Spooktacular

Halloween is approaching (ooooo-oooooh), and what could be more fun than a Halloween-themed lunch? (I suppose Christmas, Easter, St Patrick's Day...) Ah, let's face it. I just like a good theme.

Today, Feebz had a ghost ham sandwich on white bread - storebought, lazy! - and eyes drawn on with edible ink, along with Craisins, cheese cubes, a chocolate eyeball, Monster Fingers (cocktail sausages), chopper persimmon and a hard-boiled Ghost (with sushi nori eyes). For snack she had a pineapple finger and some cheese balls.

I told Feebz that this week she'd be getting some new things in her lunch to try, and I wanted her to try them. Remarkably, this did not result in a breakdown. She was a bit fussy about trying the persimmon, her new item for today, but of course, to her own surprise but not mine, she loved it. It's a lovely sweet fruit which I only just discovered too.

Not sure what tomorrow's new item will be, but chances are, it'll be Halloween themed again. Whoooooo!

Site Overhall

Hi Everyone,
I'm in the process of upgrading the site, so please bear with me if you are unable to see the site for the next few days. I'll be back up and running as soon as possible!

Keto Bento Challenge 5: Number 5 Under 5?

The kids have been off school, I've been sleeping in late, but yesterday I did manage another...

And guys, I think I may have met my 5g carb target! Let's just see though (mental maths is not my forte).

Above, you see I packed for the hubby -
*Irn Bru (0g)
*Sugarfree strawberry jelly (.5g)
*1 square of very dark (85%) chocolate (2g)
*a few cucumber slices (1g)
*1 boiled egg (.5g)
*smoked pork sausage (0g)
*pepperoni slices (0g) with full fat cream cheese (approx .7g)
*4 rashers of smoked bacon (0g)

TOTAL: 4.7g!!

I DID IT!

The only complaint the hubby had was that he didn't like the cream cheese. I really hoped I'd be able to get some cheese/fat/calcium in him via cream cheese but even that was too 'cheesy' for him. If you like cream cheese though, I recommend these!

Yummy Scrummy Snack

Behold, the Lunch Box Trifle.

This particular version is sugar-free jelly, EasiYo Forest Fruits homemade yogurt and blueberries, but I'm sure there could be any number of variations of a Lunch Box Trifle that would delight you, your kids or whomever you make lunch for.

And for a bit of a history lesson, here's the scoop on Trifle.

Happy weekend!

Keto Bento Challenge 4

It's time again for the

This time I've gotten a bit more creative, not to mention a bit more cutesy (sorry, big manly man taking his lunch to work...)

On the top tier, we have an almond bun sliced in half, a hard-boiled egg, some blueberries and a tub of Mean Pig Hot BBQ sauce. On the bottom, we have a bed of lettuce with two pig-shaped hamburgers (to go on the almond bun with the hot sauce) and...

wait for it...

Keto California rolls!

You heard me right, California rolls, keto-style.

These rolls consist of the usual cucumber and avocado (which, and I'm not lying, I had NO IDEA were the traditional fillings until JUST NOW when I linked to the Wikipedia article. It was a total coincidence that I just happened to put cucumber and avocado in it, which apparently are the norm. I just wanted something green and keto-friendly!) and a bit of tuna, wrapped in nori, but the secret keto ingredient?

Steamed, mashed cauliflower instead of rice.

It was a total gamble, and totally a creation from my own head, and I am seriously proud of it. It was my first attempt ever at any kind of California roll, and I discovered that a) I used too thick a layer of cauliflower, seeing as it doesn't mould together as well as rice would, and b) I need a sharper knife. My knives were rubbish at cutting cleanly through the nori (even though it was slightly wet, as the instructions said.) Still, for a first try, it looked not too bad, and I was dead chuffed with it. However, the proof was still in the pudding cauliflower, so I had to wait for the hubby to come home to see if they actually TASTED good. His verdict was that they were good, but very bland, and he'd have liked something spicy to go with it. So keto sushi lovers, is wasabi keto-friendly?

