Creepiest Bento Ever

Ellie told me it was a monster bento and she thought it was funny. It turned out drastically different than I expected it to! I like to call it the bearded lady....

Going Buggy!

The ladybug snack inspired this bento:



It was for my lunch, and very tasty, despite the subject matter. ;) The bugs are grapes split in two and sliced almost into quarters with raisins for heads. They are on a bed of chicken salad and spinach. Like I said, very tasty!

Lady Bug Snacks!

I asked Ellie if she wanted bananas for breakfast. She said NO.

I asked Ellie if she wanted apples for breakfast. She said NO.

I asked Ellie if she wanted ladybugs for breakfast. She said YES!

Here's what she got:



She loved it! (And ate it!)

Monkeyin' Around!

I was going for a rain forest theme here. =D This is my bento from the day I first tried rice balls. I flavored mine with a little sweet and sour sauce, though I found it caused them not to stick together as well. They have sesame seed centers. I have canadian bacon tree trunks with cute little animal food picks "climbing" up them. Spinach leaves line the bento boxes, and frozen peas provide filler and temperature control. =D The three little apple containers are filled with sauces - soy sauce, rice vinegar, and sesame oil. I broke apart my rice balls and mixed them in with the peas and spinach and then poured the sauces over top. It was super yummy that way!!

Frozen Bento

This little bento is a backup bento. It's like a frozen meal or tv dinner, only cute! I put it in a glass container so that I can pull it out of the freezer and microwave it. Of course, I will remove the strawberry butterfly and the sauce container before microwaving! I thought it was sort of a novel idea, though, and figured I'd give it a try. So... green bean grass, carrot flowers, and chicken nugget clouds. And, of course, a frozen strawberry butterfly and a marinara-filled sauce cup sunshine!

I'll let you know how it goes when I actually get around to microwaving and eating it. If it works, this might not be a bad thing to make up and keep on hand!

Spring Tweet

This is Eliana's lunch / afternoon snack bento from Saturday, the last day of February. Despite all the snow on the ground (and the snow hike we took to a frozen waterfall that day), I was getting ready for spring! So Ellie got a spring bento, and she liked it!



I used a new double decker bento for this one, which gave me two sections to work with. I like that! The bottom section is primarily vegetables, while the top held mostly fruits. Lots of green beans for grass, some carrot flowers, a couple fruit leather flowers (with my new picks!) and a container of ranch dip for her veggies. Of course, I'm pretty sure she just licked the ranch dip out and ater her veggies plain, but at least she ate them, or most of them anyway. The top portion had strawberries, as sort of a red flowery hedge, more carrot flowers to transition from the bottom to the top, and apple clouds/sky. Then I added a green bean branch and a little tofutti "cheese" bird (I used paprika and turmeric for the coloring) with a pine nut eye. All wrapped up it looked like this:



I have to admit that one of the things I like about the double decker bentos is being able to pack twice as much food, but only give her half of it at a time. That's what we did with this one. We gave her the veggie half to munch on in the car on the way home from hiking, and the fruit half once we got back home. It worked well! And it was a very nutritious lunch and snack for her!

A breakfast bento...

On Saturday I had an early (to me) morning aerial dance class to attend at 9am in Bozeman. Because I never eat breakfast if I have to get out the door in the morning (I don't purpose not to eat breakfast, I just usually forget about it until I'm in the car), I decided to plan ahead and make myself a little breakfast bento last Friday night. My bento supplies had just arrived, so I took the opportunity to play a little bit. I used my own new bento box, and borrowed Eliana's heart strap to go with the theme inside my bento...



That's the outside, and here's what I put in it...



Didn't it turn out cute?? It's very pink, and very heart-y. It would have made a great Valentine's bento. The bottom section held baked pancake hearts sprinkled with sugar (because I accidentally forgot to put the sugar in the batter - oops!) and fruit leather hearts. The top section had 3 silicone cups (pink, of course) filled with yummy stuff to complement the pancakes. The first, and lightest colored, was whipped cream. I remembered that we had heavy whipping cream in the fridge, so I couldn't resist making some up as a splurge. =D Guess this wasn't a "diet" bento... The second cup held strawberry yogurt. The third cup held pureed strawberries to dip my pancake hearts into. Of course, they were topped with a pink food divider (which also helped keep the cups from spilling) and fruit leather hearts.

As much as I liked how visually appealing this bento was, I have to say that it tasted even better. And it was fun to make something cute for myself instead of Eliana for once! I will definitely have to make myself bentos more often, especially if they are pretty, indulgent bentos like this one!

New Bento Supplies!!

I got some new bento supplies last week from IchibanKan. I'm very excited to use them in my bento making and especially excited at how cute (and inexpensive) the stuff I got is. Wanna see??

