Mothering Corner

Oh well, I’m out of idea how to name this blog post.

Decorated the quail eggs as Mickey and Minnie for my gal by using with ear picks.

And can you guess who are these characters in my boy’s bento?

It’s Valentine’s Day, but we won’t be doing anything special. Hubby is not the type who celebrates special occasions and to him, Valentine’s Day is too commercialized and just wanna rip off $$$ from lovers. Some times, I wonder how I ended up with an unromantic guy, but whenever he’s helping out with house chores and laundry, I know the reason why!

A Valentine’s Day bento for my gal.

I prepared the decoration while waiting for macaroni and cheese to cool down for packing. The mouse was made from quail egg, kamaboko and the heart was cut from mini wiener. Her grapes were packed separately in a smaller lunch box.

I did a speedy and simpler decoration for my boy.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

I’d just realized that I have some quail eggs in the fridge, so it’s best to use them before they are expiring soon. What I had in mind was Pooh and Piglet, and here’s how I decorated the quail eggs based on these characters.

I prepared 2 quail eggs, a small slice of kamaboko (pink fish cake) and some red artificial crab meat.

I wrapped the bottom half of a quail egg with red crab meat. I repeated the same step with the pink slice of kamaboko for the other egg.

Cut 2 small circles from white kamaboko and use them as Pooh’s ears.

Pin the ears with small bits of spaghetti strips.

Pin the egg on the sandwich to secure it.

For Piglet, I cut its pink ears from kamaboko, and pinned them on the egg.

Secure Piglet on the sandwich too.

Punch some nori and add in their facial details.

I cut some cheese with these alphabet cutters for Pooh bear.

And here’s the complete bento:

Pooh and Piglet quail eggs on sandwich. There are strawberries, blueberries, grapes and baby carrots in the meal as well.

It’s my second attempt in creating a dragon bento, especially after my boy said that the previous dragon looked like a cow.

Due to time and space constraints, I decided to make a speedy bento with sandwich balls and quail eggs, instead of fulfilling my boy’s wish of having this dragon.

I would be out of my mind if I want to fix that dragon!

So, instead of picking a kyaraben challenge, the mom decided to do a simpler one.

Another dragon bento, with sandwich balls, quail eggs and fruits.

And a girlie dragon for my gal.

Happy Chinese New Year everyone!

My boy drew this black angry bird in my sketch book and told me to find some time and fix one for him. At first, I thought of brushing off his request but he said something yesterday while eating his plain looking bento in the car, Mommy, you don’t pack nice nice bentos often anymore huh? O.o

Ok boy, there you have it! It’s a last minute thingy as initially, I only planned to pack fruits and sweet potatoes for the kids, and after looking at the plain looking bentos, I decided to add a quail egg wrapped in nori and decorated it as the black angry bird. The red angry bird was cut from rose apple, and I realized now that I didn’t decorate it well. It didn’t have the white feathery top on its head.

Black Angry Bird Bento

Angry Birds Fruity Bento

It’s a busy busy Tuesday for me, so I can’t blog much about today’s bento. Here’s what I packed for the kids…Pikachu in pokemon ball bento box!

My gal’s sleeping Pikachu.

The Pikachu was made by 2 quail eggs, dyed in yellow. You can do so with some turmeric powder mixed with water, or yellow food gel and immerse the eggs in for about 20 minutes. I did by keeping them in a container and keep them refrigerated over night. Then I pinned the Pikachu on the garlic bread with spaghetti strips so that it won’t move around.

My boy’s Pokemon Ball bento

I did one for my boy too. In fact, he helped me in cutting the tiny decorative details.

After days of plain looking bentos, I decided to decorate 2 quail eggs for today’s snack.

Do you know who they are? They are Crayon Shin Chan and his dog. It’s a speedy bento, so maybe Shin Chan doesn’t look like himself. LOL! Anyway, my boy likes it.

But he has declared to me that maybe, just maybe he won’t need me to pack him after school bento anymore. He’s going to primary 1 next week, and he would like to buy food from the cafeteria like the rest. So, my boy has grown up huh?

Actually, packing kyaraben bento for my boy is getting harder and harder. As he grows, his interests have changed from simple characters as Pooh bear to harder ones like Ben 10 and Naruto. I can’t possible fulfill all his bento fantasies as much as I like. But it’s a great “journey” for both of us, and I’m glad that I have a blog which captures most of the bentos I’ve made for him over 3 years.

As for my gal, I might still be packing for her because she has to  wait for her brother before I pick them up from school. She will finish school earlier but I won’t be picking her up on time.

Lets see how things go when school starts next week.

My kids are waking up later during this summer break, and some times, it’s way past 9am. Needless to say, I’m late for work everyday. Thus, I have some spare time in the morning to prepare the soup, mop the laminate flooring or do the laundry. But this morning, I decided to pack them snack bentos, and added Snoopy in their bento meals.

I prepared some quail eggs and pinned them together with spaghetti strips.

I punched Snoopy’s ear with this leaf puncher, and cut off the tip.

Stack the nori on cheese and cut it out by a toothpick or exacto knife

Pin the ear on Snoopy

Add facial details on Snoopy

There you go! A simple Snoopy Bento

I decorated a Sleeping Snoopy too.

When my boy was a toddler, he was very fascinated by owls. I bought him a couple of books about owls, but there weren’t many. Even clothes with owl characters are not a lot, except one or 2 from the Owl in Pooh’s bear collection. After some time, he switched his interests to horses and dinosaurs. LOL!

Then last night, out of the blue, he took out his old owl books and asked me to read to him. They are in Chinese, and my boy can’t read Chinese. Nonetheless, I read and translated the stories to him, and he said, “I remember these books, I used to love owls.”

That’s why I felt like fixing an owl bento today. There are a mother owl and 2 owlets, cut from quail eggs.

Owls Bento

My gal’s bento

As much as I felt like I’m walking down the memory lane, the owls didn’t excite my boy anymore. He said he would prefer me to fix him a Naruto bento. O.o

That shows how much my boy has grown up!

It’s a brand new year, and hopefully it’s going to be a great year for us. Our kids are back to school again after a short break, and mommy is back to bento-ing. I fixed them some sandwiches, nuggets, and fruits in their after school meals, and I added a quail egg decorated as a bunny to signify Year 2011.

My gal’s New Year Bento

This is for my boy.

Again, Happy New Year everyone and I hope that all of us will have a great year ahead.