Babylet's Activities

Here are some activities that Babylet and I do at home.

Painting with Magic Painting book. Just apply water and the colour appears.
Do not disturb - Artist hard at work. Babylet in intense concentration.

Practising fine motor skill with scissors and punchers, colouring, and pasting work.

Here, I put bento tools to good use. *_* Helped Babylet as she was not strong enough to press the puncher. But she cut out the grass herself with a scissor, and paste all the cutouts onto the picture. Also insisted to colour the girl's hair green. Hmm.... she'd better not dye her hair green when she's older.
Babylet with her weapon of choice - glue stick.

Creative play with Sand.

Couldn't resist adding Boylet's pic too. He's so skinny now compared to the two girls that you can count his rib bones.

New Stock at 100Yen Kuchai Lama & Taman Desa @ 6 May 2009

Emily texted me about the new arrival at Kuchai Lama on May 5. Needing a break from stressing over Girlet's first exam, I went the next morn. The retail therapy helped, and I swung by Taman Desa's branch after, and they were unpacking new stock too - pretty much the same stock as Kuchai Lama. So here are the pics. (To see an enlarged pic, just click on the pic itself)


Alphabet & Numbers cutters, punchers & small containers. I took the last number cutter in Kuchai Lama, but there are more in Tmn Desa. If you don't have alphabet cutters, this is a very good & cheap buy!! I've already have a set, so I called my sis to persuade her to get them. *_*


New picks!!! Girlet adores the ribbon, crown & hat picks (2nd pic from left). Just imagine quail eggs' faces with a crown - sounds cute!

Tomotomo bento boxes. My young kids prefer boxes with snap handles, easier to manage than bento belts.

Matching belts and bags for the Tomotomo bento boxes.

Character hangers. Babylet 'forced' me to buy the Minnie Mouse hanger for her.

Happy Shopping!!!

Bento # 134 - Cheesy Baked Pasta

Thanks everyone for your prayers and good wishes for baby Amelia. So far, reports are well. She had a hole in the heart, but it mended by itself (Praise God!). Have yet to check her eyesight and hearing. She has opened her eyes, so we are hopeful.

Anyway, I'm taking a break from studying, erm, helping Girlet revise for exam to post outstanding bentos. It was an easy bento from (yup, still) Feb. The telltale item was the lunchsheets which expired early March.

This bento consisted of baked pasta (made individual portion while making dinner). I decorated the pasta with cutout cheese (obviously it would melt, which is all the better for the pasta). There were nuggets under the deepfried lotus root (which Girlet complained had turned limped by recess), grapes, cherry tomatoes and flower lunchsheets.

To my dear Janet who requested for the 'recipe'. Well, as usual, I don't have fixed recipe, just by estimation, and what's available. But this baked pasta is ridiculously easy to make.

1) Boil your fav pasta shape (I used shells here, but have used elbow macaroni and spirals).

2) Meanwhile brown some minced beef (I used a small pack of Aust Weight Watchers from supermkt) and chopped onions, then pour in a can of tomatoes, some water, a dash of oregano, salt & pepper to taste. Let simmer and thicken.

3) In an oven-safe dish, pour in half the cooked pasta, layered with half the meat sauce and plenty of cheese, then repeat the same layers.

4) Make (and later freeze) individual portions for bento.

5) Then dump into preheated oven for 20 - 30 mins (I used 180`C as my fan forced oven is rather hot). Use higher 190`C if yours is not.

Note: For cheese, I put cheddar & a little powdered parmesan in the middle, and topped with mozzarella as my kids love the cheese to be really gooey. But you can put in any processed cheese you like.

Easy-peasy and less work than fried rice!!

A Prayer for Baby Amelia

This is my niece Amelia born prematurely at 24 weeks 3 days. I'm thankful that she's receiving the best medical care in USA, and thank God that all her major organs are fine. Pray that she continues to do well, and ask everyone to pray along.

Look at that tiny foot!!

We love you, sweetie, and look forward to seeing you end of this year. Hopefully all round and plump by then.

I WON!! Thank you Javapot!!

Thanks Javapot for a fun challenge, and thanks to all who voted for me. While I didn't get the highest votes, a big thanks goes to Master Prince who gave me a good placing in the lucky draw, thus putting me in the first place in the challenge, as seen here.

Javapot was very efficient and personally hand delivered the prize right after posting the results on her blog. Here are the lovely prizes, pix taken from Javapot's blog.

