Wendy Copley's Blog, page 12

The Week in Bentos: July 7-11, 2014

Hi lunch packers! This week I have five preschool bento lunches to share with you, along with a mini-review of a new lunch box cook book. Read on to see what Augie ate and get all the details:

This post contains affiliate links.

Monday

On Monday we hit the ground running with this cutie patootie lunch. I packed Augie carrots, cucumber slices, cherries, a few grapes and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich that I cut with our new Cuddle Palz set. I used the hamster face plate for this, but the way I positioned the body made it look more like a koala, I think. I packed this lunch in a large, black single layer bento box and I removed one of the divider trays for the sandwich.

Tuesday

On Tuesday, I sent Augie to school with Hawaiian Puff-Wheels, a recipe from a new cook book I’ve been loving, The Best Homemade Kids’ Lunches on the Planet by Laura Fuentes. Laura is the mind behind Momables a weekly lunch planning service that I’ve used in the past and really liked a lot so I expected her book to be good. After going through the whole thing though, I’d rank it much higher than “good” — it’s excellent! These puffs — puff pastry packed with ham, cheese and pineapple — were one of the first recipes we tried and they got high marks from everyone in the family. I’d actually hoped that I’d be able to pack them in several lunches, but they were eaten too quickly. I had grab the two you see here and set them aside so I’d have them for the next day!

The rest of the lunch held blueberries, a chopped up plum, cucumber slices and hummus. This was packed in the PlanetBox Rover.

Wednesday

Wednesday I had leftovers from dinner to pack, so lunch was super simple. The main compartment of this EasyLunchboxes bento box had Mexican egg rolls (recipe from my Six O’ Clock Scramble subscription). The sides were cucumber slices and cherries. Augie wanted to jazz this up, so he added some Mickey Mouse picks and a Spiderman ring.

Thursday

Thursday we woke up late so I pulled together this quick and easy lunch in our Yumbox: a chocolate chip granola bar, cherries, grapes, cucumbers, turkey meatballs and a tiny piece of s’mores bar in the treat compartment.

Friday

And finally, Augie had a lunch packed in our little house bento box on Friday. One layer held wheat thins and ham flowers separated by a piece of baran decorated with a frog, pig and dog. The other layer had strawberries and cucumber slices with some panda, koala and bear baran. I also included a monkey pick for eating the strawberries.

Are you looking for more ideas for packed lunches! My book, Everyday Bento: 50 Cute and Yummy Lunches to Go is packed with ideas for fun, delicious lunches. With 50 brand new bento box lunches and step-by-step photo tutorials showing how to make them it will provide you with loads of inspiration when it’s time to pack lunch. Order today from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Powell’s.

The Week in Bentos: June 30 – July 3, 2014

Hey lunch packers! We have a light slate of bentos this week because Wyatt did not attend camp and the holiday on Friday made it extra short. But the lunches I have to share are pretty cute.

This post contains affiliate links.

Monday

On Monday I pulled out our new Cuddle Palz set and used it to make this cutie-patootie tiger sandwich. I filled it with pb&j and put a little wild animals napkin underneath it. I also packed hummus, red pepper strips, cucumber slices and strawberries. Super easy and super cute! I used our folding sandwich bento box.

Tuesday

Tuesday I was in a rush so I packed this very fast and simple lunch: hummus in a Lego container, cukes, crackers, strawberries and turkey meatballs. It came together so fast that I had a minute to add some picks so I poked in a bee, lady bug and a daisy from the new set of picks I got last week.

Wednesday

Wednesday, Augie had this soccer bears bento box that I packed for last week’s 3 Tools, 4 Lunches post. You can get more details about it here.

Thursday

On Thursday, I packed this 4th of July themed lunch in our Yumbox. I started off with a couple of picnic staples: watermelon and corn. (Yeah, it’s not corn on the cob, but close enough!). I also put in blueberries, decorated with strawberry stars to give it a patriotic feel and then I reversed them and filled a compartment with strawberries with a few more blueberries to add to the red and blue. Finally, I rolled up some salami slices and poked a blue pinwheel pick in them. That felt sort of reminiscent of fireworks to me.

