motherhood | healthy snack boxes

Happy Valentine’s Day! It was only a matter of time before I fell down the Yumbox bento rabbit hole. The cuteness level of some of these bentos? Honestly, I’m surprised I didn’t get sucked in sooner (but obviously I have now). Most mums get bentos for their kids to encourage them to eat a wider variety of food. You can serve smaller portions in more interesting ways and we all know that interesting looking food tastes better right?

But my kids are good eaters (wonder where they get that from?) so I didn’t need a bento to encourage them to eat. For me, it was for a completely different reason: WORLD PEACE.

Anyone with multiple children know that siblings fight over everything. And they don’t even want the thing, they just want to have what the other has, and even if we have another of the exact same thing, it’s not the exact same thing, can’t you see, because I Want The One He’s Got!

I used to prepare their snacks in Sistema boxes. A couple of boxes for fruit, one for sandwiches, one for veg sticks, one for crackers and so forth. One of them would hold a box, and they’d share whatever was in the box. On a given day I used about six to eight boxes. And then one day, they started squabbling over who would hold the box. It was world war 3 every single time and so I started packing separate boxes for each of them. Suddenly I’m packing 12-16 boxes a day. And that means I’m washing 12-16 boxes a day.

Well f*** that.

So I started looking into individual bento box-style snack boxes. There are probably hundreds of brands out there but Yumbox jumped out at me because they’re leak proof, so you can pack thick liquids like dips and yoghurts. Personally, I haven’t packed yoghurts, but I’ve packed dips (success!) and also juicy fruits like melons, which sometimes would leak from Sistema boxes.

Although it wasn’t my motivation, using the Yumbox has actually encouraged me to pack a wider variety of snacks for the kids. I’m even pushing myself to make cuter bentos, and my first step was the cookie-cut sandwiches (I must say, the stars are particularly popular).

I upped the cuteness ante with my Valentine’s Day inspired bento (top) with help from adorably tiny animal forks from Daiso (the home of all things kawaii) but let’s be honest, my kids are not getting that level of effort every single day. Hah.

The kids have really enjoyed having these snack boxes too. Sam will ask me in the morning what’s in his snack box and looks forward to getting into it. And I think he likes to be able to choose what he has, instead of being given a whole box of just one thing. He has a bit of this and a bit of that and inevitably, it all disappears.

And now THIS —

Peace! Sitting next to each other just eating their snacks QUIETLY!

WORLD PEACE ACHIEVED.

Anyway speaking of Valentine’s Day, this is a special box I packed for the hubby today:

I couldn’t make it toooooo cute because heaven forbid I’d embarrass him. He usually has just BBQ chicken breast and salad for lunch (yawn) so I’ve added a couple of extra things to make it a little more interesting 🙂

ps. this isn’t a sponsored post at all, I genuinely love Yumbox and love preparing them!