Bento Party on Sep 6

Finally, the long awaited Bento Party has come and gone. It was hosted by Bentopet and Emily. Venue: Onsen, a Japanese restaurant near Palm Spring Apartments in Kota Damansara. It was a small party of 25 ladies. Each received a fabulous goodie bag. Thanks, Sue from Cooking Momster, who contributed some of the items. There are a selection of cookbooks, Hershey's cake mix, popcorn, cookie cutter, sausage shaper, mints, a bento box (not shown here) and even beauty products. (By the way, the pink mini onigiri mould is from Emily. She gave one to my sis, biblo, and I very thicked skin asked her for one too. So cute- mini onigiri is just the perfect size for kiddos. Thanks Emily!) .Bentopet started the party with a very professional talk on bento, with powerpoint slide and everything. Emily followed with an advocation to go green through bento. Good speech, ladies! After that was an ice-breaker, introduction by each participant. It was good to finally put a face to the blogs that I've been following. As expected, there were many fans of bentopet and allthingspurple there. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to chat to Christene as she had to leave early.

Lunch was a buffet spread of Japanese food, with chicken karaage, mixed tempura, mixed maki, crabstick salad and cupcakes, the later provided by SuYin. See bentopet's update on the party for pics of the wonderful cupcakes.
Both the above photos were copied from Yatie's blog.
But before we were allowed to eat, we were put to work first. Hehehe.... we had to pack the food into our provided bento box and the best presentation will get a prize. There are two categories - with accessories (which you were supposed to bring along) and non-accessories. Such an interesting concept, huh? This was my first attempt, a grown up bento. I brought along the lettuce as dividers.

After my sis took hers to be photographed, I realised that the cupcake was part of the presentation. I had taken a cute teddy bear to bring back for the kiddos, which did not match my bento at all. So out came the cute bento dividers, picks and Hello Kitty sauce bottle. Between my sis and I, also brought along some 'more' grownup silicon cups, dividers and sauce bottle, but the sis ended up going for the 'non-accessories' category. My final presentation was a very kiddy one. Well, I am blogging about kids bentos.

After lunch, we get to purchase bento supplies by the 100 yen shop..... all at RM4.90 each. My sis and I bought a big bagful each. Nothing compared to Emily with 3 big bags and 1 box. It was a good thing she had her daughters and sister on hand to help her carry her stuff. Maybe that's why she brought them along? hehe.....Here's another pic from Yatie....

On hind sight, I didn't buy a lot. Here's a pink set - two-tiered box, one-tiered click box, dividers, square sandwich box (bigger pic below), matching belt and bag. Bought extra belts as light pink gets unbelievably dirty by 6-yr olds.

The sandwich box turned out to be collapsible..... cool huh? This was one item that was completely sold out at the party.
Also bought a black bento box and matching dark brown belts for d'hubby, if and when I pack breakfast/snack for him. Also bought the blue and maroon because I already bought the bags (at the bottom) earlier on without the boxes.
This beige two-tier bento box was part of the goodie bag. I bought a beige striped belt and bag to match it. That'll be my bento box if and when I pack bento for myself.

And finally, blue and pink clickety boxed, for presents, and a dumpling mould, if I ever get around to making dumplings.... hehe..... There were also other things that Bentopet sourced, some from Daiso such as silicon cups, sauce bottles etc and some cutesy bento boxes eg. Doraemon and Hello Kitty. I had wanted to buy the Hello Kitty box, but thought not be kiasu and wait until after lunch. Of course, what I wanted were all booked and sold out by then.

The good news was that I got the prize for best presentation with accessories. Thank you. This was what I got!
Wasn't that a fabulous bag? And the contents were egg moulds and the cutest animal dividers. Thanks again.

Sorry, I didn't get the name of the person who won the non-accessories category, who incidentally also won the lucky draw. How lucky was that? And Kelly, from Kel's place, also received her prize from Bentopet's 100th bento competition.

Thank you very much, Bentopet and Emily, for the very enjoyable and well organized Bento Party. Looking forward to the next meet up.

Edit : For more photos, check Hijack Queen's blog.