Friday

There was no school because we were celebrating the 4th of July! I hope my American friends had a great holiday.

Are you looking for more ideas for packed lunches! My book, Everyday Bento: 50 Cute and Yummy Lunches to Go is packed with ideas for fun, delicious lunches. With 50 brand new bento box lunches and step-by-step photo tutorials showing how to make them it will provide you with loads of inspiration when it’s time to pack lunch. Order today from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Powell’s.

3 Tools, 4 Lunches: PlanetBox Rover, CuteZCute Animal Palz, and Alphabet Picks

It’s time once more for 3 Tools, 4 Lunches! Every week for the next few month I’m challenging three bento-ists to make lunches using the same three tools — a lunch box and two tools for decoration.

Here are the tools we used this week:

PlanetBox Rover — a divided, stainless steel, tray-style lunch box.
CuteZcute Animal Palz set — this versatile set allows you cut, stamp and seal sandwiches or mold hard-boiled eggs. You can also use it for…gasp!…cookies!
Alphabet Picks — each pack of these decorative picks has all of the letters from A to Z. I recommend buying multiple sets so it’s easier to spell out names or words.

I have to admit that I kind of messed up when I chose these tools this week because I used two of the same tools for one of our challenges a few weeks ago. But once again the versatility of these materials and the creativity of my lunch packing friends resulted in completely different lunches.

Want to see what we made? Here you go:

Our first lunch this week is a sheep-themed lunch from Amy Masterson of Yummy Bites by Amy. For this lunch, Amy used the Animal Palz set to make sheep shaped ham sandwiches. She also added sweet pepper rings, carrots, watermelon, cantaloupe, blueberries, babybell and Archer Farm sweet bbq waffle chips. The alphabet picks were poked in the fruit and used to spell out “Baby Sheep.” Find out more about this lunch on Amy’s blog.

Amy is fairly new to bentos. She started in September 2013 when she was researching options for healthy school lunches. Her favorite thing about bento lunches is seeing the happiness it brings her family. Knowing everyone has a nutritious meal brings a smile to her face.

photo courtesy of Kendra Peterson, Biting the Hand That Feeds You

Argh! Here be a Pirate Batz lunch from Kendra Peterson (aka Ludicrous Mama) of Biting the Hand That Feeds You.  Kendra’s PlanetBox holds organic sugar snap peas, carrots, broccoli, and cherries. The Animal Palz were used to make gluten-free sandwiches with peanut butter and blueberry jam. She also included a little treat of organic raw sugar cube “gold nuggets.” Get more details about this lunch at Kendra’s blog.

Kendra and her family avoid all artificial ingredients, including fake food dyes and flavors, as well as following a gluten-free diet. She packs mainly for her kids and herself (when she remembers…) and sometimes for her husband and school teachers. She started packing lunches just to be cute and fun, but it turned out to be a great way to entice her picky eater to try new things. Taking familiar “accepted” foods and serving them in different ways is a great way to avoid food anxiety, by getting your kids comfortable with the idea of change and “different” at mealtimes. She also loves that making lunches fun helps her kids not feel “left out” since they can’t have school lunches or familiar treats and snacks that the other kids all get to eat because of our dietary restrictions.

Next up: Cristi Messersmith of Bent On Better Lunches brings us this batty lunch. Cristi’s lunch holds a hard-cooked egg CuteZcute bat,     watermelon hearts cut with a vegetable cutter & decorated with little bat cocktail picks, 2 bats in love cheese sandwiches made with an Evriholder Bat Bytes cutter and decorated with fruit leather hearts, baby carrots embellished with bat rings from last year’s Trick or Treat bags, and kiwi slices with a heart bento fork. She spelled out “Bats Amore” across the top of the lunch with alphabet picks. You can read more about this lunch on Cristi’s blog.

Bent On Better Lunches chronicles Cristi’s attempts to provide nutritious,  fun, (mostly) trash-free lunches for her 5 picky sproutlets, and occasionally her sailor husband. She says you won’t find anything exotic or too complicated, just simple foods that most kids will eat, creatively packed with as little fuss as possible! One of Cristi’s favorite pages is her 101 Peanut Butter Sandwiches article. Faced with making the same thing for lunch every day for her son who has autism, she challenged herself to make it 101 different ways.

