tiny princess headquarters… a look behind the scenes.

A little while ago I had some requests to do a blog post on “Where to begin, once you decide to start preparing lunches, Bento style!”  Now, I really have only been at this for about 6 months. There are sooooo many other ahhhhmazing bento bloggers out there that have been doing this much longer and have lots more experience than I do. Not that you really need to be skilled or anything, I’m just saying they may know the ropes more than I do. More experience with boxes, cutters, tools, ect. If you want to, take a look over on my left side bar. See where it says, “The best of the best”? I’m telling you, click on those buttons. You will find a wealth of valuable information. ♥

Of course everybody’s tastes are very different. What works for some, may not work for others. If you have clicked on some of the side bar links and are still itching for more (the tiny princess way) keep reading, cause I’m gonna give you a VIP backstage pass to a behind the scenes look of the tiny princess headquarters. (AKA my kitchen) :)

So, I know I could really get this all done in one post, BUT you know me, I like LOVE to talk, er, I mean, type. :) Since that’s the case I figured I would go ahead and make a whole blog series of “how I Bento”. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

I’m going to star off a little backwards. Yesterday, I took the opportunity with some free time I had to organize my bento gears. Since it will more than likely not look this neat directly following the first, post organizing lunch, I decided it would be a great time to snap some pictures to show you just exactly, what we have in our cupboards. ♥

I won’t go into much detail here, other than just the basics of what is in each storage spot. A little later, when I continue the series I will explain my likes and dislikes of each box, tool, cutter, ect. I will also let you know what *I think* are MUST haves if you want to start this awesome addictive journey of making healthy lunch fun for your tiny royalty! ♥♥

Okay, are you ready?…….. Here we go!!!

This is my “main box” cupboard. It is actually the ONLY kitchen cupboard I use for bento stuffs. The other items are kept in rubbermaid type storage/drawer units in our dining room.

 

The rest of the goods. The top two containers are holiday and special occasion cutters.

Top drawer of the left storage unit. This contains a few lidded inner containers that belong with various boxes that we own, food picks/skewers, LunchBox Love notes, and eating utensils.

Middle drawer left unit. This one has sauce/dip containers, silicone cups, and few random containers I picked up at Target in their Easter section. :)

Bottom drawer left unit. This contains any and all boxes that would not fit in my kitchen cupboard as well as my EasyLunchbox mini dippers an Laptop Lunches inner containers.

Top drawer right unit. This has basic shape cutters, some LunchPunch sandwich cutters, my Cute-Z-Cute cutter, and a couple of bread stamps.

Middle drawer right unit has alphabet and number cutters as well as some more LunchPunch cutters and some random sandwich cutters.

Bottom drawer right unit. This one holds my egg molds, some silicone ice cube trays, (I use them for freezing yogurt) lots of fun bread stamps, and both FunBites food cutters.

Whew! And that’s a wrap! I hope I didn’t scare you away with my little obsession. Be careful… it might suck you in! ♥♥♥

 

A lunch of EGG-cellent proportion!

 

Not too long ago one of my super sweet readers left me a link on my facebook page for this EGG-cellent idea!

How incredibly cute and clever!! When I saw it I knew I HAD to try it out for my girls! What a perfect fun lunch to enjoy on the last day of school before the spring break vacation!

I mean seriously…. does it really get much more festive then that?!?! Super adorable, right? ♥

Each tiny princess has the same items (except for the sandwich fillings) carefully arranged in their own (thoroughly) washed carton of (thoroughly) washed plastic Easter Eggs.

Each egg carton contains…. three eggs filled with bite sized sandwich pieces cut using our FunBites Cube It. Tiny princess A had Nutella filling and tiny princess K had PB&J. The other eggs contained a few carrots, a sauce cup with ranch dip, some clementine orange slices, oyster crackers, a couple of squares of grape fruit leather, Jelly Beans for good measure and some all natural trix yogurt. I made sure that I tested the yogurt in the egg first. I assure you that the plastic egg that contains the yogurt has no holes and seals well enough that no yogurt will escape. I also threw in a few fun bunny and carrot food picks for some cute Easter flair! ♥

I originally planned on making this an “at home” lunch, but when I realized how well the egg cartons fit in our PlanetBox lunch bags, I couldn’t resist sending them off to school! How fun!

I wish I could be at school today to see their sweet faces when they realize that these are in fact, NOT a PlanetBox lunch! ♥♥♥

Thanks so much to Ginger for leading me to this awesome idea! I always try to give credit where credit is do, so I decided to do a search to find a few of the different places you can find this idea. I’m unsure of where it originated, but below are some links I was able to find. If you too, have done this Egg-cellent lunch please feel free to let me know and I will include your link with this list. ♥

http://kailochic.blogspot.com/search?q=easter+egg+lunch

http://www.neat2eat.com.au/blog/2013/02/27/easter-egg-carton-lunch/

http://dixiedelights.blogspot.com/2012/03/egg-celent-lunch.html

http://www.gluesticksblog.com/2012/03/easter-egg-lunch-hunt.html

 

Some things I used to make these lunches…

Breakfast on a stick with EasyLunchboxes… and a shake test!

