Friday Lunches

It's Friday! We survived the first week of school! So glad it is the weekend and we have an extra day off! Happy Labor Day Weekend!

Here are our lunches from today:

My second grader is not a fan of sandwiches and had been asking for onigiri. I had left over rice from last night and made him a fun Onigiri lunch in his Goodbyn Bynto. We packed:

• two funny onigiri and one wrapped onigiri with seasoning
• garden cucumbers
• baby carrots
• red peppers
• and some cheddar popcorn

My third grader wanted his Laptop Lunches bento box today. It is filled with:

• a peanut butter and jelly sandwich
• garden cucumbers and red peppers
• cheddar popcorn and a small serving of all natural fruit snacks
• apple sauce
• a cereal bar

I also added a fun new Lunchbox Love Card from the new joke editions! Perfect humor for a third grader ;)

My middle schooler has the same lunch as his brother but I added a Lunchbox Love Card from the Teen & Tween edition. I love Lunchbox Love Cards as you know and these are perfect for an older child. 

Happy Friday and Have a nice and safe weekend!

Things I used to make lunch (contains affiliate links):

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:

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 :)

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 :)

LunchBot Lunch

A quick lunch in our Lunchbot Trio:

• cucumber and cheese sticks
• salami sandwich
• veggie sticks and
• strawberries

I added a Lunchbox Love Card and marvel every day how far they have come this year!

Mama and Daughter Lunches

Today's lunches are for my daughter and me.
We packed the boy's lunches and then some for ourselves as well :)

Mama's Lunch:

This post contains affiliate links

My lunch is packed in our Laptop Lunches bento box:

• a kiwi fruit
• left over fried rice with some carrot flowers
• left over chicken on a bed of spinach salad with mushrooms and some left over crackers ( I also packed salad dressing in a separate mini dressing bottle - not pictured)
• and carrots and celery sticks with a tablespoon of peanut butter

Girly's Lunch:

My daughter wanted lunch on her Innobaby Din Din Platter:

• mini cucumbers
• grapes
• an apricot
• Pirate Booty and 
• two mini heart shaped peanut butter sandwiches

Here are a few of the things I used to make lunch: