Easy Halloween Mummy Bento

It's Halloween time again! The leadup to All Hallow's Eve is so much fun, with All Halloween Everything, including some great bento! This one was pretty simple to do, I used a gingerbread man cookie cutter to cut out the shape of the 'Mummy', nestled him on a bed of fried rice and then used strips of cheese as his bandages and cheese for the mouth. His eyes are raisins and the ghost is made from cheese and raisins, floating on top of some celery sticks! The Jack O' Lantern is half an orange, with the face coloured using a food marker. 

C1 was really excited, because he loves all things Halloween (especially the candy!). This year he's decided he wants to be Snake Eyes from GI Joe and C2 is going to be Storm Shadow. I guess I'll have to start making ninja bento!

Are you excited for Halloween? I'm more excited about the month leading up to it, because of all the fun bento, crafts, makeup and nail art :)

Quick n Easy Domo Bento

Today's post is going to be a quickie... Can you tell I need to go grocery shopping?? Actually, this is yesterday's lunch, today we REALLY had no groceries so I sent him to school with a lunchable and a banana =_= No, I'm not going to be posting pictures of that! Anyway, Domo is a really easy and quick character to do when you don't have a lot of ingredients on hand. All you need is bread, lunchmeat and cheese! This Domo sandwich was made with rye bread, chicken bologna for the mouth and white cheese for the teeth. The eyes are nori, but you could use black olives, raisins or a black food marker. For sides, he has cucumber slices, bologna flowers cut with a vegetable cutter from Daiso, fresh, whole strawberries and some honey bunches of oats with dried strawberries as a snack. I'm planning a Costco trip tomorrow, so Monday I'll be stocked up with bento ingredients!

Have a great weekend!

Rocket and Stars Pasta Bento

We had some leftover pasta, so I thought C1 would like some in his lunch! Topped with a freehand cut chicken bologna rocket and cheese flames and stars, it was quick and easy and still looks super cute. I used a star shaped vegetable cutter from Daiso for the cheese and cucumber stars and the strawberries are supposed to be red mars rocks with friendly alien picks. The rocket's details are nori (seaweed sheet) cut with food scissors.

I've done a variation on the rocket theme before as it's something really quick and easy. Just use a sharp, small knife and it'll slice through the bologna like butter. Be careful with your rocket shape though, I had made the rocket fins a bit bigger on my first attempt.. and lets just say it didn't quite look like what I intended......

A quick tip: to stop everything sliding around or sticking to the lid, use a cloth napkin folded and placed between the food and the lid.

An Easy Angry Birds Bento

I know, everyone and their mother are doing Angry Birds bentos. What can I say, my son has also succumbed to the Angry Birds craze and pestered me to make him an Angry Birds lunch. I pinned a few that I found and then set to work, trying to find the easiest way to make the characters. This is what I came up with! The pig is made from half an apple, two grape ears, cheese and nori (edible seaweed) eyes and apple skin nose. He is 'sandwiched' (see what I did there...) between chicken and cheese sandwich 'blocks'. The red bird is made from a babybel cheese, the white bird is made from a hard boiled egg. The details are white cheese, nori and cheddar cheese and I added some cucumber sticks for greenery, since I ran out of lettuce. This was super easy to do, except for the tiny little nori circles! You can probably tell... since they didn't turn out very 'circle' like -_-;; I think using a black food marker or black sesame seeds would be MUCH easier, so definitely do that unless you have a nori cutter/punch.

I'll definitely do this again, but change up the way I do the eyes/nostrils. Also, just a tip... it's probably obvious, but I did it so there may be some people that make the same mistake: don't put cheese on a freshly boiled egg.... because it will melt. Yes, I did that =_=;;

My 5 year old (lets call him C1) was overjoyed when he saw his cool Angry Birds lunch :D Mission accomplished.

Hot Dog Race Car Bento

Hello! For my first post I decided to make something I knew my 5 year old would absolutely LOVE - a Hot Dog Race Car bento. We had a bunch of hot dogs and buns left from a Labor Day BBQ, so I decided to make the hot dogs into little cars. I cut a small rectangle out of the middle of the hot dog, cutting about a quarter of the way in, and then cut baby cucumber slices and stuck them on with picks to make wheels. In hindsight, I would probably make the cucumber slices thicker next time, since the thin slices didn't hold their shape as well. I put an animal pick in the middle of the rectangle cutout as the driver, so cute! For side dishes, I used carrot chips, a slice of baby cucumber and some strips of nori to make a flaming wheel and sliced up a couple of strawberries. I used car shaped silicone cups to hold them in :)

The lunchbox I used is a divided container from the dollar store! It came in a 2 pack for 99c, such a steal. Hot dogs aren't exactly the healthiest lunch, but once in a while is ok and I made sure he had fruit and vegetables as well. You could probably make a healthier version using whole wheat buns, brown rice, veggie dogs etc.

Hope you liked my first bento for boys, looking forward to posting many more!