Whew we made it to our Christmas break ( wups "winter" break pardon my lack of PC-ness) the last party was today and now the monkey will run a muck for 2 weeks, oh I mean .... This week was a pretty light week as bentos go but heavy on the classroom crafty stuff so I thought I could thank the wonderful bloggers of Pinterest for our holiday foods.
Friday - Green monkey bought lunch as usual but since he got the uber cool
Hobbit Hop lunch I made Blue monkey a quickie LOTR lunch for our picnic at school. Here's the Eye of Sauron over Mordor PB&J, a ring of grapes, and our hobbit/golom snacks carrots and fish.
Sunday - Christmas party! We were delighted to be invited to our friend's party and as it was pot luck I hit up my idea engine, good old pinterest :)
Veggie tree - carrots, spinach, tomatoes, cucumbers, and broccoli
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| Sorry the picture won't rotate even though saved correctly on my system |
Wreaths - Cheddar cheese, Havarti cheese, summer sausage, and spinach and carrot for bows.
Santa Hat brownies - mini brownies, vanilla frosting, strawberries. Inspired by
Following in my shoes.
Monday - Green monkey got Jungle bell rock...stars turkey and cheese, a Santa hat brownie and salad with wreath garnish of cucumber carrot and spinach.
Blue monkey had his first class party at a free preschool he goes to once a week so we brought reindeer candy for the kids and a 3-2-1 Cake! Reindeer for his teacher. He also got a lunch because after that it was off to a bounce house with our moms group. So he got a candy cane and stocking PB&J with fruit leather and teddy grahams, a Santa hat brownie, carrots and strawberries.
Reindeer ornaments the monkeys made for their teachers and a magnet on the back to attach it to the jars. The 3-2-1 cake! recipe is incredibly easy and comes from
Duncan Hines. We used angel food cake and butter fudge cake mix then added mini marshmallows so they had toppings to enjoy at school. We loved this idea since they get a ton of mugs year after year this gives them something to put in those mugs, only requires water and a microwave, and will keep for a long time so they can save it for after the holiday sugar rush wears off. Plus the kids made the ornaments which is a fun reminder of their students.
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| Made a total of 25, 12 for the 1st class 13 for the other |
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| Made a total of 14 of these between all 3 schools |
M&M reindeer party favors for his classmates were super easy and there's a ton of pins on pinterest for them. This is round 1 I couldn't remember how I used to make them in grade school so I just used a folded pipe cleaner, a clothes pin, a red ball, googly eyes, and a marker. One example I saw was from
Kids Activities blog.
Tuesday - Little Big Planet Ham and cheese, spinach continents tossed on after he didn't like the ham continents I had on originally because they weren't green, smart kid, had to give him that one. Grape rocket again requested by the kid love his ideas. Santa hat brownie, and wintery ants on a log using yogurt covered raisins.
Blue monkey got R2-D2 on Tatooine ham and cheese with grape suns/planets, Santa hat brownie, and wintery ants on a log.
Wednesday -Spongebob Christmas Special - Ham and cheese spongebob with string cheese arms and babybel hat on top of holiday goldfish crackers, square cucumbers, and a peppermint peep and apple tree for our partridge in a a pear tree.
Thursday -Blue monkey had his 2nd Christmas party this week , this time at his Mother's day out school and our party item was grapes so I made red and green grape trees in cake pans. His 2 regular teachers, 2 special class teachers, and 2 directors all got reindeer 3-2-1 cakes, and his class got M&M reindeers. Bummed I forgot to take a picture of them because round 2 was much cuter I added little bells, hand written tags, and cut the pipe cleaners to make cuter antlers, but by now I'm going crazy making all these things, and shopping for class teacher gift baskets for both monkey's school.
Class treats M&M reindeer ornaments - this time I added bells and tags, and cut the pipe cleaners to make branched antlers.
Green monkey was still all about Spongebob's Christmas special so here's Patrick the red nosed reindeer ham and roast beef and cheese with sprinkles (babybel wax for the collar)and pretzel antlers, on top of holiday goldfish crackers, 2 babybel snail reindeer, star cucumbers on salad, and an orange octopus.
This was also the day the Bento Blogger's and friends launch week 3 of 3 of their Ho ho holiday hop series featuring fabulous lunches if you missed it you can start at my submission and hop through
here. Missed the other weeks? All 3 links are on
Bento Blogger's and Friends blog. I was so honored to be able to participate, they are a truly gifted group.
Friday - Last day! Party #3 as the room mom I got to come and run the activities in the classroom as 3 classes rotated through different themes, ours was voted the best hands down. We had a bean bag toss, a snow table using magic snow, made paper snowflakes, and snow cones! I got 2 moms to come help, and our teacher took our class on the party hop. Once again I organized the teacher gift, and this time put together all the food for the party.
Snowmen - Inspired by
Bent on Better Lunches I used powdered sugar donettes, mini chocolate chips eyes and mouth, M&Ms noses, hershey kisses hats, and candy rings for scarfs(apple and melon flavors).
More Santa hat brownies
Christmas frosted sugar cookies (not homemade but cute)
Fruit tray - watermelon, honeydew, and yogurt raisins
Snow cone syrup - Tropical punch and lemon lime made from a recipe I found at
Deep South Dish
More grape trees
I neglected to photograph the items unpacked at school like the mini cupcakes, yogurt covered snowflake pretzels, holiday goldfish, capri suns, and chex mix ( in the red cups). We made plates of everything for each so that they could just sit and eat after recess.
For his party favors we made reindeer noses and gave them a bag with a tattoo, a small notebook, and a holiday pencil. The printable for the reindeer noses came from
Kate Hadfield Designs
we used 8 whoppers and a cherry sour candy.
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| 20 party favors, 8 more reindeer jars, teachers, office, and bus, and teacher basket from the class. |
I hope you all had a wonderful week, albeit more than likely exhausting as ours was, but worth it :)
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