Food, Family, Fun.

Heidi has two strawberry jam filled, butterfly shaped sandwiches that I made using my new cookie cutter. Purple grapes, strawberries, cantaloupe and a babybel cheese. She LOVED this lunch, she said  "Hello Butterflies!" She left a few bites of the babybel cheese and a couple of pieces of fruit so I guess it tasted good too ;)

Rose's lunch -- hopefully it will put a smile on her face. She was a bit unhappy to go to school without her sister who is feeling under the weather today.

2 peanut butter cookies, strawberries, honeydew melon

gummy vitamins, wheat thins & mozzarella cheese

cheery butterfly ham sandwich with fruit leather body and jumbo sprinkle decorations

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I find that I am using my  EasyLunchboxes  more and more these days. It's for two reasons. It seems to hold just the right amount of food for Amy and since she needs needs to pack 2 snacks instead of 1 snack most dasy the carry bag is just right. When I send a planetbox lunch I just can't accommodate the extra snack in the lunch bag. Since the planetbox itself is bigger I could put a snack inside but it's more convenient for her to have a little snack container instead of opening her whole lunchbox at snack time. So the EasyLunchboxes carry bag works out better, I can fit an ice pack, the easylunchbox, 2 small snack containers, cloth napkin and her drink. I still love our planetboxes and they do get used each week - afterall I am packing a lot of lunches each week, even if I don't have the chance to snap a photo!

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Butterfly stamped sandwich, ranch dip for the carrot sticks

honeydew melon & strawberries

This was all of her favourite things so she ate it all :)

This is the set that the cookie cutter came in:

This was a REALLY fast lunch to put together! Today was the first day back to school after a 4 day weekend and I just did not have my act together this morning. I didn't even take a photo of Amy's or Rose's lunch this morning. Here's Heidi's lunch.

carrot sticks and celery, butterfly shaped sandwich, mini cupcake, grapes and strawberries

All of the kids were begging for cupcakes this morning. They each got one in their lunch. The rest of the lunch is pretty healthy so I think it's ok. All in moderation. I'm sure she'll ask for dip for her veggies as she always does -- so I'll add it at lunch time. I often put the dip right in the cup and then stand her veggie sticks up in in the dip and cup. As far as speed goes this took no time at all. Cutting a sandwich with a cutter is actually faster than trimming crusts with a knife. The longest time was spent cutting the veggies - but when you cut once for three lunches the time really is negligible. I should have timed it -- I think I took longer trying to take a photo with my terrible kitchen light!!!

She had a blast! It was a small, family only party on a budget. My Mom and Aunt helped me get organised on the day and my cousin came and put up the decorations for us :) No matter how small the party is, it always seems like a lot of work when there are 4 little ones underfoot and very excited! I am very thankful for the extra help.

I made these cookies on Saturday. I must say that a made a bit of a mess in the kitchen but it was fun and I think they came out so cute! I used 20 second Royal Icing from Sweet Sugarbelle and the mess was from making all of the different colours and trying to bake and decorate cookies with so many little helpers.

The party food was very simple: assorted sandwiches, veggies and dip, fresh fruit, malasadas (which are yummy Portuguese Doughnuts that my mother in law made -- THANK YOU!), cupcakes, birthday cake, cookies  and some chips and salsa.

A few weeks ago I was browsing the internet for some fun party food ideas. I came across a fruit pizza shaped like a butterfly on Hungry Happenings blog. I didn't want to make that but I thought it would be a perfect way to display some fresh fruit. I really just freehand arranged the shape and didn't use any sort of template. 

The theme was cute bugs and I used some party printables from Cupcake Express to decorate and add a few special touches. These are the party bags, blowouts and Hershey's miniatures that I made using the printables. There really are so many things that you can do with the printables set but I didn't get a chance to make a full use of the files this time.

carrot and celery sticks, caterpillar cookie, mandarin oranges, honeydew melon and a butterfly sandwich decorated with her favourite fruit leather

Rose's Lunch

carrots sticks and grape tomatoes, grapes, diced pears, honeydew melon

flower cookie and cheese roll up sandwiches

Rose was insistent that she did not want a sandwich - only a cookie. Of course I wasn't going to give her only a cookie so we compromised and I gave her the equivalent of half a sandwich. Usually I have a bunch of other non-sandwich options for her but it was a bit late this morning and I couldn't find anything else quickly.

