Wendy Copley's Blog, page 15

The Week in Bentos: March 17-21, 2014

Last week was fun for bento boxes! Monday was St. Patrick’s day and I got some new bento goodies, so I had fun playing with those, too! Here’s what the boys had in their lunches:

This post contains affiliate links.

Monday

First up is this St. Patrick’s day lunch for Augie! He had rainbow veggies (snap peas, carrots and red pepper slices), a shamrock biscuit, fresh pineapple chunks, leftover roasted chicken with a rainbow decoration, a pot of gold (really just Cheese Nips) and more rainbow veggies.

I made the biscuit by cutting refrigerated biscuit dough with a shamrock cookie cutter. I’ve done the same thing with a heart cutter for Valentine’s day before too and the kids’ love it. I bake the scraps of dough next to the biscuits. They’re ugly, but they still get eaten!

It’s hard to see from the photo up at the top how cute the “pot of gold” was. I found these little cauldrons in the dollar section at Joann’s a few weeks ago. They even have a little handle. So cute! (It looks like you can get them on Amazon, too.)

I made a St. Paddy’s day lunch for Wyatt too, but he ended up staying home sick from school with a bad cough. We are all ready to be completely well again!

Tuesday

On Tuesday, I busted out my new house bento box for Augie’s lunch. You can get a better look at it in the video I made about this All Things for Sale order on my YouTube channel. He was so excited to use this lunch box and he had all sorts of ideas for filling it. “We will make a couch and a bed and a really big TV!” I was not quite up for all that thinking, so I instead I put together a lunch with a business monkey pb&j (he’s wearing a top hat, of course), grapes with dog pick, cucumber slices, carrot sticks, some ham flowers and a small container of hummus.

Though the box looks small, it actually holds quite a bit. You can see what it looks like all put together and nestled in one of our lunch bags up above.

Wyatt had school lunch.

Wednesday

Wyatt saw our new eye picks sitting on the counter and was excited for me to use them in his lunch. This was a big deal because he mostly prefers not to have cute lunches these days. I decided to use them on some turkey meatballs and they were so fun that Wyatt wanted to continue the silly face theme through the rest of the lunch. I drew a face on some wheat thins using a food-safe marker, and then I also added icing eyes to an apple chunk. The rest of this Laptop Lunches box held ketchup (in the small box), grapes and carrot sticks.

Here’s a close-up of the meatballs because they are so dang cute! I am still laughing at this picture every time I look at it almost a whole week later. After I put the picks in them, Wyatt had the idea to cut little mouths into the meatballs and I think that makes them look hilarious.

Augie’s lunch was packed in the PlanetBox Rover: meatballs with eye picks, grapes, crackers, tomatoes and corn.

Thursday

On Thursday, Wyatt had lunch in the Yumbox: a chocolate chip granola bar, blackberries, strawberries, crackers and ham flowers. This week I managed to make good looking ham flowers for the first time (see a previous failed attempt here) and I may have gotten a little too excited about them.  When this lunch came home, everything was gone but the ham flowers. I asked Wyatt why he didn’t eat them and he told me his friends said they looked like “shredded poop”. From the look on his face, I could tell Wyatt agreed with his friends, but was too polite to say so. If you were wondering, this is what life is like with a fourth grade boy.

Augie had blackberries, a sophisticated pig sandwich, cucumber slices, hummus in a little Lego box, ham flowers (he doesn’t think they look like poop) and a strawberry with a fake leaf in it.

Friday

Every once in a while I like to pack Wyatt a sort of junky lunch for a treat so Friday the main component of his lunch was half of an IKEA cinnamon roll. He also had ham, orange slices, and berries. This was packed in a Laptop Lunches box.

Augie wanted a kitty lunch, and a kitty lunch is what he got! He had orange slices, grapes, berries, cucumber slices, a kitty peanut butter and jelly sandwich and some goldfish (for the cats to eat!). I stuck some of these cat picks in all of the fruits and veggies and packed it all up in a PlanetBox Rover.

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.

Learn to Make an Autumn Bento Box — Plus a GIVEAWAY!

The five weeks of giveaways to celebrate the release of my book, Everyday Bento: 50 Cute and Yummy Lunches to Go continues! Today I’m sharing a video tutorial showing how to make the Autumn Leaf Bento (p. 82) from the book. Learn to make squirrel sandwiches and bell pepper leaves. I’ll also show you a technique to keep apples from turning brown!

