The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School - a Literary Lunch

Run, run, as fast as you can! You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man.

Oh wait...
That is how the original story of the Gingerbread Man goes but in the new book from Laura Murray, the Gingerbread Man is actually loose in the school and trying to catch up to the kids at recess after they forgot him in the classroom.

This is such a fun book with a new twist on the Gingerbread Man story!

The Gingerbread Man is even trying to escape our Lunchbots lunchbox! So, before he escapes...we packed:

• a half an apple
• a gingerbread man peanutbutter sandwich on a seaweed black board with cheese decorations
• strawberries and
• a berry cereal bar with fruit leather letters

Please head over to The Little Crooked Cottage to see an exclusive interview with the Gingerbread Man - and find out if he does have a belly button - and see my lunch there!

First Day of School 2013/2014

Yesterday was our first day back to school for everyone. Thankfully everybody had a wonderful day. I had to wipe away a tear or two and cannot believe how fast they grow up.

Here are our First Day of School Lunches:

My second grader was happy to take a school themed lunch in his Good Lunch Box:

• garden cucumbers and baby carrots
• strawberry hearts
• two peanut butter sandwiches and
• a Enjoy Life Cocoa Loco bar

I also added a sweet Lunchbox Love Card to make sure he knows how much I'll miss him!

My third grader wanted his Laptop Lunches bento box filled with all his favorites:

• apples and strawberry hearts
• Annie's Cheddar Bunnies
• a cute Snoopy container filled with dark mini chocolate chips for the vanilla yogurt
• Snoopy peanut butter sandwiches
• vanilla yogurt and a
• cereal bar

I also packed a Lunchbox Love Card in his lunch. It was very quiet here without him.

For my oldest son it was the first day of Middle School and nothing cute was allowed. We packed his Laptop Lunches bento box with:

• apples and strawberries
• Annie's Cheddar Bunnies
• a Woodstock container with dark mini chocolate chips for the yogurt
• two left over chicken pieces from the day before
• Vanilla yogurt and 
• a cereal bar

His Lunchbox Love Card is turned around to just show the trivia. All grown up!

Our after school snack

Things I used to make our lunches (contain affiliate links):

Pool Lunches

We are experiencing a heat wave - like most of the country - and projected temperatures are in the triple digits. The kids want to head to the pool as early as possible and I am all in favor of fun and cool activity.

Heading to the pool in the morning also means we need lunch. For all 5 of us and possibly something more then a box of crackers. We brainstormed together and picked our Easylunchboxes for ease of packing in an assembly line. 

Everybody helped put together the lunches and we kept is simple and uniform to be faster (we packed this lunch in 10 min!) and make it easier on little hands.

The result:

Our 5 Easylunchboxes are packed with:

• cucumbers, carrots, grape tomatoes and radishes
• Annie's Organic Snack Mix
• 3/4 of a sandwich of choice (we packed peanut butter and jelly and cheese sandwiches)
• and a small silicone cup with slice strawberries and a mini fork 

 

We were able to fit all the lunches in two of our Easylunchboxes cooler bags which fit in my beach bag. So convenient!

Yum! We loved our pool lunches and this was so much healthier and nutritious then grabbing snacks from the snack cabinet.

Camp Lunch

We packed lunch for camp today and of course in our new OOTS! lunchbox:

Since it will be hot today I opted for three containers and two large ice packs:

We packed:

• sandwiches with a few Goldfish crackers
• grape tomatoes and cucumbers and
• blueberry yogurt in a leak proof container

I also added a sweet Lunchbox Love Card from the camp edition.

Stay cool today and don't forget to enter to win one of these amazing lunchboxes HERE!

Muffin Tin Monday - Dinosaurs

Today's Muffin Tin Monday theme is DINOSAURS and I immediately thought of my kids favorite song from the Laurie Berkner Band "We are the Dinosaurs." So today's lunch is all about dinosaurs and packed with help from my 4 year old:

We packed a Muffin Tin with:

• cucumber slices with the letter D for Dinosaurs
• a hatching "dinosaur" egg
• edamame "grass" with a flower spoon for the dinosaurs to stomp on
• blueberry yogurt with a dinosaur pick
• dinosaur fossil peanut butter sandwiches
• and dinosaur berries (grapes) - the dinosaurs favorite food according to my daughter :)

And if you have not listened to the adorable "We are the Dinosaurs" song from Laurie Berkner
- you can listen to it here:

I am linking up to:

Happy Birthday, Eric Carle!

