No Christmas theme bento for today. But I posted the pancake instead. I made the pancakes for the kids this morning using my other cute pancake pan, Doraemon. Yes, you read it right! I just couldn't resist to buy these cute pancake pan when I had a trip to Taiwan. I posted Donald Duck pancakes before here. Last week when I went to a baking supplies shop, I bought strawberry paste and pandan paste that is commonly used for baking cookies, cake or bread. So I thought it will be cool to make 2 colors Doraemon pancakes this morning. The paste didn't just bring out the color but also the strawberry and pandan tastes too. This is perfect for Christmas breakfast with 2 tones colors, more festive feel I think.

 I used Pillsbury pancake ready mix and pancake syrup. Is easy to make and quick too.

All you need are :

> 1 cup Pillsburry pancake ready mix

> 170-180ml water

> 1/4 tsp (1.25cc) pandan paste / strawberry paste

Mixed all the above ingredients in the bowl until even and no lumps.

I have been MIA from online and blogging a couple of days ago. Audrey was sick too on Friday, followed by me on Friday afternoon. But I'm glad that we had 2 days on the weekend to rest and to recover. Today we are back to normal again, ready to do our routines and activities. I continue to do my 2nd Christmas theme bento this morning. I made a boy with deer antler Christmas hat and red scarf. Deer antler Christmas hat were made from colored egg sheet and the red scarf were made from crab stick (only the red part). Inside the other box : steamed pork prawn balls and stir fried veggies with garlic (baby corns, broccoli, and carrots).

Kids will start their final test for first semester next Monday so reviewing the lessons will start this week at the school and at home too. Audrey got the exemption to do writing task for her PE test. She is starting to research and collect some information as her PE teacher asked her to do. I wish everyone has a great start for this week and stay healthy!

My first Christmas theme bento begins with the Santa Claus laundry. He is getting ready for Christmas and so are we. Couldn't get so much light this morning, so the picture is a bit dark. Andrew was sick from yesterday so he is staying at home. He woke up at the same time with me this morning. Later he just went back and forth between the living room and the kitchen to do the 'quality control' for this bento LOL :D He kept saying easy to me and he wanted to help to make this bento. I gave him one egg to brake in a small bowl and he literally broke it and spilled half in the small bowl and the other half on the kitchen table. This morning my level of patient was very high, so I just tidied up for him. After that what he did was supervising me when I cut the egg sheet free hand with my X-Acto knife. Oh boy! He was the boss this morning in the kitchen.

Inside the other box : braised chicken & potatoes, stir fried baby bok choy & fish cake, and small mandarin orange.

Linked this bento to What's For Lunch every Wednesday.
Please link your bento too and share it with everyone :)

Have you watched Harry Potter 7 Part 1 - The Deathly Hallows? We watched the movie on Friday afternoon. The theater was full but hubby was so smart to buy the tickets for us ahead. Audrey was enjoying the movie while Andrew was bored after half it. My kids never watched the Harry Potter moview (1-6) at the cinema before. So it was always only me and my husband. But I have the Harry Potter DVDs collection at home and my kids were having Harry Potter movie marathon (1-3) on Saturday. Inspired by the movie, I browsed the internet and found the cute Harry Potter cartoon here. I used egg sheet to re-create the character although I couldn't create as details as the original cartoon because of the time limitation. But I think I'm happy with it.

I hope everyone had a great time on the weekend. I have one good news to share. One of my bento pictures has been featured on newsletter from SCA Hygiene Malaysia Sdn Bhd (picture shown below). The company asked me whether they could use one of my bento pictures for their company newsletter and I didn't have any objection on that. In fact, I love they asked for the permission first which showed their appreciation for my bento pictures. Thanks to Jasmine and Sherin to send me a complimentary gift. I was surprised to receive that on last Friday. Now thinking about Christmas, thinking about when I should start making Christmas theme bento. Maybe I will start tomorrow, school break is coming soon. So I will try to find some ideas for that tonight.