Want to make this lunch yourself? Enter below to win all the supplies you need:

One (1) copy of Everyday Bento: 50 Cute and Yummy Lunches to Go
One (1) yubo Lunchbox – Thanks to yubo for sponsoring this giveaway!
One (1) set of IKEA Drommar pastry cutters
One (1) set of Wilton Harvest Mini Cutters
One (1) set of Autumn-themed decorative picks – Thanks to All Things for Sale/Bento USA for sponsoring this giveaway!

Many thanks to yubo and All Things for Sale for co-sponsoring this giveaway!

To enter, follow the directions in the Rafflecopter widget below (this giveaway is open to U.S. addresses only):

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Week in Bentos: March 10-14, 2014

The boys had a week of very simple lunches last week because daylight savings time messed us up. I’m not a morning person to begin with and I had a terrible time getting out of bed all week so most of these lunches were made as quickly as possible. It think this is a testament to how fast you can throw bento lunches together though!

This post contains affiliate links.

Monday

Ugh. Daylight savings time.

I love the sunny afternoons that come with the time change, but I didn’t plan and pack lunches ahead on Sunday night, so Monday morning was rough. Luckily, Zach had gone to the store on Sunday night and bought lots of good stuff for lunches. My hero! I packed this quickie Yumbox lunch for Wyatt in the five minutes I had free: wholesome turkey kielbasa (does anyone else remember that commercial from the ’80′s?), dill pickle chunks, Avengers Cheese Nips, blackberries and radish chunks.

Augie had a similar lunch, packed up in the ECOLunchbox Solo Cube: blackberries, celery sticks, turkey kielbasa and rocket cheese crackers. This lunch follows my basic bento formula and I used silicone baking cups to contain the blackberries and crackers.

Tuesday

Taco Tuesday! We had some taco fillings leftover from Monday’s dinner, so I packed some turkey taco meat and cheese into Wyatt’s Laptop Lunches box. He also had some chips to spoon up the meat, blackberries and radishes.

Augie’s EasyLunchboxes bento box held cucumbers, cut-up turkey meatballs with a doggie pick, sliced black olives and blackberries with another doggie pick.

Wednesday

We were still running late on Wednesday morning, so Wyatt had another super quick Yumbox lunch: ham spirals, apple chunks, alfredo pasta chips and radishes.

The pasta chips were from a big sample box I received on Tuesday morning. I was starving when they arrived (right before lunch) and I immediately broke into the garlic and olive oil flavor. They were so yummy! Surprisingly yummy! I had to wrap them up and put them on top of the refrigerator so I didn’t eat a bag of chips for lunch. When the kids came home from school, I gave them some for a snack and they devoured them. I remember trying these at the Fancy Food Show back in January, but I didn’t remember them being so extra super delicious so this was a pleasant surprise. I thought the alfredo ones were also tasty, but they kids turned out to be not so hot on them.

Augie’s lunch had apple slices, ham spirals on a Superman pick, cucumbers with a Spiderman decoration and some pasta chips. This was packed in our PlanetBox Rover.

Thursday

Augie asked for an Iron Man lunch so I quickly whipped this bad boy out for him. I started by putting some Avengers Cheese Nips in a rectangular silicone cup in our LunchBots Trio. Most of them are just piled in there willy nilly, but I pulled a few of the Iron Man ones out and laid them on top. I also made an Iron Man PB&J with our stamping cookie cutter. They rest of the lunch was filled out with dried cranberries, cucumber slices and a couple of carrot sticks.

There is a giveaway going on for a LunchBots Trio and some other bento goodies (including a copy of my book, Everyday Bento) right now. Go enter if you haven’t already!

Wyatt had school lunch on Thursday.

Friday

On Friday, the boys both asked for dumplings in their lunches and I had some in the freezer so I made that magic happen. Along with the potstickers, Wyatt had apple chunks, marinara flavored pasta chips, and tangerine slices. This was packed in a Laptop Lunches box.

I put Augie’s lunch in our panda bento box: dumplings, pasta chips, apple chunks and dried cranberries in a lidded silicone cup.

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.

Learn to Make the “Under the Big Top” Bento Box from Everyday Bento – Plus a GIVEAWAY!

Welcome to the second of five giveaways to celebrate the release of my book, Everyday Bento! I had to take last week off because I was sick, but I’m back on track now and I have a fun video tutorial and a terrific giveaway for you today!

