John loves Fall!

John asked for a Fall Lunch for Friday so he's getting a couple of fallen leaves (bologna sandwiches) on a field of crunchy Cheetos, some bug fruit snacks & cinnamon applesauce. Pretty simple but sometimes simple is just as good as fancy. Right?

The Alien Family On Vacation

I asked John again this morning what he would like for lunch tomorrow. He's especially creative today & asked for aliens & a rocket & the planet they're going to.

I guess they must be on vacation.

The rocket sandwich was cut from a cookie cutter he got from his great aunt. The family I cut out of Rips Licorice. The planet is a painted pumpkin muffin & surrounding that are yogurt raisin meteors. And since the rocket looked a tad lonely in its section of the container I cut a star out of American cheese & placed it underneath.

I hope they enjoy their trip!

D Is For Dad

More than Cars, more than Bob The Builder, more than even Angry Birds: John adores his father.

I never really wanted kids until my own mom passed away. Then I never really considered having kids with someone until I met Tom. He's a great Dad ... with a pretty awesome motorcycle that John can't wait to be able to ride for real.


As we were waiting for his school bus this morning after Tom rode off to work on his bike, I asked John if he had any ideas for tomorrow's lunch he said "A motorcycle. And Dad."


* Sandwich Dad & Motorcycle are bologna & cheese
* "Dad" is made from monterey cheese & Scrabble Junior Cheez-It crackers
* More Cheez-Its
* Grapes

SpongeBob!

I got these super cool new lunch containers but they're too big for his lunch bag so we'll stick with the random containers from the dollar bin at the drugstore for the time being.

Anyway, on to the lunch:

* SpongeBob is a ham & cheese sandwich
* SpongeBob Honey Grahams
* Spiral String Cheese
* SpongeBob Fruit Snacks
* Carrots w/ Ranch

Pac-man Lunch

I bounced some ideas off of my friend  (and John's almost-aunt) Caitlin last night & the result for Monday's lunch is Pac-man! John loves playing it on my iPad & I thought it would be fun :)

* Pac-man is a bologna & cheese sandwich
* The Ghost is cheddar cheese
* The Power Pellets are Swedish Fish Eggs held together with a toothpick
* Applesauce
* A full pack of fish eggs
* 2 pumpkin muffin bites

Late Saturday night I received an email from his teacher taking back the ability to send in the muffins to share for snack so instead he'll just get them in his lunch bag!

Mini Pumpkin Muffin Bites

They're small in size but big in taste!

I found a great looking cupcake base at cupcakerecipes.net and knew I wanted to use some of the pumpkin pudding I had left over from last season so went to the advice given at LIVESTRONG and here we go!

Ingredients (in order of use):
110gm (1 stick) butter
110gm sugar
2 eggs
110gm self-raising flour
1 3.4 oz box Pumpkin Spice Jell-O Instant Pudding Mix
1 egg
1/2 cup milk

Directions:
Preheat oven to 375.
Beat the butter and sugar together with a spoon until creamy.
Add 2 eggs, one at a time, stirring to combine after each one.
Sift flour directly into bowl and fold into mixture.
Add in pudding mix, milk and egg. Stir well.
Scoop into silicone mini-muffin pans.
Bake 15-20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted toward the center comes out clean

Makes 36 cute little pumpkin bites!

Scooby-Doo!

I don't think I know of anyone who doesn't love Scooby. The whole plan came about this morning when I was at the drugstore to pick up some more fruit snacks for John. The only kind they have? Scooby!

I cut his picture from the box and traced it with the food gel to transfer it onto John's bologna sandwich.

(Dear Santa: If you read my blog I could really use more food gel for Christmas. An early Christmas present would be even better.)

Scooby's bone is cut out of monterey cheese.

Popcorn & the previously mentioned fruit snacks finish it off.

Fun, huh?

A Super Why Lunch (@pbskids)

John loves Super Why so it was no shock when he requested it for his lunch bag!

A turkey sandwich made up Super Why and his book (it's a mystery!). Add-ons are applesauce, Create-a-Bug fruit snacks and the ever popular slim jim!

"He's the leaf eater, not me!"

After the flop with the Bubble Guppies cast I enlisted John's help with tomorrow's lunch. Dumped out the cutter collection & said he could pick 2.

The dinosaur & HIS lunch - the palm tree!

The sandwiches are ham & cheese. Add-ons are dinosaur fruit snacks, a banana, and mini Slim Jims.

"Slim Jims, John? I thought you said this dinosaur only eats plants."

"He's the leaf-eater, Mom. Not me!"

Almost Bubble Guppies for Wednesday

I got Mr Grouper done, at least, and that turned into dinner for Tuesday along with some random snack stuff.

Now back to the lunch bag drawing board!

Blue's Clues!

Steve & Blue are painted onto a bologna & cheese sandwich. I found the picture from a coloring page online and did the best I could. The "paint the paper" transfer technique wasn't working because of the size & details. I think I did okay, though!

I used a mini paw print cookie cutter to cut a paw print out of the top slice of bread and painted the cheese.

