Frolicking Fall Faces

I love Portland in the fall! I am use to cold, windy Septembers, bundling up our homes and preparing for a long winter. And here we are enjoying the beautiful warm sun! We have been riding bikes to school in this lovely weather! I feel so great and the kids love it.

Rice smiley faces made with rice molds, and nori with the nori face punches. Included in the lunch are peanuts in the shell, cashews, dried mango and cut apples. 

Rice and hot dog flowers

I love my little rice molds, as they are easy and fast to use on days I am not feeling terribly creative. I also have the Fagor 3 in 1 cooker, so I can cook rice pretty quickly!

I cooked up some rice, added coconut oil and garlic salt and pressed them into the flower molds; sliced up some leftover Applegate Farms turkey dogs, and, tada! Quick, cute flowers that my kids gobbled up. Included in the lunch were fresh peaches, apples, raisins and almonds.

My youngest is allergic to rice, peaches, and grapes, so this was her alternative lunch with turkey dogs octopuses, pistachios, cashews, and apples.  

Pirates

Aaarg! Me ship is sinking!

Apple boat with pirate sushi. My son then decided he wanted the pirates in their ship and added the end of the sushi roll as a shark!

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

I love Dr. Seuss, I love his rhythmic books and the oh so imaginative pictures and colors; I also love coming across his brilliant quotes and hearing about his story.

For this one, I once again, googled up some images and tried to figure out which would be easier to cut out! I believe the Lorax just came out so the image was everywhere, and it did seem fairly easy. I cut out the paper and used it as a pattern to cut out the cheeses, nori for hair, flax seed eyes.  The apple was more tricky than I anticipated with the stripes and trying to make it even but I think one can still tell it's a Cat in the Hat hat? Radish and asparagus trees!

A few months ago we were at a clothing swap and my oldest found these shoes in her size, a perfect day to wear these awesome Dr. Seuss shoes! 

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss! 

Valentine's Day Foods

I absolutely love celebrating Valentine's Day with the three little loves of my life, they bring me such joy and it's always fun to do something together to celebrate our little family.

My oldest decorated some hard boiled eggs with the rice cheese and the alphabet cookie cutters.

While I was in the shower, my kids cut out these letters out of apples and rice cheese for me, and put them by my coffee, so I would be sure to see it! 

My little one always needs a snack at Pre-K so I made her some heart shaped hearts and carrots, complete with valentine picks. 

The youngest is allergic to beef and there was some ground buffalo on sale and I thought we would try it. I made some small, heart shaped mini meatloaves for dinner. I made up the meatloaf, then used my rice mold to make the hearts and then cook them up! I also made more heart carrots and Roma tomatoes, cut on the diagonal and put together as hearts. My son is very into presentation and fancy drinks and desserts so he insisted we have our sparkling strawberry cider in our pretty glasses with blueberries, all on top of a white tablecloth. What a fun treat! 

Share the Love

I really do love my graduated Heart Cookie Cutter Set! We had some leftover gluten free penne pasta leftover from dinner, so for their lunches, I smothered them in honey cranberry chutney. I sliced the apples vertically and then cut them into heart shapes with my cookie cutters, which worked out really well, and the kids had the leftover pieces with their breakfast.

Lunch is completed with pecans, orange slices, carrots and raisins.

Sinterklaas

Sinterklaas.

Rice head, mung bean thread beard, apple for his hat with blended carrot for the cross (supposed to be gold).

Leaves and Berries

My mom was visiting before Thanksgiving preparing to take us on a trip for the holiday. I sat and visited with my mom and cut up these apples to be a leafy, autumn lunch. I also found cranberries on sale; I had never made cranberry sauce before, and it looked pretty easy, so I made that too. Not the best idea for a lunch though, as it was too juicy and made messes. Looks cool though, right?