trays
I couldn't resist when we saw these trays at pottery barn kids a few weekends ago, especially since they were on sale for $6 each. We got 4 of the orange color. I was good and didn't get the little matching spoons and forks and plastic-cups-that-fit-just-right-into-the-tray's-circular-dent. You can do all sorts of fun things with them:
Classic American school lunch, complete with spork
Japanese bento
Or maybe a big bunch of Korean panjan. Or candy. Yum.
There's just something I really like about having compartments for each type of food and being able taste a variety of little things -- bentos, high teas, and tapas are all things I really enjoy.
When I was a kid, we had this book called Bread and Jam for Frances. It was about a little girl badger that refused to eat anything but bread and jam for a good while, but eventually finds her appetite again. The lunch box spread her mom made for her at the end always sounded so tasty. I still remember: she had a little vase with a flower she'd put on her desk, a doily to spread her meal on, then a hard boiled egg that she dipped into something, some soup she poured out of a thermos, um... maybe a sandwich? And my favorite part was how she would take one bite of each item at a time, enjoying the different flavors, until everything was gone.
Randomness follows.
Where I found all those bits of food: maguro,
chawanmushi, perilla, shimeji, lotus root, chopsticks, mac and cheese, milk, salisbury steak, green beans, cupcakes
While hunting around for hot dog octopuses, I also found a lot of crazy bentos.
little black dress 06
Here's a dramatization of the before and after of the seriously marked-down dress ($20!) I altered for the holiday parties.
Photoshop is lots of fun.
(I stole and modified the legs from urban outfitters.)
bunny gingerbread house
Steve and I went to a birthday party with a gingerbread house contest. Lots of fun, and surprisingly we won! (There were a lot of funny and good houses there).
Our contribution to the candy stockpile was modeling chocolate (just like clay! but it's chocolate!). The bunnies are all made of that, and to get an idea for size, the rudolph bunny on the roof has a red nerd as his nose.
modeling chocolate recipe (cobbled from the web)
10 oz. white or normal chocolate
1/3 cups of corn syrup
- wash your hands
- break up the chocolate and melt in microwave
- zap it a minute at a time and stir until smooth
- mix in corn syrup, it will be hard to stir after a bit
- spread out on wax paper, and let it set a few hours (it sets faster if you put it in the fridge)
- play!
Notes:
- Don't use Hershey's bar chocolate. Evil pools of grease!
- Some websites say not to use chocolate chips, but for the white modeling chocolate, we used chips. And it was fine.
- Work quickly with the modeling chocolate b/c it will get mushy with the heat from your hands. When that happens, put it down, and after a few minutes, it'll set up enough to play with again.