Halloween Breakfast MTM

I am so sad that it's Halloween week!  I mean, I'm excited - Halloween is pretty much my favorite holiday - but I'm sad because I've got to cram in all of my last Halloween foods now or else hold on to them for a whole YEAR!  :(

On the bright side, though, we've been enjoying Halloween nom-noms.  Today's Muffin Tin Monday theme was Halloween.  I'm all over that!  This was kind of a last-minute thrown together hodge podge of foods since I had forgotten about MTM till last night and had little time to brainstorm, but I like how it turned out and the kids really seemed to enjoy it, too.

"Moldy" scrambled eggs, spider eggs (Kix), homemade pancake syrup (for dipping the pancake below)
Ham and cheese ghost, cob-webbed fruit salad (with coconut cobwebs), pumpkin shaped pumpkin pancake

Muffin Tin Lunch

I kept A home from school today.  She had a late night last night (we had friends over and she stayed up watching How to Train Your Dragon) so I let her sleep in this morning.  As she approaches Kindergarten age, she is quickly outgrowing the possibility of staying home simply for a lazy day so once in a while I do like to embrace it.  Plus, it gave me an extra day to wash and press her uniforms for the week.

Then she spent the whole day coughing and sniffling and I figure it's probably a good thing I kept her here.  Gross!

But she did enjoy painting butterflies for herself and for C's lunches.  (She covered her mouth when she coughed - I supervised!  ;)  We made 8 butterflies with half hot dogs and used the leftover two biscuits to make a couple of quickie donuts.

Babybel cheese, diced peaches, pears and pineapples, cinnamon/sugar donut
Painted butterfly, edamame, steamed carrot butterflies

Hopefully tomorrow she's past the coughing.  I think she's just responding to the change in the weather - it went from hot-hot-hot and sunshine to gloomy gray skies and rain literally overnight.  Today inside our house - even though it's 81º outside - it feels cold.  I'm not quite ready to turn the air conditioners down from their summertime norm of full-blast just yet.

Pumpkin MTM

Since A was home today for the holiday, I did a lunch tin this week.  The theme was pumpkins.  I absolutely love pumpkins and fall is my favorite time of year, so this was fun.

Yay for a monochromatic lunch!  Imagine this tin times two - A had already started eating hers by the time I got a photo.  I made some carrot onigiri (I got that idea from my friend Kristin) pumpkins with a little piece of sausage for the stem.  Then there's a peanut butter snowball and a couple of orange wedges.  In the lower three spaces, there's chicken nuggets, pumpkin shaped cheese cut outs, and a pumpkin chocolate chip cookie (we baked them this morning, they're our favorite!).

Circus Breakfast

I did my very first "Muffin Tin Monday"! I have been so excited to jump in on this blog-o-sphere trend but kept forgetting to pick up a couple of half-dozen muffin tins for my kids to eat out of.

I think I may be a little bit of a dunce - I couldn't figure out how everybody's Muffin Tin meals always appeared to be lunch - don't any of these kids go to school? So I decided to make my kids Muffin Tin meals breakfast.

Today, I realized most of these moms make their Muffin Tin Monday meal on Sunday afternoon (I think - difficult to say for sure with the time difference). Oh well. They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day and I've already committed to making my kids breakfast...  so I am just going to go with it. (Till I run out of clever breakfast ideas, that is!)  Plus, A was so excited about it that she was up early this morning to see what kind of fun I had planned.  All in all, I think it was a hit.

The theme this week was "circus".  It has been SO long since I went to a circus, and sadly my kids have never been to one.  The closest A knows to a circus is Jojo and Goliath!

Oh well, she's all about fun stuff, so it worked out.

A and C's Circus Muffin Tin breakfast

Top row: "Clown hair" scrambled eggs, circus animal crackers, mini "corn dog" (pancake dipped sausage)
Bottom row: Caramel apple bites, peanut butter fluff dip, and "cotton candy" yogurt.

Yum!