More Halloween Bentos

Today I decided to make some Linzer cookies as small gifts for the teachers (maybe I'll add pictures of those later). While I had the cookie cutter out I just whipped up these lunches. the cut-outs show much better with my older daughters sunbutter sandwiches, than the little one's turkey, but it's still cute and was super fast. The cut-outs are pumpkins, an owl and a ghost, if you can't make them out.

Along the same theme I used a cat cookie cutter for these sandwiches. I took the center of the full bread slice and made the little cat. I then filled in the full slice with the same cat cut from the end of the loaf of bread. See those little Jack-O-Lanterns with the small cat? Those are carrot slices I hand carved, there are only three because I almost cut my finger off and gave up.

Can you guess what these sandwiches are? I knew those food markers would get a lot of use!

Spooky

It's so easy to get into the Halloween theme with the lunches! I mean there are so many cute store bought items this time of year. My little one has a field trip tomorrow to a pumpkin farm so she had to bring a sack lunch, no Bento. I made sure to include a pumpkin shaped sandwich for the occasion. Following suit this is the my oldest daughters lunch.

Bentos for the week so far...

I've been so busy doing things around the house the past few days it's wearing me out! Now I'm coming down with something, so more than ever my creative time at night is my therapy. I've been trying to get my brain to work harder on new ideas. I'm playing this game where I blindly choose a cookie cutter and have to incorporate that theme into the Bentos. Here's what I've come up with so far...

We re-live a lot of favorites in this house. Snap peas and flower sandwiches are always a hit, and of course fortune cookies!

This was for my oldest daughter yesterday. Hubby is trying to convert her to a Packer fan. I thought this might maker her a little more popular with the boys at her lunch table too...

The little one is doing her weekly unit on apples this week, so I used that for her lunch.

This is tomorrow's lunch. This is as creative as I can get with laryngitis, and after having spent the day moving furniture around...

Fall

My little ones class is doing a fall theme this week, so I just went right along...

I also offered to bring a treat for "sharing day", they are supposed to bring something fall themed so I made "Leaves and Acorns".

Busy Busy Busy

Sorry I've been MIA for a bit. Schools in full swing, and Ive had the wonderful oppurtunity to spend some time volunteering in my little one's class. I'm offering myself up to help out at school as much as I can. It helps to see her working away in class and I know she's really enjoying Kindergarten. Here's a few recent lunches:

I thought it'd be fun to do a breakfast for lunch so here we have mini blueberry muffins, some peaches a mini bagel, and those adorable mini European Plums. I threw in some Koala cookies for kicks.

This was a little less inspired, but my little one really enjoys when I use the picks in her lunch so I ran with the "bunny" theme...

I promise to be back soon with some of the wonderful things I've worked on for Lindsay's Peacock wedding. In the mean time if you visit my shop I am offering 55% OFF EVERYTHING!

Victory! Well Kinda...

The little one had a day where she ate almost all her lunch! I guess a teacher was at her table and helped her arrange everything on top pf the lids of her bento like a plate, and she ate pretty much all of it! The teacher commented to her what a cute lunch she had too, she's was SO proud when I picked her up. YAY! Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of that days lunch, but here's tomorrows lunch.

Flower turkey sammies, flower shaped rice crackers, snap peas, clementine slices. The oldest also has string cheese (cut up) and a strawberry. As a fun surprise I added fortune cookies!

Change of Plans

Ok for those of you waiting for shop updates, I am so sorry. My camera broke last month, and the thought of using the DSLR scares the begezus out of me. I promise to play around with it soon though, because I have some new necklaces I really want to get in the shop.

In the meantime I can't believe we are already into the third week of school! My little one has been having some anxiety about lunch at school lately. She really has so much less time to eat with the school schedule. It actually had her in tears one day last week. Which broke my heart. As I mentioned before to try to combat this I've decided to pack her smaller Bentos. The fist full week I sent some of these.

The red bento is my little ones...

I though for sure the bear would go well, he's just a mini bagel with Nutella

I was getting full Bentos back at the end of the day. One day all she ate was a plum! I'm trying to chalk it up to her just needing to adjust to all the business of the day. I hope once the new routine is settled she be able to enjoy her lunches more. My oldest is eating every bite and asking me to pack more!

Here's today's "smaller" Bento. There are mini flower sandwiches, grapes, a Babybel ladybug, some clementine wedges, and a few slices of swiss rolls. For my oldes I added some mini Poptarts too fill up the larger Bento. Here's hoping for empty boxes coming home!