I didn't make any bento yesterday because it was a public holiday here. Yesterday, I went to a Korean supermarket near our house and bought a pack of Korean mixed grains rice to make today's bento. We love Korean foods. We have this Korean restaurant called Hanwoori, very close to our house (only 5 minutes drive) owned by a Korean family. The couple is very friendly to the kids. The wife always comes to our table and chats with the kids. Andrew's favorite is Soluntang and Audrey loves Bokkeumbap and Jap Chae. She even loves the Kimchi Jigae now. As this is the first time to introduce Kongbap (mixed grains rice) to my girl, I made 2 heart shapes onigiri. The Kongbap contains 14 kinds of nutrition for a healthy diet. At least that's what I read from the package. And the package contains barley, rice, brown rice, black rice, sorghum, buckwheat, mung bean, and millet. The mixed grains rice tastes very good, a bit sweet with a rich texture in it.

I added 2 characters boy and girl with the hands positioned like make a heart shapes. If you love to watch K-Drama then you will know that they usually do this and say 'saranghae' - is Korean to say I Love You. Inside the other box : heart shapes tamagoyaki, cherry tomato, stir fried carrot & cabbage with onion, and ebi katsu with shiso leaves.

Good News! Yesterday we went to the doctor and have x-ray on Audrey's broken hand. And she is now free from her sling, back to normal. Doctor said she needed to be careful for the next 6 months until everything has recovered perfectly. Her left broken hand looks a look smaller than the right hand. She will have to exercise with the squeezed ball to strengthen the muscles. Meanwhile, we have made a letter to the PE teacher and the school principle to give her exemption for not taking PE classes for the next 6 months.

I layered the pink egg sheet on the top of the rice and decorated with a cow character made from 3 colors egg sheet. I found a new way to make pink color egg sheet with pink dragon fruit extract juice. I just need one drop to mixed it with the egg white to get that light pink color. And if you can see, the pink egg sheet got the white pattern on it. That was because I didn't whisk and strain my egg white. Inside the other box : stir fry green bean with onion and red paprika, prawns with salted duck egg, chuka wakame, and cherry tomatoes.

Did you all have a good weekend? I hope so. Mine was just great with my family. Wish everyone has a good start for this week. I will be very busy with 2 big weddings coming up, hubby's birthday, my girl's birthday, kids' 1st semester exam, Christmas, holiday, and some others things on my list ... phew!! So today's bento was a quick and simple bento, it only contained fried rice and fruits. I used my Kokeshi Bento Box (Ichiro & Hanako) from Bento&co. The round box is pretty small so I put fried rice in 2-tiers Hanako box, and put the fruits, tomato ketchup in 2-tiers Ichiro box. I love to prepare fried rice with different ingredients. This time I put a finely chopped carrots, baby bok choy, Chinese chives, onion, red paprika, egg, and lap cheong (Chinese sausage). I ate one small bowl this morning for my breakfast, couldn't resist the temptation really. Added a little cuteness, a girl from the quail egg sunny side up, decorated with nori and tomato skin. Tada! No need a long time to prepare it this morning.

If yesterday's bento was in-between mouse and rabbit. I make sure without doubt that today's bento is really a rabbit. I made Ms. Bunny from Walt Disney's animated film Bambi. Inside the box : rice, red paprika omelet, stir fry Chinese cabbage, cherry tomatoes, lemon, flower shapes fish sausages, and chicken karaage.