Finally for dessert, I prepared sugar-free strawberry jelly, and ta da! Another keto bento.

Now for the important part - the tally. Let's see how many (approximate) carbs there were. Note: Each item will be very approximate since so much was made by hand.

-Almond bun (2g net carbs)
-Handful of blueberries (4g)
-Boiled egg (.5g)
-Hot sauce (2g)
-2 tiny burgers (2.5g)
-Lettuce (1.4g)
-4 California rolls (2g)

TOTAL: 14.4g

Hmm... that doesn't look as good on paper, but I suppose if you used low-carb BBQ sauce (which I didn't) and perhaps tried a different berry (or maybe my guess on blueberries was too high) and also if I'd actually paid attention to how many carbs were in the burgers (I'm hoping it was actually less!), then you could get a much lower carb bento out of this. I guess it also depends on how many carbs a day you are eating; the hubby is allowing himself 20g a day, so this lunch probably was too many for him... but he didn't complain!

Next week, the kids are off school, so while I'll blog about our in-house lunches, I'll also try to get some more keto bentos sent in with the hubby to work.

Watch this space - I WILL get under 5g one day!

Single File

Lolly doesn't stay at nursery for lunch time. She gets out at 11.30 and comes home and has lunch with me and Baby Jaguar in the house. However, she gets jealous when she sees Feebz taking a 'snack lunch' with her to school, so many days she begs me for a lunch too. She'll fish out her lunch bag and start filling it herself with random things if I don't do it myself. So today, I made her a little mini bento (which she then left at nursery and therefore totally wasted).

But first, Feebz.

If you have an office job, this lunch might be just the one for you... everything in neat little rows, nicely filed. That's how it looks to me anyway.

We have sliced and filed cucumber, tomatoes (the only thing not sliced here), and plum on the one side, and smoked sausage, cheese and grapes (oh, I guess those aren't sliced either). Inside the lid we find a bit of scatter with some chocolate sweeties.

Then we have the 'Don't eat me!' banana. Lolly, always wanting the same, but different, wanted a face banana too, only she wanted hers to say 'Please eat me!'

For Lolly's little bento, I just did slices of smoked sausage, cheese and grapes, with a plum and a slice of cheese-topped bread in the lid. It saddens me that those delicious sausages are just wasting away in her backpack in an empty nursery right now. Not looking forward to opening that box tomorrow either for cleaning.

Yum. Those grapes look amazing.

Bento Art

Lovely drawing of a bento box by Feebz! The arrows indicate which drawn food items go into the box (and the banana has an arrow pointing out of the box and into a lunch bag!)

Oh What a Circus, Oh What a Show!

A prize for the first person who tells me where today's title comes from! (No Googling, cheaters!)

Feebz insisted on making her own lunch this morning. I just helped. She made her own sandwich and picked out her own cookie cutter - possibly the most intricate one I have, the least appropriate for sandwich cutting - but it gave us the idea for a circus theme.

A circus must be colourful and cheerful, which we tried to achieve with what we had at hand. We have two ham and cheese carousel horse sandwiches*, decorated with cucumber and cheese stars, surrounded by raisins, tomatoes and raspberries in the top tier and toffee popcorn (part of the circus idea), tomatoes, grapes and star-cut cucumber in the bottom. In the lid we put a homemade chocolate oatmeal cookie and a chewable Vitamin C tablet (we have all come down with colds). The plum was for snack.

This next week I'm going to try to experiment with some different kinds of food in their lunches. Feebz is a pretty picky eater, so wish me luck!

*This cookie cutter was bought for Lolly's first birthday party, which was a carousel/rocking horse theme. Just thought I'd show off a bit and show you the cake I made for it!

Love Makes the Lunch Go 'Round

For my very girlie daughter, a heart lunch.

