The Best of Loving Lunches 2013

What a busy year 2013 turned out to be! We moved town, we changed jobs, we welcomed Honey to the family. . . but the constant that I found comforting, was Bento. At the end of the day we have to eat, so why not have fun with it?!?

These are some of my favourites from this year. Did your favourite make the cut?

Doctor Who muffin tin

Sandwich Ball Easter Eggs

Count Duckula

Octonauts lunch

Barbie cheese art

Water bottle sandwich

Cheshire Cat lunch (well, I loved my whole Alice in Wonderland Series, but this was my favourite)

Bananas in Pyjamas

Gingerbread Man Bunny (this guy made a few appearances, this version from Alice in Wonderland series)

Tractor Cupcakes

Yours & Mine Puppy Park Lunches

Turbo lunch

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

To help ring in the New Year I'll be linking this collection up with some of the wonderful Bento Bloggers & Friends. Do be sure to check out some of the other fabulous round ups, and Happy New Year!

This lunch is linked. . .

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.
~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on personal experience with the product.

Fishy Friends

I'm taking a little mini-blogging-break while we prepare for Kindergarten. What a perfect opportunity to share some of my 'early works' :-) This would have to be one of my favourite lunches, I can't believe I haven't gotten around to posting it yet! Fish bites, cheerios, boiled egg with cheese circles, black sesame seeds and FooDoodler details. I'm afraid I seem to have misplaced my Pinspiration for the fish tails. . .if you find it, please let me know :-)

This was my first attempt at 'octo-dogs'. I used tweezers to pierce all the black sesame sees in place. I think that's the last time I ever spent so much time on them - hee hee hee :-)

A very fluffy fish. . .Before I'd bought proper cutters and was still using my large egg rings to cut sandwiches. Sultana eye and Pepperoni from Walkerston Country Meats for the scales.

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.
~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on personal experience with the product.

FooDoodlers

I'm taking a little mini-blogging-break while we prepare for Kindergarten. What a perfect opportunity to share some of my 'early works' :-) I was so excited when I got my first pack of food pens. I'd purchased FooDoodlers because they were all I could find at the time. now I see all sort everywhere!

I drew on every single grape in Miss M's lunch box that night :-)

And then I attacked her sandwich too :-)

Which inspired her snack for the day. Mini Teddy cheese :-)

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.
~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on personal experience with the product.

3D Christmas Tree

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.

~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on personal experience with the product.

Vixen Sandwich

I'm so proud of my little Vixen sandwich. I asked Miss M what she'd like for lunch on her last daycare day and after some careful consideration she replied 'A Vixen sandwich'. Not entirely sure how I was going to accomplish that I sought guidance from Google. Let's just say I don't think anyone has made a children's reindeer Vixen sandwich before. . .

I used my pocket sandwich cutter as a decruster on a slice each of white & multigrain. Cut out the reindeer and flipped them before filling with ham & cheese. Some of the off cut crusts were used to fill the bottom of the box and to highlight Vixen's name which was cut from cheese. I uses some nori with a punch for the eye and some ham with a mini flower cutter for the bow.

I'm kind of chuffed with how the skirt worked out! I drew inspiration from My Little Pony for that one.

Tonight the ham just fell into place beautifully! I secured it with some raw spaghetti. Two pieces to hold it together and one piece to stick it to the sandwich.

To those who are celebrating Christmas may it be as Merry as you desire. To those who aren't, may you find some joy in the holiday season.

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.
~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on personal experience with the product.

FunBites Christmas Fun

Not many words from me this week as I set up scheduled posts and take a mini blogging break. I hope this festive season finds you and yours happy and healthy. Recharge, relax, revive and prepare for the year to come. Thank you for your support this year, I look forward to your company again next year, when we graduate to Kindergarten!

These fun shapes were all made using the FunBites cutters. The coloured ones above are capsicum, each colour cut with a different cutter - can you guess which one goes with which? A few sultanas and some raspberry jam thrown in for good measure :-)

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.

