22 Days to Halloween!

Today's countdown lunch very subtly pays tribute to our good friend, Count Von Count from Sesame Street, who turns 40 today.

As the Count lives with bats in his castle, I made pb & strawberry bat sandwiches on a bed of salad.  Since he's turning the big 4-0, I put 4 bat rings in the salad for decoration to count.

Because he is a vampire, I packed mandarin oranges (the other half of the can I used for yesterday's lunch) with a white "vampire teeth" fork pick.

I did have more direct ideas, but some little girl was worried that her friends would think that it was too babyish, so I went for sublte references instead.  I did not take a picture of the label for her sandwich box, but I drew vampire mouths, bats, and a spooky cat to help tie into the theme.

I still don't have food writing pens as the surrounding stores that carry them are out, or I would have done a basic vampire sandwich.  Ah, well, I may still do one for another halloween lunch.

23 Days to Halloween!

Another week brings another round of lunches counting down to Halloween.

Today is still wet from yesterday with more rain predicted, the weather is cool enough to bring out long pants and long sleeves, so a hot lunch was in order.  We made baked spaghetti this weekend, so leftovers made this lunch really easy and quick to put together this morning.

In her food jar (I charged it with hot water first) she has spaghetti all nice and hot... it fits the halloween theme as it can be called bloody worms.  We also have some green beans (or green fingers) with a bat ring and cat fork pick and mandarin oranges (kidneys going by shape) with a finger puppet skeleton (from Dollar General) and the matching cat fork pick.  She has lemonade in her gorilla bottle.

26 Days to Halloween!

Well, I failed yesterday at making a mouth with apples and banana, but I'm happy to report that my aha moment caused a success!

I realized that CELERY could be used as green teeth... which is cool for halloween... and my daughter loves peanut butter on celery and apples, so I could use it to hold them together!

In addition to her mouth of apple slices, pb, and celery, she has BOO written in cucumber twice, on skewers (sadly, these are hearts as I am still sick and so have not made unnecessary outings for things like halloween stickers to make the picks festive)  Her jack o'lantern is half an apple and celery is used for the stalk (two pieces, placed where the core was removed).

In the smaller section (with wax paper to prevent it getting too moist from sweating on the plastic container) is what is technically a ghost (the ghost of my set of cutters), but I think looks like Boogie Oogie from Nightmare Before Christmas.  Boogie/the ghost is a pizza sandwich... I had a nice stick of pepperoni and cut some of that, spread ketchup (because I didn't want to open a jar of tomato sauce... I'm lazy), and put the (dairy free)  cheese on top of each piece... and microwaved to melt the cheese.  That is how he got a little bloody... lol... because some of the sauce and cheese discolored him a bit... but I had the face on the down side so it would show.  By putting it together warm, it will stick nicely.  The bread is honey oat and it's nice and thick, so I didn't have to toast it prior to making the pizza sandwich (other, softer, breads I do this to make sure it holds shape)

I didn't show the top of her container yesterday... but here is the one for today... 

27 days till Halloween!

This is another one of those "do I really wanna post this?" lunches, because it isn't the prettiest, but I like to be honest with my lunch making process, so here it is.

I've been wanting to do those cute apple mouths, but Ruthie doesn't like almonds or uncooked marshmallow, so I finally decided to try banana... she doesn't care for pb on her banana, so I used toothpicks to put them together.  Now this morning I woke up with this AHA moment of how I could have done it without the toothpicks, so I'll be doing that shortly... on the brighter side, Ruthie was pleased and saw them as mouths right away.  In the main section she has "BRAINS" aka... shredded chicken, then she has some bones of carrots and celery (trying to get her to eat carrots by sneaking small bits into some of her meals), and then a silicone cup of lettuces and another of cucumber jack o'lanterns... sorry that you can only see one, but there it is.

28 Days till Halloween!

Yes, it's day 2 of counting down till the day we go trick or treating in fun costumes around here, so another halloween theme lunch is in order.

As I did yesterday, I made a cover for the box I used.  Today, I used her pink hello kitty box, the largest from her set of 4 and I decided to use her gorilla bottle from the zoo for her drink... this kind of shows the size of the box compared to the 10-12oz bottle.  It is taller than the bottle lying down, though... and holds a surprising amount.

In her lunch, we have a pb & strawberry witch on honey wheat whole grain bread supported by celery "bones" (yeah, she doesn't eat a lot of raw veggies), two halloween chips a'hoy cookies because the kids' aunt bought a package on sale as a surprise for them, and a silicone cup of orange chunks with a spider ring for decoration.  She has water to drink.  Now that she's not caring if her foods touch like she used to, I can pack more tightly and use the smaller containers more often, and this also means she gets to take her favorite my little pony lunchbox more often.  This lunch could fit in even the smallest lunch bags with no problem.

Halloween Countdown Bento #1

Halloween is coming!  We love this holiday and so I decided we will do a countdown to it in Ruthie's lunches!  Today is the first bento... 29 Days till Halloween!

I made it in her Tinkerbell sandwich box which still surprises me on how much it holds.

Two bat sandwiches filled with peanut butter and strawberry fly at the top of the lunch which holds a green silicone bakign cup of cucumber chunks with a skull ring for decoration, a pink silicone cup of orange chunks with a cocktail fork pick (from Dollar Tree) because they are so juicy.  Surrounding the two cups are bite-sized celery sticks (also called BONES during halloween... hehe), and I used my BOO cookie cutter (plastic, so required both hands to push down) to make the word from orange peel.  Above the bats is a sour apple laffy taffy that I found hiding in a drawer... leftover from one day or another... so she even has her first TREAT along with her lunch of yummy tricks.  A note on the top of the box helps her count down, too (it's only held on by the bands that keep the box closed, so she can pocket it if she wants... she did that with her pirate map from our pirate day lunch)

Her other treat of 8oz (in a re-used Motts Juice bottle from an 8pack I bought last year) of watermelon/cherry kool-aid (50/50 with water) is not pictured.

The cutters used for this lunch are from a Wilton set I got from ebay

What fun things are you doing to get ready for Halloween?

First Attempt at Angry Birds Lunch - partial fail

Ruthie went to a birthday party this weekend and it had an angry birds theme, down to the invitations (the gift bag was even an angry birds drink cup holding a packet of fruit snacks, a fruit roll-up, 3 pieces of candy (snack size), and a little rubber angry bird ball you put together... all wrapped in cellophane).  So she asked for an Angry Bird lunch.

I've been sick all week with this horrible virus and have still not picked up food writer pens (the kids were sick first, so it's been two weeks of buying lots of medicines), so I saw the fail coming, but it made her happy, so it was worth it.

First, we have a turkey (bird meat) sandwich... I made a face from a heal of the loaf, but had to freehand it... that, combined with the fact my daughter rarely eats a full sandwich (I only packed a half sandwich) not giving much room for it, and the angry bird face ended up how you see it below.

In the yellow-green silicone cup she has chunks of apple and on the bottom she has a field of lettuce.
In the pink pig silicone cup she has all of the angry bird fruit snacks, surrounded by pretzels (there are two under it, too)

She was thrilled, but I am seeing that I will be going to walmart for the food writing pens this week even if I'm still sick.  I could have done so much more with them.