SPRING BREAK!!

Hi! Andy Bye! :)

We are heading to my dads house to enjoy the beginning of spring break with my family! I can't wait! In an effort to 1. be healthier and 2. save money, I packed bentos for us (dinner/snack) for the drive. Its about 3 hours, and I hope this will keep everyone from asking to stop or drive through somewhere... YUCK.

Bunny bento for Olivia

Not pictured- a green apple. This is my bento! :D I'll post the chickpea recipe below!

A daddy bento! You can't really tell but this one includes 2 sandwiches. 

A little Sophie bento!

Cinnamon & Truvia Roasted Chickpeas

Preheat oven to 350

Line baking sheet with 1 tbsp olive oil

Spread out 1 can of organic, well-rinsed chickpeas on the baking pan

sprinkle with cinnamon and truvia, bake until crispy!

We will be home Monday or Tuesday... and its possible to see some bento adventures throughout the week! Orrrrrr we'll be back a week from Monday with lots of spring break photos and a brand new school lunch.

Til then, join us in our Bento Enthusiasts facebook group! Its open to anyone (just request to join) that enjoys bento, learning about it, making it, talking about it, and posting their food art on various social media. :) 

Feelin' a little Froggy

Ribbit, ribbit!

Sophia is on a huge princess and the frog (pwincess and da fwoooogggg, mom!) kick the last couple of weeks. She is also on a HUGE bento kick! She's finally old enough to really "get" bento, and love it. Yesterday she carried around a piece of bread and some Chia ginger superfood cookies "i make pinto, mom!" for like an hour. She has also started creating "pinto" for us with her wooden melissa and doug toys in her little kitchen. I love it!

So today, when she went to the pantry...

Sophia: "I hungy mom, I wan bite bite!"
Me: "Ok! What do you want?"
Sophia: *walks to pantry* "I go dis way!"

.... hahahaha! I opened the door for her and she pointed to the bento boxes and said she wanted a "pinto pock" ... how could I refuse?!

I grabbed my cute z cute, and made a quick little lunch for her!

In this ELB, you will find:

A simple Pumpkin butter sandwich made with my cute z cute

Pirates booty

Pretzel crisps & horizon organic cheese

Simple, easy, and just the right size for a toddler. :) 

Crazy Arkansas Weather

... where to start!? I haven't posted since Valentines' Day!

We have been super busy! It has been snowing like crazy for a couple of days, then 70 degrees and sunny for a couple of days.. then more snow, more sun, and so on! Yesterday was a gorgeous day, and today its raining and soooo cold- in the morning we're expected to have snow and ice! With all the weird weather, the school has gotten out early, or been closed.. or we haven't had groceries so I haven't made a photo-worthy lunch. We're all guilty of that, sometimes!

The week of Valentines' day, I made the trek to Mountain Home, Arkansas to get our sweet new puppy! I am very pleased to introduce you to Artemis. She is a french mastiff, and super sweet. My husband searched for her for months, we found a dog that was due for puppies around Thanksgiving. She was FINALLY ready to come home to us as our family Valentine! Mountain home is 4 hours away from my house, so it was a crazy long drive by myself. I enjoyed it though, listening to what ever I wanted to on the radio, and as loud as I wanted! It was so funny though.. it was nice and fine outside and on my way home it came a freaking blizzard! ha!

Here she is: Artemis!

And so today, when I finally got to make a decent lunch, I decided to go with a puppy theme.

I just LOVE you!

I am so excited for this entire week of lunches! Valentines Day is one of the most fun holidays, for me, as far as bento goes.

Probably because pink is my favorite color! ha!

In this easy lunchbox container you have

Pizza crescents

Pizza sauce in the little dipper 

grapes & a strawberry heart

Chobani's new Pear flavor, with sprinkles!

{{this new chobani is amazing! So far- EVERYTHING is! We are cho-freaks!}}

Pizza crescent rolls are easy peasy. Both kids like them (duh, who doesn't love pizza?!), and they're super convenient to make for dinner & lunch the next day. Olivia and Sophia both prefer only cheese pizza, so all I did was put pizza sauce and mozzarella cheese on the dough before rolling it in to a crescent.  They're more like giant pizza pockets though, because once I stuffed them, they kind of lost their ability to create a crescent shape. 

Check out other pizza crescent lunches from Bento For Kidlet, More Than Your Average Mom, and Healthy Eating Starts At Home.

MOMOCON!

As many of you know, I will be at MOMOCON this year with some of my AMAZING bento blogging friends!