The last lunch of the week is my homage to the U.S. men’s national soccer team using…er…pandas. The U.S. team was playing Belgium when I made this lunch yesterday. We are not normally a sporty family, but we’ve all been enjoying the World Cup so I was inspired. I used the Animal Palz panda plate to cut and stamp a slice of watermelon and I used the same stamp to make two salami sandwiches. I also tucked a soccer ball pick into one of the sandwiches to make it look like the panda was kicking it. The other two items in this lunch were a sliced Persian cucumber with USA picks poked into it and a field of blueberry “soccer balls” where I spelled out “Futball”.

Do you have these tools? How do you like to use them?

But wait! There’s more! My book, Everyday Bento: 50 Cute and Yummy Lunches to Go is packed with ideas for fun, delicious lunches. With 50 brand new bento box lunches and step-by-step photo tutorials showing how to make them it will provide you with loads of inspiration when it’s time to pack lunch. Order today from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Powell’s.

The Week in Bentos: June 23-27, 2014

Last week both of my boys were out of the house at lunch time — one at preschool, one at day camp — so I have a jam-packed week of lunches for you today. I am very used to more relaxed summer mornings at this point, so I’ll admit I was not particularly jazzed to be packing double the lunches this week. My strategy to make it easier: pack as many of the same items in the kids’ lunches as I could. they have pretty different likes and dislikes as far as food goes so I didn’t pack them identical lunches, but I think I managed pretty well.

Let’s dig right in!

This post contains affiliate links.

Monday

On Monday, Augie had a salami rose in a silicone cup, grapes, a Persian cucumber, Pirate’s Booty, and strawberries. I packed it in our PlanetBox Rover.

Wyatt also had Pirate’s Booty, a salami rose, grapes, and strawberries. I swapped the cucumber for a dill pickle. His was packed in a Laptop Lunches bento box.

Tuesday

On Tuesday we were really low on groceries, so I had to scrape the barrel a little to come up with lunches for the boys. Still their meals ended up looking pretty good. Augie had mini tacos from the freezer, carrots, tortilla chips, raisins and cucumbers in the Yumbox.

Wyatt had carrots, mini tacos, tortilla chips, salsa and raisins. Once again this was packed in a Laptop Lunches bento box.

Wednesday

I went to the store Tuesday afternoon, so we had tons of options on Wednesday morning. (I love the day after grocery shopping!) Both kids begged me for a turkey corn dog and I relented. Augie also had apple chunks, some ketchup for dipping, popcorn and dill pickles. Looking at it now, I notice that there was a lot of sodium in this lunch, but it’s too late to fix that now, I guess. I packed this one in our Yubo.

And looky here! Wyatt had the exact same lunch! Popcorn, pickles, apples, corn dog and ketchup. And there’s that Laptop Lunches box again.

Thursday

Thursday I pulled out the PlanetBox again for Augie. He had hummus, strawberries, cucumber, turkey roll-ups, crackers and a diced plum.

Wyatt used the Laptop Lunches box again: strawberries, raisins, plum, turkey and crackers. Easy peasy.

Friday

On Thursday afternoon, I received the newest CuteZCute set in the mail*: Cuddle Palz! I am a big fan of all the CuteZCute cutter sets and this one is a cool addition to my collection. It comes with both a head and a body cutter so you can make a full animal. Seriously, SO CUTE.

Of course I had to try it out immediately, so I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with the bear stamp. Augie was super excited and even Wyatt commented on how cute it was. (Too cute for a 9-year-old to put in his lunch, however…) He also had some big pieces of Persian cucumber, grapes and strawberries. I packed this lunch in one of our Lego bento boxes.

And for his final lunch of the week, Wyatt chose the…Yumbox! He had a granola bar, jelly sandwiches shaped like stars, grapes, strawberries and turkey roll-ups.

Are you looking for more ideas for packed lunches! My book, Everyday Bento: 50 Cute and Yummy Lunches to Go is packed with ideas for fun, delicious lunches. With 50 brand new bento box lunches and step-by-step photo tutorials showing how to make them it will provide you with loads of inspiration when it’s time to pack lunch. Order today from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Powell’s.

