feeling a little lunchy: Blog hop

Showing posts with label Blog hop. Show all posts

feeling a little excited {Santa Claus is Coming to Lunch blog hop}

Santa is coming! My girls are at the age where the magic is fading. They haven't said that they don't believe or even questioned us this year, but I know it's going to be the last year we can hang on to the magic. Santa brings them one big gift that's left unwrapped, since he doesn't have time to do all that wrapping. I think they love coming down and seeing their favorite gift sitting under the tree. The excitement they have for it is genuine and I have cherished those moments. Last year, my younger daughter had some questions and her big sister would cover her ears and hum loudly to drown out the sound. It was so funny. This year, they're more interested in technology and clothes, so the big gift is going to take a lot of thought. Here it is, December 16 and we've still got nothing! What we do have is a blog hop...since Santa is coming to LUNCH!

Please check out all the other lunches by clicking the button below, which will hop you over to the next blog and so on. Comments are always appreciated! See what Shirley over at Little Miss Bento has whipped up for you...her food is amazing!

http://littlemissonigiri.blogspot.com/2013/12/santa-claus-is-coming-to-lunch-bento.html

I went uber simple with this lunch. Sometimes I get overwhelmed by all the decor and fanfare over Christmas. So I kept it to a bare minimum and hope the sentiment isn't lost.

The lunch is simply a turkey sandwich cut to look like a fireplace, salad with carrot stars and one of our easiest cookies ever...the recipe for those cookies can be found HERE. The girls had a great time using our food coloring tints to paint on the white chocolate of the cookies. I prefer the cookies without all the paint, but they were having such a great time doing it and working together.

I cut the crusts off the bread, except for bottom edge, which is the top ledge of the fireplace. Using the back side of the knife I pressed the bread a bit to make bricks. Cut a square out, painted a burning fire with Wilton food coloring tints and BAM! Instant doorway for Santa to come in to. Although now that I think of it, the burning fire may pose a problem for him...poor guy.

Of course there's a Same Lunch, Two Ways since the older, mini woman would be appalled by a fireplace in her lunch. She came home and mentioned that the food coloring on her cookie had colored her teeth, which none of her friends told her about until two classes after lunch and she was embarrassed a little. She stated that I could still put the cookie in future lunches, but they had to be decor-free. I haven't packed them salads in a while because I was getting them back and they were hungry. They ate all of the salad so I was pleased.

If you are interested in any of the products I use, click the affiliate links below, please! Anytime you purchase through one of my links, regardless of what you purchase, I get a small percentage of the sale. It's how lunchy gets paid! Thanks!

feeling a little geekier

I'm a relatively Newvian Whovian, but luckily the geek community doesn't judge! My daughters and I were introduced to the Doctor last year and have watched every episode of the new series and are currently working our way through some of the older episodes. We are eagerly awaiting the return of the Doctor this weekend and what better way to celebrate, geek style, than with a painted slice of cheese and a blog hop? The Cyberman I drew on the cheese turned out ok, don't you think? I shared this with some of my bento blogging friends and was invited to join in their blog hop for Edible Geekery. I'm honoured and thrilled! Now we just have to figure out how to watch the 50th when we don't have cable or the BBC....hmmmmm....

Now for the hop and the fun! Click the image below to head on through the universe to Biting the Hand That Feeds You's special post for the 50th Doctor Who! Then click the same image again and you'll go to another blog...and another...until you come full circle. Kind of like a TARDIS? No? Too far?

http://www.bitingthehandthatfeedsyou.net/2013/11/wibbly-wobbly-lunches-doctor-who-50th.html

For more of my Whovian lunches, check out the Guest Post I did over at What's in Our Lunch Bags a few months back, and this post as well.

feeling a little freaky {Pumpkin Spice Latte Bread Recipe}

It's that time of year again...Halloween! Who doesn't love a bit of scary mixed with all you can eat candy? It wouldn't be a holiday of the Bento Bloggers and Friends didn't do a blog hop...so here it is in all it's fearsome glory! Click the button below to head on over to One Crafty Thing when you're done eyeballing my lunch.

One Crafty Thing

This lunch contains an awesome recipe for Crock Pot Pumpkin bread from Wanna Bite blog. I found the recipe on Pinterest, of course. It's moist and delicious and I don't think I will ever make pumpkin bread any other way now. If you're feeling a little adventurous, try dumping in two packets of Starbucks VIA instant coffee for a Pumpkin Spice Latte Bread...I use Italian Roast. It's delicious (and caffeinated to boot!)

