fun food friday: beautiful fall colours

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Fall is here and I absolutely love it! It's definitely my favourite season with the beautiful Fall colours. The kiddos really enjoyed this colourful lunch and ate it all up. It was super easy to make. Here's how I made it:

Fall tree - pretzel stick with red, yellow, and green apple leaves. I used food-safe markers on a few of the apple leaves. 3 cheddar cheese maple leaves.

A square silicone container of yogurt with fall leaf sprinkles and a yummy maple cookie for a treat.



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fall pics of the kiddos

Pin It We went out on Sunday to take some beautiful Fall pics of the kids. Unfortunately the leaves weren't as changed as I had hoped they would be. They're still pretty green. Oh well, I still got a few shots that I love. Here's just a few:

















There's more on my Flickr account if you're interested. Just click on any of the above pictures to get there.

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this week in bento boxes

Pin It I am totally loving this. After making fun food fridays for over a year, it's a nice refreshing change. Kirsten has been helping me make her school lunches and she decides what foods she wants. I love involving her in the process. My bento boxes are not elaborate by any means and they really don't take any longer than packing any lunch for your kiddos. I usually just add 1 or 2 cute elements to each box that takes very minimal prep and time. Here's some bento's from this week:



This was a great bento for her afternoon nutrition break. A ham and cheese sandwich on a multigrain roll with a little cheese whale and fruit leather spout. I used my food safe markers to draw on the little eye. A container of blueberries and a peeled clementine orange.



This was for a morning nutrition break. I made homemade blueberry muffins, which I absolutely love. I also made a blueberry, cherry, apple smoothie. I make large batches of smoothies and freeze them ahead of time in freezer jam jars and take them out the night before and leave them in the fridge. They help keep the lunch cool and are defrosted by her morning break. If you're serving one for lunch, you might want to take it out the morning of, and not the night before. I also gave her some red grapes. The smoothie container unfortunately doesn't fit in the bento, so I had to pack it outside the box. She's really been enjoying the smoothies in her lunches.



This was for an afternoon nutrition break. I made pinwheel pasta sauteed with butter, broccoli and parmesan cheese. I made this for supper and served the leftovers in her lunch. A sliced kiwi and some crackers with dino-shaped cheese.



Here's another morning nutrition break bento. I cut my homemade chocolate zucchini bread into an elephant (she got 2 pieces) and put an icing eye on the top. Vanilla yogurt with a piece of elephant baran and a sliced nectarine with an elephant pick. Just so you know, I wrap the yogurt in tinfoil before packing her lunch to prevent it from spilling.



Here's another afternoon nutrition break bento. A turkey and cheese sandwich on an multigrain roll. Little cheese fishies with food marker eyes. Goldfish crackers and fresh raspberries.



And another afternoon nutrition break bento. Turkey bologna roll-ups, some wheat thin crackers with little cheese birdies. A sliced up apple with adorable little tree picks. I dipped the apples in pineapple juice to prevent browning.

Here's some of the stuff I used to make these bentos:



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fun food friday: puzzle lunch

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This lunch was really easy to make with the puzzle lunch punch I got from All Things for Sale (link in sidebar). I have to be completely honest in that I've kind of been neglecting my fun food fridays ever since I've started packing school lunches for Kirsten. I have to get motivated again. Making the school lunches is just so fun to me right now. Here's how I made this lunch:

I made 2 sandwiches - 1 on white bread and 1 on whole wheat bread. I used the 4-piece puzzle punch and each kid got a sandwich with 2 pieces of each. They loved this.
Silicone container of puzzle watermelon pieces, silicone container of yogurt with fruit leather puzzle piece, silicone container of crackers with puzzle shaped cheese. Blueberries around the plate.



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fall button branch

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I'm a little obsessed with buttons. I'm always trying to think of new crafts to make that use buttons too. They're just too cute. The kids and I made this craft together and I just love it. We picked out a nice branch from the backyard and then we picked out all our lovely fall-coloured buttons. The buttons are supposed to look like all the beautiful fall leaves we have on our trees. It turned out amazing. Here are the instructions:

What you'll need:

canvas
branch
buttons
glue

Directions:

1. glue your branch onto your canvas. I put a very heavy book on top of the branch while it dried to keep it flat to the canvas.

2. Once the branch is glued and dried, start gluing your beautiful buttons on the smaller branches to look like leaves on a tree. Allow to dry.

3. You're going to want to display this beautiful masterpiece!





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more bento snacks and lunches

Pin It Here's some more bento boxes I've made. With having to pack 2 of these every day, I'm getting quite the collection to post. My bentos are by no means elaborate, just really simple with maybe one or two cute and easy elements to them. Kirsten has been helping me pack her lunches and she's been having a lot of fun picking out the foods she wants. I love involving her in the process.