I used the same cookie cutter to embed & paint a one onto his apple and again to trace & paint a third on one of his crackers.

After all, what kind of Blue's Clues lunch would it be without the clues?

Also included are yogurt raisins but there was no way I was going to try to paint a paw print onto one of those!

Linked up to Just a Bunch of Momsense: Lunch Box Round Up!

Another @pbskids lunch - Curious George

I had the brilliant idea of tracing my picture of George with the food gel right on the paper. I then transferred it by pressing it right onto the bread. Pretty smart Mommy, huh?

The sandwich is roast beef.
The Man's hat is painted cheddar.
Add some vanilla pudding & a banana (and his drink, of course) & we've got a lunch!

Phineas & Ferb for Friday!

I've been wanting to try and do the boys for my boy and here they are!

*Turkey sandwiches cut out & painted for the heads & sign
*melon chunks for the hair swiped out of his fruit salad
*spiral cheese stick
*Mini Oreo Fun Size Bag

Linked up to Just a Bunch of Momsense: Lunch Box Round Up!

Sid The Science Kid Lunch (@pbskids)

John requested a Sid lunch for tomorrow:
*ham & cheese Sid sandwich
*baby carrots
*blueberry yogurt tube (currently frozen)
*Create-A-Bug fruit snacks

If nothing else I seem to be getting quite adept at painting with toothpicks! :)

Just some favorites!

Not every lunch has to be fabulously complex to still be fabulous.

Tomorrow is:
*raisin bread with berry cream cheese sandwich
*mini Slim Jims
*Teddy Grahams
*vanilla pudding

Tuesday - Bob The Builder

With grapes, gummy Life Savers, pretzel thins & diamonds out of cheese and sandwich because we could :)

Now Starring: Lightning McQueen & Francesco Bernoulli!

John loves Cars and Cars 2. Lightning McQueen & friends are all over our house. Tons of cars of various sizes. Clothes. Movies. Books. Even John's bed is shaped like Lightning McQueen. This is probably the first of many Cars related lunches.

The inspiration: Lightning & Francesco



Started by making Lightning out of his turkey sandwich



A much more detailed Francesco out of cheese (cheese is SO much easier to paint than bread!)


Ta-Da!


I had just hard boiled some eggs and got the bright idea to try and mold one using one of John's little Lightning snack containers (which worked pretty well!)


Add in some Cars Fruit Snacks & Strawberry Gel with Peaches (chosen because it looked most like Lightning's colors) and we've got lunch!


Linked up to Just a Bunch of Momsense: Lunch Box Round Up!

Friday's Lunch

Packing it up for the lunch bag will be a last minute deal so it'll stay warmer longer in his FUNtainer, but on the menu:

* mac & cheese & broccoli
* Goldfish crackers
* chocolate ice cream muffin

He'll also get some yogurt raisins or a fruit leather... some sort of fruit item, anyway! And, of course, a flavored water of some sort in his drink thermos.

The muffins we made & tried tonight for the first time. He liked them but I would have liked them a tad sweeter, I think.

 

Day 2 ~ Take 2

Decided on a "snacky lunch" of baby carrots with ranch dressing, cinnamon applesauce, pumpkin shaped pumpkin bread & cream cheese sandwich and even more mini Slim Jims.

The kid would live off Slim Jims if we let him!

And he did already try to steal the pumpkin bread but I hacked off another chunk to give him instead!

Perry the Platypus

This was going to be for John's lunch bag for tomorrow... until he saw it and decided he needed to eat Perry immediately. Guess future lunch prep will get done without the kid around ;)

First Day of Kindergarten is Angry Birds!

At first I was going to wait until John went to bed tonight to work on his lunch for tomorrow ... but I needed/wanted his input so started it while he was just on the other side of the kitchen counter painting with some new water colors at the dining room table. I'm so glad I did, too, because he was a HUGE help and we had SO much fun once he realized what I was doing.

Now, if you know anything about my boy from following me on Facebook, Twitter or my other blog you know he's one of the biggest (and smallest) Angry Birds addicts there is. His 5th Birthday party? Angry Birds. His favorite toys? Angry Birds. The reason we HAD to buy iPads? Angry Birds. If he's not playing Angry Birds he's probably watching YouTube videos about Angry Birds.

It really came as no surprise when he requested an Angry Birds lunch for his first day of school.

The pig was done before he started to pay attention with a chunk of monterey jack cheese painted with food gel. He got curious once I began cutting out the birds from his turkey sandwich :)

Because of the size of the container the birds ended up being small and I knew he would need more food so we made another sandwich and cut it to size for the background (with grass painted on). Some vanilla yogurt raisins for eggs and a slingshot made out of cheese and voila!

Add-ons are an apple, some more yogurt raisins and mini Slim Jims (another addiction). 

For his drink we put some "Angry Bird Juice" (grape flavored water) in his thermos.

And now I think he's even more excited about starting Kindergarten tomorrow!



Linked up to Just a Bunch of Momsense: Lunch Box Round Up and What's For Lunch Wednesday!