Mothering Corner

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!*

My SIL got a Hello Kitty pan from Penang, and she is having a hard time using it. I think it looks something like this:

She asked if there is a way of using this pan, and make a nice piece of fried egg sheet. Seriously, I can’t help much as I don’t have any fancy shaped frying pans. Remember that my kids rejected fried eggs and it’s only until recently that they love it?

On top of that, my kids don’t take pancakes, so I don’t think I need a pan like that. I tried preparing pancakes for them, and I ended up eating ALL because they didn’t want to try!!! I had almost needed the best hgh releaser to burn off the extra calories after eating so many pieces of pancake with honey syrup!
Another reason is, I doubt my skill in flipping it over to the other side and I wonder if the shape will come out exactly the same.

Thus, if you have any tips in using fancy pans like this, please share in comment section. Thanks!!!

Days ago, I stumbled upon this product about how to create ebook and sell it online. I really spent some time reading it through and follow all the steps listed there, and found that it’s really not that hard to create one, even if you don’t have any experience in writing or marketing an ebook.

For those who are trying to make some money online, maybe you can give this product a try. The only thing not mentioned in it was after you have set up your domain or website in promoting your ebook, you need to submit it to free web directory to crawling. But if you sign up the website membership, this will be done for you.

Hubby asked if I am interested to write one about bento, but I guess I won’t for the time being. I’m just too busy. If you are interested, check out the links.

Hi there! I’m a little tiger cub, cut from sweet potato. My tail was “made” with cheese topped on ham (to prevent the cheese from melting fast).

I hope that you’ll like me as much as my little “owner” .

He could not resist himself from snapping a photo of me with his camera. LOL!