I was running low on resources actually (shopping day and all), so I had to work with what I had. I made tuna mayo sandwiches on store-bought (!) bread cut into heart shapes. The silicone cups contain raspberries and heart shaped cucumber slices. The inner cucumber hearts were placed on top of the sandwiches, along with some tiny cheese hearts (also in the raspberries). To fill in the gaps, I placed some apple slices, the last of my box of Panda biscuits and a mini chocolate cupcake. To finish off the love/heart theme, I wrote 'I love you' in Gaelic on the banana. (I used my food pen, but actually a ball point pen works better.)

As a bonus, I found this in Lidl this morning - a chocolate mould. Lolly and I are going to make chocolate covered stuff this afternoon with it. Raisins, cherries, nuts, any other ideas?

Traditional With a Capital T

You know you are slightly obsessed with something when it starts showing up in your dreams... All last night, I dreamed about what I was going to put in Feebz's lunch today, and it was so frustrating; the sweet corn kept disappearing out of the bento, and the mayo from the tuna kept leaking onto everything else.

Um...

So anyway, upon waking from this corny (ha) nightmare, I went through to the kitchen and made just an ordinary, everyday lunch. No disappearing grains, no leaking condiments, just the Traditional Lunch.

(I figure if you capitalize the words giving it an official title, it makes it less boring.)

Here we have the ham and cheese on homemade white *with* the crusts, a bag of crisps, an orange, a strawberry soya milk, a Pepperami (for snack) and some sliced cucumber.

Oh, and a pack of Moshi Monster playing cards. To make up for the boringness traditionalness of the rest of the lunch.

Not very inspired, I know. But that's because it's a Traditional Lunch With Capital Letters, so it isn't meant to be original.

That or I was sick of dreaming about lunch all night.

Here's hoping tonight's dreams don't find me naked in public!

Nothing Says I Love You Like a Bad Joke

Unfortunately, I didn't manage to upload my photos from my camera onto my laptop before heading off for the weekend, so no lunch photos for the weekend. All I've got for you is an idea.

I had a friend in school who's mom used to write little notes to her on her lunch napkin. This is a cute idea, and so is including a joke or a photo or good luck on a test. Sometimes, just a little reminder than you're thinking of them is all that's needed to make lunch special.

A few days after Halloween, Sally came home with a bad report card. Her mother asked why her grades were so low. Sally answered, "Because everything is marked down after holidays!"

Two monsters went to a party. Suddenly one said to the other, “A lady just rolled her eyes at me. What should I do?”
“Be a gentleman and roll them back to her.”

Q: Why didn't the skeleton go to the party?
A: Because he had no body to go with.

Q: What do you call someone who puts poison in a person's corn flakes?
A: A cereal killer.

etc.

Keep It Simple

This month I'm taking part in the October Dress Project. I am wearing the same dress everyday for 31 days, for various reasons (the main one being to raise money for charity!). This means that for a month, I have to think a lot about how I'm going to 'chop and change' the look of this dress each day so I'm not showing up at the school run in a plain black dress and nothing else for a month. The moroseness of it might get me a visit from the mental health team called in by concerned teaching staff...

Okay, that might be a little over dramatic, but the point is, it's taking away from my bento-making time. Dudes. That time I like to spend in the mornings getting all crafty with my Kraft, cheesy with my cheddar - okay, I'm stopping - is getting imposed upon by my need to accessorise my clothes in some uber-creative fashion (pun obviously intended).

I've said that October is going to be my month to simplify - simplify my wardrobe, my belongings, my schedule - but it won't be a time to simplify my lunch (or my other craft projects). No, no, now is not the time for that.

However, this morning, I learned a bit about simplifying style without sacrificing quality (just like with the dress project! I get it!). Lo and behold:

On the top tier, we have cocktail sausages, a cheese stick, and a slice of brioche roll surrounded by tiny plum tomatoes. On the bottom tier, I had fun stuffing raspberries with blueberries and creating stripes with blueberries and orange slices. The lid contains Mikado sticks and toffee popcorn, and the Wotsits (for snack time) and the strawberry soya milk (a change from juice boxes) slotted into the bag beside the bento just so.

When I cleaned out Feebz's lunch bag after school, the bento box was empty, ya'll. Utterly empty. That's gotta be a compliment to the chef.

Chef. Ha.

