Bento & Furoshiki

Our oldest daughter is a vegetarian and her school cafeteria menu is far from vegetarian friendly. To further complicate matters, she dislikes most sandwiches, leftovers, and anything that is too cold, soggy, warm, etc. Carbs are her go to food, and snacking is her preferred way to consume food. After years of uneaten pb&j sandwiches returned home in her lunch, I went searching for an answer. I found it at Lunch In A Box, a blog about the Japanese bento. In a bento, a variety of foods are aesthetically arranged and packaged to be eaten on the go. I realized that lunch doesn't need to contain a sandwich, or even a main dish, but can be made up of many small foods. Better yet, since this is exactly how Faith eats, why not feed her this way. Before school started last fall, I did more reading and research and was happy to find many bento boxes available on Amazon. We found this adorable owl bento there.

All bento boxes, it seems, have multiple compartments and sometimes multiple layers. This box has a bottom compartment, covered by a top compartment that has a sealing lid. The owl cover loosely fits on top. I neglected to take a picture of the open box, so here is the photo from Amazon.

The bottom layer is usually rice, pasta, or couscous; although, I would also like to try quinoa, soba noodles, barley, and rice noodles for variety. The top does not have separate compartments, so I often use muffin papers to separate carrot sticks, nuts, egg slices, dried fruit, cheese cubes, etc. Many bento boxes come with an elastic strap to hold the cover snug on the box (the cover is loose enough that it will easily fall off if not secured), but this box did not. We've used a variety of rubber bands, but none looked very pleasing, so I decided to make a furoshiki. When researching bento, I had stumbled on furoshiki, a Japanese wrapping cloth. The furoshiki serves not only to secure and wrap the box, but creates a handle for carrying as well. I found a scrap of old fabric I'd stashed away, and here is the result.

Off to school with her bento. It usually comes home empty!

I am glad I snapped these photos a couple weeks ago, because sadly the bento with it's furoshiki has gone missing. First it was, "it's in my backpack," then, "I left it in my locker," until she finally admitted, "I don't know where my bento is." If it doesn't turn up soon, she'll be replacing it because we're not going back to pb&j and bento in a Tupperware container just seems wrong!

The Boy's Room Reclamation - the unedited before pictures.

My son is hopelessly disorganized very creative. He creates pictures, Lego ships, stories, train layouts, and more. When he's done creating one thing, he moves on to another thinking little of what he's left behind. Project Reclamation has begun and he might not be so happy about it. But I'm unwilling to walk by this disaster area any more.

 

Notice him sitting here playing his fish game oblivious to the disaster around him.

I'm more tolerant of his sisters' messes - their rooms are in the basement and I don't walk by them as often and nagging my children just sucks. (Yes, I realize it's unfair of me to expect him to keep his room clean and not care as much if the girls do, but tough - he's the baby of the family and probably gets way more than they ever did so he can deal with it!) He did help me clear out the clutter and now we're left with this.

It doesn't help that his clothes bar is so high he can hardly reach it from a step stool (which seems to encourage him to dump all his clothes on the floor).

This afternoon's project: empty out the closet completely, including shelf and bar, and paint inside the closet. Stay tuned for the rest of reclamation.

It's a jungle in there...

We've now been in our home for almost 11 years and there is one room in which we have done no remodeling.  It has been one of the most used rooms - the nursery for each of the kids and now our youngest child's bedroom.  He's 5 (going on 6), so we figured it was finally time to get the toddler bed out and get him a regular sized bed.  With that, an overhaul of the room was due.  However, it contains the last of the wallpaper in the house and if the wallpaper stripping experience in one of the other bedrooms is any indication of what might lie ahead we knew now was not the time to tackle wallpaper removal.  The floor was wood when we moved in (one of only two rooms with the wood showing back then) and in need of refinishing, but that too will wait.  So, rather than being remodeled, his room is undergoing a simple face lift.  Even with only that though, it has become one of my favorite rooms in the house.  Since before he was born I knew his "big boy" room would have a jungle theme.  For years I've gathered jungle themed items on clearance at Target, been given some by a friend, and even received adorable lion wall hooks as a baby gift.

A few months ago I started gathering supplies to make some art for the wall: canvases, paint, vinyl jungle animals.  This week I painted the canvases to ready them for the vinyl animals - the plan was a pop art style grouping with bright colors.  I liked the idea, but then a bigger idea popped into my head.  What if I dressed the canvas up a bit by adding some fabric?  I grabbed my scrap fabric basket and started pulling out coordinating colors and started snipping away.  Happy with the result, I used spray adhesive (for the first time ever) to adhere the fabric.  I really like how they turned out.  I have another canvas and a cute vinyl "alphagator" for another wall in the room, but I messed up when painting it and ran out of the correct paint, so that will have to wait for a few days.

The original idea - vinyl animals on painted canvas.

With the fabric accents (not adhered yet).

On the wall.  I used command adhesive velcro strips (one on each side) - the perfect thing for holding up canvas.

Jungle room - complete with jungle cat!

Coffee Date Dress

Time to create is certainly a big part of what I want to fit into my "blank" notebook of time.  (I'm also realizing that as a mom and wife and friend, etc., "blank" and time don't really seem to go together, but I'm making the most of extra time I do find.)

Anyway, I've picked a project.  Probably a very ambitious project.  I'm going to make a dress.  I've made a few dresses in the past.  Most successfully a couple jumpers that I paired with nursing shirts when the kids were babies, one ill-fitting nursing dress, and one dress that never reached completion (mostly because I am not a rule follower and thought I could take some shortcuts - I guess some rules are meant to be followed).  My one really successful dress was the Cinderella costume I made for my oldest daughter (worn by her sister in this photo, taken after we'd entered the age of digital photography).  I loved that project and the result.

For this project, I knew a fun summer dress would be perfect to get me back to sewing clothing.  Not finding a pattern I liked, I began a few months ago clipping catalog photos of dresses, in an attempt to find inspiration.  I have numerous photos clipped; however, I lack the experience (for now) to take an idea from picture to product without some sort of pattern or instruction.  Today I discovered BurdaStyle, a social network for people who sew.  While browsing the site, I stumbled on a pattern that has me eager to begin.  It's a cute, fun, easy summer dress.  An the name - Coffee Date Dress - can't be beat.  Even better, the pattern was free to download.  On the down side, it's missing all instructions, but I figure that should fit well into my non-rule-following nature.  I have a 50% off coupon to Joann's burning a hole in my pocket, so I just might go shopping for fabric tomorrow.  I'll post my progress along the way.

Reversible Apron

I made this great apron at a craft retreat I attended this past weekend. While this is not the first apron I've made or even the first reversible apron, I'd never used an embroidery machine or used my machine's decorative stitching function, and I had no idea what a towel loop was. So I had a few firsts, learned something new, and had a lot of fun! Good thing the embroidery step came early or I might have opted to keep the apron for myself! Thanks, Bethany, for the great class!

My first tutorial!

Cone shaped treat holder

Supplies:

12x12 double sided patterned paper
cutting tools, adhesives
accent papers, punches, brads
compass, piercing tool, wire, ribbon

Cut 12x12 paper diagonally - this works best with a cutting mat, ruler, and rotary cutter. You could also fold the paper diagonally and cut on the fold line.

Place the point of the compass on the center point of the long side of paper
(use your cutting mat to find the center) and draw the largest semi circle possible.

Cut out the semi circle using a rotary cutter or scissors.

Roll the semi circle into a cone. The point of the cone is where the point of the compass was placed. Make the cone fatter or skinnier to your liking (a fatter cone will hold more treats!). Use strong adhesive (such as sticky strip) to hold the straight outside edge to the outside of the cone. Don't worry about the inside edge, it will be held in place by the next step.

Make half inch deep cuts every quarter inch around the top of the cone.
Fold to the outside of the cone.

Stamp and punch images. Two small images to dangle from the bottom of the cone and a greeting to affix to the front of the cone. Put brad through one of the small images,
do not bend open yet.

Pierce the cone approx 1/4 inch from the bottom. Thread and twist wire leaving ends free.

Pinch one wire with the ends of the brad and twist wire around brad before pressing the brad open. Affix other small image to hide the back of the brad and twisted wire.

Punch holes at the top and make a ribbon (or wire) handle. Layer and adhere greeting to front.

These make great teacher, hostess, and thank you gifts!
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