Valentine's Day!

Valentine's Day is here! Sure, it's supposed to be all about the people that you love and stuff. But in this house it's all about the chocolate. I normally do not like chocolate. In fact I tend to avoid it with fervor which causes A-chan no end of grief since she can't understand why I don't like it the way she does. Homemade chocolates made to my specific secret recipe, however, are totally irresistible to me.

We ended our preparations for today's chocolate fest yesterday evening after a full day of playing with chocolate. A-chan made chocolate butterflies in 3 different colors for all her friends using a nifty silicone mold. We also have chocolates with coconut white chocolate filling, chocolates with almonds inside, plain chocolates and for the first time I tried doing some chocolate painting! See the two hearts in the little blue container to the left of the bento? The best of my chocolate painting efforts :) It was a lot like henna and very much fun to do! A-chan consented to eat some of the coconut filled chocolates that I made. And she *gasp* even liked them!

In the bento: Three heart shaped sandwiches with peanut butter and sugar sprinkles (one is red and one is pink, I don't know if it's possible to tell the difference in the picture), three pieces of fried tofu with a lemon wedge, steamed broccoli, carrot flowers, plum slices and a blackberry. In the far right corner is another of the candies we made yesterday, white chocolate and coconut underneath with a coating of pink chocolate on top and colorful sprinkles.

The chocolate painting was once again inspired by Lia Chen. She gave a wonderful tutorial on her blog, www.mybentolicious.com!! I had no idea that such an artform existed until she started showing us her wonderful paintings. This year I stayed with very simple heart designs but I would like to try something more challenging next year.

Behind the chocolate hearts is one of A-chan's handmade valentine's for her schoolmates. I tied the bows for her but otherwise she did it all by herself and made 40 of them! The heart on top she cut out of fabric, the light green sheet has a decorative border that she cut with my special scissors and on the dark green paper is written her message and a drawing. She also made the chocolate butterflies, put them in bags, put stickers on the bags and tied them closed!! I am sooooo proud of her for doing all that work!

I've typed the word chocolate so many times now that it's starting to look weird to me, lol. I should stop now.