FYI:
A group of friends and I are participating in the October Dress Project to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support. All donations to this wonderful cause, very close to all of our hearts, are gladly accepted and appreciated.

The Supermarket Game

This post brought to you by... my other blog.

A few years ago, I created a shopping game to help me budget and spend less at the grocery store. Today I share this game with you.

The Supermarket Game (by Lori)
Pre-Game Preparation:
*Make a breakfast/lunch/dinner/snack menu for one full week.
*Break that menu down into a list of things to buy.
*Do not forget to add non-food items such as toilet roll and shampoo that you ordinarily buy with your shopping.

Game Step 1:
*Break the list down into the different shops you will get each item in.
*Within each shop, next to each item, predict the price. You can get as detailed as you like, though I'm mathematically challenged and prefer to round up or down to the nearest 50p.
*Tally up each shop's price list, and this is your budget for that shop.
*Beside that number, tally up the number of items. This is for the bonus round.

Game Step 2 (Budget Round):
*Give yourself 1 point for each item that is priced below your prediction or exactly your prediction. You could give yourself 2 points for exact predictions.
*Give yourself no points for prices above your prediction.
*Deduct 1 point for any extra items you pick up while in the shop.
*Neither give nor deduct any points for items not on the list but genuinely needed.
*At the end, if your receipt price is under your budget or exacly your budget, you WIN the Budget Round. But if it goes over your budget, you LOSE the Budget Round. BUT...
*Tally up your points you accumulated from your predictions. If the number of points is close to your number of items counted for the Bonus Round, you can give yourself an A, B, C, D or F by calculating your score like in school (for example, if you get 20 out of 30, you'd get a 66%, which is a D). So you may not WIN, but you could still get an A or a B.

Bonus Round:
*This is the hardest one to win. Go back to your number of items and if you only bought that number of items or less, you win the Bonus round! Even if your budget went over and you lost the Budget round, you could still win the Bonus round!

Bento For Mummy

I used to make a lot of bentos for the children when they were small if we were going to be out all day, and I made them for myself too. Below, is my favourite bento meal, for kids or grown-ups. This one is for me. (I only made it though, because I was attempting a Darth Vadar avocado and it... well... let's just say it went to the Dark Side. So I had a whole avocado to do something with.)

It's ever so simple. Tuna mayo, avocado, cheese and crackers. And for fun, I added some star-shaped cucumber. Add a fork and you have a really simple and filling lunch to take out with you.

May the Fork Be With You

As a parent, you're always asking yourself, "Am I doing the right thing? Are my children going to grow up with a sense of right and wrong? Am I teaching them what's important in life?"

Then, every now and again, you get one of those break-through moments when you know you are on the right track.

Like when your five year old daughter asks to watch The Empire Strikes Back before bed on a Friday night. It's those kinda things that let you know you've done something right.

So in honour of our Star Wars weekend, I baked a loaf of green oat and linseed bread (which, typically, didn't come out as green as I hoped) and made Yoda sandwiches for lunch.

Oh by the way, notice how this is Sunday night? Yeah, I actually made lunch the night before! Such a good mum! Except I didn't iron any school uniforms, so there's that.

Now, I had really high hopes and visions for this lunch, most of which went to the place where dreams go to die. I was going to do a Cinnamon Bun Leia, a Boiled Egg Stormtrooper and this very intricate avocado shell and rice Darth Vader (which died a horrible death in the making, but at least spurred me on to make this lunch too). All that made it, however, was Yoda. Which kinda makes sense, because the Force was with him.

What you see above is a Yoda cheese sandwich, with cheese eyes (with pupils that did not work as planned - again, fail - thanks to the edible ink pen which did NOT work), plum cherry tomatoes, Oddbits crackers and cocktail sausages, all on the bottom, and on the top, cucumber stars, Mikado Lightsabers, raisins, chocolate cake (which I also tried to turn into a Darth Vader, but man, it so wasn't happening!) and prunes (yes, my kids love prunes. We call them 'dried plums' and they don't know the difference). For snack, there is the granola bar and of course the apple juice.