First, I’ll show you how to make the “Under the Big Top” Bento Box from the book:

Want to make this lunch yourself? Enter below to win all the supplies you need:

1 copy of Everyday Bento
1 All Stainless LunchBots Trio – courtesy of LunchBots
1 set of small metal flower cutters – courtesy of All Things for Sale
1 set of circus animal decorative picks – courtesy of All Things for Sale
1 set of Wilton Mini Noah’s Ark Metal Cookie Cutters

Many thanks to LunchBots and All Things for Sale for co-sponsoring this giveaway!

To enter, follow the directions in the Rafflecopter widget below (this giveaway is open to U.S. addresses only):

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Good luck! I hope YOU win!

* This post contains affiliate links.

Join Me for a FREE Parenting Seminar March 19

A few years ago I  attended a one-hour Positive Parenting Solutions session focusing on how to get your kids to listen to you without nagging, yelling or saying the same things over and over and OVER. As a parent, this is one of the main issues I struggle with and I got lots of good tips from Amy McCready, the expert behind Positive Parenting Solutions.

When Amy approached me about hosting the same seminar for Wendolonia’s readers I was excited to partner with her because in all honesty, I’m due for a refresh. If you are struggling with similar issues with your own kids, I’m guessing you’ll come away from the webinar with more than a few tips you can put into action immediately.

What:

This free online class for parents of kids ages 2½ – 16 lasts one hour and it will address the following topics:

why kids really misbehave — it’s probably not what you think!
how your personality may actually fuel misbehavior
the 5 R’s of Fair & Effective Consequences so kids listen the first time you ask
training resources to reduce your parenting stress & stop nagging, reminding & yelling

The class is interactive so you can get answers to your questions during the seminar.

When:

Wednesday, March 19 at 6:00 PM Pacific (or 9:00 PM Eastern)

For more information visit the Positive Parenting Solutions site. While you’re there, be sure to sign up for this FREE session.

Disclosure: I’ve partnered with Positive Parenting Solutions to bring you this free informative, parenting seminar. You will have the option to purchase additional classes during the seminar.

The Week in Bentos: March 3-7, 2014

Oh my! I had quite a week last week! My book was released (Yay!!) and I received many lovely photos of my friends, family, blog readers and their children holding it as well as a handful of photos of wonderful bentos people created using the book as inspiration. I couldn’t have been more thrilled to see all that creativity!

But meanwhile, in my own home, it was a pretty pathetic situation. I got hit with a bronchial infection over the weekend and I spent much of my time in bed trying to recover. This translated to pretty basic and — in Wyatt’s case — non-existent packed lunches! This is what they looked like:

This post contains affiliate links.

Monday

Monday, I turned to our Yumbox to put Wyatt’s lunch together as quickly as I could. He had canned pineapple chunks, a mix of cheese and pretzel goldfish crackers, Saltine crackers, a honey lemon candy, blueberries and some ham roll-ups on animal picks.  With the exception of the crackers, I packed all this the night before and boy was I grateful to myself for that!

Augie’s lunch was also pre-packed in our Lego bento box: blueberries, pita chips, cucumber slices, pretzel goldfish (in the smaller Lego box) and peanut butter and jelly roll-up sandwiches.

Tuesday

Tuesday Wyatt had leftover pasta in the Thermos food jar along with radishes and a piece of sourdough bread that I packed in a single layer of our other Lego bento box. That super cute little monkey cup held butter for the bread. (I got this at Daiso years ago and haven’t seen it for ages.)

Augie had a circus bento from my book, Everyday Bento: a pineapple and cantaloupe circus tent, peanuts, mini meatballs with circus animal picks, and naan (below the meatballs). This was packed in our LunchBots Trio. Look for a video tutorial (and a giveaway!) showing how to make this lunch later this week!

Wednesday

Wednesday Augie had a PlanetBox lunch: a jar of hummus (in one of these containers), snap peas, pineapple and cantaloupe, a sealed apple sandwich (not my best work!), and leftover roasted chicken with a grumpy giraffe pick.

This was the morning I was feeling my worst and I made Wyatt eat school lunch. I would have done the same for Augie if that had been an option.

Thursday

I was still feeling awful Thursday, so I kept Augie’s lunch as simple as possible: celery sticks, deli turkey spirals, Triscuits and cantaloupe. I packed this in our Lock & Lock 4 square bento box.

Wyatt had school lunch again.

Friday

On Friday I dug the PlanetBox out for Augie’s lunch again: celery, baked teriyaki tofu, apple chunks, pita chips and a container of hummus.

Wyatt had a thermos with leftover pasta in it, but I forgot to take a picture. It would have been a boring picture anyway, so you really aren’t missing much.

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: February 24-28, 2014

After a few weeks of colds and vacation, we had a jam-packed week of lunches last week. Read on to see what the boys had in their bento boxes:

This post contains affiliate links.

Monday

On Monday I started things off with an easy lunch for Wyatt. He had a biscuit, pretzel goldfish, leftover sliced steak, Thin Mints, radishes and strawberries packed in an EasyLunchboxes bento box. I put the pretzels in a rectangular silicone cup and the cookies in a round silicone cup to keep them from flying all over the large section of the box.

Augie had the apple lunch I packed for the Tree Top Apple Sauce post I wrote yes last week.

Tuesday

Wyatt had another mish mash lunch on Tuesday with lots of random items pulled from the fridge: the last biscuit from the batch, some blue corn tortilla chips, radishes, leftover chicken kebabs, and strawberries. This was packed in a Laptop Lunches box. (If you’d like to enter to win one of these great boxes along with a copy of my book, go here!)

Augie’s lunch was pretty similar: chicken kebabs, strawberries, celery sticks, blue corn tortilla chips and his beloved cucumbers. I dressed it up by cutting a few of the cukes into bear shapes and added a little bear pick too. Augie’s nickname is “Little Bear” so when I include a bear in his lunch, it’s a little unwritten “I love you” from me to him.

The chips were from a sample bag of chips that Way Better Snacks sent me. We’ve tried 3 or 4 flavors of these chips now and so far we like them a lot. The boys like these blue ones best.

(This was packed in a Yumbox.)

Wednesday

On Wednesday I packed Wyatt a modified version of the Space Bento I made in last week’s video: blueberries, grapes with a flying saucer pick, star cookies, blue corn tortilla chips and a turkey, cheddar and pesto sandwich.

Augie had a PlanetBox lunch. I started by making two stuffed sandwiches — a bear and a business monkey — with my Animal Palz cutter/stamper set and then I added baseball cap picks to make them even cuter. I also packed blueberries on robot and truck picks, canned pineapple and some blue corn tortilla chips.

Thursday

Thursday, Augie had a LunchBots Trio with cucumbers, pita chips, peanut butter and jelly “sushi“, blueberries, strawberries and a bag of Crispy Fruit freeze-dried mangos.

We also got a big pack of Crispy Fruit in several flavors to try. We LOVE this stuff. All of the flavors we’ve had are good, but the mango and the pineapple are our favorites.

Wyatt had school lunch.

Friday

I pulled out an EasyLunchboxes bento box for Wyatt’s Friday lunch.  I tucked in an apple sauce pouch, some chicken dumplings, a piece of coffee cake and some blueberries.

Augie and I packed his lunch together. He found some food dividers I haven’t used much when he was looking through my bento drawers and he wanted to include them in this lunch so as I added the food, he tucked them into the box. He had dried cranberries, coffee cake with a little bear hiding behind it, a hamster hiding in his cucumbers, a puppy with his dumplings and a bunny in the blueberries.

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

If you are interested in winning a copy of the book along with a lot of great lunch gear, head on over to this post to learn to make a Space Bento Box from the book and enter the giveaway.

Grown-up Lunches: Sesame Noodles and Southwest Salad

Lately, it feels like all I talk about here on Wendolonia is my book, Everyday Bento. Have I mentioned my book is coming out this Tuesday?

Crap! I’m doing it again!

I’m excited to share it with you all for sure, but that’s not the only thing I’m doing these days. I’m also running errands, playing board games with the kids, binging on House of Cards and eating and stuff. Since those first three things aren’t exactly exciting, I thought I’d share a couple of the better lunches I had this week as part of my occasional Grown-up Lunch series. Because making lunch is exciting, right?

Up above, you can see yesterday’s amazing lunch which is a conglomeration of dinner leftovers. I started off by combining two side dishes that we’d had earlier in the week. Tuesday I made a whole menu from this month’s Cooking Light: Chicken Kebabs, Cucumber Noodles and Sesame Carrot Salad. The kids were ga-ga for the chicken so all of that was gone by the end of the meal, but they weren’t exactly thrilled by the noodles and carrots. Oh well! More for me! (I loved it!) I tossed them together along with the little bit of salmon leftover from Wednesday’s dinner and it was delicious.