Here's the recipe for the kids without the coffee:

Crockpot Pumpkin Bread

PIN HERE: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/86483255315312813/

Ingredients

½ cup of oil
½ cup of sugar
½ cup of packed brown sugar
2 eggs (beaten)
1 15oz can of pumpkin
1½ cup of flour (sifted)
¼ tsp. of salt
½ tsp. of cinnamon
½ tsp. of nutmeg
1 tsp. of baking soda

Instructions

Blend the oil and both of the sugars into a large bowl.
Then, stir in the beaten eggs and canned pumpkin. Add the remaining dry ingredients and mix thoroughly.
Pour the batter into a greased or oiled bread pan. (I used a canola oil spray that worked just fine.
Now add two cups of water to your crockpot and place the pan into a crock pot.
Cover the top of the crockpot with eight-ten paper towels. This is to trap condensation and keep the bread from becoming mushy.
Place the crock pot lid on top of the crockpot (I tried to make sure the paper towels were trapped around the lid so they didn’t slip) and bake on high 2½ to 3 hours.

Since I have two very different children at two different stages in life, I had to make a lunch without all the Halloween flair for the 7th grader. She gets the same lunch, no fun and not tomatoes because she doesn't like tomatoes.

And here's some close ups of the fun lunch: I got the skeleton flair at Publix and the witch and hand on Amazon. Check out the links below to get some of your own.

feeling a little aaaarrrrrrgggggg!

The Bento Bloggers and Friends band together once again for a raucous blog hop! Gather ye little Scallywags 'round to sail o'er me lunchy seas...Walk the Plank by clicking the button below to venture off to Eclectic Lamb's sunken treasure of food once you've satisfied your peepers here.

After ye've sailed 'round this hop, hang on to yer sea legs!

Click 'ere to board t'next ship fer another hop!

For my favorite pirate: a treasure chest roll made with turkey with cheese doubloons, graham cracker map, a prescription for scurvy orange and some Pirate's Booty cheddar puffs. All drawings made with Wilton's edible food dyes. My bloggy friends have done this kind of hop before, and I've got Eclectic Lamb to nod at for the treasure chest idea, and to Crystals Ramblings for the graham cracker map idea.

feeling like we're not in Kansas anymore

With the release of Disney's Oz, the Great and Powerful tomorrow, the Bento Bloggers and Friends have teamed up to do yet another amazing and fun blog hop. I love hops...I love the planning and creativity that goes into it. I love the various ways each bento blogger interprets the theme. It's exciting. Everyone is so talented and we sure do love to share our exploits with you! After you're done here, click on the yellow brick road at the end of this post and ease on down the road...(that's a reference to The Wiz! people).

I got a call at work this morning from the clinic saying my wild child had thrown up. Would I be a terrible, worthless mother if I said I was kind of happy to get to leave work today so I could think about this post a little more? Don't feel like you have to answer that question for me. She's fine, people...she's been doing cartwheels in the family room and playing the Wii while laying on the couch...upside down.

First up, I made a little hot air balloon snack for my sick kid. Ultimately, she ended up only eating the cereal "basket" and the apple now resides in my refrigerator. I used Americolor food markers to draw on the plate.

I absolutely love Zach Braff, too. Ever since the days of Scrubs...man I miss at show. Too bad his adorable face isn't superimposed on that weird looking animated monkey he lends his voice to. His voice is adorable, too, so I will survive. Now, how exactly do I get a lunch to look like a flying monkey in a suit?

Close enough?

It's a salad. With a flying monkey made out of a flour tortilla with cheese for wings and drawn on with food coloring markers. I love those things. I know food coloring is evil...but really, how much could possibly be in that little monkey? Forgive me for not caring.

Then I stole an idea from The Bloggess...although my banana isn't as sinister. It's just a yellow brick road. Hers were saying bad things. I adore The Bloggess. If you haven't read her book, "Let's Pretend this Never Happened"...you should. But only if you love dark, witty, humor sprinkled with colorful language. Read her post about the bananas here: Listen to the Bananas

The wild child found this witchy pick the other day hiding in our cupboard and shrieked that it HAD to be put in this lunch. So there it is.

And I thought I'd throw a tip at you all, too...just so I could pin it, shameless, I know.

Head on over to Organized Bites and check out what the ever amazing, powerful and wonderful Venia has to show off! Her stuff is amazing. I seriously wish she were my mother...or just my favorite next door neighbor so I could borrow a cup of sugar from her...every single day...but she's kind of far from where I live. Oh well...maybe one day all of the bento bloggers will start a commune. I'm game!

feeling a little mustachey

This is our little dog Molly. She's a Jack Chihuahua mix and quite a handful. Just getting her to sit for this pic was a challenge. She wanted to eat the mustache.