(Have I mentioned my rabbit's name is Chewbacca?)

This was an incredibly fun lunch to make, and there are so many ideas floating through my head, I can promise you more where this came from. Especially since I ordered these on ebay about an hour ago.

(I have a serious problem with buying crap on ebay. I need support.)


Q: How is Duct tape like the Force?
A: It has a Dark Side, a Light side and it binds the galaxy together.

Omelet You See What I Got Today

At some ungodly hour of this Saturday morning (about 10am or something, for goodness sake!) the doorbell rang. It was the postman. He was immediately forgiven for interrupting my lie-in, because he came bearing gifts.

A letter from the hospital with an appointment I've been waiting on.
My tickets to The Enchanted Forest next weekend.
The brightly coloured flat terry nappies I ordered online.
And these:

An edible ink pen (as in edible-ink pen, not edible ink-pen, naturally) and a set of mini cutters. These cutters are seriously mini; they are even smaller than I expected, which I am delighted about! I foresee many mini cucumber stars, cheese hearts, and ham flowers in the near future. And the hubby can expect some embarrassing written messages on the outside of his boiled eggs in his keto bentos. "u r eggcellent", "u crack me up" and "i shell <3 u 4ever", that sort of yolk.
Eggspect more bad puns later but for now I am egghausted and my brain is fried.



(On the subject of eggs, how cool is this?)

They Learn By Example

6.30 came too early for me yesterday morning.

My alarm went off six times before I actually dragged myself out of bed and fumbled my way around the obstacle course of laundry baskets in my bedroom to the kitchen. There I found Feebz, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, already eating her self-poured bowl of Rice Krispies with sliced banana.

I began the morning routine of unloading and reloading the dishwasher. Feebz asked what she was having for lunch. It reminded me to turn the oven on for her popcorn chicken, which I did. Through my morning haze, I continued my chores and barely noticed what Feebz was up to.

I like that this shot came out blurry. It's how I saw it too.

She was making her lunch herself.

She had gotten out the grapes, cucumber, string cheese, Wotsits and juice boxes herself. She opened the bag of Wotsits and put some in a tub. She got out the cutting board herself (and I got out the Pampered Chef child-safe knife for her) and sliced the cucumber and put it in a tub. She put a few grapes in the tub - "The chicken can go in beside the grapes", she informed me. She even got out the ketchup herself and squeezed some of it into a tub. All I did was get out the strawberries for her so she could put some of them in a tub.

Wow.

Once the popcorn chicken came out of the oven, she put that in with the grapes, and there we had it, her lunch was made. All by herself.

I love that she used tubs for everything.

Her little sister, not to be shown up, had to make her own "snack lunch", as she calls it. (As in "packed lunch".) She took the rest of the Wotsits (in the bag), some grapes and strawberries,some chicken, a juice, and a string cheese and packed her own bento box.

She also chopped a huge chunk of cucumber, but it never made its way into the box.

Basically, it was a pretty easy morning for me, and thank goodness. I was not in a lunchbox frame of mind.

And thanks to them, I got my dishes done too!

Two proud little girls.

Baby Led Bento

Just bought this for Baby Jaguar. I can't believe he'll be ready to start solids in only three months! Merry Christmas, here's some turkey and dressing for your first foods...

By the way, have I mentioned that bentos are Japan's gift to Baby Led Weaning?

Hot Dawg

There was no real theme to this lunch I sent in to school with Feebz yesterday. I just really wanted to use my mustache and cake idea. (Today she didn't take a lunch but bought a school dinner, because I took a lie-in this morning while the Hubby got them ready and took them to school.)

With limited resources and time, I slapped this little face together, made of cake mustache, cheese eyes and egg slice mouth, on top of the normal lunch for a bit of fun. The real lunch consisted of carrot sticks, a boiled egg sliced with an egg slicer (one of my many, MANY Pampered Chef items... don't get me started on how much I love Pampered Chef), cucumber slices, grapes, and several mini hot dogs placed inside a brioche roll. Mmm... And a string cheese for snack time. (See, I do try to make sure my kids are cool.)

