Sandwiches that make the cut!

Cookie cutters can cut sandwiches too! 

For B's 2nd birthday three years ago, I did a teddy bears picnic birthday party! I cut sandwiches with bear shaped cookie cutters. The kids loved them! I didn't take photos of the bear sandwiches at the time (I had no premonition of this blog), but I did take a photo of the food on the table and look how few sandwiches are left and how the other food is virtually untouched!

I just need to remember that it doesn't have to be a party for me to cut sandwiches into fun shapes. I'm going to keep my cookie cutters right near the bread from now on. In fact I could give the kids the task of cutting their own sandwiches (and hence avoid disappointment over shape selection). 

--A

Christmas Lunch Round Up

Both the girls got Santa bellies today, inspired by a beautiful bauble I picked up at the local Christmas Markets

Love heart Santa <3

Honey asked for a Santa Pirate. . . as you do!

Room on the Broom Christmas lunch.

The Grinch inspired simple lunch

And a pirate for Miss M's Pirate Day at school. There was also a large morning tea/picnic with families this day, hence the skimpy lunchbox.

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 my personal experience with the product. This post may contain affiliate links.

More Hearty Lunches

 More simple hearts for my loves <3

Miss M too yoghurt, strawberries, sandwich and cheerios with tomato sauce in the little container.

Honey took ham & cheese layered heart, sandwich, strawberries, yoghurt and cheerios which hadn't quite thawed out so didn't end up being cut. Oh well!


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 my personal experience with the product. This post may contain affiliate links.

Hearty Lunches for my Loves

We are all down with variations of the flu at the moment and I'm finding it rather difficult to get creative with the girls lunches. Good thing I have a backlog of lunches to share!

These were sent the last day of book week. Miss M has yoghurt, strawberry hearts, popcorn, juice, and sandwich with heart cut out and '<3 2 read' with picks.

Do you think I got away with using my 'S' backwards as the '2'?

 Honey & I usually have a 'Friday pie-day' so she had some party pies, heart sandwich, popcorn, strawberry hearts and yoghurt.

The heart sandwiches sucked up nicely in her Nude Food Movers.

To make the most out of the bread I made an extra heart out of the scraps, creating a 3-slice sandwich.

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 my personal experience with the product. This post may contain affiliate links.

Starry Lunch

 A starry lunch for Honey.

Yogurt pouch; chicken nuggets; mashed potato stars; cereal trail mix; sandwich squares; rockmelon stars.

I turned the cookie cutter I used on the rockmelon & potato over and added some FooDoodlers to add a little fun to her sandwich too.

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 my personal experience with the product. This post may contain affiliate links.

Lunch fit for a Queen

We celebrated the Queen's Birthday a few weeks ago and I though it the perfect opportunity for Miss M to try some iced tea. A very Queen-ly drink I thought. Turns out she doesn't like iced tea, but at least she tried it! I couldn't convince her to take cucumber sandwiches though, so I just added some cucumber slices to her lunch instead :-)

 Some jewels in the kiwi crowns :-)

And more in the crown sandwich.

And even more jewels in the crown treasury - grapes!

Would you like a right Royal prize? Check out our Juice in the Box GIVEAWAY in this previous post!  Do investigate in a timely manner, as time is running out!

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 my personal experience with the product. This post may contain affiliate links.

Cake Stall Bento

Our local Playgroup had a Barefoot in the Park celebration for Under 8s week recently and when they asked for donations to go towards the cake stall I knew I had to spread a little more Loving Lunches love around :-)

The afternoon before the big day I cut made some Vegemite dolphin and some Honey elephant sandwiches. I also assembled some mandarin/grape flowers and made some mini bread & butter puddings from some of the bread offcuts. The sandwiches stayed on the bench overnight while the fruit & pudding were tucked away in the fridge. In the morning it was a simple task of assembling in their disposable containers and popping them in cooler bags while I did the school run.

I had a stall at the Fun Day too and this is the Yumbox I packed for Honey to share with her friend while she had a playdate at the event.

Their favourite wafer biscuits, some muesli bites (recipe soon), cheese stick, bread & butter puddings and cucumber.

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 my personal experience with the product. This post may contain affiliate links.

Rock Star Lunch

 Last week I shared the lunch I made for Miss M's first Disco of the year, and before it gets away on me I'm going to share the one that represented the Term Two Disco. 'What You'd Like to be When You Grow Up'. Apparently Miss M no longer wishes to be an Astronaut, opting instead for the lures of Rock-Star-dom. I wonder what she will want to be next week :-)

 Every star needs their glasses and a little bling so a food pick and some writing icing were the perfect touches for this star Vegemite sandwich. If you squint you can see the Sinchies food pouch under the sandwich saver of our Nude Food Movers Rubbish Free Lunchbox. The stickers were part of a set I picked up at back to school time. I love the idea of them, but would prefer a card or something reusable. These are definitely a one-use item.

Her double snack pod holds some *rock*melon (did you see what I did there?) cut into star shapes with some more fun food picks. I also left the fork attached to the top of the pod in case she preferred that to the picks.

Her juice box had a few stars quickly drawn on as well.

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 my personal experience with the product. This post may contain affiliate links.

Tinkerbell Tea Party

Our local cinema is great with fundraising! The most popular movies are premiered at a party to raise funds for assorted local groups and schools. Our Gymnastics club scored a double premier of TinkerBell & the NeverBeast and Cinderella. At intermission there was a TInkerBell Tea Party. I thought that was the perfect excuse to do a spot of baking!

These cute little toadstool cakes were a cinch to make.

Basic vanilla sponge

Removed from silicon baking mould.

I used a mini cutter to give a straighter edge to the base

Like so

And trimmed with a knife.

Giving a more toadstool look. In the end I think I gave up as these were so small you couldn't really tell, but in a muffin size I would recommend trimming. Or you could fill your moulds a little more so the mixture naturally overflows in the cooking process.

Add some bright red buttercream icing and some mini marshmallows, et voila!

I also made some sushi bites with nori cuttings.

I was quite proud of my Tinkerbells, what do you think? I think the hardest part was searching for the perfect image to cut.

I think this was my favourite. Adapted from this gorgeous photo.

The rice bites were made using this set of rice moulds.

This was regular rice cooked so it was a little stickier than usual. Some of these bites were plain, others were filled with pre-marinated teriyaki chicken. I love having a skewer or two on hand, they are the perfect size for a few sushi rolls.

Some peas helped to complete Gruff.

Being that it was a double movie premier (and I've always wanted to try) I also made some high-heel cakes.

Mini patty cake/cup cakes with buttercream icing then decorated with a wafer biscuit and a Rondoletti stick held in place with a little more icing.

So simple!

For the Gruff inspired ones I used some black chocolate melts with chocolate icing and topped each with a green M&M. I also used two toned wafer fingers for the heel.

I think my melts were heat affected and they didn't really melt properly making piping them quite interesting. I still think they looked cute though!

I failed miserably at these sunflower balls but still love them. I used a cake pop mould for the yellow chocolate (again heat affected I think - the joys of living in central Queensland. Good thing I had some coconut oil on hand). The truffles are TimTam cheesecake balls rolled in chocolate sprinkles. You can see the Pinspiration for them here.

I was so happy with how my little TinkerBell slippers turned out! And just 3 ingredients! Well, I made the coconut balls with condensed milk & desiccated coconut, but you could quite easily use store bought. 

And Miss M had a great time helping colour the biscuits.

And using a little condensed milk to attach the coconut bites.

I can't remember now why we couldn't make it to the movies that day, but you can see some of the spread in this post from the Club.

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 my personal experience with the product. This post may contain affiliate links.