3 Tools, 3 Lunches: EasyLunchboxes, Flower Cutters, and Leaf Picks

Welcome back to 3 Tools, 4 Lunches! I had to take last week off due to some difficulties that befell several of the bloggers who were scheduled to post (including me), but this week we are back on track…mostly. I’ve had a rotten cold this week, so I decided to skip making a lunch, but I have three gorgeous lunches from some of my bento friends to share.

If you are unfamiliar with this series, each week I recruit three bento lunch packers and challenge them to create a lunch using the same three tools. My goals are to show the variety of ways different bento tools can be  used and to showcase some talented bento-ists who you may not know about yet.

Here are the tools that were used this week:

EasyLunchboxes bento box — a versatile, economical choice that allows creative bento creations to shine.
Wilton Nesting Flower Cutters — these cutters come in six sizes and are a basic flower shape which makes them extra versatile.
Leaf Picks — add a bit of greenery to your lunch with this cute leaf picks.

And here are the lunches:

This first lunch is from Jackie at Loving Lunches. You may remember Jackie’s cute owl lunch from a couple weeks ago. Today she is sharing a pretty lunch packed with flowers.  Here’s how she describes the contents of this lunch:

Strawberry, watermelon & grape ‘salad’, cut with smallest flower cutter
Puff Pastry morsels cut with middle sized flower & imprinted with smallest, then topped with strawberry jam & piped full of strawberry cheesecake spread.
Ham rosettes & cheese flower cut outs on top of lettuce. The bread & cheese ‘rolling hills’ were cut with the flower cutter after rolling the bread up sushi style. The cloud up top is made form a single slice of bread cut with the largest flower cutter & imprinted with two smaller sizes, filled with butter & jam & sealed with the next size down.

Photo courtesy of Sarah Denton, Blame it on the Bento

The next lunch is by Sarah Denton of Blame it on the Bento. Sarah made flower-shaped nut butter sandwiches with sprinkles and planted them in a flowerpot with crushed oreo soil on top of a little more nut butter. She accented them with leaf picks. For sides she cut cucumber and carrots with the small cutters and added in some strawberries and blueberries. You can find out more about this lunch on Sarah’s blog.

Sarah has been packing bento lunches for about 18 months and she likes to pack fun lunches for her three kids who are 9, 9 and 11. She describes her lunches as a little geeky, with science fiction or vintage cartoon themes. She occasionally packs lunches for herself as well.

The final lunch is from Becky Williamson of Food for Harper.  This is how Becky describes her blog: “I document lunches I make for my almost-4 year old girl, Harper, and I’ve just begun to document what I prepare for 19 month old boy, Adler. The lunches do not take me longer than 15 minutes to prepare and they all usually include the five basic food groups. I love color!”

This lunch includes a flower peanut butter and honey sandwich with rainbow nonpareils in the spaces. Becky used two different sized flower cutters – one to create the shape of the sandwich, and one to reveal the contents of the sandwich. The side dishes are cucumber flowers and cherry tomatoes with a leaf pick to attached to make them look like a pair of cherries. The dairy is a Mini Babybel with a flower cutout and pineapple bits were included for a serving of fruit.

Do you have these tools? How do you like to use them?

But wait! There’s more! My book, Everyday Bento: 50 Cute and Yummy Lunches to Go is packed with ideas for fun, delicious lunches. With 50 brand new bento box lunches and step-by-step photo tutorials showing how to make them it will provide you with loads of inspiration when it’s time to pack lunch. Order today from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Powell’s.

Summer Kick-Off

Things have been a little slow around here lately, because I’ve been off-line enjoying the summer with my kids. Summer is my happy time. Yes, I realize that’s true for many people, but I’m more relaxed in the summer, I have more energy and I definitely yell at my kids less. (They might dispute that fact, but I guarantee you I’m a much funner mom from June-August). I love summer so much that I even named one of my kids August!

I keep thinking I’ll write individual posts about all the stuff we’ve been doing, but that hasn’t worked out, so I thought I’d just put everything in one loooong post.

