This morning, I only cooked beef soup and rice for lunch bento. I didn't bother to make any decorations for today's lunch bento, instead I tried to decorate today's quick snack bento for the kids. Two bread balls stuffed with beef floss inside. Decorated it with black beans, nori, and cheese to make this black and white buddies. I put some fruits (strawberries, seedless grapes, oranges) from the fridge inside the box. This was quick to make, I meant like really quick. This afternoon we will be cleaning the whole playroom downstairs. Kids will be helping to clean their library and I will be working to clean the other shelves in the room. During the 1 week holiday next week, my husband and I will give some house chores for kids to do. No bento for next week but see you all soon after the holiday. I might be posting something on My Bloglicious during the holiday since no bento making will be happening next week. See you all after the holiday! Have a wonderful weekend and wish an early Happy Eid for friends who celebrate it :)

The weather was cooling down a bit yesterday and this morning we have a colder breeze. I hope that this is the sign of the coming rainy season. I love the cold wind breeze from our window. Next week, Moslem friends are going to celebrate the Hari Raya / Idul Fitri. All the schools here will be closed for one week starting next Monday. In fact, some of the government schools have been closed from this Monday. Hubby's office will also be closed for 1 week but we don't have any plan to go anywhere this time for holiday. More likely, hubby will do some works and finishing his homework at home. Kids will have some fun later after finishing some school projects. Big A has been asking to learn how to sew. I think I will give her some basic lesson about that. She is a big girl now. At least she has to know how to sew a button. Yesterday, kids were taking their lunch from school catering so I didn't prepare any bento for them. Today, I made a sleeping pea boy with his polkadot blanket. Inside the box : sauteed thin slices pork & asparagus with teriyaki sauce, mini tamagoyaki, cherry tomatoes, and spicy tuna from last night dinner left over.

If you are following me on Twitter then you would know that I just bought some new food picks for bento. One of them is a candy set. I tried to use one of the candy picks for today's bento by making this candy bear. I used purple and yellow deco furi, nori, jelly ball, red paprika, and steam rice to make the bear. I didn't have time to take a picture of deco furi this morning but I will take the picture tomorrow and post it along with my new food picks and tomorrow's bento on the blog. Inside the box : stir fried chicken char siu & lap cheong, and stir fried cabbage & carrot with garlic oil. Since the cooking was about stir fry, cooking happened pretty quick this morning. And everything in the box can be eaten in a room temperature which I love most when I prepare bento for the kids. They still can enjoy their bento and no need to reheat because the school doesn't provide a microwave oven to reheat their lunch.

Weekend passed so fast and here comes Monday again. New week to start and hopefully everything will be going smoothly this week. I wish the same for all of you. A simple and quick bento for Monday which I almost let it plain without any decorations because I didn't have any ideas. Then after I finished cooking, I remembered that I still had some yellow & green deco furi. So I quickly opened the package, mixed it with the rice and made simple lemon & lime boys to decorate kids' bento. The face parts were from nori, red paprika, and jelly ball. Hair was from cabbage. Inside the box : sauteed chicken, red paprika omelet, and jackfruit curry. I put some strawberries in a separate box in the fridge last night that I forgot to take out and put them inside the bento bag. Oh well! Kids can have them later after school :)

Kids are celebrating Independence Day at school today, so no lesson for today. They will just have fun to join different competitions. I can't wait to hear kids' story about the competitions later on in the car. Two days ago, I was told that the pot luck lunch for each class had been cancelled which means I need to prepare bento for today's lunch because the kids will go home at 2PM. I made a little duck swimming with its red swimming ring just to get cooling down a bit from the hot weather. I used yellow egg sheet to make the little duck, red parts were from red paprika, orange part was from carrot, and the wave was made of thin white egg sheet that I teared it up and made it looks like wave. It didn't look so convincing, the wave part I meant but I was happy with it. Inside the box : SPAM cooked with mushroom and carmelized onions, tamagoyaki, and stir fry green bean with red paprika. Happy Friday everyone! Wish everyone a wonderful weekend ahead :)

I must be hallucinating this morning. I thought I heard the sound of the rain outside but it actually was nothing coming down from the sky. No rain at all this week, and we are all longing for the rain. Hope the dry season will be over soon. My kids are now bringing a big 1L water bottle to the school to avoid dehydration. Every time I pick them up, I bring extra bottles for them to drink in the car. Some of their classmates have been down with sore throat, cough, and flu. I kept telling the kids to drink a lot of water between the lessons. Kids are allowed to put the bottle on their table, so they can drink anytime they want without asking permission to the teacher. I promised to Little A to make Pokemon bento this week so I made one this morning, a Pokemon's character called Minccino or also known as Chillarmy. I saw it from kids' Pokemon book and looked pretty easy to make. I used rice ball, nori, fish ball, and red paprika to make this character. Inside the box : asam chicken (you can find the recipe here), cherry tomato, cucumber, and stir fry Chinese spinach sprinkled with sesame seeds.

