Bento: Zone

Our kid LOVES going to the "Zone" at our local Y. With school starting back up, his opportunities to go have decreased.  Today's lunch is zone-themed with the promise of taking him after school.
For the spiral sandwiches, flatten a slice of bread with a rolling pin, and spread the filling leaving 3/4" at the far end. Roll the slice away from you like a jellyroll. (The filling will "squish" into the end a bit.) Use a sharp knife to trim the edges and slice the log into spirals.
I carved the fruit leather with a small knife.
Garden tomatoes, dried blueberries, and a frozen Gogurt finish out today's lunch.

Bento: Star Student

As we start off the new school year, I wanted to encourage my 3rd grader AND to show you how easy a fun lunch can be.  Don't get me wrong, I love some of the elaborate lunches; but let's be honest, we don't all have time for that every morning.  My original plan didn't work out (when I realized that my loaf of bread was still in the freezer), so this a modified even EASIER version that was quick to throw together this morning.
This lunch is in a Laptop Lunch box (currently, there is a 72 hour sale for back-to-school - enter code BTS15 for 15% off.)  The sandwich has stars cut with a cookie cutter and a piece of fruit leather cut with the same cookie cutter.  The dried blueberries have some star sprinkles that I had left from cupcakes.  The egg was pressed in a star egg mold (and was a small egg!)  The egg took the longest, but I did it last night.

Last night, I boiled an egg (larger eggs are preferred) for 9 minutes, drained the water, rolled it around the pan gently cracking it open on all sides (to make it easier to peel), ran a quick rinse of water over the egg, peeled the shell, and placed it into the egg mold before putting it in the fridge overnight.  While the egg was boiling, I made the note with "Night Sky" font.  
This morning, it took less than 5 minutes to assemble the lunch. Happy Back To School!

Back to School!

 I downloaded the free printables from Yellow Bliss Road, and <3 them!  Chalkboard "1st Day of" signs for free!  For lunch, there's an A+ sandwich (Wilton Food Writers were used to make the "paper,") fresh blueberries, garden tomatoes, a pluot (who named that anyway?,) and a granola bar.  For a whirlwind first day of school with my husband out of town, a full day of meetings, getting all 3 kids ready and out of the door (not to mention feeding our four-legged family members), I thought this was rather successful even if it is super simple.  The kid - he absolutely loved it. 
(And yes, it was still dark outside when I took the picture, so it's not fabulous.  I should have used my *real* camera.)