Last night, me and my husband did some works for our Christmas holiday. Finally we booked our airplane tickets and accommodation online. Everything is set, now hope nothing changed from what we've already planned. Destination? I will tell everyone's later. I only can say, the place is very good for hibernate, relax, enjoy the view and no snow. I will share some pictures from our holiday via twitter if I can get the wi-fi connection hehehe ... :D

I couldn't get online much since the weekend. I had fun over the weekend with the dinner gathering on Saturday's night and a baking class on Sunday. We hosted the dinner at home, it was fun but made me feel so tired. I felt like my energy worn out that night. Baking class was a lot of fun from 10AM until 3PM. We baked a lot of cookies in the class. Hope the fear of baking will slowly disappear. We went to the immigration office on Monday to renew our passports so my kids were absent from the school. We couldn't make it if we had to wait until the kids went home from the school. The kids were happy because they felt like having 1 extra day for the weekend. Yesterday was uninspired and unmotivated day to do bento, so I blamed on the lazy bug LOL :D Back to bento business today, I made a simple mouse on the top of the egg fried rice. I used hard boiled egg and dry egg somen to decorate the mouse. This one was quick and simple to do. But somehow, I felt my mouse looks like rabbit or a rabbit that looks like a mouse. Oh well ... let your imagination guides you, what do you see? Mouse or rabbit?

Inside the other box : shoyu chicken, flower shapes carrot, cherry tomato, edamame, broccoli & cheese and baby corns.

Happy Friday! Another quick and flying week ... I'm surely very tired this week. We just 'passed out' last night, both me and my husband. I thought we woke up by alarm bell at 5AM and slept again until Audrey knocked on our bed room door, entered and then said 'Mom, it's already 6.20AM' ... wuahhh I jumped out of the bed, took shower and prepared breakfast for the kids. Bento was way too late to be prepared because the kids had to leave at 7AM from home. But after the crazy morning, I still managed to make bento for Audrey. My husband dropped the kids to school before went to the office. I made this bento with no one at home and it was more fun and relax. I will go to drop this bento to the school before lunch time at 12PM. And will wait at the Starbucks near kids' school until 2PM to pick them up.

The owl was made with colored egg sheet (again) and as you can see, I used a lot of small cutters to make some details for the owl. The tree was made of celery. Inside the other box : sauteed Chinese spinach & corns, cherry tomato, prawns in tomato & garlic sauce, edamame, and fried fish cake. All of the foods in this box are Audrey's favorite. I didn't make any bento for her yesterday so she just had lunch from school catering with Andrew, who still 'refuses' to bring bento to school :p Some friends from my Junior High will have dinner at our house on Saturday and guess what ... I will be going to a baking class on Sunday. I will start from the simplest class first - 'making cookies'. Wish me luck, hope I can overcome my fear to bake LOL :D Wish you all a great weekend!!

If you remember my post on Bentolicious #141 then you will remember that I mentioned before about The AppStore Bento Challenge at Mils' Blog - Not A Brown Bag. So I chose 'Cut the Rope' game from AppStore that my kids and I love to play on my iPad. Andrew is very good with this game. He always taught me on how to win this game whenever I failed to cut the rope and couldn't deliver the candy to the green little monster called Om Nom. This game is very popular in AppStore. It sold out 1 million copies in ten days.
I used colored egg sheet to create 1st Part - Cardboard Box - Level 1 (as shown below from the screen shoot) . Inside the other box : fried chicken, macaroni risoles, carrot & daikon salad, (mayonnaise in separate container not shown) and cherry tomato.

I linked this bento to What's For Lunch every Wednesday at Shannon's Blog. Please link yours too so you can have fun sharing your bento and see others too.

I wrapped two rice balls with yellow egg sheet to make two boys in cat suit. For decorating the face part, I used jelly ball, nori, dry somen, egg sheet, and carrot. Some strawberries were put to fill in the empty space on the top of the box. Inside the other box : stir fried veggies (green beans, red paprika, corns), sauteed tofu & potato with sweet soy sauce, cherry tomato, and chicken teriyaki.

I feel pretty exhausted from yesterday. Lack of sleep just made me like veggie. Hope my kids will have extra energy because they will start their extra math lesson this afternoon at 4PM. They will have it twice a week on Tuesday and Thursday for one hour. Usually we arrive at home from school around 3, so the kids will still have 1 hour to have snack and a quick rest before they go to the extra math lesson. The place is pretty near our house, only less than 10 minutes. So hope the kids will enjoy it today!