I am so super excited to have been considered and chosen for this event- I have not ever attended any kind of blog networking event in my life! So this is a big thing for me, and I am *so* looking forward to being there.

To make things EVEN BETTER, my best friend Rachel is going with me. She is my biggest cheerleader in life and I am so blessed to call her my friend. I can't wait for this fun road trip and amazing weekend with her! Living in separate states has been hard :( I miss her too much!

So anyway, the theme of our class at MOMOCON is angry birds. I haven't ever done an angry birds bento before (not sure why, Olivia LOVES angry birds!), so I have been practicing. :D

essentially these are the same lunches, just plated differently. Not too bad for my first attempt. I think Olivia will be getting angry birds lunches all week next week. Stay tuned :D

Other awesome bento bloggers I'll be at MOMOCON with::: BETH, EMILY, & ERIN :)

Simple Little Monday

Good morning! I love Mondays. Most people don't, I know! I love it because we get to go back to our routine- bedtimes, lunch making, breakfasts with my adorable little Sophia after we shuttle Olivia off to school. I love a routine! I also love nap time for S while O is at school so I can concentrate on homework and business! Busy mamas, you know what I mean.

In today's lunch: 

Earthgrains berry bread heart sandwich with Sunbutter

Z-bar gummy rope

kashi crackers with pepperjack cubes

blueberries, strawberries and frozen grapes

All packed in one of our favorite containers: the Easy Lunchbox!

So, I would love to know, what is your favorite day of the week, and why? :) 

Miss Piggy

Good Monday Morning!

I am looking forward to this week after an awesome weekend with my BFF and my husband! I love having company!

Today's bento is so cute, to me, because Sophia always asks me "Where ya-ya?"... and I say "Olivia's at school, honey!" So a couple of seconds later she says "Ya-ya school with Miss Piggy!" and I have NO idea why she thinks Miss Piggy is at school with Olivia?!

Hence the piggy lunch today!

In Olivia's Easy Lunchbox container

A little piggy sunbutter sandwich made with my cutezcute cutter

Chobani vanilla chocolate chunk yogurt

flower cucumbers

laughing cow and pretzels

The vanilla chocolate chunk is Olivia's favorite yogurt flavor, so I think she will be super excited to find that as a treat in her lunchbox!

Tiny trees

Hello! Happy Hump Day! :) It has been quite a while since I've posted. Don't worry, I've still been making cute lunches every day, I just haven't found them interesting enough to blog.

Today I want to show you a quick way to send your yogurt in your kids lunch. This idea was shown to me by my amazing BBF group, I can not remember specifically which one! I have several of my bento blogging friends' buttons on the right side bar, feel free to click through and see how wonderfully talented my people are! They're so amazing!

Ok, on to the yogurt!

I bought little Christmas tree ice trays at target last night. I spooned 0% organic plain Greek yogurt in the mold, then a dollop of honey, and a sprinkle of cinnamon. Then I added a few sprinkles to look like Christmas "lights." So fun!

How do you send yogurt to school in your kiddo's lunch?

Cute Z Cute

It's exactly what it sounds like... CUTE!! :) you can get one at allthingsforsale.com & if they're not available on amazon yet, they will be soon!

It's one cutter with four different faceplates- a panda, a kitty, a frog, and a piggy!

I LOVE IT!!! :) thanks so much JeeJee <3 you're fabulous!

Biscuits (aren't just for breakfast)

That's right!

Actually, I can't even take credit for this idea. It's all pillsbury. Andy saw a commercial where they smushed the biscuit dough into flat circles and baked it. So, he was like "oh, do that for dinner!" Well.... We don't dictate dinner while we are staying with my family so, I tried it for Olivia's lunch.

She loved it! It's not the healthiest but it works for days I'm uninspired (seems like every day now), or in a rush.

Just smush, bake, and create.

We are Beliebers!

I could NOT resist! Yesterday on the way to school we were jamming out to "Boyfriend" - quite possibly one of the greatest pop songs OF.ALL.TIME. <-- Yeah... I'm not ashamed to admit that I've got the FEVER!

A peanut butter and pumpkin seed sandwich with strawberry fruit leather fever, a few pretzels, red raspberries, white raspberries, watermelon, sunflower and pumpkin seeds, carrots, tomatoes, and ranch. Oh, and the Biebs!

So, Who is your favorite singer (I mean... who is your child's favorite!?)... and how excited would they be to open lunch and see them?!