Bento: Charaben!

With baby's first birthday coming up, I wanted to give something to her first classmates (she goes to a weekly 'Sing and Sign Language' classes since March for the past 12 weeks) to mark the occasion of her first birthday. At first I thought a pretty cupcake of a sort. Then it got me thinking how my baby can't have it (not for a few years at least) and I feel bad if I'm feeding my kid sugar, and equally if I'm feeding other peoples kids sugar. Empty nutrients kind of thing when they are at the stage of needing the good stuff for their development, ok enough of that,it's just me, new mom syndrome...

And that's when it struck me to make bentos for them! Last time I made bentos was when I was in my first trimester, every time I look at the pictures of those bentos I made, I remembered how sick I was all day, I didn't have morning sickness, I had all day sickness!

I did research on kids bentos and preschoolers bentos, what they eat, how to make character bentos and looking at hundreds and hundreds of pictures of bentos.

I laid out a plan and did a sketch of what I would put into the bento. I made a test bento the day before, as I wanted to make them fresh for the actual thing and I needed to know how long it would take me to do them.

What I didn't anticipate on was the time it took to make them all, I thought I had simplified the design, the preparation took ages, but once the items were all ready, it was just a matter of putting them together.

Pretty satisfied how they turned out, cute, colourful and healthy. The only thing processed was probably the bread and that was wholemeal.

I don't know if each child we gave them out to enjoyed it, the mommies were impressed. Dropped one off to dear husband, who showed it to his colleagues and they can't believe it was edible, baby and I shared one together. It was interesting making them, but it won't be something I'll be repeating anytime soon.

More pictures can be seen here.