So-so Snowman Bento

Lunch from 12/15/11 - Since I've been laying low and not doing anything in the mornings before school lately (due to excruciating pain in my rib area if I sit or stand for too long. Apparently I have an alien growing inside of me trying to ram her way out via my ribcage,) I haven't had the need to pack lunches. And I've been switching our Little Gym class from Thursdays before school to Fridays, with no school after. But since my amnio was scheduled for the Friday that week, we went to gym class at our regular time on Thursday. And since it would be probably the only holiday-themed bento she'd see this year her last day of school before the break, I wanted to make her lunch a little special.
The theme at school was still gingerbread men, but I was so over that, after doing class snack the week before. So I went with a snowman theme. Kind of.

So-so Snowman

Z's lunch: carrot candy, mandarin orange, PBHoney snowmen, Annie's Cheddar
Bunnies w/pistachios, CoJack w/mozzarella cheese bits, carrot w/snap peas

I made this as a combo breakfast/lunch, since I hadn't fed her yet. I used the EasyLunchBoxes. Because, you know. They're awesome.

The carrot thing is from a pack of 6 I got from the Dollar Tree at Easter. I got them to re-use as sprinkle containers, but so far she's managed to mangle all the ones I've let her eat so they are no longer usable. It's a little plastic carrot filled with flavored sugar powder stuff, kind of like a Pixy Stix. She had wanted to 'help' make the food, so she dragged out my Easter/Halloween/Random Holiday bin from my bento supply shelves. I was dreading the addition of a little candy bunny cupcake topper or something, but this at least I could pretend was a snowman nose, right? :)

I managed to squeeze out two snowmen from one whole peanut-butter-honey sandwich using some random plastic cutter that I either got at a thrift store or one of our childhood cutters I got from our mom. I had wanted to give the snowmen (or at least the one on top... since it's the one you guys can see!) some features. But as she was practically gnawing my leg off with hunger and impatience, I opted to leave them as-is.

She's been asking for oranges lately, so we got a bag of mandarins from Costco. I like them because they're easy to peel and small. I hate peeling, and I usually get stuck with the majority of a larger orange after she sucks out the juice and hands me her desiccated pulp. Yum. I used a snowman cupcake liner (turned inside out to show off the pattern) that I got from Target last year.

In the other liner, I made a 'snack mix' of Annie's Cheddar Bunnies (one of her current favorite snacks,) and pistachios (her other current favorite snack.) We got a big bag of pistachios at Costco, so I've been doling them out abundantly lately. I had been planning on just pistachios, but she requested the bunnies, and I like to accommodate her input when feasible. Even if it doesn't fit the theme...

The snowman pick came with the cupcake liners. I used my FunBites Cube It! to cut up the Colby Jack cheese (still have a few slices left after preschool snack the week before.) I also cut a stick of string cheese into nibblets, and arranged them in an alternating pattern on the pick, since she was studying AB patterns in preschool that week as well.

I had planned on cutting her carrot stub into sticks to go with the sugar snap peas, but she wanted it whole. O-o-okay. She said she didn't want the peas, but I told her she needed to eat more greens and she could choose either peas or broccoli. She chose peas. And mostly ate them.

My lunch: PBHoney, carrot sticks, apples

Between what she ate on the way to gym, on the way from gym to school, and after school, she ended up eating everything but one of the snowman sammies. She had mangled it beyond recognition giving it facial features by gouging... something... through it. I'm assuming it was the plastic carrot. The carrot frustrated her since the powder tends to clog up once it gets moist (ie: touches her face.) Once she discovered that she could loosen it by using her snowman pick, she was much appeased... until the toothpick part broke. Then I gave her a straw. I keep a stash of bendy straws in the car for use with the milk boxes I get at Costco (they come with a collapsing straw that tends to get lost inside the box!) and fast food drinks - the bendy parts makes them easier to use in the car without spilling. That worked until she dropped the straw. At that point I was fed up with the whole thing. But she had gotten most of the powder out, so we called it a wash.