Fruit and Veggie Bento

Today Missy Lulu had a sweet yet simple snack bento. She loves Porkkanapannukakku which are Finnish carrot pancakes. A whole lot to say but super easy because mine are store bought!! I added in some fruit, a cherry tomato, cheese, and a cute carrot stick and she's ready to go!!

Catching Up After the Party!

Well, I've rested for about a week after a huge event... My oldest Missy Lulu is FIVE YEARS OLD!!! 0-o (Unbelievable)!! My tiny little peanut of a pixie child is now a officially a kid, but what a wonderful kid she is!!
 We celebrated with a huge Pop Star Birthday Party...complete with Justin Biber and Robin Packalen (the Finnish Biber) pop songs playing during a mini disco! Missy Lulu and her pals all had a blast and I and her dotting Isi did as well! Happy 5th Birthday Missy Lulu!!

For starter's let me include the last bento in my Dora the explorer bento theme of last week:

In this snack bento she had:

1. A cheese and Aioli sammie with Backpack drawn on soy wrap edible paper and food safe pen.
2. Black berries and red grapes
3. carrot sticks
4.  Orange juice

Now, back to the party! I was inspired by the super cute invitations I bought from this wonderful Etsy shop named Jcbabycakes... here. The colors of hot pink, aqua, and zebra print were pop star party perfect!! The snazzy decor  thrilled all my little rockettes without totally offending my tiny rock dudes (Always a good thing!!)  I already had a zebra print table cloth and hot pink chair sashes from a previous party; so with the accessories from jcbabycakes and a few cut out stars from poster paper our party table looked like this...

With a title wave of sugar presented at the party I thought it best to serve a bento lunch. Here are the party bentos:

In each "Rocker" bento was:

1. A "Rockabilly" Guitar Pizza with extra cheese and nori details
2. Two heart sausages
3. Two mozzarella, cherry tomato and basil snack on a pretty heart party pick
4. A couple of cucumber slices

Of course we had a Super Star Cake!!  Baked by the birthday girl and her mommy!

 And with a fantastic/mini diva party outfit (Sent to us from Grandpa and Awesome Auntie Juanita!!)
My little Rockette was ready to party!!

And Party We Did!!!

Happy 5th Birthday Missy Lulu....You are My Super Star!!!!

All My Super Stars keep my life bright!!

I've Linked the Party Bento to "What's for Lunch Wednesday week 124."

World Animal Day with a sneaky little villan

A sneaky little villain was revealed in my daughter's lunch today, and here he is...!

"Wait a minute," you say, "how is that sweet little guy a villain?" Look a little bit closer...

It's Swiper the Fox!!  But no worries, friends! Swiper's not snatching anything today; he's just joining my friends and I in a wonderful blog hop celebrating October 4th, 2012 World Animal Day. I'm absolutely thrilled with all the wonderful creativity shared by all my bento blogging community friends. Be sure to travel through-out this amazing cyber zoo and enjoy our crazy world of wildlife!!!

This bento contained:

1. A Swiper the fox pizza, topped with white and yellow cheddar cheese slices. Nose and whiskers are cut from nori.
2. A cherry tomato, with a bit of carrot on a bento pick.
3. Flashed boiled edamame.
4. Two huge blackberries and a few sweet red grapes.
5. Orange juice. 

All done here ? Well the fun continues!!  Cruise on to my friend Anna at Becoming a Bentoholic for another cyber animal exzibit!

A monkey and his little red boots

Wednesday for lunch we had Dora's little friend Boots the monkey! I found a nice tutorial on how to make him as open face sandwich here:http://www.nickjr.com/recipes/boots-open-face-sandwich.jhtml
This is what I turned out:

In this lunch they had:

1. A "Boots"  open face bologna sandwich with radish eyes, nori, and slice of tomato mouth.
2. Penne pasta with a white cream and chive sauce.
3. Green beans
4. Banana and grape flowers
5. Cucumber slices with a cherry tomato

This week has been quite busy for me. I wanted to make a Boots the monkey face for Missy Lulu's snack bento but ran just so behind time I had to take a quick shortcut!

In her snack bento Missy got:

1.  A Homemade Banana apple sauce muffin topped with Boot's boots! (Boots made from Marzipan)
2. Flash boiled and salted edamame (She LOVES these!)
3. Grapes and pear slices

See the little Dora and Boots Barans? Guess who made them!! Gosh I love this home laminator seriously!(  ^-^ )

Linking this lunch to What's for Lunch Wednesday week 123

Dora the explorer and a Invention!

Today I decided to go with the star catcher herself Dora!  I definitely had a little fun coming up with a different way to create this adorable little girl. So this is what I ended up with today...

