I’m very excited about my new bento supplies. I’ve been surprised that it’s pretty difficult to find bento supplies, even in a multi-cultural city like Toronto. I have found some fun stuff on-line, but they don’t ship to Canada. Luckily I’ve got friends in high places… well at least in the US, who are willing to act as shipping and receiving for me. So here’s what I got:

My favourite is probably these toothpicks, that change food into umbrellas, balloons, rings, and flowers.

And here’s how I used some of the new loot today, in a flower themed Muffin Tin Meal.

We had flowers made of bananas, with the blueberry centre held in place with a little piece of spaghetti (great idea I learned from another blogger, it works just like a toothpick, but isn’t harmful if ingested). Don’t you just love the flower stem and leaves tooth pick?

I also made a few tiny carrot flowers. We also had some left-over mac and cheese. For dessert, a scoop of ice-cream with some sprinkles on the side in one of our new silicone flower cups.

It’s fun to sometimes make meal times a little more special, because life really is a party, if you make it one!

This post is linked up at Muffin Tin Mom, where you’ll be inspired by lots of other amazing Muffin Tin Meals.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! We’re celebrating around here with a Leprechaun Lunch, and everything green! Here’s some of the great stuff I used to make the all green Muffin Tin lunch. The cupcake wrappers are from President’s Choice. I was really excited to find green pear/apple sauce, perfect for our theme. I used some cute green pics I picked up a Party Packagers. I also grabbed a few cute St. Patrick’s Day items from the dollar store.

For the Leprehaun Lunch we had broccoli, snow peas, and green grapes. The applesauce is Mott’s pear flavour, and it’s really green. We also had some noodles with butter and cheese, a real favourite around here. I bought a bag of the tri-coloured noodles, and just used green and white today. For a treat I picked up a couple of cupcakes at the bakery, and added in a few pieces of Leprechaun gold chocolate coins. We also tried Lemon/Lime Koolaid for a green drink.

After lunch it was time to read “That’s What Leprechauns Do” by Eve Bunting. It’s a sweet story about the mischief that three Leprechauns get into on the way to dig up their gold and put it at the end of a rainbow.

Hope you and your little Leprechauns are having a happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Have a look at Muffin Tin Mom for more Muffin Tin inspiration.

This post is also linked up at Somewhat Simple, and seventhirtythree.

And…don’t forget to help us celebrate 100 000 Hits here!

It’s muffin tin Monday again, and today’s theme was -Valentine’s Day!

On the special menu today: some mozzarella (or pizza cheese as my kids call it) cut out as hearts. Next row, turkey pepperoni bites, and some crackes. In the heart container is a caramel square, one of Maddie’s all time favourite treats. Top row, blueberries on Valentine’s day tooth pics, and a Kinder egg, sent from Grandma as a Valentine day treat. All eagerly eaten!

I hope you had a nice Valentine’s day lunch too. Check out lots of other ideas at Muffin Tin Mom.

Today is muffin tin Monday again, and Maddie now looks forward to it, and loves it. The theme today at Muffin Tin Mom is Favourite Foods. We filled our tin with Maddie’s absolute favourites! They were: Bagel Bits mini pizza, broccoli, blue berries, and an ice-cream sundae of frozen yogurt (shhhh), chocolate sauce, Valentine sprinkles, and a cherry on top! We used some new Valentine cupcake liners and pics today too, and they were also a big hit.

We used a small plastic cup for the ice cream and stored it in the fridge so it wouldn’t melt while she ate everything else.

Good to the last drop! Check out other great ideas on today’s theme at Muffin Tin Mom. Happy Monday!

Today’s theme over at Muffin Tin Mom is “Big and Little”. I had a lot of fun brain storming with my girls about what our big and little foods should be. Here’s what we came up with:

Big and little chocolate chip cookies, big grapes, and little raisins, and big pasta shells and little pasta shells with butter and parmesan cheese. We used our snowman cupcake liners and pics since it’s another snowy day here.

Maddie loved her lunch, and even tried something new! She ate all her grapes, even though she told me she didn’t like them; she really wanted her cookies, and we have a “healthy things first” rule around here. Again the pics with snowman and snowflakes on them were a huge hit. Maddie was also quite excited about lining up all the big at the top and the little at the bottom. And, after explaining that raisins are dried up grapes, she even suggested we could turn our grapes into raisins, but that might have been just so she didn’t have to eat them

If you’d like to see what some other creative Moms and Dads came up with on the theme of “Big and Small” check out the other muffin tin Monday links here.

Happy Monday!