I got some new bento boxes for Eliana:


(just the bear box)


... and a new bento box for myself:


And some bento box straps:

(I love the little heart on this one!)


... and some utensils (that I know will fit in the lids of all of the bento boxes):



Some ADORABLE food picks:





Some cute sauce containers (and a little monkey spice shaker!):




Some rice molds...



some hard boiled egg molds:


... and some food dividers!


Lots of fun stuff!! New stuff makes for fun future bentos! (Actually, I've already played with some of it, so you can look forward to pictures of new bentos coming soon!)

Scrapblog

A while back I discovered scrapblog. I have found it to be an easy tool to use for making quick blog headers and digital scrapbooking projects. Free, easy to use... what's not to like?

I used scrapblog to make the header for this blog, and I really like it. I started with a template and changed some things up a bit, but I thought it really embodied the bento spirit. So there it is.

I also used scrapblog to make a little album of some of the bentos I've done. I'd like to add to this little album as I make more bentos (and archive my past ones), and maybe some day I'll print my own book of bentos. =D Maybe. We'll see.

So, even though it's in its early stages, here's my bento album from scrapblog. I didn't spend much time on it, but I did try to archive some of the bentos I've made Eliana this year. I'd like to go back and maybe add in the foods from each bento, but we'll see if that happens. For right now here's what it looks like...

Not quite sure what to call this one....

I think in my scrapblog I called it "Radioactive Men" - not because they were intended to be radioactive men, but because those cute juice heart ice cubes I put in the applesauce look like the radioactive symbol to me! Oh well... you win some, you lose some.

Anyway, this bento consists of appleasuce (with fruit juice heart ice cubes), carrots, peas, and cornbread men.

Owl always love you...

I couldn't resist the punny title! This is Eliana's bento from today. Nothing too fancy, super easy to put together. But I think it's so cute! Perhaps because I have a wee obsession with cute little owls... The silicone cups hold pasta and spaghetti sauce, topped with Tofutti and olives to make the owl eyes. The bottom is full of baby carrots and a few more olives, and the beak is a heart shaped pumpkin muffin.

There you have it. Easy peasy and cute to boot!

Circus Time!

This is a bento I made a week or two ago for Eliana. Ham elephants with fruit leather stars and hats, fruit leather circus tent flags, and a fruit spread heart on another fruit leather. Some frozen peas make up the floor of the circus tent, and the whole scene is resting atop a pile of mac and cheese underneath. Oh, and just for kicks I added some yellow sprinkles at the top of the tent. It just seemed like a fun idea. =D

When Dinosaurs Roamed the Earth...

This is Eliana's bento from yesterday... I wanted something cute, but simple since I didn't have a whole lot of time to put it together. The base of the bento (which you can't see) is celery and peanut butter, which just bumps everything else up since I don't yet have "real" bento boxes, so mine are a little deep. Then I cut two dinosaurs from a slice of high fiber and flax bread (using a super-easy sandwich cutter) and slathered them with Simply Fruit spread. I used a yellow silicone cup filled with whole wheat pasta and "cheese" (tofutti) with a tofutti sun (cut from the slices before I melted them into the mac and cheese) for decoration. I filled in the open spaces with peas and lunch was done! Not the fanciest bento ever, but it was quick and easy, and she liked it! Here's the proof....

(The sun was the first thing to go...)

(Then the dinosaurs...)

Eventually, all that was left of this little bento was two of the four celery sticks and a few scattered peas. Yay for empty bentos!

Well... Here we are again....

Once again I am starting a new blog. I am finding my new bento habit is taking over my child-rearing blog, so I think it's time it has a blog of its own. So... welcome to BENTO-RIFFIC!

I love all things crafty and creative, so I figure it was only time before my newest craft involved food (in a form other than baking, cupcakes, cake decorating, or candy making...) and when you have a 2 year old daughter like I do, it's just too hard not to get sucked into cute food!

So here I am. Sucked into the cute food world of bento. But I love it. And she loves it. So let's just embrace it, shall we?

I will work on posting some of my previous bentos over here, but for right now most of them are posted on Train Up A Child. I have some other bentos I haven't yet posted, but I suppose I will be posting them here when I finally get them up.

As a SAHM of a toddler who isn't in daycare or preschool, I don't make bentos every day. I think it would be fun to get to that point, but right now I only make them for special days or when we are going out. Now that it's starting to warm up, I'm hoping we'll be getting out more often. =D

Anyway.... enough of an introduction. I think this blog makes my addiction to Bento official, and my order of bento supplies will be arriving on Thursday, which will only fuel the fire. It'll be bento-riffic!