Today is Eric Carle's Birthday and we are celebrating with a "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" lunch!

 This is our well loved copy of The Very Hungry Caterpillar..

This book has been a longstanding favorite - first my favorite book when I was little - and now my kids' favorite! They can never hear enough of the little caterpillar eating through all this food until he had a stomachache.

We packed our Innobaby Keepin' Fresh bento box with:

• a watermelon caterpillar
• an eaten apple slice
• and eaten strawberry
• an eaten watermelon
• an eaten cheese stick
• an eaten hot dog and 
• an eaten piece of pie made out of a peanut butter sandwich

Happy Birthday, Eric Carle!

Check out the Linky hosted by Creative Food for more Eric Carle Lunches!

Muffin Tin Monday

Today's Muffin Tin Monday theme is summer! Sand, sun and the beach is what I first thought of:

Our Muffin Tin is filled with:

• a home made Almond Streusel Banana Bread beach
• a chocolate spread sun
• a wild blueberry ocean 
• kiwi fruit
• a yogurt butterfly decorated with apple and chocolate chips and 
• strawberries

Enjoy this beautiful summer day!

Things I used to make this lunch:

First Day of Summer

Happy Summer!

We packed a simple summer lunch in our yubo today:

• a peanut butter sandwich sun
• cantaloupe
• blueberries

Hope you can enjoy the sun today! Have a great weekend!

Mickey Mouse Snack

I packed my preschooler a morning snack today - that she can have anytime she needs it - in the hopes I can get a few things organized.

We packed our Innobaby Keepin' Fresh stainless bento box and matching drinking cup (review to come soon!) with 

• cucumbers, 
• carrots, 
• cheese flowers, 
• cantaloupe melon bits and pieces and one big Mickey Mouse melon and 
• two small peanut butter and jelly Mickey Mouse sandwiches. 

The smiles were priceless and I am hoping to get some thing organized this morning :)

An Angry Bird Lunch

As the last days of school for this year approach I wanted to make a few more favorite lunches.
Angry Birds and King Pig are always on the top of the list:

Our Easylunchboxes box is packed with some Angry Bird cookies, apple slices with a bag of Angry Bird fruit snacks and two King Pig sandwiches decorated with candy eyes.

Other Angry Bird themed lunches from this year (click on the picture for more info ):

Things I used to make this lunch:

Disposable Field Trip Lunches {with Tutorial}

We had a couple of field trips lately and I wanted to share our disposable field trip lunches with you.

This field trip lunch was for a regular field trip for First Grade:

I packed a strawberry container with:

• an apple
• a peanut butter and jelly pocket sandwich
• an all natural blueberry fig bar from Nature's Bakery 
• and an Honest Kids juice pouch

I have gotten some questions lately about packing disposable field trip lunches and wanted to show you how I generally pack mine:

1) I layer napkins into the strawberry container.

2) I add the apple or other heavier large items like an applesauce or pudding.

3) Try to fill up the bottom with the heavier items like a cereal or fig bar.

4) Next, I added the pocket sandwich.

5) Last but not not least: the juice pouch. I froze mine to use as a cooler and added a piece of wax paper between the sandwich and juice pouch so the sandwich would not get soggy. Depending on your juice pouch or container you can also add the juice box first and layer the heavy items on top finishing with the sandwich. My son likes his sandwich very cold and that is why I chose to layer the juice pouch on top of the sandwich :)

6) Fold over the napkins to cover the lunch...

7) ...add a cute Lunchbox Love Card and you have a fun and thoughtful field trip lunch without squished sandwiches and broken crackers :)

Disposable Field Trip Lunch for Sports Day

The school requested a disposable brown bag lunch for last week's field trip and this is was we packed for lunch:

• Mott's all natural Applesauce
• Cheez-It Scrabble crackers
• a peanut butter sandwich
• carrots and cucumbers
• grapes in a paper muffin cup
• and three blueberry morning cookies as well as
• a big bottle of water

To prevent the peanut butter sandwich and grapes to be squished, I packed everything into a recyclable sandwich deli box. With the added fun napkin and Lunchbox Love Note - wishing them a great day - it was a fun and special day lunch. The bottle of water and deli sandwich box fit in a XL brown paper bag!

And if you want to stock up on Lunchbox Love Cards for lunches and upcoming field trips, use my code Mamabel to get 15% off right now :)