Also delicious was the kind of Southwestern-y salad I had for lunch on Monday. I made a pot of farro over the weekend because I love putting that in salads throughout the week. No one else in my family likes it so it tends to last a while. I threw that in a bowl with some pre-washed and chopped kale from Trader Joes and then I added some corn, black beans and chopped red pepper to the mix. Finally I dressed it with Terrapin Ridge Cilantro Lime Ranch dressing. It was so limey and tasty and I felt like a virtuous person eating it!

And lest you think I’m a fancy person who always eats whole grains and kale and homemade Asian food, here is what I had for lunch today:

Campbell’s tomato soup with cheese crackers in it. Not so fancy, but perfect for a rainy February day!

What have you been eating for lunch lately?

Learn to Make the Space Bento Box from Everyday Bento – Plus a GIVEAWAY!

Five days from today my book, Everyday Bento, will be released! I’m thrilled to share it with you all and I’m ridiculously excited see what you will create from the ideas inside it!

To celebrate, I’m kicking off a series of videos with a rad giveaway to accompany each of them. For the next five Thursdays, I’ll post a video showing how to make one of the 50 bento boxes featured in the book and then you’ll have an opportunity to win a copy of Everyday Bento and everything you need to make that bento box. Er…except for the food — I couldn’t quite work that out.

First up is a fun — and easy! — Space-themed lunch:

Want to make it yourself? Enter to win all the supplies you need:

1 copy of Everyday Bento
1 Laptop Lunches Bento Box (many thanks to Laptop Lunches for sponsoring this giveaway!)
1 Meri Meri Space Cadets Robot Cupcake Kit
1 Wilton Set of 3 Round Cutters
1 Wilton Set of 3 Star Cutters

To enter, follow the directions in the Rafflecopter widget below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Good luck! I hope YOU win!

* This post contains affiliate links.

A Cute Apple Lunch with a Tree Top Apple Sauce Pouch

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Tree Top.

Do you like apples? They are one of my all-time favorite fruits! I love fresh apples and apple juice, but my dearest love is apple sauce! My boys also adore apples and apple sauce, so when I was recently offered the chance to try Tree Top‘s new apple sauce pouches, I happily said “yes”.

Though I typically put fresh fruit in my boys lunches, I always keep some fruit pouches in the cupboard for days when I’m in a hurry. I also like to have them on hand so I have a nutritious snack to offer the kids when we are on the go. And Tree Top is a brand I trust — their Organic No-sugar Added Apple Sauce is the apple sauce I normally purchase on my weekly grocery runs.

Tree Top Apple Sauce Pouches come in four very tasty flavors: traditional apple, strawberry-apple, cinnamon-apple and my favorite — mango-apple. I like that they are made with simple ingredients. Everything on the ingredients list is something I consider to be “food” and I was pleased to see that sugar was not listed among the apple and other fruit purees. (There’s vitamin C in there too, but I give that a pass because we take that every day anyway.)

And because I’m a dorky food-art lady, I was excited about the cute packaging. Each pouch shows a piece of fruit skateboarding, swinging, hula-hooping or parachuting. In fact, those pictures inspired me to make an apple-themed lunch for Augie:

I started with an apple-shaped peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I used an apple-shaped pie press to cut and seal the sandwich and I decorated it by cutting the word “apple” along with an apple shape from a piece of fruit leather. (Geez! How many times can a person write the word “apple” in two sentences??)  I filled the remaining two sections of the lunch box with mixed pretzels and cheese crackers and cucumbers cut with an apple cutter. And then I finished things up by adding a Tree Top strawberry apple sauce pouch.

What do you think got eaten first? I’ll give you a clue:

You guessed it: the apple sauce!

#TreeTopMainSqueeze Sweepstakes Details

February is here and love is in the air! At Tree Top, they’ve got a main squeeze that makes our heart go pitter-patter this Valentine’s Day. Made with USA apples and nothing artificial, Tree Top Apple Sauce Pouches are tasty treats that are great on-the-go and the little ones love them! Plus, they’ll never break your heart with an unexpected mess.

Show Tree Top who you love the most (aka your main squeeze), and you could win $500, plus a supply of Tree Top Apple Sauce Pouches! To enter, Instagram a photo of your main squeeze using the hashtag #TreeTopMainSqueeze and tag @TreeTopInc.
Participants can follow along with the Sweepstakes on Instagram by searching the hashtag, #TreeTopMainSqueeze.
Terms & conditions for the promotion can be found here: http://on.fb.me/1bSeb0O.

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Tree Top.