Muffin Tin Monday - Riding On A Merry-Go-Round

Be sure to celebrate my 50-followers milestone with me by entering my giveaways! I have a Muffin Tin Meal-themed one, and a bento-themed one, but you can enter both, and they both have great items for MTM!

This week's Muffin Tin Monday theme is Big and Little, Short and Tall. Well, whenever I think about basic opposites like that, I always get the song from Disney's The Sword In The Stone stuck in my head... "In and Out, Thin and Stout, that's what makes the world go round!" Etc etc.

I sang this a lot to Little Z when she was little, and sometime between 18 and 24 months she would sing "Up and down, up and down, Riding on a merry-go-round" to that tune. So now I think of merry-go-rounds when I think of opposites!
So I opted for a Merry-Go-Round Muffin Tin Meal! With some bigs and littles, shorts and talls!

Clockwise from top: Banana and blueberry kebobs, Raisins, Carrots, Hotdog and cheese kebabs,
Colby Jack cheese stars, ketchup, Zucchini fries, Pretzel sticks, Ranch
Center: PBJ Star sandwich

I used animal picks to make it more circus-y and Merry-go-round-y, but also to add some size fun. The circle caddy is a party tray thing my mom was getting rid of. Woot!

Big: Elephant pick (with zucchini fries,) big star sandwich, whale pick (with hot dog kebabs) [Okay. It's really a dolphin. Pretend it's a whale.] Also I used big muffin cups. Big banana slices (compared to the blueberries, anyway!)

Little: Little muffin cups. Little kitty (with the cheese stars,) dog (pretzels,) and turtle (fruit kebabs) picks. Little raisins and little blueberries. Little star cut out of top slice of sandwich.

Short: I used short muffin cups (the ones without clown feet!) Short carrot sticks. And a variety of short animal picks.

Tall: Giraffe pick (with the carrots.) Tall muffin cups (with clown feet.) Tall pretzel sticks. Tall zucchini fries (left-over from my Blogger's Night Out dinner Saturday night! I'll post about it soon!) And, of course, tall fruit and hotdog/cheese kebabs! I got the skewers from my Blogger's Santa Swap partner, Ver! They were perfect for this, since they're extra long!

Pointing out the 'little' blueberries. And the 'tall' skewers.

After jabbing the animal picks into her sandwich,
she gets started!

She didn't go for the kebabs at all, which was kind of a surprise. She did take the cheese and hot dogs off, but only ate the cheese. She ate the sandwich and the pretzels too. Nothing else. Kind of surprising, but then she ate very little the rest of the day, so just not an eating day today. Kind of like a reverse growth spurt. She goes through a few days of low appetite, then starts chowing down again full-time.

Bento Goodies Giveaway! (Ended)

I have a bunch of fun bento stuff! Also great for at-home meals or Muffin Tin Meals!

We have:
1. 10 plastic heart-shaped boxes for sauce, seasonings or candies
2. Heart and star egg/rice molds
3. Plastic-coated paper cups in 4 sizes/shapes (small round - rabbit, large round - bird, large oval - bear, and small oval - squirrel)
4. 2-tier bento box w/band ad chopsticks. Blue base, animal graphics on lid.
5. Box of 200 plastic grass baran (divider sheets)
6. 24 plastic colored circle picks
7. 30 Assorted animal translucent short picks (has monkeys, chickens, snails, dog, puffer fish, starfish, cat, various fish, bunny, mouse, maybe more)
8. Mini cube rice mold (makes 3 mini rice cubes)
9, 10, 11. Star, Tulip and Winking Face laver/nori punches (works on thinly-sliced carrots or cucumber peel and dried seaweed)
12. Set of mini ocean-themed cutters

These are all new-in-package. This was all purchased by me personally. None of this was provided as a commercial incentive, or provided free to me for any reason. The only compensation I am getting from this prize pack is the good feeling I'll get when I pick a happy winner! Plus hopefully some new followers and such! And maybe some new creative-food-preparing converts! Value around $19-20 (more from most other bento merchants. More than double, after shipping!)

That No Man Enter Til My Tale Be Done: (King Richard II: V, iii)

There are several ways to enter. Please make a separate comment on this post for each entry. [For things like following, you only have to do it once to enter in both giveaways, but you'd need to make a comment on both giveaway posts.] 
If you've already followed/liked/etc, just make a comment that you have! This is to celebrate my EXISTING followers too! I will also ship internationally.

1. Follow this blog publicly. [Click the 'Follow' button on the right of the scroll, under "About Me" and "Followers." If you don't have a Google account of any kind (through gmail, Google docs, Picasa, whatever, you'd have to create one.)]

2. 'Like' my Facebook page (You'd need a Facebook account to do this.)

3. Follow me on Twitter (ditto)

4. Follow one of my husband's blogs publicly. His game design and review blog, The Play's The Thing or his trying-a-new-recipe-a-week blog, Week Sauce, whichever interests you the most! [You can follow both, but good for only 1 entry total.]

5. Comment on any post other than these giveaways. [Good for 1 entry total.]


Contest closes 11:59 PM on Monday, January 31st.

___________________________________________________________________

The Bento Gear Giveaway winner is...

Comment #37 Michelle!
"Hi, found you through What's for Lunch Wednesday. I'm now following. Really enjoy the site!"