I asked Feebz if she pretended her cake was a mustache at school. She just looked at me and said, "I just ate it."

Like I was crazy.

You've Got a Bit of Cake in Your Mustache...

Oh, your cake IS your mustache. Sorry, man, sorry.

(Chocolate cake made in bread machine on the Cake setting. Sliced with an electric knife. Cut into shapes with a mustache sandwich cutter. So much fun.)

Cheap and Cheerful

When I was in elementary school, Lunchables were what all the cool kids were eating. (That and string cheese.) My dear mommy couldn't afford to buy three Lunchables per day for her three children, so she made me her own brand of 'Lunchable'.

It really wasn't cool. But she tried.

And oh dear, my kids are probably going to blog about me (using their microchip mind computers while floating in their studio apartments on Mars) when they are grown about how uncool my lunches were. Sigh. Parents can never win.

But her Lunchable-style lunches stayed with me, and here I am now, a couple of years later *cough* doing the same thing.

Today Feebz took in her lunch (and Lolly and I enjoyed at home) sliced smoked sausages, sliced cheedar cheese and Ritz crackers (okay, they were Tesco 'Snackerz' or something), just like Mama used to make. To fill in the holes I used grapes and finished off the punnet of blackberries in the silicone cupcake case. That cupcake case was important, by the way; without it, the blackberries might have made the crackers soggy. I had to keep them completely separate to avoid that.

I also included a banana, a juice and some EasiYo raspberry yogurt. Fast, easy, cheap and probably utterly uncool if the cool kids are still bringing Lunchables with them.

Seriously, why buy them when you can make them at home for a fraction of the cost? Mommy, I totally get you now.

Sincerest Form of Flattery

Imitation.

Or blatant thievery, whatever.



Someone on the Facebook site linked this photo to me, and I had to try it. It was just too cute! However, I did it from memory, and thus forgot to make the hair. I knew something looked amiss. Anyway, here's my attempt at stealing someone else's creativity and imagination.

It was a tuna mayo on homemade bread sandwich, with cheese for eyes. (And now I want to buy this and this.) I included two strawberries as separators. Some salad hair would've helped make the guys look a little less... I don't know, bald.

The rest of the lunch consisted of blackcurrant jelly/jello, blackberries, half a banana (those bananas were HUGE) and a pack of Cheesy Wotsits. Not exactly the most creative of meals, but I was busy trying to cut out the perfect face shape, and that takes time.

Any other ideas I can pinch?

Kicking It Up A Notch

Today we have a theme. The Moshi Monster theme. Yes, I've done this one before.

But this time, I've kicked it up a notch.

I've had a bit of trouble figuring out how to do the face on this monster. It is a press, but it just doesn't work well on bread. I have tried food colouring, but it wasn't exceptionally successful. I tried writing icing but wasn't totally satisfied with that either. This time, I tried pressing the design into a slice of cheese and hurray! It turned out better!

First notch kicked up.

The rest of the lunch consists of banana chunks, blueberries, strawberries and blackberries on the bottom tier and, along with the ham and homemade bread monster sandwich, I prepared carrots, cucumbers, two "Marshmellow Moshlings" (decorated with writing icing), a Pepperami stick for snack and a homemade blackcurrant jelly/jello.

Now, if you recall, last time I made a Moshi Monster lunch, *somebody* (we don't know who...) slipped a real Moshi Moshling into the kids' lunchboxes. They theorized on *who* or *what* could have caused this toy to appear in their lunch. It was a mystery, and I had provided clues and red herrings, but from the start, I'd decided that the Moshi Monsters lunchbox AND the shape of the sandwich would be the key elements for which a toy would magically appear. I thought it would take Feebz several Moshi Monster lunches for her to deduce this.

Well, she figured it out already.

Sigh. At least she still believes it was "love" that put it there and not me. But now she's asking for a monster-shaped sandwich every day so she can add to her Moshlings collection. Erm... that could get a bit expensive? Not to mention a bit, eh, boring for this blog?

