In Other News

Hi everyone! Some fun things that I want to share that are bento related:

First - Asfora at Bento Box invited me to do a guest post on her blog a week or so ago. (Thank you, thank you Asfora, that was soooo sweet!! ) Here is the link, please go have a look and see her lovely site! http://blog.bento-box.org.uk/538/guest-post-from-bento-anarchy/

Second - I entered a bento in the Japan Society's awesome Virtual Bento Battle recently. Wait til you see the incredible bentos that were entered!!!! Here is the link to their flickr page, you absolutely have to go and see! http://www.flickr.com/photos/japansocietynyc/sets/72157623727695610/

Third - At the end of May I will be attending Fanime Con in San Jose, CA!

I had intended to get all of this information up a while ago, but I just didn't have the time. My schedule right now is crazy busy and I'm so completely backlogged on everything (except the laundry -that actually got done, lol) . Summer should slow things down a bit and allow me to do more bento stuff and I hopefully will have time to even post things on all the wonderful blogs that I follow and even on Flickr.

Thank you so much to everyone who comments on my blog posts, I apologize for taking so long to reply! But I appreciate your comments so much, they uplift my spirit and make me very happy :)

Batman!

My little girl is crazy about Batman. She'd never seen any videos of Batman before this Christmas. But some of her best friends in the world were huge batman fans. So the hero of Gotham has been slowly but surely making more and more of an appearance in our humble home. Santa brought her the video and the game that she wanted. (she only gets to play Lego Batman with her dad because I simply cannot figure the derned thing out!) And now he's sneaking into her bentos :)

This bento features miniature frozen pancakes with a chocolate icing batman shape on the top one. Inside the little monkey face container is more icing for the other pancakes. There is one soy-sausage link cut interestingly. Two 'bombs' made from tater tots, pretzel sticks and nori are snuggled up to the bat symbol. The two colored mochi slice looks really pretty! Also some steamed broccoli, cheese blocks and a baby tomato.

To make the batman symbol I used a technique that I usually use with henna. I took a triangle of cellophane paper and rolled it into a small tube shape that would fit into the palm of my hand, then I taped the outside edge. Next I filled it up with icing, rolled over the wide end to close it off with more tape. Then I snipped off the pointy end a tiny bit and started squeezing the icing out. first the outline and then filling in the center. It's the same technique as cake icing (so my friend, Jen, who makes cakes tells me) just on a much smaller scale.

The slice of mochi was apparently suspicious and she wouldn't eat it to save the world. It was sooo funny. Normally she gobbles mochi up but because this wasn't a whole one, she wouldn't touch it. That's okay, I got to eat it when she brought it home!

Stripey Heart bento bag

It's been a while since I did a post with a bento craft. This one is a matching set with a bento bag and band. I was getting fed up with the bento bags that we had for while they were nice and easy to use, they were for adult sized bento boxes. They left enough room for my daughter's small toddler boxes to slip and slide instead of being carried securely. So we went to the fabric store and she picked out the fabric that she wanted which got transformed into the bag and band!

For the drawstring I took some extra cotton yarn that I had left over from her baby sweater (I finished the sweater a few months after she was born and I was so glad to finally have found a use for the yarn!) that is braided and then just knotted on the ends. The hearts are felt and hand sewn onto the bag and band. Inside the cute stripey band is strong elastic.

It was such a hit that she has already asked to purchase more fabric and requested a kitty face on the next one! The bag fits her smaller bentos very securely and I'm very pleased with how well it works.