First day of school/Last day of school:

Wyatt’s last day of school was a few weeks ago so I took the traditional last day of school photo to see how the boys have grown this year. Up above is the first day photo. And here’s the last day photo:

They are older and wiser, my friends. Older and wiser.

Welcome to Summer Kits:

A few days before school let out, I saw this post about making fun summer bags for your kids on Petit Elefant. I needed to get a few more summer things for the kids anyway, so I put together these kits to welcome them home on the last day of school. Each kit had exactly the same items in it (to minimize bickering and whining about unfairness) and I tried for a mix of pure fun and practical fun. I packed each one in a sand bucket and included a pair of silky shorts, a tank top for the two hot days we’ll get this summer, flip-flops, a water cannon, a box of candy, a box of those things that make a loud popping noise when you throw them on the ground, a pack of glow sticks, a water ball and a craft kit that I got for 88 cents in the clearance section of Target. The kits were a little spendy because of the clothes, but I would have bought those anyway and this delivery method was MUCH more fun than pulling them out of the Target bag. My boys went absolutely cuckoo when they saw them so it was a fun way to start summer vacation.

Beach:

We lucked into warm weather the Sunday after school let out so we all headed to the beach for the day. I used to shy away from the beach because it seemed like a lot of work to prepare, but a few years ago I started keeping a bag with a blanket, beach toys and sun block in the trunk of our car and now it doesn’t feel so bad.

The kids took their water canons with them and they had a great time shooting their Dad with them while he was trying to nap. Heh.



Rainbow Loom:

I found a knock-off Rainbow Loom at Ross for $5 right before school let out and now we’re all hooked on making the bracelets. Wyatt used almost all the rubber bands that came with the set the first few days we had it, so I got a big pack of assorted bands at the craft store shortly after and we’ve all been going to town with them. You can see some of my handy work up above.

Popsicles:

We’ve been eating tons of popsicles.

So. Many. Popsicles.

I usually buy them at the store, but I’ve also been playing around with recipes for home-made pops. You can get the recipe for the healthy rainbow pops up above at Alpha Mom.

Library:

We have a standing weekly date at the library every Monday afternoon. We check out a huge pile of books and then spend the rest of the afternoon on the couch plowing through as many as we can. Augie has been really into ancient Egypt lately, so we’ve been getting lots of books on that topic. Wyatt has been reading about Pokemom, pranks and cartooning.

Kinetic Sand:

Oh gosh! I kind of want to write a whole post on kinetic sand! If you haven’t played with it before, it’s kind of hard to explain. It has the consistency of damp sand, but it’s dry and it doesn’t leave any residue on your hands. It sticks to itself, but not much else, so it’s easy to mold and clean up. It also moves in a way that is sort of hypnotizing and I’ve found that if the kids are going a little cuckoo, they calm down really quickly. I bought a two pound pack of it (about the size of a brick) and Augie has played with it multiple times per day since I brought it home. He uses it to make sand castles, mini forts, and landscapes for his toy animals and he also just has fun packing, molding and cutting it.

Tie Dye:

I also found a neon tie dye kit at Ross (for $3!) so we made some shirts first thing. The shirts came out great (see my tie dye tutorial for more info) and I had some dye left over when we were done so I decided to tie dye a few pairs of the kids’ sweat socks instead of just dumping it down the drain.

This may very well have been the worst aesthetic decision of my life. It seems that sweat socks do not absorb dye the same way plain cotton t-shirts do and the result was three pairs of the world’s ugliest socks. This is what we call them: The World’s Ugliest SocksTM. As in:

“Mom! I need to get my shoes on for camp, but all I can find are The World’s Ugliest SocksTM!”

Or:

“No, Mommy! Please don’t make me wear The World’s Ugliest SocksTM!”

How’s your summer been so far?

The Week in Bentos: June 16-20, 2014

Dang it! The first head cold of the summer is sweeping through our family and we’ve been succumbing one by one. Augie was the first one down, so that made for a short week of bentos, but I do have a couple of snack boxes to show you that rounded the week out a bit. Read on for more!