(I have, however, bought some stickers and playing cards for future MM lunches.)

So, um, where is the Moshi Monster, you ask?

Oh I'm so glad you asked. So glad. Because this, my friends, is what I call, ahem, pure genius.

Are you ready?

Are you?

It's in the jelly. I set it in the jelly.

Notch kicked up super high, I mean really.

I'm afraid I've reached my pinnacle of lunch creativity. I might as well just stop here. Nothing more can I teach you, young grasshopper.

(But actually, I'll be back tomorrow.)

(And I sort of ate almost all of the Marshmellow Moshlings...)

We'll See If She Notices....

For the second morning in a row, we accidentally slept in. For some reason, I didn't bother to check my alarm to see what was wrong (maybe I was in too much of a rush at that point), but today I checked and realised it had been set to Wednesdays only. No idea.

So both days I've been in a major rush to not only pack lunch, but get myself and my three offspring dressed, fed and relatively clean looking. Yesterday, I opened the fridge optimistically, thinking 'Good topic for the blog!'. Then I saw only dairy products and instantly gave up in favour of sending £1.75 to school with Feebz instead.

This morning was much the same except I didn't have £1.75 to fall back on, so I had to get creative.

Not sure Feebz is gonna like it...

I bought a bit of ham last night in preparation but forgot butter, so I had to improvise. The car sandwich is therefore a ham and houmous sandwich. I personally love houmous, and so does Lolly, but Feebz claims she doesn't. I doubt if she's ever even tried it. Well, she will today, and by surprise! I quickly made the car look a bit more exciting with a cucumber window and wheels. (Wish I'd been thinking - or had the time to think - and I could've given them carrot disc wheels for more colour.) Aside from that, it's just blueberries, carrot sticks, a cheese, some grapes and some blackberries. On the side is some blueberry yogurt (not homemade unfortunately), a banana (for snack time), a drink and some Mikado chocolate sticks.

I had to fix her hair in the car, but it was worth it.

You're A Star!

Feebz got the "Tha Is Math A Rinn Thu!*" (or something to that effect, I should've taken a picture) star medal this week, so I made her a star lunch, and she helped. Or at least we tried to make a star lunch. I didn't have very much that was big enough to punch a star shape through. We first cut out a star ham and cheese sandwich, then cut out a slightly smaller star from ham to go on top. I cut out a star from a slice of cheese, but it looked a bit dull,so I got out my thinking cap, and cut a hole out of a cucumber slice and placed the cheese in the hole, holding it all together with a food pick. (These food picks were a great purchase from eBay, and I prefer them much more than using wooden cocktail sticks to hold things together; it feels safer.)

I then cut out dinosaur eggs from kiwis, thinking that was quite star-like and topped them with blueberries (and food picks). The raspberries were my favourite part of this lunch. These raspberries were massive, with massive holes in the middle - just the right size to fit a blueberry into! I thought my blueberry-stuffed raspberries were very attractive indeed. I filled in the rest of holes as best I could with blueberries and dark chocolate Hershey's Kisses and separated the sandwich from the fruit with a plastic separator (called bento 'grass' dividers if you are looking online for it.)

In the lid is a Babybel cheese, some Mikado sticks (same thing as Pocky) and a piece of banoffee fudge. In the purple tub is homemade banana pudding.

The whole thing seemed a bit too sweet though, upon reflection, so thus the token carrot sticks on the side.

I fit everything into her lunch box but there was a pesky little hole left... how to fill it? She had more than enough to eat, I figured. So I went to my stash of party favours, my new favourite addition to lunch time, and put in a shoe keyring. The party favours section of the supermarket has now taken on a new meaning for me. I now go through it wondering what little knick-knacks would be fun to stick in my kids' lunches! Lolly got a shoe too at home that afternoon with her non-packed lunch of a hot grilled cheese sandwich.

This would've been a perfect lunch if she'd gotten that star medal for running!

*Gaelic for "Well Done" but I can't remember exactly what the medal said. It was something to that effect.