I just love this bento set by Thermos. My first 'keep warm' set.
Many cute accessories, which got the kids very excited and happy.

And here are all the bento entries.

Edit: 4 months later - I found this languishing in the draft section, waiting for the pix. Am backdating this post, just to complete the blog. Yeah, I'm anal that way.

VOTE FOR ME - Javapot's Bento Challenge

This was my entry for Javapot's very interesting Bento Challenge - a self-descriptive bento for myself. I found this tough and scratched my head for 2 weeks before the dateline forced me into action. Nothing like a burst of adrenaline to get the creative juices flowing.

The bottom tier consisted of my all time favourite food, nasi lemak, which I moulded into a face, with sambal in the middle. I added nori details to represent yours truly. The hairstyle is something that I have been sporting my whole life, with bangs, to cover my wide forehead *_*.

Japanese and Korean food are my other favourites, represented by inarizushi topped with ebbiko and seaweed, and kimchi. Also can't live without meat, and wasn't impressed that I couldn't fit in more than 1 piece of chicken into this small box. This was how the bento looked like without embellishments.

Unfortunately I am currently trying to lose post baby weight - the question "how many months pregnant are you?" by complete strangers is getting to me!!! I am now more likely to be eating salad for lunch, as depicted in the top tier. The salad consisted of lettuce, red / yellow cherry tomatoes, raw carrots and pine nuts (another fav). Would have added capsicum if I had planned better and restocked the fridge. For the dressing, I used Sesame Seed dressing from Jusco, which was recommended by Bentopet. Thanks! It's super yummy.

Being a SAHM, my whole life revolves around my 3 kids, which I blogged about here. Hence this bento couldn't be complete without their presence. The three figures were cut out of fishcake (for faces, arms and wings). I hope everyone noticed that I even varied the sizes of the figures to match their real life sizes. I added some colour with kanikama (imitation crabstick) for the girls' dresses and eggsheet for the the boy's shirt. Fortunately, I called them angels. I had initially wanted to call them little monkeys, but didn't want to be 3lilmonkeys myself... hehe ..... otherwise would have ended up figuring how to make monkeys for this bento.

I also added some fun pasta shapes, with three types of flower pastas, and three figures, 1 boy and 2 girls, again for the 3 kiddos. Those who had been frequenting my blog would know that I'm a 'collector' of fun pasta. In fact, in my cupboard now, I have about 20 packs of pasta sourced from as far as Australia and USA. I admit to going a bit crazy there *_*. But am still buying whenever I come across new pasta shapes *incorrigible grin*.

The time taken to complete this bento is about 1 hour. I usually take 15 - 30 minutes, but for the purpose of this challenge, of course had to put in more effort and time *_*. The pasta was an afterthought, as was frying up the egg sheet for the boy's shirt, all adding to the prep time.

Thanks Heaps, Javapot, for organising this fun challenge and including me in the event. And everybody else, please go vote for me (No. 11) now at this link. Polls closes at 5pm (Malaysian time) on Wednesday, 22 April 2009. Thanks!!

And you can view all the other very beautiful shortlisted bentos here. Happy Bento-ing!!!

Bentos # 131 - 133

I made more bentos than I expected in Feb since I'm still unearthing unposted pics. How do I know these bentos were from Feb? Well.... each pic has a clue. Let's see who can guess the answer. *_*

Bento # 131 - Two sleepy brown bears made of ricepot chicken rice, with bite size chicken thigh meat stuffed inside. This was an easy bento. Skewered the grapes with picks, cut some sweet peas at an angle, and placed the fishball and strawberry as they were in the box. Had some place, so added in a piece of chicken for more protein. All in took less than 20 mins.

Bento #132 was even easier - fried rice with carrots, frenchbeans and egg, with two pieces of sweet n sour pork - all leftovers from previous night. Thought it was too plain, so made a mandarin orange man, surrounded with grapes. Fifteen mins including steaming time.

For Bento # 133, I attempted a flower garden again. This time white rice was moulded into a flower, with the side dish of sweet n sour fishcake in a tulip cup, and leaves from sweet snap peas. Added egg sheet flower and grapes for colour, and also to fill up the gaps. I believe this didn't take more than 20 mins, though I wish I could be faster with easy bentos like this.

(A hint : ChooiPeng's customers may find it easier to guess) *_*