 

Wow! It sure feels good to blog again. I’m still on an internet hiatus, but tonight I was able to grab a few minutes at McDonalds to use their wifi!

Last night we had breakfast for dinner. My tiny princesses LOVE breakfast food.  Morning, noon, and night! Put it on a stick and it makes the PERFECT school lunch!

Since I had some extra time last night, I decided it would be the perfect opportunity to do an EasyLunchbox shake test! ♥

Here is tiny princess K’s lunch before our vigorous shake!

Both girls lunches included basically the same items. The large compartment of our EasyLunchbox contained…. Homemade mini pancakes and fruit skewered on a long butterfly pick. K had strawberries as her fruit with one lone blueberry, and A had all blueberries with no strawberries. The flower silicone cup holds a smaller round lidded container that came with our Sistema lunchboxes. K’s container has syrup and A’s has whipped cream, bot topped with flower blossom sprinkles. I picked up the cute little ladybug containers from Target in their Easter section. They came pre-filled with candy, but I emptied the candy out of these ones and added some yummy sunflower seeds. ♥

The upper right compartment has a small container of all natural Trix yogurt and 2 small graham crackers that the girls can use to crush up as a yogurt topping.

The bottom right compartment consists of scrambled eggs with a few sweet peppers mixed in. (both girls gobbled up their eggs at dinner and agreed that sneaking some peppers in their eggs was a great idea!) I added a few small pieces of bacon around the eggs and threw in a flower pick to sort of tie in the spring theme. ♥

Okay, now what you all have been waiting for…… how did this adorable lunch look after the tiny princess shake test? Keep reading to find out.

Here is A’s lunch pre-shake….

Just like in our previous shake tests we put our EasyLunchboxes through the ringer! We shook it left, we shook it right, we shook it up, we shook it down. We even played a fun game of catch with it! Surely all that shaking made this lunch look a mess, but I beg to differ this lunch stayed put! Hardly any shifting at all. Don’t believe me? Just look for yourself…..

See?!?! I told you so! Everything stayed nice and neat! I find that that placing food on skewers or picks whenever possible really helps things stay put. The little ladybug only moved around a bit and even the sprinkles in A’s whipped cream remained on the surface! Our eggs stayed nice and not one piece of bacon strayed out of it’s space. This was definitely our best shake test yet!!

Tiny princess K’s lunch still looked great too! ♥ Her sprinkles got a bit mixed in with the syrup, but we knew that would happen, so no worries! Her bacon also shifted a bit more than A’s, but we think it still looks cute!  One thing I should mention is that EasyLunchboxes are not leak proof, (on purpose so the lids can be removed by little hands) so  you plan to pack yogurt or something equally “leak-ish” make sure you add it to a leak proof container first. I usually use the EasyLunchbox mini dippers, but since I already used the bigger compartment for the eggs I had to go with a different container that would fit. ♥

So there you have it! Another tplb shake test success! And I have to say I think it’s our best one yet! ♥

 

Some things I used to make these lunches…

A whole days worth of meals and snacks in 15 minutes!

Whew! Having no internet is really starting to get under my skin! Who would have thought it would be this hard?!?!  I hope to be officially back online in a week or so. *fingers crossed*

So, I literally have 15 minutes of time (snuck away to use McDonald’s wifi while tiny princess K is in dance!) to write up this post. Why I chose to do these particular meals I don’t know. There is a lot to cover here, but I’m going to make it simple!

Last weekend my tiny princesses (turned tiny dancers) competed in their second dance competition of the season. We were gone from just after lunch time until waaaaay after dinner time, and this mama knew we had to eat!

Our main course for the day was build your own taco salad! YUMMY!

Here are tiny princess A and K’s meals packed in our Laptop lunch boxes! I may come back later to update this with details, but for now I’ll let the photos do the talking! ♥

 

The husband and I also had taco salad, but we decided to pack our in our FAVORITE EasyLunchboxes!! I love that I was able to color coordinate our lids for a “His and Hers” effect! ♥

 

I also put our new LunchBots to really awesome use!! Here is a photo of our Uno, Duo, and Trio packed to the gills with fruits, veggies, and savory snacks! Oh, and some Girl Scout cookies…. who can forget those? ♥

I’m happy to report that we came home with NO food left! The competition was fantastic and there wasn’t a hungry tummy in our bunch!

 

I promise to come back in a link you to all of these fabulous products soon! I just don’t have the time right now! Gotta go get my princess! If you have any questions about anything you see leave me a comment and I’ll answer the best that I can!