May the Fourth Be With You - Vader and Son plus Death Star Star Wars Bento-ettes

To make this hop more manageable, it's been broken into two hops, so you can easily complete one, then check out the other when you have time! After checking out my lunches, click the button below to go into HyperDrive to see what Bento Days has created. The Force is strong with that one...

Once you've completed the hop...

Both girls have mostly the same assortment of foods, but I made them a little different, just for fun! Both of their lunches are packed in little Star Wars sandwich boxes found at Target's Dollar Spot. Z has a collapsible Star Wars water bottle from there also. The Mos Eisley "Canteen-a!" Hahaha! Cloth napkins from Red Poppy Crafts on etsy.

I didn't pack big lunches since these were for a Friday. Fridays are a little off, since neither of Z's preschools have class, and she has an occupational therapy appointment at noon, during what is normally our "lunch hour" the rest of the week. We usually end up eating breakfast a little later, since there's no need to wake anybody up, so eleven is too soon for lunch. Then we go out after 1pm  for lunch either at Naked Pizza (they have a gluten-free all-natural crust, and their soda fountain options are all-natural too!) or a local gluten-free bakery that also makes pizza (I don't like it, but Z does,) or a teriyaki place next door to the bakery that uses gluten-free teriyaki sauce. Then gluten-free cookies or muffin at the bakery, depending on what catches Z's eye that day, and whether it has artificial colors or flavors.

I'm usually fairly disorganized, so we're running out the door just as the kids start whining that they're hungry. Too late! So this time I planned ahead with small snacky lunches that can sit out for an hour during her appointment (and I get to use my ThriftTee Gear bag! Squeee!) to satisfy their hunger on the way there and to nibble on after. Then they'll still have room for whatever Mama wants! Yay!

I call these types of bentos "pick-ography" since it's mostly the accessories. But fast plus fun is still a win in my book!

Little Z's Force-full Lunch

For Little Z's lunch, I wanted to pay homage to the book "Darth Vader and Son" by Jeffrey Brown. It's a clever book of funnies depicting what life might have been like for the Dark Lord of the Sith if he had had to take care of his preschooler while trying to take over the galaxy. I got the book for myself, but Z saw it and went nuts for it. She has Hubby read it with her night after night at bedtime. What a hoot!
I can't wait for my copy of Vader's Little Princess to arrive; his follow-up book with Lord Vader raising Leia from a precocious toddler to a rebellious teenager!

Sith Lord and Son: I used just the top half of a Darth Vader Easter egg treat box to represent Vader and just pressed it in a little, like a cookie cutter, to get it to stay in place. (I got mine at Target before Easter.)

For little Luke, I used the head, bangs, and face cutter from the mini faces wheel from my favorite faces cutter set. The bangs were way too big, so I cut them again a little lower with the rounded part of the bangs cutter to make them shorter. And as always, cutting the facial features out from the cheese makes the cheese split. Since this was mozzarella, it was a little softer, so I almost got away scott-free. But I wasn't careful enough pulling the head off the cutter, and handled it too much trying to get peanut butter on the back. Oh well.

GF PPJ (organic raspberry jelly,) organic mozzarella and cheddar, organic peas, organic strawberries

Since they're walking along eating ice cream on the cover of the book, I had to include ice cream cones! So I stuck some ice cream cone cupcake picks into some small organic strawberries so they would appear at just the right level for the characters.

I had some lightsaber cupcake picks and reeeeally wanted to use them somehow, but couldn't trust Baby with them (she only gets ones I'm willing to let her lose somewhere in the car when she dumps her lunch, or ones I won't be upset about should they break.) So I managed to just squeeze them in on the side of Z's lunch, after sticking them willy-nilly through a poor little half-berry.

Baby, Destroyer of Planets...

Death Star: I chose the Death Star for Baby's sandwich both because it was easy (crazy easy!) but also because she's a destructive force too! I used large and small circle cutters on a heel and a regular slice of gluten-free bread (the heel was the last slice of the browner multi-grain, but the inside side had a nice shading to it, kind of like the Death Star itself. So I opted to use it instead of tossing it in my scraps bag to make into French Toast Casserole. The scraps from the circles and Z's crusts went in though!
I cut the mini circle from a scrap of the heel and did my best to slice off as much of the bread side as I could, so it wouldn't stick out so far. I glued it on with a bit of peanut butter, then drew the line around the middle of the Death Star with some organic chocolate syrup on the edge of a butter knife. I could have used my Justin's Chocolate Hazelnut Butter, but I figured this would be easier to work with!

GF PPJ (organic raspberry jelly,) organic peas, organic strawberries, The Good Bean salted roasted chickpeas

I added the Stormtrooper cupcake topper ring just because I could, and put some salted roasted chickpeas from one of my foodie subscription boxes into an R2-D2 Easter egg treat box (that also came from Target.) Yes, yes. They're a choking hazard. But she made me give her some the other day and did great with them, splitting them apart in her mouth, chewing them a little with her four little budding molars, and swallowing them down. (I had a migraine so bad I ended up vomiting. Before that, I had been lying on the floor in the hallway eating them because they were handy when I lurched into the kitchen to find something quick and easy to nom before my pain meds made me nauseous. So I was in no shape to be denying her anything. She overpowered me!)

And check out last year's post too! Clearly I looove that face cutter set!

Tools of the Trade