This post contains affiliate links.

Monday

Monday morning I typically make a pretty low-key bentos because…ugh! Monday mornings! Am I right, people? I pulled out our 4-up Lock & Lock and filled it with cucumber slices, ham spirals, grapes and Triscuits. Boom! Done.

Tuesday

Tuesday I packed this animal bento in our Lego box: turkey roll-ups, the last meatball in the freezer, yellow and green bell pepper pieces (cut with a little elephant cutter), Funley’s pizza crackers and grapes. The meatball was packed in a little orange-shaped cup, the peppers in a much larger flower cup, the crackers were in our smaller Lego box and then I added a few cute animal picks too.

Wednesday

On Wednesday I pulled out the Yumbox and filled it with chicken dumplings, frozen pineapple chunks, grape tomatoes, Triscuits, cucumbers and a bit of hummus.

Wednesday afternoon, I took Augie and his buddy to the Bay Area Discovery Museum for a special play date while Wyatt was at camp. If you ever visit San Francisco with young kids, this place is totally worth the trek across the Golden Gate for an afternoon of big fun. We attended an event there a few weeks ago and they kindly gave me a few free passes to come back, so I was happy to treat the boys.

Growing five-year-olds need big snacks after preschool, so I packed twin snacks for them in our monbento box. Each one had a silicone cup filled with raisins, their fully hydrated cousins – grapes, and some animal crackers.

And I packed myself a snack in the LunchBots Trio, too! I had Tillamook smoked cheddar, rosemary raisin crisps, animal crackers and some cherries. The kids not only ate all of their snacks, but they also ate a bunch of my crackers and some of the cherries too!

Wyatt is at camp this week, so look for a jam-packed week of bentos next Monday!

Are you looking for more ideas for packed lunches! My book, Everyday Bento: 50 Cute and Yummy Lunches to Go is packed with ideas for fun, delicious lunches. With 50 brand new bento box lunches and step-by-step photo tutorials showing how to make them it will provide you with loads of inspiration when it’s time to pack lunch. Order today from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Powell’s.

The Week in Bentos: June 9-13, 2014

Here are the lunches Augie took to preschool this week:

This post contains affiliate links.

Monday

Monday he used our new divided box. He had celery sticks, bunny crackers, peach chunks (with a grumpy giraffe fork to eat them), turkey roll-ups, grape tomatoes and a mini-pita that I cut into strips. I also did a little decorating with food dividers.

Tuesday

On Tuesday he had the lunch I made for last week’s 3 Tools, 4 Lunches challenge. You can read more about this lunch here.

Wednesday

Apparently I forgot to take a picture of his lunch on Wednesday. Or maybe I deleted it accidentally? I’m not sure which, but I can’t find any photos!

Thursday

On Thursday, I packed a PlanetBox lunch: hummus, carrots, cukes, berries, craisins, salami and a ginger snap.

Friday

And on Friday he had a lunch packed in an EasyLunchboxes bento box: a mini dipper with peach-raspberry yogurt, salami slices, pita strips, red and yellow bell peppers and watermelon chunks.

The yogurt was a sample I received when we attended a preview party for the Tillamook pop-up store that was set up over the weekend in San Francisco and dannnng was it good. I’ve never tried a dessert yogurt before and it’s pretty dang decadent. The kids and I were instantly hooked

Are you looking for more ideas for packed lunches! My book, Everyday Bento: 50 Cute and Yummy Lunches to Go is packed with ideas for fun, delicious lunches. With 50 brand new bento box lunches and step-by-step photo tutorials showing how to make them it will provide you with loads of inspiration when it’s time to pack lunch. Order today from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Powell’s.

3 Tools, 4 Lunches: Yumbox, Transportation Cutters, and Food-Safe Markers

Three tools! Three bloggy friends! Four kick-butt lunches!

It’s Wednesday again and we are half-way through the 3 Tools, 4 Lunches series! For ten weeks straight, I am challenging some of my favorite bento bloggers to take the same three tools to make lunches. It’s been fascinating to see the different techniques everyone comes up with each week and to note the similarities and differences between the four lunches we create.

