I think almost everyone is on holiday right now. But I simply want to wish everyone 'Merry Christmas & Happy New Year'. I want to thank all my blogger and flickr friends that have been always supporting me and encouraging me a lot with all your nice comments. I feel really blessed to have such nice friends like all of you. Forgive me for all of my mistakes and if there is any words that I didn't mean to perhaps bother you.

I will leave Jakarta to Melbourne on Christmas night, leaving my husband and the kids. I know it seems so sad. But I will go to Melbourne to give support to my big sister who just gave birth to 6 months premature twins last month. She needs all the supports from the family as the twins are still in the hospital right now. She is exhausted because everyday she has to go to hospital and takes care everything. We keep praying for the twins, hope they are growing healthy everyday. I will back to Jakarta on 16 January, 2010. I know my husband and the kids will have fun together since there are no mommy's rules LOL ... I will make some posting from there and I have packed all my gadgets hahaha ...

Wish all of you a great holiday!! Hope you and your family have fun leaving this year behind and starting a new year with joy and smile :)

I re-arranged some bento stuffs on my cupboard this morning and I took some pictures of my soy sauce containers collection. I remembered the first soy sauce container was the fish shape, like the one we always have when we have take away sushi. I was confused at that time because I didn't know how to fill the soya sauce inside because the neck was very small. Luckily I saw a Sushi Maker at a take away sushi restaurant when he filled the soy sauce container. As many of you already know, sometimes the soya sauce containers come with pipette in the pack but sometimes no pipette at all. So I hope this tips will be useful for the first time buyer. Usually the soy sauce container comes in small size so it can fit perfectly into a bento box and the shapes are usually very cute too. Very useful if we want to bring small amount of soy sauce or any other sauces. I am sorry for the unclear pictures, can't get any sunlight because this morning was raining.

Here were some pictures I took, showed step-by-step to fill soya sauce into
the soy sauce container :

(1) Prepare the soy sauce / any other sauces, soy sauce containers, and pipette. (2) Press the pipette with your thumb and pointer fingers. (3) While still pressing, soak the end of pipette into soy sauce. (4-5) Release the pressing and you will see soy sauce flow inside the pipette. (6) Fill the soy sauce container with soy sauce from pipette by pressing down pipette.
For the small neck soy sauce container you can fill the soy sauce by pressing down the soy sauce container itself. Don't worry, most of the soy sauce container is soft enough to press down.

Don't throw away your cute soy sauce container. It can be re-used for so many times. Just clean them with liquid soap water and clean water after use. To clean the inside part just refer to the steps showed above on how to fill the soya sauce.

Today is the last day of school for this semester and the kids will have Christmas holiday for about 1 month. Maybe some of you are wondering why the break is starting on Thursday not on Friday. It's because we have public holiday on this Friday. So I will have bento break for quite a while. Today's snack bento was very simple. You will notice that I was kind of rush this morning to prepare this bento because I woke up late. I just put chicken fried rice, cherry tomato, fried fishcakes and steamed carrots. The kids also brought green tea and red bean mochi along with the snack bento. On Saturday morning I will have to go to school for the last parents meeting and also take kids' report card for this semester. Hope the kids are doing great this semester with all good marks on their report card :o)

No bento for today ... kids were having their Christmas snack from school. My friend, Jeanny made these plain gingerbread man cookies for kids to decorate. She is always great in baking cookies (thanks a lot Jean for the cookies!!). So after school, my kids were having fun decorating those plain gingerbread man cookies with 3 colors icing. I didn't help them at all to decorate the cookies, just let them to have fun decorating by themselves. While they decorated the gingerbread man, I took some pictures ... from nothing to something. And because mommy was watching around, they only got their hands dirty with the icings and dropped some icings on the table. They were pretty organized this time hehehe ... The kids still kept some cookies and planned to give it to their daddy later in the afternoon. I'm thinking to do more cooking activities with the kids at the school holiday. They love to help in the kitchen but sometimes I am the one who does not encourage them to play with the foods. I should give them more chances to explore and experience at the school holiday. But please don't make it too messy kids ;o)

I made the Snowman to continue the Christmas theme bento. The kids will have their last school day on this Thursday and then yeah ... school holiday will start then until 10 January, 2010. So this week it's my chance to prepare bento for the kids. Hope I can manage to keep posting something (I'll figure it out later) during the school holiday. Kids were very excited to decorate their bedroom with Christmas ornaments yesterday and they offered to decorate our bedroom too, very nice of them but I'm still thinking about that. Maybe I will just ask them to decorate little Christmas tree downstairs instead. Inside today's bento : rice burger covered with nori and cheese snowman on the top, steamed baby carrots, lap-chiong (sweetened chinese sausage), baby carrot and edamame skewers.

Thinking something festive with green, red, and white colors then I came out with this idea to make Happy Soda Drink. We can easily get what we call 'Soda Gembira' drink available at most restaurants here. The ingredients are only soda water and sweet condensed milk with lot of ices. And for this is Christmas month, I love to add kiwi fruits and strawberries inside the drink. Easy to make and it's quite tasty cold drink. The sweet taste is from the sweet condensed milk, add with sparkling of soda water and freshness of kiwi fruits + strawberries just make this drink wonderful ... well at least for me.

> Strawberries <
> Kiwi Fruits <
> Soda Water <
> Sweet Condensed Milk <
> Lot of ices <

| How to Make |
(1) Diced strawberries and kiwi fruits.
(2) Pour sweet condensed milk until 1/5 of the glass.
(3) Add soda water until 3/5 of the glass.
(4) Then add diced strawberries and kiwi fruits until 4/5 of the glass.
(5) Stir well until the all ingredients mixed perfectly.
(6) Add some ices and ready to drink.

