Mothering Corner

My kids will be spending the whole holiday break at my office, but they are not bored at all. They have playmates here, and they can keep themselves occupied with some “paper recycling work”, messing up the piles of office tees which look like nfl t shirts, or just playing with their iPad and iPhone.

For the past few days, I only packed undecorated snack bentos for them. But today, I felt like adding some food picks.

Leaf and flower food picks.

Frankly, I can’t remember which online store I bought them from. Feel free to shout if it’s from your store.

All I did was pinning a leaf and a flower pick each as close as possible to create this:

My gal’s afternoon snack bento, with sweet potato, strawberries and mangos.

The bento will look better if there are some butterflies, bees, and etc, just like a garden theme. But I was running out of time, so there you go. LOL!

This is for my boy.

My boy is requesting sandwich balls again. He totally loves the sandwich balls, especially the chicken floss inside. LOL! I wanted to try tuna or other fillings but my kids are picky with can food, so far they haven’t tried tuna nor sardine. Anyway, I used chicken floss again, but this time, besides preparing the sandwich balls, I prepared a mini wiener too.

I cut the mini wiener into halves.

Then, I joined a sandwich ball and a piece of wiener together, and decorated them as a mushroom. I topped some red artificial crab meat and smoked cheese on the mushroom heads, as you can see from the bentos:

2 little mushrooms in my boy’s bento, with kiwi, apple and grapes too.

This is for my gal. I’ve just realized one of the red flowered dots is torn.

Actually, my gal is not going to school today, so the bento shall serve as her afternoon snack. She’s still resting at home for another day, and she will be back to school tomorrow. I hope that both my kids stay fit and healthy from now onwards as I skip too many days of work and lost some weight taking care of them. I’ll probably need some vitamins for weight loss drastically now. LOL!

Sorry that I hardly leave comment on most of the bento blogs I’ve visited, but I do read your posts. Most of the time, I will just read from my feed, but for some blogs, I will drop by if I have the time. Life is getting busier for me, but I still want to steal some time for blog hopping.

I know that Hapa Bento organizes BOMB every month, but the theme always slipped passed my mind when I’m too busy. Luckily, there are a few bento-ers who took part and I kept reminded about BOMB. The theme for May is flowers, so here is my submission.

I cut the bread and cheese with a flower cutter. For the bread placed on top, cut out a small circle with a round cutter. Then, I added nori and artificial crab meat as cute faces.

Here are the bentos:

My gal’s bento with flower sandwiches, rambutans, carrot roses in baked fish cakes, strawberries and some blueberries.

This is for my boy. Most of his fruits were hidden in the lower tier under Pikkachu.

I should have place some flower picks for him too, but I was running out of time. I have just got the items from Bento Craft, and my kids love them all.

New bento tools by Bento Craft. Thanks for the cute duckie cutting board, which my gal claimed it’s hers!

BTW, the tiny carrot roses are inspired by Hippomum. Do check out her tutorial. I just replaced fish sausage with blanched carrot strips.

Carrot rose.

I packed some noodles for my kids today. It’s just plain noodles, but I mixed them with some soy sauce, sesame oil and a little bit of pepper for taste.

Then, I decided to fix mushroom man again because it’s quite simple. I didn’t snap any photos during the preparation of previous bentos. Since Chinnee was wondering how I fixed the little mushroom, I shall share some photos here.

I prepared 2 quail eggs, a cherry tomato (cut into halves and dig out the flesh), the white artificial crab meat, 2 heart picks and Carl’s punchers.

Pin the tomato and quail egg together with the pick.

Then, add some tiny spots of artificial crab meat on the tomato, and add the face features for the little mushrooms.

So, there are the bentos:

Today’s bentos with little mushrooms in dry noodles, some rambutans and baby carrots. Those nori bits were punched by my kids this morning and they wanted to put them in.

It’s Friday, so have a nice weekend ya!

Firstly of all, I would like to thank all the readers who drop by my blog, and I truly appreciate your comments and emails.  I will try to answer your questions as much as I can. If you are a regular here, you might have known that I do share some tips and experience in bento-ing, but I guess I didn’t label my posts well, so it’s quite hard to find the posts. I myself was lost looking through my achieves too.

Anyway, if you have the time, please check out the older posts, and maybe you can see how I used to pack my kids’ bentos initially. *wink* I have gradually “improved” over time, and I noticed that my bentos are getting simpler and faster too. As a mother without a maid (which is pretty common in Malaysia, but my hubby is a great helper la ) and one who has to rush to school and office in time, personally, I would prefer speedy bentos with simple decoration. Most importantly, I hope that my kids would love to eat their bento meals, and that’s the main factor that keeps me going.

Ok, let’s get back to today’s bento…

Some of you who follows my kids blog might have known that my boy was sick, but he’s feeling better now. He’s slowly regained his appetite, and he wants to have macaroni and cheese as his afternoon tea. It took me awhile to prepare the macaroni, but at the same time, I cut the fruits and boiled the fish balls and mini wieners too.

Cut some lines on the wieners before you boil them. The wieners should curl up slightly when they are cooked.

I pinned the wieners to the fish balls with spaghetti strips. (Why I use spaghetti strips)

By the time the mac and cheese was ready, I packed everything in bentos and here they are:

I decorated the fish balls and wieners as little flower kids. You may use 2 mini wieners to form a complete circle for each fish ball, but my bento boxes are too small for that. The strawberries, kiwi and blueberries were packed separately.

Here’s the closer shots:

My gal’s flower girl

And that’s my boy’s bento.

If you would like to know more about the decoration details, please click on the photos and hop over to my Flickr account ya?

My friend was asking if I have any bento to share today, oh well, I do have one. LOL! I was very busy today, so I didn’t have time for blogging until now.

I toasted some garlic bread (with hotdog buns) for breakfast today, and packed some for my kids. As for mushroom men, I cut the cherry tomatoes into halves, dug out the seeds and flesh, and pinned the tomatoes on the quail eggs. Then, I decorated the mushrooms with ham, nori and artificial crab meat.
So, here are my little mushrooms bentos:

My boy’s bento with garlic bread roll, golden kiwi and oranges. I decorated his quail eggs as little mushrooms, and if you are a regular reader to most bento blogs, you might have seen these little mushrooms before huh?

This is my gal’s bento.

Sorry that I didn’t have time to snap more photos while preparing the bentos today, but if you know any blogs with mushroom men toturial, drop me the link and I will post it up. Thanks!

It’s been raining cats and dogs for the past few days, and it’s cloudy today. I haven’t checked the weather forecast, but I guess it might rain again today.

Thus, today’s bento theme is about rainy day, and it’s something simple and quick, so I didn’t draft out the ideas in mind. But if it’s something more complicated like a cad drawing or a nice portrait, then it’s best to draft out the bento in advance.

Here’s the bento meals without decoration. My kids will have corns, sweet potatoes, rose apples and mangoes for tea.

I spent a few minutes punching the nori and placing the cheese details in since my kids prefer to see their meals “smiling back at them”.

The tools for today’s bento.

So, here’s the end result:

My boy’s bento, with clouds, rain drops, smiling flowers and an umbrella. Umbrella is a must on rainy days!

And here’s my gal’s bento.

I wonder when will this raining season stop? I feel like fixing a sunny day bento. LOL!