I believe that everyone in the bento world has at least 1 cutter to use for bento making. I love to use cutter for quick and neat cut. They come pretty handy all the time. Cutter comes with a lot of sizes, different shapes, and materials. This time I want to share some of my small cutter sets collection. These small cutters are my favorite because I can use them for so many creations and also to decorate bento with details. They are just perfect in sizes. And the sets are not too expensive, even can be considered as very cheap; so they are worth to be added to your collection too.

If you wonder how I keep my small cutters. I put them in a box with small dividers inside, so it's easy to find and easy to take out. I don't put them in the ice bucket like in the picture above. That's only for my picture set taking for this post LOL :D

The sets following can be found and bought from many bento online stores.
And you can also probably find them at your local Japanese shops in the bento section.

The following sets can be found and bought from Daiso, 100 Yen Japanese Store.
The set from No. 1 - 5

Wishing everyone a great weekend! Have fun with your bento making!

This morning I made this bento only for my girl. I chose to make rice balls again and decorated it with yellow egg sheet, nori, crab stick, and food pick as a girl. Mango is in the season now. I still have some left in the fridge so decided to make a quick mango chicken and added into the bento box. I cheated because I used mango salad dressing and freshly chopped mango to cook with my chicken. I also added a little bit of sugar 2 minutes before the chicken done. Hope my girl loves it so I can put the mango chicken again next time :)

Inside the box : quail eggs, cheese sausages, flower shaped carrots, baby corns sauteed with finely chopped parsley, and mango chicken.

Last time I made 2 rice balls mixed with tomato sauce. Today, I made 2 rice balls mixed with light soy sauce and decorated them as doggies. The ears were made of fish cake and nose was made of small grapes and the white part of crab stick. Both ears and nose were attached to rice ball using spaghetti stick. For the others facial parts, I used nori and red part of crab stick.

Yesterday, my mood to make bento just swung away because of my migraine from the morning. After sleeping early last night, my head seemed okay... Migraine and backpain are 2 things that I hate so much when it happens to me. Sometimes can't tell when I will get those to torture me LOL ...

Inside the box : laksa prawns, cauliflower, sauteed pok choy, omelet & carrot, and strawberries.

Today is Wednesday, don't forget to join "What's for Lunch" and put your bento link there.

Thanks a lot for so many comments that I received for my birthday and the anniversary blog. I could only say "I Love You All!" ... your comments are really a big gift for me and I feel really happy to receive them. And please check on my blog to find out who's the 2 lucky winners for giveaway on August, 1.

Today, I only made snack bento and I used my new bento box from Bento & Co. This round box is 2 tiers box but I just used 1 tier because I only prepared for snack bento, so no need to put too much food inside. This bento was very simple and very quick to prepare. It just simply put everything inside the box. To get the orange rice balls, I mixed rice with tomato sauce and used cling wrap to mold it with hand to get the smooth rice balls.

Inside the box : Orange rice balls, vermicelli, tamagoyaki, roast chicken, sauteed pok choy, baby carrots, and strawberry.

Today is my 1st Blog Anniversary and also my birthday (I'm one year older but still young at heart, believe me ... ). I would like to thanks my hubby and kids for their support for my blogging. Thanks for being my angels who bring so many joys in my life. Also I would like to thanks to so many bento friends that always give very positive and encouraging comments. I love you all! I learned so many things from all of you with your talented works that really inspired me through my bento journey from beginning until now. I feel so lucky to meet you all through bento blogging.

My kids gave me big hugs and kisses this morning with surprise gifts for my birthday. They even prepared a birthday card with their writing inside ... oh so touching! Hubby will fly back this afternoon from his business trip so we can celebrate tonight. I made Hello Kitty rice cake to celebrate 1st Blog Anniversary and cooked Japanese Curry to eat with the rice cake.

To celebrate my 1st Blog Anniversary, I would like to giveaway 2 gifts for 2 lucky bento friends that will be drawn by my kids later.

You just need to leave a comment why you like to read my blog and don't forget to put your e-mail address too. You can put your comment until July, 31.

The winner will be contacted via e-mail on August, 1.

Have a great weekend for all of you!

Bento books are always great resources to learn about bento making for me. This time I wanna show you some of Mari Miyazawa's bento books that I 've collected so far to learn more about making cute bento / kyaraben bento. She is a very talented bento artist and her works are so inspiring, very creative. Even before I started my blog, I loved to check on her blog at E-Obento. You can check it too, and I am sure that you will love her amazing website. Some of my bentos, if you remember, Bentolicious #010 and Bentolicious #072 were actually inspired by her bento book.

You can check all of her books at E-Obento, or you can also check it from Amazon Japan.