Today's snack bento was still on Christmas theme. I used my small square rice mold to make 2 little Christmas presents. I stuffed some tuna mayo inside the rice and decorated it with red and green ribbons made from egg sheet. To get that rubber looks of ribbon, I added 1/2 tea spoon of corn starch (dissolve with 7,5ml of water) in the 2 eggs mixture. Found that tips on my bento book, hope this will useful for others too. I got some new food picks from my Japanese friend and tried the heart shapes picks to pinch the ribbon. And guess what? I got the purple potatoes and decided to use it. Even though the color combination was not so good in the snack box but I'm excited. I was quite surprised when I found the purple potatoes because I never seen that before available in Jakarta. Well, I can say that this was the first time in my life to see that purple potatoes. The color was dark purple inside after I steamed it. Thanks to Sheri for her posting about this type of potato, very useful information. Inside the snack box : veggie puff pastry cut in half, purple potatoes, egg rolls, and broccoli.

Christmas wreath for today's snack bento. It only contained 2 money pocket shapes fried dumplings, kumquat oranges, sweetened red and green cherry. Christmas wreath itself was made from white steam rice decorated with thin layer of cucumber and paprikas (green, yellow, red). Yesterday, my kids asked me to put our Christmas wreath at the front door because some of our neighbors who are Christian have put that on their front door. Hahahaha … I'm not the one who love to decorate our house with Christmas accessories, my husband is. The Christmas stuffs will be pull out from the box very soon.

Today's snack bento was my first Christmas theme bento. I made 2 boys wearing the Christmas hat. The boys were made from rice balls, crab sticks and nori. It's easy to make for busy Monday morning. Inside the snack bento box : some chicken fillets cooked with teriyaki sauce, steamed baby corns, star shapes carrots & takuwan (pickled radish), and strawberries. I never mentioned takuwan for pickled radish before, until I read Debra's blog, Sheri's blog, Megan's blog, Susan's blog for quite sometimes now. I bought my takuwan from the Korean Supermarket near my house and always have them stocked in my fridge.

The above bento boxes are from my collection. The square one comes with 4 different sizes, 4 different colors and 4 different lids in every pack, while the oval one comes with 3 different sizes, 3 different colors and 3 different lids in every pack.
The boxes are very convenient to store.
I bought the oval one when we had a family trip to Taiwan last September. In Taiwan, bento is known as bian dang 便当. Bento accessories can be found at Daiso, Komonoya, Tokyu Hands around Taipei and other major cities.
For the square one, I bought them in Jakarta.

I wanted to post some tips on making some animal shapes from sausage this weekend but I found 2 sets of cute Hello Kitty's bento and Stitch's breakfast miniatures that I couldn't resist to share it with all of you. After the Sunday service at the church, we went to a mall to have lunch and my daughter asked me to buy some hairbands. So when I and her were hunting some hairbands, I found this little store with all cute stuffs inside. They sold cute miniatures with many characters. After looked around for quite sometimes, I found those 2 sets displayed on their shop display. The store just have 1 set for each, so I bought my first 2 set of miniatures and perhaps I will buy again next time (???). Took some pictures and put the 100 Rupiah coins as comparison (the diameter for 100 Rupiah is about 2,5cm).

Hot day, no wind, very dry ... led me to very uninspired and bored. Sometimes the weather affect our mood, don't you think? Lately we have a very strange weather. It should be rainy season by now, but this week turns out to be very hot and dry. I turned on my iPod then picked SS501's album (SS501 is a boys band from Korea, very famous and love their songs). Tried to switch my mood :o)

Inside today's bento were : seaweed rolls, orange chicken (the sauce was inside the rabbit container), baby zucchini with carrot on the top. Sprinkled the rice with fish furikake, and planted some flower eggs on the rice. On the top of the flower egg was quail egg sliced around 3mm and decorated with nori. I preferred to use my kitchen scissor to make the flower egg rather than to use knife. It was easier to get a neat cut with a scissor.

I made two rabbit sausages for today's bento. The rest as you can see were flower carrots, flower baby zucchinis, ebi katsu, seaweed egg rolls, and strawberries. I just put half portion of pink rice as the kids will just have this bento for their snack time at school. Yesterday, I didn't prepare any snacks for the kids because they had a big bread for breakfast and actually Mommy was having a lazy day hehehe ... excuse ... excuse :o)

Slept around 2.30am because around midnight Andrew was having nose bleeding. And I had the panic attack and decided to run to ICU at the nearest children hospital. The heavy nose bleeding just would not stop for around 15 minutes, I tried to put cold pack on his nose ... maybe because I was too panic I forgot to press his nose to stop the bleeding. But on the way to the hospital suddenly I remembered to press Andrew's nose to stop the bleeding ... silly me. By the time we got to the hospital, the bleeding was off. Ahhh ... this was the second time we run to the ICU for Andrew, hope next time we ... especially me don't get too panic.

This bento was for my daughter. I made lunch box instead of snack box for her because she had to practice drama for one and a half hour after the exam. I put 2 rice balls, thin sliced fried chickens, carrots & baby corns, fish balls stuffed with chicken minced, and leaf shapes zucchini. I also made some small flowers with 3 colors from the egg sheets. Punched them with the puncher and put them on the top of the rice balls and thin sliced fried chickens.

And below was for my son's snack box. I didn't put too many for his snack box only flower sandwiches (cheese and mushroom ham) with Snoopy stamped on the top, slices of persimmon and red cherry. This snack box is definitely very quick to prepare. I just got lost somewhere ... somehow ... blank, no inspiration at all when I prepared this snack box. Hope I can do a better one for tomorrow's snack box :o)