~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on personal experience with the product.

Santa Claus is Hopping to Lunch

Santa Clause is coming to lunch with the Bento Bloggers & Friends with our last Christmas hop for the year. I wanted to show you that you don't need a specific Santa cutter to create some cute Santas. Most of these ideas have come from Pinterest crafters, rather than foodies. (Although I must admit the crown beard was my desperate attempt at not having to dig through my cutters to find the hand `-^)

I'm sure you've seen Santa made from a hand print before.

I used my pocket sandwich cutter as a quickie de-cruster and a hand cookie cutter. Using a slice of white and a  slice of multigrain bread meant I could get some definition between the background and my feature :-)

Santa's hat and mouth are made from fruit leather (Roll-Ups) while his eyes and hat trim are made from cheese stick. Pupils are black sesame seeds. The rest of the chess stick got added to the lunch with this cute little food ring (Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page)

Again there's a hundred versions of Santa made from a heart.

After a quick de-crust I cut out a heart with my cookie cutter, flipped over the pieces  and pressed with the up-turned pocket piece (the pink part of the pocket sandwich cutter) This left a misaligned 'beard' for Santa. Details added with ham and cheese cut with my create-a-shape.

I'd promised Miss M a Santa sandwich and couldn't find my heart cutter one night but I did find my crown cutter.

So some ham & cheese, a large circle cutter and my create-a-shape came to the rescue.

Again, using a star to create a Santa figure isn't anything new.

This little guy was made on toast after Miss M decided she wasn't as hungry as she originally thought. So I cut up her jammed toast, added some peanut butter & Nutella and ate that little baby myself!

I must admit he was quite tasty.

I did make her a star Santa too. This one has jam, butter, vegemite and coloured sugar balls/cachous seeing as daycare is nut free. One great thing about this one is it can easily be thrown together in the morning rush, which I found out having realised I didn't make her lunch the night before. If I had made this the night before I would have found a way to use more of the bread, probably with lots of little star cut outs :-)

Now 'hop' on Santa's Sleigh (by clicking the button below) to see what Keitha's Chaos has cooked up.

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.
~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on personal experience with the product.

I Want A. . .

Hippopotamus for Christmas!

Pinspiration for this submerged hippo from here. Made with 2 minute noodles, some meatballs, cheese and black sesame seeds.

Here's the Pinspiration for this one. Using a CuteZCute upturned for the head and a circle cutter for the nose. Ham, cheese, sultanas and crust offcuts complete the look ;-)

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.

~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on personal experience with the product.

Reindeer Round Up

So close to Christmas now, I thought I'd better catch up on sharing some the little cuties that have been going to daycare. This little heart sandwich has sultana eyes and an M&M nose. Antlers made with crust offcuts.

I've started using my pocket sandwich cutter as a quick way to de-crust bread. It makes the sandwich fit perfectly into my Tupperware container :-) I used one slice of white, one slice of multigrain bread for this sandwich. Cookie cutter a reindeer & swap the bread pieces over. This only works for filling sandwiches like this ham & cheese. If you want to apply the idea to spread sandwiches  (like jam or vegemite), do your cutting first, then the spreading. Of course I had to add an M&M for Rudolf's nose.

Here I packed some 'Reindeer Poo' (recipe in this previous post) with some leftover chicken drumsticks. The legs are cooked in a paprika/sour cream mix similar to stroganoff and went down a real treat with Miss M. I snavelled these for my lunch. I knew I had a busy day ahead and having a lunch packed in the fridge seemed a logical way to make sure I would eat. Are you counting the sleeps yet?

This little guy is made from capsicum and sultanas, cut with FunBites Luv It and Triangles

Same but different. This one is a peanut butter sandwich (for Mummy) with some sultanas and raspberry jam. Cut with FunBites Cube-it and Luv-it.

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.

~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on personal experience with the product.