Heidi's Lunch

cheese sandwiches, ranch dip for her carrots, celery and tomatoes

the last of the cookies from Emily's party and some honeydew melon pieces

I made her lunch in the morning after everyone left and popped it in the fridge until she came home.  I also made my hubby some lunch to take to work today.

cheese & crackers, celery, carrots, tomatoes

clementine & grapes, ham and swiss sandwich on a roll

Emily's birthday party was fun. I'll post a few party photos soon

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vanilla pudding with sprinkles in the mini cup, red grapes & cantaloupe, carrot sticks & cucumbers

little birdie friend cut out of fruit leather, squirrel shaped sandwich

I fully intended on putting chocolate sprinkles on top of that peanut butter for the tail but when I looked in the cupboard we didn't have any left. Doh!

All of the food is the same just a different the theme 

I saw the idea of putting sprinkles in a cutout on a couple of other bento blogs this past week including: Lunches Fit For a Kid, and Meet The Dubiens. It's so easy to do for a little something special.

Heidi has the same lunch as well -- her vanilla pudding is in that mini dipper cup made by EasyLunchboxes. It's my first time trying it out. More on these soon!

So what IS World Animal Day?

BEFORE you do that, don't forget the blog hop -- next up is Keeley McGuire click the button in each post to continue along the hop to see more fun animal themed lunches. We all picked our animal ahead of time so each one will be a different animal. My choice was the squirrel. The others I made were a bonus :)

 

Amy Planetbox lunch

grapes, cantaloupe melon balls and a ladybug shaped ham sandwich

Heidi's EasyLunchboxes Lunch

sandwich rectangles with cheese butterflies, nutter butter bites cookies  

carrot sticks and cucumber sticks, cantaloupe off cuts from my melon ball fiasco, red grapes

No ladybugs for Heidi, but she has their garden friends  - some butterfly cheese cutouts. This is a lunch that I made in the morning with the other two and left it in the fridge until she came home at midday. That system works out wonderfully as it really is easier to make several lunches at once and keep up the variety. All three lunches used -- 2 carrots,  a small cucumber, 2 mini packages of nutter butter bites, a few grapes, a few strawberries and the fixins for three sandwiches and a little bit of dip for Rose. Heidi also had dip for her veggies,  but I didn't put it until she asked for some at lunch time.

honeydew melon, clementine, apple slices, craisins

carrot sticks & cucumbers with PB for dipping

Ham butterfly sandwich

Rose's lunch

Heidi's lunch

plum slices, strawberries, honeydew and blue berries,

goldfish, Earth's Best letter H cookie,

butterfly cheese sandwich with fruit leather and jumbo sprinkles for decoration

You can't easily tell from the photo but I still cut her sandwich in half as she likes smaller sandwiches most days. Then I put the fruit leather over the division to make it look more like a whole butterfly instead of two halves.

 grapes, granola bar, honeydew, raisins,

ham butterfly sandwich - she chose the colours.

Amy's lunch

grapes, granola bars, honeydew melons raisins

ham butterfly sandwich. She wanted black, orange & purple.

This was the first one I did. Not so pretty. She still loved it.

Anytime I use these food writer markers she thinks it's FAB.

The smallest things make her so happy - Bless her.

 Rose's Lunch:

 popcorn, raisins, cantaloupe, grapes, peaches, celery, carrots, tomato & ranch dip

raisins, ham sandwich with *calico* kitty topper

Heidi's lunch

same as Rose :)

Amy has summer day camp and the theme this week is Western / Horses. They are making cookies today and I loaned out all of my horse theme related cookie cutters to the camp.  Instead of trying to be creative - I made her a butterfly theme :) I finally have a new camera ( THANKS MOM) but haven't had a chance to figure it all out yet. I think I can do better on the lunch photos than this one - but here goes:

flower icing decoration & butterfly sandwich (ham inside)

Amy was VERY happy to see a pretty lunch again - yesterday she had nothing fancy at all. Just a sandwich cut into triangles and some fruit & granola. She didn't eat hardly any of her lunch yesterday. They went horseback riding and to the beach yesterday with her camp. She had a BLAST! When I was looking for some picks to put in I thought I didn't have a single one that matches and then I remembered the tops of these - PERFECT :) I bought them at All Things For Sale

Added to WFLW: