Mothering Corner

Did I mention that we have been pretty busy lately? It’s not only about preparation for Chinese New Year, but also 2 short trips away to Koh Chang island and Hua Hin beach. We had a company trip to Koh Chang last weekend, and it’s a nice 3 days 2 nights stay with friends and colleagues. The kids had a great time on the island, as well as snorkeling in the sea. Nonetheless, I felt that the sea is not as nice as Phuket and Similan Islands, but to some of the company workers, it’s their first snorkeling trip.

None of us brought along our laptops, and I didn’t even switch on my phone for 3 days. As expected, my mailbox was full this morning, and I had tonnes of unread messages by some cell phone repeater, reminding me that the sales are available as most department stores. I’ve almost done with my CNY shopping, but if I have time, I will go for another round with my expat friend this week.

So, how’s your preparation for Chinese New Year? I hope that it’s going to be a prosperous year for all of us.

I have this idea of fixing a Chinese New Year bento for some time, and at first, I thought of fixing it some time next week. But then, considering that I might be quite busy next week, with spring cleaning, finalizing on where to have our reunion dinner, packing for our beach trip (again!), preparing the guest room and move the refurbished fitness equipment away, I better share my idea now before it’s sank to the bottom of my to-do list.

For this bento, I prepared:

Some blueberries, quail eggs and mini wieners.

Then, I joined the “parts” together with tiny spaghetti strips.

Then, I placed the pieces in silicon cups and packed everything in the bentos. I cut some kamaboko (fish cake) and red artificial crab meat with an oval cutter, and added them as arms. I cut the red artificial crab meat into halves and stacked them on kamaboko as red sleeves. These tiny pieces are arranged as “gong xi gong xi” hand gesture, which is a common greeting on Chinese New Year.

Next, punch the nori and add it as “hair” on the eggs.

Add the eyes and lips.

And that’s about it! So here are my Gong Xi Fa Cai bentos:

My boy’s bento. I gently lay the characters before closing the bento.

This is my gal’s bento.

BTW, since this year Chinese New Year falls on Valentine’s Day, I think the cute couples can be used as valentines too.

I was very busy last week, thus I didn’t have time to fix anything nice for the kids. With Chinese New Year around the corner, I think I will be pretty occupied with some preparation, mainly because we are expecting hubby’s family members, who are flying here for the celebration. It’s our second Chinese New Year in Thailand, and I’m very grateful that they are willing to fly over here to join us. Chinese New Year is not a major celebration in Thailand, so my kids can’t skip school for many days, if we want to fly back.

Anyway, today’s bento is tiger again, and I hope that you are not getting bored with this theme.

I cut the smoked cheese with this teddy cutter.

Cut 4 small ovals as the noses and tummies.

Then, add some nori on the tigers and that’s it! It’s very simple and fast.

This preparation was done last night, and the cheese tigers were refrigerated in air-tight container. So this morning, I took them out and topped them on the sandwiches.

Both bentos have the same decoration to speed things up.

I “created” the word “hu” by joining bits of nori together. It will look nicer if you trace the character and cut it out as one.

Here’s a close up of the tiger year bento:

I promised my boy that I will fix him a ranger bento on his birthday last month, but I couldn’t make it due to a few unforeseen circumstances. So, I wanted to make him something special for his field trip to the butterfly farm today, and I asked him earlier if he still wanted that ranger bento.

He told me that he wanted Gaoranger, but not Power Ranger this time. I am totally clueless about all these rangers, and I can’t differentiate them at all. When he passed me the CD, I could not get a good look at it, so I suggested that he change to Ben 10 instead. He was so thrilled when he heard Ben 10, and he immediately brought out his Ben 10 cards and showed me Humungousaur. The moment I saw the “alien creature”, I regretted that I mention Ben 10…

Humungousaur: Ben’s most physically powerful form. Humungousaur is a dinosaur-man who can, in Ben’s words, “bench press a pickup truck”. He’s also a size changer, who can grow to nearly 60 feet tall, taking unsuspecting adversaries by surprise.

But a promise is a promise and I don’t want to disappoint him again. So, I fixed the egg sheets last Sunday (with the blue egg sheet) and froze them all. The egg sheets will still be fresh for a week, and I took them out yesterday to defroze them. I boiled a piece of ham, which was used as base, and prepared the drawings on a piece of baking paper.

The tracings. Please ignore that Ben 10 Alien Force logo, I gave it up.

Next, I placed the drawing on the ham (and then egg sheets) and started cutting the outline.

Try not to cut directly into the pencil lines so that you won’t stain the food. I’d normally cut along the pencil lines, without touching it. *I hope you’d know what I mean!*

Using a piece of ham as the base will make the “work” more solid and easy to handle. It’s just an option, you may skip this step.

Work in progress…

Frankly, I had almost given up! Cutting nori is sooooo hard!

I wrapped the “work” in saran wrap and refrigerated it in air tight container. So this morning, I just had to top it on the sandwich.

Dang dang dang! Here’s the end product:

My boy’s Humungousaur Bento

He was so over the moon with the bento! He loves it, but he said, why didn’t I fix that Ben 10 logo on Humungousaur? O.o

Boy, it’s too small, let’s forget it ok?

Just in case you are wondering….I took a day off to fix this bento!!!

I don’t know much about Pokemon, and the only character I know is Pikachu. My boy requested a Pikachu bento out of the blue yesterday, so I Google and found other Pokemon characters and decided to fix them for today’s bento. I used this bread cutter for the sandwiches:

But I cut off the “ears” for the penguin.

The blue egg sheet was my first attempt with the food colors, but I didn’t stir it well. You can still see the blue spots. LOL! I shall try this again, when time permits.

My gal’s bento

I don’t know about the names of these characters, please let me know if you can recognize them! Thanks!

Here’s my boy’s bento, with Pikachu and dunno-what’s-the-name squirrel.

Ah…I don’t know how kids remember all these characters. LOL!

Ok, before my old blog buddies started “scolding” me for being bias in “accepting” awards and doing tags, let me just say… I’m sorry that I didn’t pick up some of the old old tags and awards being passed to me. It’s nothing personal, those that who know me for years would know that I don’t really “do these passing awards and tags around” thingy. I’m just too lazy la…

But for gamene and Lia Chen, I’ll do for both of you this time ok?

To Lia Chen, thanks for the “I Love Your Blog’ award.

I love your blog too, and I read it from my feed.

Gamene passed this to me:

The rules for this award are as follows:  copy the award image into a post; list 10 things that make you happy; tag 10 bloggers who brighten your day; link to their blogs; and notify the award recipients (who should link back to the sender’s blog).

Since I’m a naughty blogger, I will BREAK the rule and I won’t pass it around. Again, too lazy la…

But if you are interested to know what makes me happy, here they are:

1. SHOPPING! Yeap, I’m a vivid shopaholic. I shop when I’m happy, down, angry, or just for the thrill of it. But this year, I’ve made up my mind of not spending much. SERIOUS!
2. A nice cup of coffee, preferably latte. I can’t live without my daily cuppa. I only quit my daily caffeine when I was pregnant and breastfeeding, but once a while, I would take a sip of hubby’s coffee and it felt SOOOOO GOOD!
3. A nice spa and massage. I used to go for spa every month before I moved to Bangkok. I would steal some time when my kids were taking their afternoon nap, and pamper myself at the spa center. My ex-maid is very reliable, and she’s a great helper. But now, I hardly have time for spa even if Bangkok has a lot to offer.
4. Manicure and pedicure. I like pretty nail colors, but I’m not good at doing it on my own. Speaking of which, I should get my hand and foot spa done soon. LOL!
5. Vacations! It doesn’t have to be an oversea trip, even a short trip to the beach will make me very happy. I just need to break my daily routine and recharge myself once in a while
6. Getting enough sleep! When I was single, I needed 8 hours of beauty sleep, and I put on eye mask IMMEDIATELY when I saw any eye bag or dark circle. LOL! But after being a mom, getting enough sleep sounds like a luxury. I used to sleep only 4 hours a day, with lots of interruptions when my kids were babies, but I survived. Forget about the weekly eye masks, I don’t have time for that now.
7. A nice facial. I’m vain, I know. I’m tempted to try laser treatment for my spots, it’s something most Thai women will do here, and I haven’t even tried once! It’s’ going to cost some $$$ so I’m still waiting for the green light from my finance minister aka hubby. A whitening facial will come after the laser treatment.
8. My hubby. He might not be the most romantic guy on earth, but he’s a good father and he can tolerate me, for BEING ME.
9. My kids! Hubby and I always think that we have great kids. Of course, I don’t mean that they are brilliant, smart and outstanding, but it’s just that we feel lucky to be their parents. They are such a joy to us, even if they might draw us up the wall sometimes. If it’s not because of my kids, I won’t be doing any bento. I’ve never known I have such patience anyway.
10. My friends. Funnily, I don’t meet up with most of my close friends. We chat online mostly, maybe it’s due to the distance. But you know whoever you are gals!

Ok, I’m done with my list. If you would like to do this tag, please pick it up. Thanks.

I packed something simple for the kids today. It’s just sandwiches cut and decorated as sugarbunnies. The bread was cut with sugarbunny rice mold and sugarbunny veggie cutter respectively to avoid food wastage (tools are shown here and here). For a piece of white bread, I can cut out a big sugarbunny, and 2 smaller ones. The tiny flowers were cut from striped cheese and artificial crab meat with these plungers, and my boy helped me with it. He enjoys playing with these new tools. LOL!

So, here are the bentos:

My boy’s sugarbunny bento

My gal will have the tiny bunnies instead.

I topped some jam with a toothpick for their ears. They are tiny and cute huh?

Have a nice weekend everyone!

My kids are picky with veggies, especially my gal. She only likes broccoli, carrot, and spinach, so if I cook other veggies, she will give me tonnes of excuses not to take them. I’ve tried these tips suggested, but they don’t always work. LOL!

So, these days, I will just tell her that, if you want to have pretty skin as nice as Snow White, you better take your veggies. If not, you might have to figure out how to treat acne if you have an outbreak next time because your daddy has problematic skin and you might inherit that from him.

I’ve been going through a blog diarrhea posting as many assignments as possible as for the past 2 days, and it’s quite fun. I missed the days when most of us could make money from blogging, even if you are a stay-at-home mother. The job is easy, and all you need to do is just complete the assignment. But that was more than 2 years ago!

I was rather surprised to see the assignment pouring out again, just like most bloggers. Maybe it’s just once and for all.

I hardly make much from blogging, and frankly, I’ve almost given up. LOL! My other friend is still making well, with more blogs and seo optimization software. She’s putting a lot of effort it in, so it’s not surprising that she’s doing so well.

I found this website about exzema, check it out if you are interested but I found that it’s not as informative as others.

My gal used to have it when she was a baby. Her skin is very sensitive, so we were very careful in introducing food to her when she was younger. There was once when she had a bad skin condition, sort of like eczema, but it’s different. Even her skin doctor couldn’t tell for sure what caused it, despite carrying out some tests. So, he took a photo of my gal’s butt*ck and thighs, and used it as a case study with her pediatrician. *slap head* Luckily, she recovered well after a series of creams and medication.

I hate the mozzie seasons in Malaysia. We stayed in a house with a big compound and there are always a lot of mosquitoes. Check out this post to take a look at the old photo taken at my house. And how my gal looked like when she’s attacked by mosquitoes.

I’m so glad that she’s grown out of eczema and sensitive skin. *I’m crossing my fingers!*