Tomorrow is a pubic holiday to celebrate Indonesian Independence Day. I made today's bento to match the theme for the Independence Day, a boy with a party hat and the red & white flags which are the colors for Indonesian flag. Inside the box : Indonesian yellow/tamarind rice, stir fry green bean with corn, shredded sunny side up egg, and sweet chili sesame prawns. Usually in our neighborhood, we have some competitions for the kids and also for the adults. I don't know about this year because I have not received any notification regarding the event. Probably because this week is still in the fasting month, anyway ... we are planning to eat out and watch a movie tomorrow. Will be back to make bento again on Thursday. Happy Independence Day!!

Hope everyone had a good weekend! We had a very relaxing weekend at home. Hubby's dental surgery went well on Friday morning and now is recovering very well. I'm back to 100% me and Big A who had cough on Friday is getting better after taking a lot of rest on the weekend. So everyone seems to be back in a good shape. Monday bento is panda bento. I tried to use nori for the ears and eyes but my nori started to shrink quickly that I had to replace them with brown egg sheet (mixed dark soy sauce with egg). Little A originally asked for Pokemon bento but I told him that he could have it this week but not on Monday. I will need to look at their Pokemon books to find some inspirations for the Pokemon bento. Inside the box : braised five-spice chicken and potato, sauteed tofu and egg, rice. Fruits in separate box (not featured in this picture).

This week is definitely a tough week for me. I have been feeling unwell from Monday, so I didn't make any bento for the kids. That's why no update for my blog in the past couple of days. They just had lunch from the school catering. I felt better yesterday and tried to sleep earlier because I promised the kids to prepare bento for them. This morning woke up with a sore body (again) and just prepared a simple fried rice bento for them. So many things happened in my life this week. My mom's leg was hurt a lot this week so I asked her to check up at the hospital. She has diabetes and she has got accidents twice that broke her leg before. Now, she needs to go to treatment three times for her bones. Hopefully after the treatments all the pains in her leg will go away soon. Hubby will have dental surgery tomorrow morning for his wisdom tooth removal. He is a bit worry about the surgery so I will accompany him tomorrow. Pray that everything will go smoothly for him. Big A will have a longer school day until 3PM on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. And the new regulation from the school that I just received yesterday required every students to take at least one of the extra-curricular activities provided by the school. Big A decided to go to ballet class on Wednesday and Little A will join the chess club on Friday after school hours.

I don't need to introduce the character in today's bento. I believe all of you already know it. Yes, it's the Pig King from the Angry Birds game. I'm not much of a game person. I do play this game on my iPad but mostly my kids played it and finished all the levels. My girl specifically said that she didn't want any 'green rice' on her bento. So back to egg sheet to make this character. I used food picks for the crowns. A quick way to finish this character. Inside the box : chili tamagoyaki, rice, five spice pork mini burger, stir fry bok choy & tofu, and longans.

This week is a crazy week. Kids' homework and projects are queuing up to be handed. I actually want the kids especially Little A to do his project on his own. But the project itself sometimes needs supervision by the parents. So I ended up cutting, printing, gluing etc. for Little A to finish his projects. In term of time management, Little A can't do it very well yet. He seems to lost track which homework or projects to be handed first. Lucky I don't have to assist Big A too much now. Otherwise I will faint LOL :D

Kids had 2 days school break for the first two days of the fasting month. My kids' school didn't have any break for the beginning of the fasting month before. This year is the first time they have it. Before I forgot, to all my Moslem blogger friends / readers, I would like to say Happy Ramadhan! Hope your fasting will go smoothly during this fasting month. May God bless all of you!

Today's bento was actually yesterday's bento for Little A. Big A has a group school project and this time she had to do the project at her friend's house from 9AM-1PM. I made this bento, because Little A came with me to drop Big A and went to grocery shopping. I was a bit worry that he would feel hungry because we had late lunch after picking up Big A. So I tried to put everything in the box some foods that were easy for him to eat in the car. Inside the box : rice wrapped in egg crepes, tiny pork sausages with cucumber, stir fry veggies (carrot, daikon, mushroom). Today, no bento making in my kitchen. I just arranged school catering for the kids as they requested. So will make bento again tomorrow :)