Creative lunchbox ideas

Creative lunchbox ideas...yeah that's what I said! Are your kids picky eaters? When you send a bag/box lunch to school with them is half of it uneaten? I might have the cure for you and your picky eater. My quest to get my kids to eat more all of their lunches started with the growing list of things I COULDN'T pack in their lunches. The school they go to has all these "rules" about things that you can and cannot pack in their lunches, yet they offer no school lunch program. (Nothing that needs to be heated up, no peanut butter (or any nuts for that matter), under the age of 4 no carrots or celery (choking hazard), blah blah blah). I found myself, and my kids, were getting bored with the same old standby of a meat and cheese sandwich. So......I thought to myself "hmmm, what can I do to livin' up the lunches?" I did a little searching on the internet and found some great blogs and ideas of things to do to jazz up their lunches. I can say, it takes a bit more time (a few minutes) but it is well worth it! My kids rarely come home with any leftovers and their cubby note says "ate all of my lunch" nearly everyday! All it takes is a few cookie cutters and some creativity.
Here are a few of my their favorite lunches.

Princess Power!

Crown sandwiches with stars (homemade fruit roll up) for jewels
Princess wand (homemade fruit roll up)
Magic carrot sticks with pixy dip (dill dip)
Yummy Yogurt
Belle of the Ball Banana
Cottage cheese (I never really had a cute name for it)
Princess fruit snacks

Beep Beep Goes the Car!

Car sandwiches with cookies for wheels

Yummy Yogurt

Dip sticks and dip (carrots and dip)

Cottage cheese (again, no cutesy name)

Beep! Beep! (homemade fruit roll up)

Cars fruit snacks

Beep beep banana

Under the Sea!

Fishy sandwich (Goldfish bread and turkey)

Shark and fish fruit snacks

Starfish, goldfish and sea turtle cheese crackers

Octopus cheese

Seahorse (homemade fruit roll up)

Dirt and bait (chocolate pudding and a worm for fishing)

Ahoy there matey!

Pirate sandwich

Cheese map (using wilton's food markers)

Babybel cheese with X marks the spot

Veggie dip with orange octopus

Black olives with swords

Pirates treasure (sun chips and carrots)

I'm Squirrel-y for you

Crunchy Carrots

Rockin' Raisins

"M" initial cheese

Sticks and Rocks (pretzels and M and M's)

Leafy fruit (home made fruit roll up cut into leaf shape)

Squirrel Sandwich (I used a candy for the eye)

Bootastic!

Dried Dragon Wings (Cheese Sun Chips)

Kiwi

Cucumber Stars

Witches fingers (Dried Apricots)

Jac-o-lantern cheese

Ghostly marshmallow and pumpkin marshmallow  

Pumpkin Sandwich

Pumpkin ring for fun!

Happy 5th Birthday

5- five shaped sandwiches

five shaped tortilla chips

5 melon balls

five cheese

favorite cookies

Some great links for more ideas:

This Lunch Rox

Cookie Cutter Lunch

Wendolonia

BentoLunch

BentOnBetterLunches