Lovie Dovie Bento :)

Ahmetia is grocery shopping as I type this, so this bento represents the last of the bread, the macaroni salad, the tuna, the clementines and the red pepper :o  Thank goodness she's shopping :)

I didn't want to do the same bunny, bear and flower sammies or the flower I did the other day, so today's has a heart shaped sandwich and a triangle from the rest of the bread.

I put the macaroni salad in first then the sammies, using baran food dividers to keep any tuna from getting on the other foods. 

I then queezed in the Valentine's cupcake cup and filled it with the chex mix, then added the clementine wedges and the veggies as I cut them up.  I didn't want too much baby carrot since I already had plenty of orange in the bento.

It took some rummaging around the kitchen and fridge to come up with first the wasabi almonds and then the smoked Gouda to fill in around the heart shaped sandwich.  I specifically chose a smaller bento box knowing

that I only had a little macaroni salad left etc.

The sammies looked so plain, so I grabbed a slice of cheese (poor Rob was stuck w/ fat free since that's what I had...) and used the bear sandwich cutter to make a cute little cheese bear to plop on top of the triangle shaped sammie (I think this is the same one used by Pikko for her breakfast bento for her TV appearance the other day - her awesome blog can be seen at http://adventuresinbentomaking.com/).

At first, I was going to just cut a smaller heart to place on top of the heart sammie, but then saw my letter cutters and decided to do our initials like you'd see carved in a tree :)  Last, I added the nori accents and was finally done!

This fairly simple bento ended up taking me probably 45 minutes just because I didn't really have a plan (though I rarely do) and was low on so much. 

Tomorrow's bento will likely once again have a leafy green salad - at least the low groceries forced me to do something different for a few days :)

On another note, someone I went to High School with who I reconnected with on FB has a daughter who also loves all things Japanese.  A while back I sent her a package of bento goodies.  Anyway, she just did a Social Studies project on Bento and won first place! 

Congrats to Kaylin!! :)

The girls had their first day back to classes yesterday, which happens to be their long day between the 2 of them, so they each packed themselves bento for yesterday.

I'll start with Kat since she does them more often and has been doing them the longest.  She has a lunch and a dinner bento.

Here she has an onigiri decorated with Pink Denbu, egg flowers and pea pod - This onigiri is from the Kawaii Bento Boxes: Cute and Convenient Japanese Meals on the Go.

Also in the tier are 2 quail eggs, Octodogs and shitake mushrooms.

In the bottom tier she has edamamme, bean sprout namul baby carrots, grape tomatoes and soy sauce in the bottle.  The namul recipe (for both the bean sprouts and spinach) is from Personal Trainer: Cooking for Nintendo DS.  I think she uses this more than any actual games - lol.

For dinner she had a sabboro bento.  Over the rice, she has Pink Denbu, Egg and Shitake mushrooms with some of the pretty kamaboko slices.  Then in the bottom tier she has edamame, kimchi and daikon salad.  There's soy sauce in the bottle for her sabboro.

Now for Ahmetia's bento.  She packed one large bento for lunch and dinner and still brought some back home.

In the first tier, she has rice noodles topped with a veggie stirfry.  In the second tier she has peppermint bark, broccoli and cauliflower and pierogies.  She needs to work on the photography :o

whew! that was a long one!

Happy Bento-ing!