Here in this lunch we have:

1. "Dora" Potato smiles (home made using instant potatoes, need to perfect my recipe though.)
2. Fish sticks with lemon slice
3. sauteed spinach
4. garlic mayo and ketchup for dipping
5. more potato...this time (salad) was out of the girls favorite cottage cheese. There's also a cherry tomato with a star pick.

I love the idea of potato smiles; this is what they look like, if you have no idea what I'm talking about! (Lol) Smiles   They are simply smiley face tater tots or baked mash potato. I doubt if I'll ever find them here in Finland so I tried to recreate them myself. I used instant potato mash and corn starch to help the consistency and baked in the oven...but they were a little stodgy, so I need to keep experimenting. (The girls ate them fine smothered in mayo and ketchup of course.) I topped my baked potato smiley with nori and voila it's Dora!

For Missy Lulu's snack bento I did more experimenting. To make the Dora potato smiles, I used a biscuit cutter for the face and some small bento cutters for her eyes and mouth; I did the same on some left over tortilla from yesterdays lunch. I spread the tortilla with cream cheese and sprinkled on  raw organic coconut palm sugar. Coconut palm sugar looks and taste like brown sugar, but has a lower GI than brown or white sugar; and it has essential vitamins and amino acids. Mixed with the cream cheese was it quite nice. After the sammie was done, I was left with this:

Not very cute right!!?

I didn't want "creepy skeleton Dora", even though it is October! I wanted the cute little face on my daughter's napkins and party hat left overs...then  it came to me!

I'm calling it a sandwich protector! All I did was cut out the card board hat and used my home laminator to seal! My scary sammie went from scary to this:

Much Better Amigos!! I figure I could adapt this idea around a lot of her sandwiches, just make a design more generic like a circle with flowers or a simple hello kitty bow. No more messy sandwiches no matter how rough my kids are with there backpacks!  What do you think? 

Linking this lunch to What's for lunch Wednesday week 123 .

I'm the Map!

Both my girls love Dora the explorer. We watch her DVDs in the evening and even had a Dora themed party when my oldest turned three. I had done a Dora themed muffin tin lunch and bentos before, but today I decide to have a Dora week before all the Halloween celebrations begin. It's nice that the show has so many great characters so it's really easy to spread out over a week! Today our Dora celebrity is Map or (Karta in Finnish t.v.)

In this muffin tin lunch we have:

1. A "I'm the map" vegan burrito made with soy vegetable protein and yummy vegan tomato based sauce. I added carrots just in case the girls missed grated cheese.
2. A side order of Spanish rice with black beans, garlic, corn and soft rice in a Tex-Mex tomato sauce.
3. A side cup filled with sweet corn
4. sliced cucumbers and a cherry tomato
5. A serving of fruit puree of blueberries and apple sauce.

This was the snack bento Missy Lulu took to school.
 

In this snack bento she had:

1. A" I'm the Map" burrito, this time filled with home made apple sauce and cinnamon.
2. A banana wedge and sliced apples.
3. A cup of raisins
4. Boxed o.j.

Despite the meal being totally vegan my two girls munched away without skipping a beat! Vegetarian/ vegan meals are definitely something I am willing to incorporate into our meal routine. It's always a good idea to eat heavy meats and dairy products in moderation, so this is an experiment I really needed to learn from.

Linking these meals to Muffin tin Monday and Bento Blog Networks Bento of the week: totally vegan.

Snoopy Bento

Today I attempted to make my favorite Charlie Brown characters, Snoopy and Woodstock. I used to love Charlie Brown as a kid, but remember always being depressed by how depressed Charlie Brown was in most episodes. If it weren't for Snoopy and his sidekick Woodstock, I probably wouldn't of watched the show at all! My little ones don't know these characters, but Missy Lulu never met a dog she didn't love,"Aww cute dog mommy!" she said. "And what's the other yellow thing?" ( Me:) "It's a canary bird dear, but it's hard to tell." "Oh," she says, "Well it's cute too mommy, I'll eat him!" (Me:) "Good girl!" So here's Lunch and snack:

1. Snoopy, made from a boiled chicken egg with Nori details. Snoopy is served over Ramen noodles.
2. Woodstock is hand cut from a carrot pancake. He also has some nori details.
3. The usual veggies of cucumbers and cherry tomatoes
4. Green beans
5. Sliced Chicken nugget.

In the snack bento was served:

1. Snoopy nutella sammie with nori details.
2. Yellow & red cherry tomatoes make Woodstock with nori details.
3. Two mini sausages with flower picks
4. Sliced nectarines and plums
5. Boxed fruit juice

Everyone have an amazing weekend! Love Kiki ^.^