Mothering Corner

My gal’s birthday is coming soon, and I might order a cake to the sent to her school so that she can have a mini party with her friends. 2 years ago, I ordered a 3D cake online, and got it sent to my house. I was pretty pleased with the service and design, so I’m thinking about doing this online again. I haven’t tried to Order Cheesecake Online as I’m still wondering if the kids will love cheese cakes? Or one of those high sugar, rich with artificial food colorings cakes? I bet they will choose the latter!

It’s still a couple of weeks away, so I will take my time sourcing for a reliable online bakery. Most importantly, I should let my gal pick the cake design.

I’m trying my best to reuse my existing bento tools, but I have to admit that I hardly use my rice molds. I’m not one of those who pack rice often, nor would I have time to decorate my kids’ meals at home!

I’m so glad that I learned a new way of using the rice molds to shape sandwich balls. This skill has given me more chances of using my rice molds.

Bunnies sandwich balls bento.

Tomica sandwich ball.

It’s going to be my 4th year in bento-ing, and as much as I’ve slowed down as comparing when I first started, I still pack after school bentos for my kids, at least 3 times a week. Fridays are reserved as junk food day, which my kids are allowed to buy anything they want from the cafeteria, and most of the time, my gal will go for ice-cream and my boy for sushi or nuggets. I’m trying not to cut them off the fun of buying food on their own, without compromising much on their snacking on empty calories too many days a week. As for lunch, it’s all provided by the school.

I don’t decorate all the bentos everyday. Mind you, I’m a busy working mom. But I’m just doing my best in kyaraben. Furthermore, my kids are totally cool with having non-decorated bentos, even if it’s just some fruits with bread, peanut brittle, sweet corn and potatoes and etc. This morning, I packed some garlic toasts and grapes for them. And I stopped snapping pics of my non-decorated bentos. If not, I will have tonnes of bento pics! LOL!

Packing food should be done with the objective of providing a better meal for our little ones, and food decoration comes as a bonus.

Just an update, the renovation starts again this week! My flooring is done, but my KITCHEN is not!!! And the wallpaper in my living room, my boy’s bed, and some touching up here and there. But we are almost there…I think. I’m getting used to cooking and preparing meals with limited resources anyway, so I guess I can just hold on and be more patient until my stove and hood are installed!

Back to bento-ing. I did a quick kyaraben again this morning, by decorating cube cheese before topping them on ham and cheese toasts.

These cube cheese are tiny!!! But aren’t they cute as Hello Kitty and Melody, without her ears? LOL!

My initial plan was to decorate a Shinkansen for my boy, but he wanted the cube cheese to be boys with hats. So, this is even easier than I thought!

Let’s assume that the boys are boarding on Shinkansen.

Shinkansen is my boy’s favorite train, which he yearns to ride on for years. Ok, let’s see how mommy’s biz goes this year, and maybe…maybe we can plan a trip to Tokyo in the near future. Let mommy sell more sensors and odyssey pc925 batteries first then.

We had recently got our boy a second handed piano, and it’s one of those “shorter” upright which we managed to squeeze it into the lift to our condo. It’s impossible for us to get a new one right now, and I’m not sure if my boy is very serious about learning piano. He likes it, and he will be sitting for Grade 1 exam soon, but I’m just not sure if he’s really passionate about it to lplay it “forever”?

Both hubby and I learned music, but we gave up during teenage years. So, we are taking it easy on our kids. They can choose to learn other musical instruments if they are interested when they are older, such as drumming, Squier guitar, or even the harmonica. But for the time being, I will let them choose either piano or violin.

I’m still waiting for my gal to make her decision. She’s turning 6 soon.

I’ve never smoked and I don’t quite like the idea of being a passive smoker either. That’s why if hubby goes out drinking with his clients or friends, he must take a good shower and wash his hair before coming to bed. Either way, he can sleep on the couch.

Maybe it’s just me being over sensitive towards the smell as some of my friends are alright with cigars such as macanudo, but it’s just me who can’t take it. I will just walk away.

I’m kind of out of idea what to pack for my kids lately as I can’t do pizza or garlic toast without an oven. The renovation workers can’t fulfill their promise of completing my kitchen AGAIN so I’ve given up on rushing them. Thus, there isn’t much variety in my kiddos bento meals.

Then it strikes me that I haven’t made sausage bread rolls for some time. Oh, I didn’t bake the bread rolls but just roll the sausage on flatten sliced bread. After that I cut them into tiny bites and decorated them as boys and girls.

Boys for my boy, of coz.

And this is for my gal.

I packed some blueberries and oranges too.

Thanks for the guest post by Esteban Vinson

I did not think I would want a security system at my house, but when I was looking at this website, http://HomeSecuritySystems.com, the other day, I thought maybe I should reconsider. I guess it made me realize how many ways people can get into my house and the things that could happen. There are also just so many things that people will do even though you want to think the best of them. I have always thought that about people. Whenever I hear stories on the news about someone committing some terrible crime, I am surprised. I think if so many people do these terrible things, how could something not eventually happen to me? I think that is probably not the best attitude to think about things, but realistically things happen to people! Either way, I have started to think that maybe I should get something more elaborate than a single lock set up at my house. I think the fact that I have been thinking about having kids with my husband is probably part of the reason I want a bit more security. It is funny how much the way you think changes when things like that start to be considered.

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?

Nothing special today, but just decorating 2 sandwich balls as Rilakkuma and Korilakkuma in each bento. Oh well, the photos speak it all.

My boy’s bento with Rilakkuma.

Korilakkuma for my gal.

Instead of using cheese, I used hard boiled quail egg white for the details as I will be out and about the whole day, and the bentos will be stored in cooler bag (with ice brick) in my car.