Lisa Storms

lunches with personality

This week's lunches were all about faces.  As creepy as one would think that would be, the kids loved them.  Even my 11-year old son, who I don't usually do cute lunches for, was asking for these.

I love this guy.  Mostly his hair.  I just cut off the crust from the sides and bottom beginning where the loaf dips in.  I wanted him to "talk" so I added a Cheerio for an open mouth.  The speech bubble is just punched cardstock.  The eyes are slices of marshmallow with edible marker.

This guy was cut with a circle with sliced carrot sticks sticking out for hair.  The eyes are slices of cheese stick with edible marker.  The nose is an almond, and the mouth a cut from pepperoni.

The kids were off from school for a couple days, but faces were still popping up.  With their bagel.

And in their salad.

Faces are an easy jumping-off point for inspiration and easy to pull together with items you already have at home.

valentine lunches

I've been a little obsessed with heart shaped food this past week.  I apparently have too many heart gadgets to use on one lunch alone, so it's kind of been Valentine week around the geeky Storms household.

First up is breakfast for lunch.  The kids always buy lunch at school whenever they have breakfast for lunch.  They are their mom's kids after all.  Breakfast is the best.  I found a heart pancake mold in my stash so figured that was the way to go.  The heart pick looks cute as a little arrow but is really just to eat their melons.  I didn't want to deal with sticky syrup, so we opted to include strawberry yogurt for dipping.  And sprinkles just make the world happy.

I called this one "bee mine" due to my half-hearted attempt at making bee fruit kabobs.  The heart picks I've been using are meant to be cupcake picks.  I like these for their lunches because the tips aren't sharp as opposed to skewers/toothpicks.  This was my second attempt using a "toast stamp".  The lunch before I didn't even bother photographing.  It was a detailed stamp that you couldn't really even tell what it was.  But my youngest was thrilled that it included a Mario mustache (which was actually a pair of love birds, but I'm glad he found happiness in it).  In hindsight I should have taken a pic lol.   But this simple heart is fine.  Just kind of not what I was going for.  I did figure out I like stamping the bread before toasting.

And of course I had to bust out the sandwich cutters.  I see this heart cutter hanging in grocery aisles all of the time.  Had to do the traditional Valentine strawberries by cutting in half and trimming out a more exaggerated "v" at the center with a knife.  I really like these silicone baking cups from Wilton.  This set of hearts comes with a mix of red and pink.  We got lots of use out of these this week, and they fit well in our lunchboxes.   Here the heart cup isn't necessary, just cute.  Which to me was necessary =) but another day I used three hearts in the large compartment to separate out meats, cheeses, and crackers for homemade lunchables.   Happy Valentine's Day to all!

View more of my Valentine ideas here: Valentine Posts

And view more of my lunches here: Lunch Posts

shape cutter sandwiches

While using up gift cards from my birthday and Christmas, I snuck (I'm ignoring that spell-check is telling me this isn't a word)  in a little more than a few new toys to make lunches.  Please know I do realize no normal person does this.  I've never claimed normalcy.

So with lots of new sandwich cutters comes new lunch ideas.  I just wish it wasn't dark in the morning so I could get better pics...

I'll start with an ocean themed lunch starring my new dolphin sandwich cutter.  It cuts out a heart in the middle, too, but I just saved those to add to their afternoon snack.  The dolphins are joined by some goldfish friends.  The cucumbers are "starfish" resting on carrots.  The thin layer of blue jello serves, obviously,  more for theme design than nourishment lol.  I just poured the jello straight into their lunchboxes the night before so it would set flat in the refrigerator.  The sailboat is an orange slice (from a cutie) with cheese sail speared on with a toothpick.  If I do the sailboat again, I'll skip the cheese and do something that compliments the jello better, like maybe fruit leather.  My daughter didn't like that the cheese ended up touching the jello in transit.

Next up is a dinosaur lunch.  I had better ideas for this but nothing in the house to make them come to life, so with what I had on-hand, here's what I came up with!  These dinosaur cutters were cute but were begging for some spikes.  I did my lazy mom grilled cheese (toasted bread with slice of cheese melted in between in microwave), cut them out, and then pushed in broken off tips of tortilla chips along the spine while the cheese was still soft.  Very simple thing that adds a lot I thought.  The grapes are dinosaur eggs ... play along with me here, people.  And the crushed up graham cracker "dirt" with pretzel "bones" sum up that we need to make a grocery trip around here.  But, it's still fun to play with your food. =)

(The dinosaur paper I just happened to receive recently as part of the CUTEST line from Imaginisce featuring the most adorable argyle dinosaur.)

holiday lunches

This is the last week of school for us before winter break, so I've now made my last school lunch of 2010.  Had to go out in holiday style of course.  I had grand plans of all kinds of creative things, but with the reality of time, I went super simple.  And I'm always happiest when I do.

First up is a snowman themed lunch.  I cut their sandwiches into sealed circles by accident.  I couldn't find a circle cutter the right size so I grabbed a mug with a lip that curves out.  So when I cut with it, it automatically sealed the two pieces of bread together.  Happy accident.  I gave him raisin features glued on with peanut butter, and of course a carrot nose.  Another compartment is full of  more "noses" on top of grapes, and the last is a marshmallow snowman on a bed of pistachios.  The pistachios have no significance here, other than my kids really like them =).  My kids are obsessed with making these snowmen, and I'm sure they are a classic but here's what we do ... spear three marshmallows with a pretzel stick, break another pretzel in half for the arms, and draw on features with food markers.

The gingerbread lunch is one the kids have been asking for for quite a while, ever since I bought the cutter.  He is made from what I call the Lazy Mom Grilled Cheese.  I toast two pieces of bread, put a slice of cheese in between and microwave for 10 seconds to melt.  I used a gingerbread man cutter and added a few raisins.  Then I have hollies and berries for the fruit and veggie.  Grapes for the berries and sliced cucumbers cut around the edges with a small circle for points. 

By the way, since I am always cutting things up for their lunches, I keep all of the "scraps" leftover and save them to add to their afternoon snack.  Nothing goes to waste.

I hope to find time to post a little more holiday inspiration soon...

halloween lunch

Yay!  Typepad helped me fix the things that were bugging me in my design.  Soon I will sit down and get the rest of it set up. 

But since Halloween is almost here and gone (blink), I wanted to share the kids' lunch from today.  Since my youngest is in kindergarten and only goes to school three days a week, I made their Halloween lunch a day early.  Does anyone else have fun with lunches??  I figure I am going to make them anyway, might as well enjoy it!

The coloring is kind of odd due to indoor lighting since the SUN wasn't up before they left this morning.  Who am I kidding ... I live in Oregon so the sun won't be up until May.

I made candy corn pizza, ghost yogurt, and a jack-o-lantern "cutie" orange.  For the pizza, I bought three different cheeses and placed them in circles before baking so when cut into wedges would form candy corn stripes!  Their yogurt simply has two raisins for eyes.  I like to keep things very simple.  And the pumpkin face is drawn on with my trusty Sharpie =).

I plan on sharing the kids' lunches from time-to-time in hopes that there are others out there who are on the lookout for inspiration like I am.  My goal is to share well-rounded crafty inspiration on this blog, from clothing to parties to lunches to scrapbooking to cards to home decor to anything-I-can-make-a-little-cuter-with-some-glue-or-scissors =).

While I'm at it I should share a couple more lunches I thought to actually photograph this year.  The first day of fall called for busting out the leaf cookie cutters and leaf sprinkles!

And to prove I don't alway do pizza (in fact it's pretty rare), here was their lunch on the first day of school, in star-theme.