A New Lesson in Bento...Have Options

So we've had a few days of school, and that means a few lunches have come and gone. I was worried about my little one because she really likes to take her time when she eats, but Kindergarten schedules don't allow for THAT much time. I love offering her selection in her lunch, but sometimes that means more food, and more food...requires MORE time. See the conflict? So I figure now I'll be sending smaller portions in the smaller bento, which I originally thought was too small. I'm glad I had the smaller one.

This is the bento she has been taking, which holds a LOT to keep it full.

This is the smaller one, that gives me the two tier option, yet with smaller portions.

Tonight I wanted to make my kids a favorite family salad that I know they both love. So I needed another container to hold the salad. I was so glad I remembered the little snack cup that I actually picked up in the Target dollar section!

It may look like a lot to pack, but it keeps everything fresh, the dry goods stay dry, and the flavors don't mingle. Everything fits very nicely in her lunch sack.

The bottom three containers are hers, the top is my 12 year olds bento.

Back to School

My baby starts Kindergarden tomorrow!

Summer is Coming to and End...

One of our last Summer Bentos

That means it's BACK TO SCHOOL!! I have so much to show you! September will be full of fun new Bentos, a pretty peacock wedding to prepare for, Smash book fun, Feathers for the shop, and SO SO much more!

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Such a Busy Month

Sorry for the lack of posts but we've had a very busy month. My oldest had her Birthday this month, and we had my parents visit for a few days, plus had a Birthday party! if you follow me on Pinterest you probably saw the board I have dedicated to her party. It was a big success, despite some early concern about the number of guests. We made button bracelets at Glitter Workshop, then we had a sleepover.

Let me tell you five eleven/twelve year olds, plus my two girls can be a LOT of fun, but pretty tiring. Here are some quick snaps from the events.

The decorations had a cute little owl, so we ran with it. These cupcakes I found on Family Fun were perfect.

How cute are these little cookies?! I got them from a seller on Etsy, and she was just so lovely to work with. They were just as delicious as they are cute!

I set up a little "candy buffet" for the girls to have a take-aways. I might have re-thought this is I'd have remembered they were coming straight to my house afterword...

Naomi's button collection is swoon worthy!

Sandwich Sushi

Today's bento was really fun! While my 11 year old is really adventurous and will eat actual sushi, my 5 year old...well she's another story. Part of Bento for me was broadening the scope of what she will eat by making it fun. So I took veggies I knew she's eat and made then into simple sandwich sushi, with whole wheat bread, and a little mayo. She loves eating with chopsticks so I made sure everything in the bento was kid chopstick friendly.



Here's a little pictorial on how I made the "sushi".

What I've learned in Bento

I started Bento-ing this summer as practice for the school year, which is fast approaching. Here are some lessons I learned.

Dead space is useless, fill it in and, fill it up!

Colorful food is fun food, and veggies are colorful, yay for this one!

Dessert is important when your a kid. Oh who am I kidding it important to all of us.

Kids will eat almost anything off cute mini forks!

Cupcakes, Champagne, and Feathers!

Let me start by saying I LOVE weddings! I love the every aspect of it, but most especially the planning. I think because I so LOVE to see it all come together in one grand display in the end. But I also love parties, and what better excuse for a bunch of parties than a wedding.

When Lindsay first asked me to help her with accessories for her wedding I was ecstatic! When she started talking about her vision for the theme all these picture started whirling in my head. One thing I knew was I has to have some kind of party for her, but I needed a bit of an excuse. I'm not close enough to help with a shower, or part of a larger group for an engagement party. Then she said she wanted to invite the Bridesmaids to show them some of what we were working on, and I thought, THIS IS IT!

It was so great to have Abby and Kayla come and work on the designs they were going to wear. First they are so much fun to chat with, and you can really see why all these girls are such good friends. It was lovely to be a part of that.

I got to see the dresses. The got to see all the ideas. We made a Lindsay try on here headpiece, and the girls saw theirs. Everyone went home with cupcakes and champagne. it was a GREAT day!

Lindsay's Peacock Wedding

Okay I'm going to show some unfinished product, I just can wait to share. Remember how I said that the wedding accessories I was working on included bouquets made of feathers? Well without further a-do:

There is some finishing work to do, this was mostly a test to see if the bride liked the look. I am going to include some rhinestone accents that will match the bridesmaids hair accessories.

Those areas where there seem to be more blue, in the center I'll be including rhinestone accents like the ones you see on this lovely comb:
These are the Maid and Matron of Honors hairpieces. I had a chance to meet them and we worked together to design them. It was so much fun! A perfect excuse to eat cupcakes, talk wedding talk, and of course have some champagne! Check back for a glimpse of what it was like.

