Monster High Party

Honey decided she wanted to celebrate her 5th birthday Monster High style! Originally I was happy and excited to be able to go to my local department store and just buy one of everything in the party section for the Monster High brand, but turns out they're not as popular as they once were and most of the goodies were discontinued and no longer available :(. So I hit up google and pinterest to find all sorts of lovelies and got to work customising them to make her day that little extra special.

We made photo booth masks from here and here

We played pin the bow on the skull based on this image

And I made food tents from the fan art from here and cupcake wrappers from here

Activity wise we had nail art (of course featuring my favourite Jamberry lacquers

A colouring station

A tatto station

And a card making station

The cake was the same mix as the patty cakes/zombie cakes, which also made an appearance at Kindy this past week. My first ever attempt at a marble and now I know I need to marble more ;-)

 Happy 5th birthday my little Honey Bee!!!

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Yummy Kawaii Bento Review

Have you heard? One of my absolute favourite Bento Bloggers, Bento Monsters has released a book! I love Li's beautiful Bento style and have been a fan of her charaben works since I first discovered her. This is the lady who inspired me to use my wooden chopping board as a background for most of my lunches now. It cam from the crisp clean look of the photography on her blog, not to mention how fresh she makes everything look!

Li spent near on a year working on this incredible beginners Charaben Bento book. And the work has certainly paid off! Chock full of meal designs for all sort of serving ware (plates, bowls and various boxes) as well as recipes so you can complete the dish. The introductory section of the book is almost 20 pages long and covers everything from Bento tools & boxes through to creation and packing techniques. My favourite is the rice colouring guide!

 I decided to try my hand at Tamagoyaki. And Honey decided to help!

 You can never mix your eggs too much!

 I didn't have any Mirin or a Tamagoyaki pan so made do with what I had.

 I also couldn't find my sushi mat, but had this mini sized one tucked away.

Quite happy with my first attempt!

 I ended up making three 'layers' due to the size of my pan but I think they worked just fine!

 Then I decided to wrap them in ham and decorate as piggies just like one of the Charaben lunch boxes featured in Yummy Kawaii Bento.

I didn't hunt through all my tools to find the exact ones used in the book, opting instead for what was on top! Admittedly not quite as cute as in the book, but pretty darn close!

Then Miss M had a quick look through and asked for the clown lunch. I'm sure it was just so she could use my Mummy lunchbox, although the cherry tomato nose was also a big draw card.

But she wasn't happy when I told her the 'hair' was scrambled egg. It didn't take her long to let me know that she would be happy with scrambled egg whites instead. 'Just so long as there's no yolk, Mummy! And maybe you could colour it. . . like icing!!'

 So I tried! I mixed some food colouring into an egg white and microwaved in 20 second blasts until I was happy with the consistency.

After it cooled I added it to the sandwich. I was worried the egg might make the sandwich a little soggy so I added a ham 'skull cap' to act as a barrier between them.

I carved some apple in checks as are featured in the book, but decided to do one with stripes like a circus tent which I placed on top. I also included some strawberry hearts, again featured throughout the book.

Overall I've got to say this is a brilliant Bento book and I can see lots of the ideas, techniques and recipes being put to good use! There are lots of lovely simple yet amazing ideas like this scrambled egg clown that are so easy to replicate. A great book for beginners through to  advanced Bento Makers!


Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.

~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches & Bento Monsters who generously provided me with an e-copy of their book. All opinions expressed are my own, based on my personal experience with the product. This post may contain affiliate links.

Hiding Tiger Lunch

 One of Miss M's reading books at prep was 'Hiding' with various animals hiding in the tall dry grass. So I made her a 'Hiding' lunch :-)

Cherry tomatoes hiding under some beetroot, passionfruit hiding in her yoghurt, her tiger sandwich hiding (not very well) in some pretzel grass. For brain break she had strawberries, with green & gold kiwi fruit and milk in her Juice in the Box.

 Honey had the same but different. Her yoghurt was in a pouch

Honey helped to make the lunches and seemed to really go for the Vegemite while I was making Miss M's so I tried one layer of her sandwich as Vegemite. Guess which layer came home >.< Seems she just likes it straight from the jar *sigh*.

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.

~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on my personal experience with the product. This post may contain affiliate links.

More Minions

Have you seen the new Minion movie? We are hoping to make it to the cinema while Miss M is on holidays but the days are filling up fast!

I'm back at work now and last week there was a late notice bring a plate morning tea. Rather than trying to bake with two tired munchkins we decided to make Minion Jelly instead! That was the inspiration for their lunches the next day.

I just happened to have some dinner rolls and I wanted to make a dinner roll Minion for the last lunch I made. This one is topped with nori and some mini marshmallows coloured with FooDoodlers. There's also a quickie cheese art to top her 'back up' sandwich ;-)

A golden kiwi fruit.

Minion coloured popcorn.

Miss M had her Minion jelly in a Sinchies food pouch and milk in her Juice in the Box. All this packed into her giant Nude Food Mover Lunch Pack.

I couldn't let Honey go without joining in the fun too. She's got milk in her Juice in the Box too, yoghurt and jelly in the snack pods.

The blue hadn't really set and I didn't let the yellow cool enough to get a nice clean line between the two, but no one seemed to mind :-)

More Minion popcorn and a pear for snacks.

Some mini pies and sauce in the container for lunch. Ham, cheese and FooDoodler details.

Do you like the look of those Juice in the Box drink containers? Stay tuned for more details including a review and giveaway launching this weekend!

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.

~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on my personal experience with the product. This post may contain affiliate links.