Smiling Candycanes

Let there be cries of joy and resounding rock music throughout the house for A-chan is at school today! Woohooo! It's amazing how quickly we've lost our morning routine. We were so very late today and getting her ready to go was nothing like the mornings from last week. I was really happy to get to make a bento today. It was a little surprising how much I missed it yesterday. Apparently one missed day is okay but two is stretching things, lol.

In the bento: A container of corn, some black olives, two tiny rice squares with carrot ribbons, a clump of grapes, a veggie hot dog, two baby tomatoes and a carrot star. The other tier has three cheese sandwiches with candycanes and provolone letters, separated by rolls of baby spinach. Looking at the picture now I wish that I had used more spinach leaves around the outside edges of the sandwiches too.

The candycanes were cut out of provolone cheese with a Wilton's holiday themed cutter. The red stripes are apple peel. They have black sesame seed eyes and nori mouths, and for the first time ever I'm using sriracha for the cheeks.

The middle sandwich was made from the heel in order to get the different color. Luckily A-chan doesn't mind eating heels and crusts of bread!

For the two rice square gifts, the only way that I could get the carrot ribbons to stay put was to skewer them with picks. It's not quite the way I wanted it but I still like how it looks :)

A-chan loves eating candycanes. Unfortunately she and I are both allergic to mint so we have to be very careful about finding candycanes that aren't flavored with real peppermint. When she accidentally ate a bit of mint last spring she had a pretty bad reaction and I'm kind of torn about letting her eat any candycanes at all this year.