International Fake Mustache day was MADE for lunchy! I plan on drawing a mustache on my finger and talking in a fancy voice all day. What are your plans for sporting a mustache today?

Of course, it's a Bento Bloggers and Friends blog hop as well. For those who are new to the blog hop idea, basically, we have all made a special lunch with a theme and linked to eachother. all you have to do is click the image below, which is on all of the blogs, to go to the next blog and join in the fun. we all love comments and suggestions, so please, drop us a note and have fun!

Go check out what Venia over at Organized Bites has made for a little more mustachey fun!

Of course, I have about 30 lunches with mustaches in them, but these were a little more deliberate.

I have these awesome cookie cutters from Fred and Friends and I took them to a whole other level by using them on some crescent roll dough. Then I whipped out my food color pens to add a little detail. It's salad day, so there's romaine lettuce with peas, carrots, a turkey sausage crescent roll dog and some ranch dressing in the minidipper cup. All packed in our yellow lidded Easylunchboxes Brights box. We just got these last week and the girls love the new colors. I can't even tell the difference between my old, well used boxes and the new ones. Yet another great reason to get some for yourself...they last forever and keep looking great the whole time.

Two meatballs wrapped in canned biscuits, a mozzarella Babybel cheese, pasta sauce, ranch dressing for dipping, an egg and a cookie packed in the ever popular Easylunchboxes.com box. I was going for an Italian theme. I think I pulled it off, a little.

The biscuit meatballs are easy to make...and my kids like them hot or cold, so they're perfect for lunch. Just take a can of refrigerator biscuits, pop it open, recover from the scare, take a frozen meatball and wrap the dough around it, sprinkle it with Parmesan cheese, then toss in the oven at 350 for about 15 minutes. Voila! Thanks to Bentolunch.net for the idea!

We are loving our Lunchbots containers these days as well.

The girls outgrew their High School Musical Thermos, so I wrapped each in a little mustache duck tape that BentOnBetterLunches sent to me. They've been through the dishwasher many times and no issues. We also use our Leaflet Tight boxes on a regular basis. They've got removable sections that make them so versatile for our lunches.

Of course, we here in the lunchysphere get a bit goofy with our mustaches.

Thanks for the glasses, Alex!

poor Molly.

We also had fun with felt mustaches while camping with our Girl Scouts troop last fall. These are their "tough guy" faces when they were freezing cold at 7am in the North Georgia Mountains.

feeling a little Christmas cheer...

It's been a little while since I've actually written a blog post. I've been hiding out on my Facebook page: Click the image below to go visit and LIKE it! Special thanks to Beth over at www.aboyandhislunch.com for the logo and web design! She did a great job, don't you think?

The Bento Bloggers and Friends group has gotten quite large and hops were huge and overwhelming to go through, so we divided it up this time and are adding a linky party as well. This is the second week of the Holiday Ho Ho Hop and it's sure to be just as awesome as last week! When you're done with feeling lunchy, click the hop button below and head on over to My Epicurean Adventures for more holiday fun.

I asked my 9 year old what she wanted for this lunch and she replied fairy bread! Fairy bread is really simple...it's so simple, I feel like I'm questioning your intelligence when I write the instructions below.

You will need:

2 slices of bread
1 cookie cutter
Peanut butter, Nutella or some other sort of sticky spread
Sprinkles or we used Jet Puffed Mallow Bits (they're like the crunchy marshmallows in hot chocolate packets and they're amazing! they can be found where the marshmallows are in the grocery store)

Take one slice of bread and smear it with your sticky stuff. Take the other slice and use your cookie cutter, cutting out a shape in the middle. Place the cut slice on top of the peanut butter slice and fill the hole with sprinkles. Be sure to lightly press the sprinkles into the peanut butter so they don't fall out when the lunch is brought to school. We had a little mustache flair that we added to our gingerbread man. You don't eat the mustache...never eat. The mustache.

She has her fairy sandwich, tomatoes, Snap Pea Crisps and a homemade ginger bread cookie. It was her idea to cut the center out of the cookie, too.

The Miniwoman has a simpler lunch of course, since she's too cool for fun lunches...she has an orange, some tropical trail mix, a gingerbread cookie and her sandwich is just like the Wild Childs, peanut butter and crunchy marshmallows, but you'd lever know that because we hid all the fun inside!