Bento: Simple Can Still be Cute

When I was young and my Mom packed my lunches there was a simple formula, sandwich + chips + fruit + dessert = well made lunch. Of course there were variations substituting the sandwich for soup, the chips for crackers, etc. Back then it's how most of the lunchboxes opened to look. You know what, it's still a fine choice. It's simple, easy, you can find lots of healthy variations on even chips these days. So I'll show you how even that can be just a little bit dressed up to be cute. Kind of like this:

Okay I'm sure everything here is recognizable, those are sandwich thin rounds cut in half, made into simple turkey sandwiches and stacked. A cup of blueberries with a strawberry garnish, frozen grapes, and baked Cheetos (yes my kids at Cheetos...). But it looks cute right? The colors are appealing. It doesn't look like your trying to pull one over and add any tricky "new" foods, kids like that. All I did to up the cute factor was use one "Bento Supply" this:

This cute little "cutter" has so many uses, cut lunch meats and cheese. Use it as a stencil to add details with condiments. You can even cut thinly sliced fruits(I've done it with apples that I dip in lemon juice, but that's for another time). The best part, this little guy can be had for under $5. Try Amazon, if your willing to wait for shipping from Japan there's JBox.com, and even Ebay has them.

Craftacular

I'm so excited to be taking part in this show this weekend. The lovely Naomi Richardson of Glitter Workshop works very hard to put on a great show. The venue is amazing with lake views, and great food, even a tiki bar. This year there will be about 80 fabulous artists, and I'm flattered to be one of them. If your in the area I hope you'll come out and say "hi"!
Sunday July 24th from 10 am to 5 pm
East Side Club
3735 Monona Drive

Bento by Request

In lieu of a lengthy post I'm going to show you some of our recent lunches.

Arent these Ladybug Babybells the cutest?! I found them on Pinterest. Ah Pinterest you are my new drug of choice.

This was a "Teddybear Picnic". The sandwiches are supposed to be bear faces, I just could not think of how to add mouths so they look a little off. This is why I'm practicing, next time they'll be better.

A big part of my staring to Bento was getting my little one to be more adventurous with food. She had tries so many new things now, snap peas are a new favorite! This was basically salad, and I was so happy to watch my girls eat all those veggies!

This Bento inspired a lot of questions on Facebook about where I got my Bento supplies. I'll be answering those questions in a post very soon!

Don't Play with your Food

My youngest will be starting Kindergarten in the fall. I love the back to school season, and I've already been searching out all the cutest supplies I could find for her. I am so excited for her, and at the same time know how much I'll miss all my time with her during the day. We've been talking about what school is like with my oldest who will be going into 7th grade. We've all decided both of them will bring lunches to school this year. My oldest wanted to buy lunch at school last year, you know "like all the cool kids do". She quickly learned, she's not that into what they serve at school. I started to see a pattern in her lunch buying, bagel and apple and a cookie, almost everyday for lunch. Not exactly my ideal, so I decided to Bento.
My youngest is picky, and she eats in snack-y proportions throughout the day, so for her it's perfect. My oldest is not picky, but right now she's obsessed with all things Japan, so it fit for her too. We've been "practicing" this summer to see what kind of lunches go over well. Here are some we've done.

I've purchased some supplies and a few different types of "lunch boxes", including some more bento style boxes. But Bento is becoming so popular, as well as good old fashioned taking your lunch. So even Ziplock makes containers that work.

I've been pretty amazed at how much my little one will eat when it's cute food. I even get to use the ends of the bread now! I mean really who knew.

Pretty as a Peacock

I thought I'd share a project that is currently in the works. A dear friend of ours is getting married this fall, and I've been lucky enough to work with her on some things for her wedding. She chose a beautiful Peacock theme, and has the most lovely ideas. The work centers around feathers, and though I'm excited to show you everything, Ive had to restrain myself from getting to far ahead. I want the feather to look lovely and fresh for the wedding you see. But I'll give you a sneak peek.

It is SO beautiful, inspired by a design she found, I used a Peacock pad and some ostrich feathers and hackle. The lovely vintage inspired broach just pulls it all together don't you think?


See that lovely blue in the peacock feather eye? That is the color of her bridesmaid dressses. Look at these pretty Daisy Petal Designs Earrings she chose for them.

I can't wait to show you more. Her bouquets are feathers too! Stay tuned!