Peeled and sliced kiwi, sliced cucumber, unsweetened applesauce, crackers with 2 marble cheese turtles - I decorated them with my food-safe markers.



Yogurt with fruit leather penguin (icing eyes and carrot nose), raspberries, blueberries and whole wheat penguin crackers.



2 bunny-shaped quesadillas with marshmallow and food marker eyes and heart sprinkle nose. Small container of salsa for dipping. Sliced strawberries with bunny pick and pretzel sticks.



Half a sandwich (ham and cheese). I cut a giraffe out of a tortilla and coloured it with food-safe markers. Raspberries with giraffe pick and baby carrots.



Whole wheat and blueberry waffle cut in half with a little container of pure maple syrup for dipping. Fruit leather bent into rainbow. Yogurt with blueberries and granola.



Turkey and cheese sandwiches on mini ciabatta buns. Cucumber flowers with carrot centres and a fruit leather rainbow.

Here's some of the supplies I used to make them:



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fun food friday: the Queen of hearts

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Happy Friday everyone! Here's another lunch I made using the fabulous lunch punch set I got from All Things for Sale (link in sidebar). This was also from the sandwishes set. It's such an adorable set with so many possibilities. My kids absolutely adored this. They're both quite fond of Alice in Wonderland lately so I thought they would think the Queen of Hearts was cute. Here's how I made this:

Sandwich cut into crown shape using the crown lunch punch. Fruit leather hearts. Bowl of vanilla yogurt with icing eyes, fruit leather heart mouth and heart sprinkles. Cheesestring hair. Strawberry pocky and fruit leather wand and blueberries around the plate.



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leaf people

Pin It Bring on the Fall crafts! Fall is definitely my favourite season and the kiddos and I have been busy Fall crafting. This craft was really fun. The kids and I went outside and picked our leaves, and then came inside and made leaf people. We made our family to be exact. Kirsten especially enjoyed this. She took great care picking out the leaves that would become us. So fun. Here's the Dubien family in leaves:









and here's a family portrait made by my little Cam:



Here's what you need to make this craft:

paper
glue
lots of colourful fall leaves
googly eyes
sharpie

Direction:

1. go outside and pick some beautiful Fall leaves
2. arrange your leaves in a person or animal shape and glue to your paper
3. add googly eyes and sharpie mouth



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make a chalkboard speech bubble

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As soon as I saw this idea on the fabulous Make and Takes last year, I just knew I had to make some for my kiddos first day of school. What an amazing idea to document your little one's milestones. The possibilities for it's use are just endless. These are so simple to make and take barely any time. I just love them! Here's how I made mine:

What you'll need:



black foam core board
sharpie
craft knife or Xacto knife - I used the fiskars fingertip knives and love them!
chalkboard spray paint
plastic knob
glue gun (I have rubber glue in the picture, but it didn't end up working very well)
chalk

Step 1:

Using your sharpie, draw the outline of your speech bubble:



Step 2:

Using your craft knife, cut out your chalkboard speech bubble, following the lines you drew:



Step 3:

Take them outside and lie them on a piece of cardboard. Following the directions on the back of the spray can bottle, spray your speech bubbles with the chalkboard spray paint. I did a few coats. Let dry.



Step 4:

Once completely dry (they dry pretty quickly), bring back inside and glue a knob on the back of the speech bubble. This is optional, but I figured it would make it easier for the kiddos to hang on to it without having to touch the chalkboard surface. I thought I would use the rubber glue, as pictured, but it just didn't work. The knobs fell off. I ended up using my glue gun and it worked perfectly. Allow the knobs to dry completely.



Step 5:

On the chalkboard surface, rub white chalk all over and wipe off. This will help give it that real chalkboard appearance.



Step 6:

Have fun with it!





Idea from Make and Takes



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fun food friday: the princess and the frog

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"Princess Tiana: Oh, very funny. So, what now? I reckon you want a kiss? Prince Naveen: Kissing would be nice, yes?" Kirsten's favourite movie right now is The Princess and the Frog. Cam even loves it, although his current faves are still Cars and Despicable Me. I must admit, I love the movie myself. The music is just awesome. When I got my new lunch punch set from All Things for Sale (link in sidebar), I knew exactly what I was going to do with the frog punch. The kiddos absolutely adored this lunch and they've asked for it many times since. It is pretty adorable! Here's how I made it:

Sandwich cut into frog prince using the sandwishes lunch punch set from All Things for Sale. I used the punch to cut his crown out of a piece of cheese. A fruit leather heart for his mouth. Icing eyes.

A stick of strawberry pocky with raspberry sprinkles for a royal wand. Silicone cups filled with yogurt and heart sprinkles and heart-shaped watermelon with a cute froggy pick. Fruit leather hearts around plate.

Have a great weekend everyone!



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