Here are the tools we’re using this week:

Yumbox — This lunch box has six separate compartments and each one is water-tight when sealed. It’s on the small side, so it’s a good choice for younger kids.
Transportation cutter/stamper set — This set of cookie cutters comes in four shapes — car, bus, airplane and boat.  In addition to the outer piece that you use for cutting, there is an inner piece that stamps details onto your food.
Food-safe markers — Magic markers? That write on food? Yes and yes! These pens are filled with food coloring and can be used to add fine details or big blocks of color to your bento creations. They can be used on almost any flat surface as long as it’s not too wet — bread, crackers, cheese, icing, etc.

And here are the lunches we made:

This first bento is from Tracy Meier at The Lucky Lunchbox.  Tracy managed to include one car, two boats, a train, a plane and a dump truck in this box. Impressive!

She used the car cutter to make mini car sandwiches filled with natural bologna and cheddar cheese with a bologna car on top. She used a food marker to add the details. The boat was made by freezing yogurt and sprinkles inside the boat cutter. It is floating in blue yogurt “water”. The rest of the lunch is baby carrots, snap peas, a Babybel cheese with “vroom” written on it with food markers, Ritz Bitz, green olives, strawberries, cherries and Craisins in the treat cup.

Tracy says, “I started packing creative bento style lunches for my son 2 years ago when he was in kindergarten. I started up my blog, The Lucky Lunchbox, in September of 2013 at the urging of family and friends as a way to chronicle my son’s lunches and to inspire other moms and dads. I was inspired to pack him this style of lunch after accidentally stumbling on several bento blogs when I googled “creative lunch”. After the first few fun lunches that I made, my son and I were both hooked.”

Ahoy! Next up we have a boat lunch from Rebecca Phillips of Licious Lunches. Here’s what she had to say about this cute meal:

“I brushed a couple of tortillas with olive oil and lightly salted them before cutting out ship shaped pieces. I baked those at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about eight minutes and let them cool. While the chips were baking, I used the cutter on thin slices of apples and colby cheese. I used food safe markers to decorate the cheese. The cheese was paired in the box with round saltines and grapes went along with the apples. I used a couple of nautical themed picks to spear the ham roll-ups. I filled the veggie compartment with carrots, cucumber slices, and asparagus. The treat section held some colorful fish.”

Find more details about this lunch, plus a similar car-themed lunch she made for her son on her blog. Licious Lunches often shows adult lunches for work, elementary school morning snacks and lunches, as well as breakfasts and lunches for daycare.  Rebecca says she likes packing bentos because they allow her to be creative, to show love for her children and husband, and to accomplish the necessary work of lunch packing in a fun way.

Meagan Skarbek @ Meagan Musing

Meagan Skarbek at Meagan Musing packed this fun lunch full of cars and trucks. Here’s her run-down of this meal:

“I knew I wanted to use the bus and the car for this little challenge. They’re my favorite of the transportation set. I included two turkey and spicy mustard sandwiches stamped and cut with the bus. The beetle-bug style car was used to cut the cucumbers and the cheddar cheese. I drew windows and wheels on the cheese using a black food safe marker. There are a few graham crackers under the cheese and I spelled out “Vroom” in the cherry tomatoes. I finished it all off with a mix of strawberries and blueberries. ”

Meagan describes her blog as something “that’s evolved as my kids have gotten older. It all started as a photography blog and I still share tips and tricks for getting authentic, in-the-moment photos of your kids in natural light. You’ll find anything from my latest fashion finds to book reviews in addition to my weekly super simple bento inspiration.” For more from Meagan, check her out on Facebook and Instagram.

This last bento lunch is one I made for my preschooler, Augie. I also went with a road theme, but I used the tools a little differently than my friends. The sandwiches were peanut butter and jelly on whole wheat and I cut the bread into small rectangles to fit in the lunch box. I used a black food marker to color on the stamper and then pressed it into the bread to make a colored impression. I was thrilled that it turned out so well! I also used the car cutter/stamper on a thin slice of watermelon, but it’s a little hard to see that. The rest of the lunch was a stoplight made of bell peppers, cherries with a truck pick and a few wheat thins.

Do you have these tools? How do you like to use them?

But wait! There’s more! My book, Everyday Bento: 50 Cute and Yummy Lunches to Go is packed with ideas for fun, delicious lunches. With 50 brand new bento box lunches and step-by-step photo tutorials showing how to make them it will provide you with loads of inspiration when it’s time to pack lunch. Order today from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Powell’s.

The Week in Bentos: June 2-6, 2014

Phwew! Summer has officially started here in the Copley house and I think everyone is pretty glad about it! Wyatt gave me a list of things he was willing to eat (finally!) so I packed his lunches for most of his last week at school. But now he’s going to be home for the summer so you won’t be seeing many bentos for him for the next 10 weeks! Augie will finish out the summer at his preschool, so he’ll still be getting a lunch every day.

OK, so let’s get to what the boys had last week:

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Monday

A friend gave me a gift of two new bento boxes over the weekend and Augie was excited to use this new box first thing Monday morning. The box has two inner lids that fold down over the larger side and the divided side and then the whole thing folds up so it’s kind of a square shape. It’s hard to explain, but basically the large compartment is upside down when it’s all folded up so I think I’ll have to be pretty careful about what I put in there.

For this lunch, we opted for a peanut butter sandwich. I cut and stamped a big panda with our CuteZcute cutter set, then I cut little bears with a mini cutter from this set. The faces were drawn on with food-safe markers. The divided side of the box held nectarine chunks with a panda pick, Triscuits with a panda food divider, cucumber slices and a small tub of hummus.

Tuesday

One of the foods that Wyatt requested on his lunch list was smoothies, so on Tuesday I made a big batch of raspberry-banana smoothies for breakfast and then I filled a Yummi Pouch for each of the boys so they could have one for their lunch. I also gave Wyatt grilled pineapple, a cornbread muffin and some chicken chunks — all leftover from dinner the night before. I packed all of it up in our Laptop Lunches box.

Augie also had a smoothie, a corn muffin and grilled pineapple in his lunch and I filled in the rest of his PlanetBox with turkey roll-ups and cucumber slices.

Wednesday

On Wednesday I packed Wyatt’s new lunch in our other new box. I like this one because it has two removable inner trays that are divided into three sections each — perfect for a snacky little bento. For this first run, I gave him raspberries, blackberries, salami, tortilla chips, a little bit of leftover pesto pasta and carrot sticks.

This box is pretty large and holds quite a bit of food, but it’s still a bit smaller than one of our Laptop Lunches boxes. Here’s a photo of it packed into our Laptop Lunches bag. You can see there is a little room to spare (which I used to pack a bag of Funley’s crackers, a fork and some black bean dip).

I packed Augie’s lunch in our Yumbox: wheat thins, salami, grapes, raspberries, blackberries and cucumber slices.

Thursday

Wyatt wanted a turn with the new yellow box on Thursday, so I packed him a summery lunch for his last lunch of the school year. He had a jelly sandwich that I cut and sealed with an empanada maker, grapes, pretzel thins, raspberries and blueberries. Wyatt decorated the sandwich with a food marker to make it look like a happy sun wearing sunglasses and I also included some paper picks — a flip-flop and a slice of watermelon — to add to the summer time theme.

When Augie saw Wyatt’s lunch, he wanted a similar one so the two of us worked to replicate it together. I made the same sandwich (this one had peanut butter and jelly inside), then filled in the rest of the box with grapes, berries, carrot sticks and a container of hummus. I also included the paper picks for more summer-osity in this lunch and I also added sand bucket and shovel stickers to the hummus container for some extra fun. This was packed in a PlanetBox Rover.

Friday

On Friday, Augie asked for the panda bento box so I dug that one out of the basket for him. He had strawberries, grapes, turkey meatballs, carrots, snap peas and some hummus in a Snoopy container.

Are you looking for more ideas for packed lunches! My book, Everyday Bento: 50 Cute and Yummy Lunches to Go is packed with ideas for fun, delicious lunches. With 50 brand new bento box lunches and step-by-step photo tutorials showing how to make them it will provide you with loads of inspiration when it’s time to pack lunch. Order today from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Powell’s.