Lunch Lady Friday #2

    Here we are Friday already.  Where did the week go?  Oh wait I know the answer to that... Strep throat hit my house, and I have been wiping tears, emptying vomit buckets, and checking frighteningly high temperatures and then giving doses of Tylenol and Advil, that is where my week went.  I say good riddance to this week!  Now that that little whine and cheese party is over......

    I have to tell you that when I started posting the pictures of the kid's lunches I expected eye rolls and the under the breath mutterings of either "She has finally lost it!", or "Man she has wayyyyyyy too much time on her hands!"  Instead I have been met with approval and encouragement.  This week a few friends (you know who you are, you nice ladies) have sent me pictures of fun lunches for inspiration.  That is a nice pat on the back, so I say thank you.  To those of you who are muttering, that's o.k. too, you may be right, I may very well have lost my mind, but I assure you, I do not have wayyyyyyyy too much time on my hands.  I was inspired by the amazing Bento blogs out there.  It honestly only takes a fraction longer to make a fun lunch, and I find it as much fun to make as the kids do to eat.  The other up side is that the other kids in their class crowd around their desk at lunch time to see what they have today.  It gives the kids mini-celebrity status.  More than anything else, it's kind of like a little love note to my babies.  You know that someone loves you a whole lot if they go to that much trouble for your lunch!  No one is asking you to be a food artist, just give it your best, and fill it with love.

    For today's lunches I decided to swap out the sandwiches for hot dog rolls.  Pilsbury Crescent Rolls were on sale for $.99 this week, and so were chicken hot dogs.  It works out to be cheaper than sandwiches, which in this penny pinching Mom's opinion, is a good thing.

    I know that everyone knows how to make these bad boys, but humour me will you?  I discovered after a few failed attempts with whole hot dogs, cutting them in half gave the best results.  I also cut a little bit of cheese and placed it on the top of the hot dog.

    Then I rolled.  In my head it was a thing of beauty, in reality, not so much.  I discovered that I had too much left at the ends, and so I was struck with genius, or so my poor sleep deprived mind thought.

    To make those little bundles look adorable, I would pull the loose ends into the middle and make it look like a tiny little bow.  In my head it was darling.  In reality I believe that Grace would call it "An Epic Fail".

    They looked pretty good when they came out of the oven, the cheese had melted and rolled out of  the wraps.  It took most of my strength to fight those kids off (especially the big kid that I am married to).

    I have this huge basket full of cookie cutters of all shapes and sizes.  I was looking for my snowflake cookie cutters, but they seem to have vanished.  I did find a few different sizes of snowman cutters.  I have tiny little ones that were perfect for using to cut the cheese.  I then used my tiny tree cookie cutters for cutting the apple slices.

    Elly got the wrap that I demonstrated for you.  I added a cup cake pick that I got from my girls at Sweet Temptations (o.k. it came in the peanut butter ball that I have become addicted to.  Ummmmmm peanut butterballs).  I added tiny carrot sticks for arms.   You cannot tell this, but that weird looking thing in the right hand corner is a Rice Krispie Square I cut using the snowman cookie cutter.  I then added sprinkles to make the sad looking face.  Elly loves yogurt, so I added yogurt.  To make it a little more fun I added a few snowflake sprinkles.

    For Grace and Riley (notice I did not say for Rowan.  He's home sick).   I went with more hot dog wraps and added a fun gingerbread man cupcake pick.  I also added some larger squares of cheese to go with the cute, but very tiny snowman cheese.  The above picture is Grace's lunch.  Riley hates ketchup.  Grace on the other hand would slather everything with ketchup if I let her.  I'm thinking that I should be buying shares in Heinz.  The big girls also got yogurt topped with snowflakes, and they got a Rice Krispie Square , just bigger.

    To those of you who have sent me pictures for inspiration, I say thank you.  I hope that my insanity will encourage you to make a fun lunch too.  If you do, I'd love to see them, or drop me a line and let me know how they turn out, and what kind of a reaction you get.  Happy Friday!