Hope you enjoyed the lunches! Have fun on your hop.

A Very Thankful Blog Hop

There are so many things in this world to be thankful for. Family, friends, children, jobs, life...why is it so hard to translate that into a lunch? Well, because these things are not tangible. They're not guaranteed. They're gifts from the universe that can be fleeting.

I often feel a bit geeky and like I have far too much time on my hands when someone I know in real life says they're overwhelmed or feel inadequate when they see my lunches and meals. I have this to say to them: I make time for this. I make time because I need to. I make time because I like to. Much like they may enjoy reading their book or watching a movie, I enjoy making these lunches and then snapping a picture of them. Please do not feel inadequate or like you'd never be able to do it. You could, if it were something you enjoyed doing and then scheduled time for. I work about 28 hours a week. I don't have my children in a ton of extracurricular activities and honestly, I'm beyond thankful that I have discovered this creative outlet for myself. It's not for everyone. But if I can inspire you to think outside of the same old lunch, then I am thankful for that.

I am beyond thankful that the Bento Bloggers and the internet group I was so sweetly invited to join found me when it did. These people have no idea of the impact they have had on me and my life over the past few months. They've helped me through a pretty deep depression and basically saved my life. I won't go into the details, but I was beyond low.

Who can say that a lunchbox saved their life? I can. And I especially want to thank Kelly Lester, the singing CEO of Easylunchboxes for giving me one, albeit small, reason to wake up every day. Her light shines through my internet connection on a regular basis, and her enthusiasm and praise and appreciation for everyone who uses her products makes it all the more special. Thank you, Kelly. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

The lunch I made for this hop is quite simple...as I try to keep my lunches. Sometimes I go overboard (like the Angry Birds or my Walrus). I wanted to keep this lunch simple because it's more about having the time to show my kids I love them and be thankful that I have the ability to make these special meals for them. It's about the lunchbox...not the food.

It's a deconstructed sandwich made with homemade bread. I recently dragged out the bread machine we got as a wedding gift and started making bread. 12 years later, and it still works. The bread is awesome and makes the house smell so homey and wonderful. If only they made a baked bread scented candle...maybe I'm on to something there. There are tomatoes, grapes, graham cookies we got at IKEA and bologna roll ups. The mustaches are still a hit around here...and they basically revived this years lunch making, so I'm thankful for mustaches. And again, thankful for my ELB.

I post on my Facebook page more often than on my blog so please, head on over there and like my page! www.facebook.com/feelingalittlelunchy

And please, join in the hop...take a look at what the others are thankful for:

Check out Keithas Chaos next by clicking the button below:

Halloween is Nigh...

It's a Halloween Hop now! This is my second hop and I'm so glad to be a part of the Bento Bloggers and Friends! These people are amazing! Not just with their lunchscapades, but in reality, too. Please leave me a comment below if you'd like and then head on over to Glory's Mischief to follow the hop and see all the fun and inspiring lunches we've all been working on!

(Click the pumpkin above to travel through the hop)

Every year, I want to start with the Halloween decorating around the first week of October. The Hubs is the voice of reason, and lets it be known that decorating too early could water down the festivities. I agree, but I still want to decorate! Today, I am off from work again, and having successfully avoided the laundry yesterday until around 5pm, I have not much else to do today. So I made a little Halloween lunchy for the natives. We still have to get our costume ideas nailed down, but I think the Wild Child is trying to get me to make her into a box of french fries. Last year, they were pizzas, and the year before that, we had one 50's waitress and one bubble bather, courtesy of Family Fun Magazine's extensive costume idea section. They've won our little neighborhood costume contest for two years in a row.

On with the lunch, then I will show off my mad costume making skillz.

I made tombstone apple swirl bread sandwiches with Trader Joes Pumpkin Butter (which is nowhere near the price it is on Amazon), Snap Pea Crisps for grass, ranch in the Mini Dipper, a Babybel pumpkin cut out with an Exacto-Knife, carrot chips, dried apricots and a Rice Krispie Treat cut to possibly resemble a candy corn. Then, of course it's adorned with the little Halloween picks I bought like 3 years ago on clearance and still have a ton of. Again, my Bento Bloggers and Friends have a ton of ideas, and I am in no way original in making this lunch...so I will credit all of them with the ideas! Click HERE for a link to a bunch of Halloween themed lunches.

Now for our Halloween Costume Showcase! I'm rather proud of the results from making their costumes...and honestly, they didn't take long at all to make! And I LOVE carving pumpkins...even use power tools to get the desired results!

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