Since this week's bentos always come in three (3 chicks, 3 aliens ...), this morning I made inari sushi of 3 white bears called Korilakkuma (friend of Rilakkuma). I decorated the ears and nose from fish ball, the eyes from nori, and the red cheek from tomato sauce. This time I put tuna chunk inside the inari sushi. The kids have been very busy lately with homework and school projects. No playing time except for 30 minutes basket ball time in the afternoon. Hope they can really do well in this new school term and hope they will learn more responsibilities at school and at home.

In the blue box : sauteed brussel sprouts, veggie fish balls, star kamaboko, sweet corns, and grape tomato.

Please check on my blog this Friday! I have surprise giveaway for my blog 1st Anniversary.

Ended up with this Goggle Eyes Aliens bento because I didn't know what exactly I had to name it. I didn't have any idea at all for today's bento. This was just a spontaneous bento that I made this morning. I love to use 2 tiers box. So in the first tier I put rice and decorated it with the egg sheet and the aliens. And for the other tier, I put 2 big silicone cups. Inside the green silicone cup : mini dumplings and raspberries. And inside the yellow silicone cup : sauteed veggies with beef meat balls.

I am feeling so sleepy this morning because I watched K-Drama until 1.30am and have to wake up at 5.00am. I'm thinking of a cup of coffee now...should definitely get one cup before going to pick up the kids from school. Hope all of you have a great day and fun in your bento making :)

Happy Monday! Hope you all had a great weekend! Started the new week with this little chicks bento. I made flower shaped onigiri stuffed with salmon chunks then put small egg rice ball on the top and decorated it. This morning, I used my rice mold shown below to make the small egg rice ball. Rice mold is quick and easy to use. Save a lot of time for bento making in the morning :) But you can always mold your rice with your hands as the ball shapes it's also pretty much easy to make.

In the other box : cherry tomato, steamed broccoli, half hard boiled egg, carrot & chicken ham, and tofu fish cakes.

Don't forget to join July's BOMB. You can read more from Debra's blog : Hapa Bento. This month theme is picnic bento.

I didn't make bento for my kids today because they were dismissed from school at 12.00PM. So I just took pictures of their breakfast for today's post. Nothing special for all time kid's favorite breakfast ... it was just pancake. But what make this pancake special is because of this cute pan with Donald Duck character on it. The other one that I have is Mickey Mouse (will post it later). I am happy with these cute pans until now. They are easy to use and easy to clean as they come with non-stick coating. It really prints out the character perfectly. I picked up this pan when I traveled to Taiwan last year at Japanese Store 'Tokyu Hands' (it calls Hands Tailung in Taiwan). I think this pancake will be nice to put in bento box too, don't you think?

Today's snack bento was pretty quick to prepare. I stuffed thin slices of spam inside the onigiri and decorated with Hello Kitty shaped thin layer rice on the top. To make the thin layer rice, you just need to put rice between two plastic cling wraps and use roller pin to flatten the rice. After that, press with a small cutter to get the Hello Kitty's head shape. Press softly the cutter on the onigiri then put the thin layer rice on the top, so the thin layer rice can stick properly.

Onigiri boxes are fun to use. They come with different sizes, colorful, and sometimes with cute character on the lid. Those 2 in the pictures are pretty small, just perfect for the kids.

Inside the other box : fried chicken drumlettes, green tomato & cucumber, and strawberries.

Please join "What's For Lunch" at Shannon's blog.
I added today's bento. It's fun event for every Wednesday, so we can share our bento picture to others.

I finally bought 2 Face Food bento books by Christian D. Salyers and just added them into my bento books collection. Today's bento is inspired by these 2 books. My kids requested me to make Yagami Taichi, one of the characters from their DigiMon (Digital Monsters) DVDs. They had been watching this movies during the school holiday at home. I almost gave up halfway but then decided to finish up the character. I thought I still needed a lot of practice, I missed up so many details because of the time limitation. I think I will not able to make this type of bento too often as I always prepare my kids bento in the morning. And in my opinion, this type of bento can't be made in rush if we want to have a good result. In the end, my kids were pretty happy when they saw this character in their bento box and requested to make another character from Digimon ... oh no!! Inside the box : peanut butter sandwich, fruit bar, gold kiwi, and jelly balls.

Back to bento making again. Everything seems to be back to normal since the kids are back to the school today. My daughter starts her first day in Grade 5 and my son in Grade 2. They are excited with some of the new friends and the new teachers in their class.

I have been taking long break to post for my blog. So have to get my lazy nerve working properly again :)

Today's bento is a little happy elephant. Crossed the road safely to the school. I made it from egg sheets, carrot, crab stick, and nori. Inside the box : Chinese cabbage stir fry, black bean garlic chicken, omelet, broccoli, and grape tomatoes.