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 .

Bentos gone to the dogs!!

It's a overcast day today and baby sunshine is fast asleep! I have a cup of tea and my laptop, happy to have a few moments to myself to blog! We had nice lunches today using the Hello Kitty tins...

and

For lunch we had:

1. Homemade cream of chicken soup
2. cottage cheese with bologna doll! (instead of paper) cheese and nori details. Above skirt and hair is eggplant)
3. Steamed peas
4. Tomatoes and slice cucumbers
5. sliced chicken nuggets 

For school snack I picked dogs as the theme..my oldest loves dogs. She would make a wonderful vet someday!!

In this snack bento she has two poodles...I used marzipan again. I would love to try and make pink bread like what you see at Bentomonsters, remember that pink poodle? (It was super cute!!)But until I find a good recipe, Marzipan is my medium!

1. Poodle  sammie made of butter bread and marzipan (sausage and nori paw)
2. Tiny cheese and nori poodle face...used the tiny Carl craft punch.
3. Two sausage bows
4. Apple juice

The day before Missy Lulu took this bento:

1. A doggie apple muffin...homemade from our own apples!
2. Two sausage puppies with cheese details got this idea from the amazing Luckysudnae at her blog cuteobento. (Careful you'll spend hours drooling over her work!)
3. Sliced plum and nectarine
4. Apple juice

 Linking these meals to Whats for Lunch Wednesday week 122

Elmo Bento

Welcome to the weekend! Had a great week this week, got some Christmas shopping done and made plans to have a girls night out next week!! Let the holiday festivities begin y'all!
Friday's bento has been inspired by our little red friend Elmo! I love his voice and if you youtube Elmo ABC's with India Ire you get a treat because it's best rendition of the ABC's you'll ever hear. It's Missy's absolute favorite and I can never get her away from the computer till she has hit replay 4 or 5 times.(Smh, Lordy!) But It's sweet and educational as well, so why not!
In today's bento we have a strawberry jelly Elmo sandwich with cheese, carrot and nori details.We also have a cherry tomato Elmo and a cup of veggies. A box juice and a banana rounds everything out!

Wednesday's Bento!!

Wednesday Bento!
Hi, double post for me today, Yay!! This is Wednesday's bento. Missy Lulu took chicken nuggets along with a couple of cute bears spread with peanut butter. Missy also had steamed veggies and fruit for dessert.

Bumble Bee Bento

This is the lunch Missy Lulu had Monday. Its a oven roasted drumette, with veggies and fruit. The bees are made of small potato balls boiled in curry powder mix and nori details. The wings are radish slices as is the rose. She also has some yogurt covered banana slices as a treat. She said it was cute and nice!

Kiki loves Bento's!

Missy luu luu is attending "leikkikoulu" or playschool five days a week for four hours. This is a wonderful thing all around. Missy luu luu loves it and she has made lots of friends. Mommy KiKi loves the free time to try and get some home care duties done while I just have one lady to deal with! I get to dress the cutest little thing ever and send her off to enjoy her day with a lovely bento snack!
Here are some of my favorites.. I'll feature them much better from now on.