Muffin Tin Meals Loot Giveaway! (Ended)

I've decided the theme for this batch of goodies is Queen Of Hearts! (With some other stuff thrown in, so it's not so girly!)

We have:
1. 24 paper cups with animal designs (elephant, rabbit, dog, chicken) [these are neat, since the graphics are on the inside, and they are lightly plastic coated, so are good for moist foods in your MTMs! NOT meant for baking!]
2. Outer Space mini plastic cookie/bento cutters
3. Set of 4 Betty Crocker Easy Writer Food Decorator pens (red, yellow, green and blue) Love these!
4. 12 silicone flower/scalloped muffin cups (3 each or red, purple, green and blue)
5. 20 heart picks (light and dark pinks, orange and blue)
6. Queen shoe cookie cutter [or Princess, or Renaissance-style men's]

7. Queen crown cookie cutter [or Princess. Even a King, if you use your imagination.]

8. 100 mini fork picks
9. 100 long picks with a heart on the top (in red, white, blue, green and yellow)
10. Set of 6 graduated heart-shaped cookie cutters
11. Face nori/laver punch [you can cut facial features out of nori (dried seaweed,) thin sliced carrots, or cucumber peel!)
12. 24 Valentines heart cupcake liners with 24 matching wood/paper picks

These are all new, unused items. Most are new-in-package, but the cookie cutters came loose. This was all purchased by me personally. None of this was provided as a commercial incentive, or provided free to me for any reason. The only compensation I am getting from this prize pack is the good feeling I'll get when I pick a happy winner! Plus hopefully some new followers and such! Value around $20 (Closer to $30-35 from online bento suppliers!)

The Gates Are Open, Let Us Enter Too: (King Henry VI, part III: V, i)

There are several ways to enter. Please make a separate comment on this post for each entry. [For things like following, you only have to do it once to enter in both giveaways, but you'd need to make a comment on both giveaway posts.] If you've already followed/liked/etc, just make a comment that you have! This is to celebrate my EXISTING followers too! I will also ship internationally.

1. Follow this blog publicly. (Click the 'Follow' button on the right of the scroll, under "About Me" and "Followers." If you don't have a Google account of any kind (through gmail, Google docs, Picasa, whatever, you'd have to create one.)

2. 'Like' my Facebook page (You'd need a Facebook account to do this.)

3. Follow me on Twitter (ditto)

4. Follow one of my husband's blogs publicly. His game design and review blog, The Play's The Thing or his trying-a-new-recipe-a-week blog, Week Sauce, whichever interests you the most! [You can follow both, but good for only 1 entry total.]

5. Comment on any post other than these giveaways. [Good for 1 entry total.]

Contest closes 11:59 PM on Monday, January 31st.

_________________________________________________________________

For the Muffin Tin Loot Giveaway, the winning comment is #17!

Comment #17 Congrats Morgana!

"I'm following your husband's gaming blog. I had to giggle- after I wrote the comment on the other giveaway, I realized I write both a game review blog and a cooking blog. I don't even think about my cooking blog much because when I say I'm working on my blog, that's the one I'm always writing for. Lol!"

Congratulations ladies, and thank you to everyone who entered! I'm super excited that one of the winning entries was for following my husband's blog. He started it at the beginning of the year, and after a few weeks, kept making little mewling comments about how he only had 2 followers (one being me!) Now he has 20! It was worth the price of admission to hear him exclaim the other day when writing his latest post "Hey! I got a bunch of new followers!" Plus *I* got a bunch of new followers, and found some wonderful new blogs to add to my read-list! And I love that I was already following (and/or subscribed to) so many of your blogs already! What a wonderful online community!

Fifty Is Nifty!

I've finally reached 50 followers! (Not counting me!) To celebrate, I've been buying extra saving up some goodies to give away! Since I have followers from both Muffin Tin Monday and from bento-ers via What's For Lunch Wednesday, I decided to do TWO themed giveaways! I'll do them as separate posts, to make it easier to keep track of the entries for each prize pack.
Contest closes 11:59 PM on Monday, January 31st.

Image from FreeGreetingsCards

Click here for:
Muffin Tin Meal loot giveaway
Bento gear giveaway

Little Love Lost

Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation - Kahlil Gibran

While 'quickly popping in' to a Joann's with my sister, Little Z asked to use the potty. Well, I was certainly not going to turn her down! Since my sister and I had arrived in separate cars, she finished her shopping and I headed into the adjacent mall to find a potty. On the way to the potty was a toy store having a 'Sidewalk Sale.' Oooooooh! And right past the bathrooms was an Old Navy. Having a 40%-off-lowest-marked-clearance-prices sale. PLUS an additional 25% off if you use your Old Navy or Gap card! Double Oooooh!

So, potty first. She sat on the public toilet without complaint, leaning into me as I kneeled on the floor. (Uck. At least the bathroom was fairly clean looking!) She didn't end up peeing, but we apparently got there at a popular time, as there was a constant stream of loud flushes the whole time we were there, which unnerved her a little more each time.
I let her play a little in the toy store while I shopped the sale table as a reward for trying the potty. Then back into Joann's to buy the stuff in the cart I had left behind (90% off Christmas clearance!) and then a quick pop into Old Navy to see if they happened to have the sweater dress on clearance that I hadn't bought for her at the one I went to with my sister the week before.  Their baby/toddler clearance was abysmal. Loads of stuff in XS-XL though (roughly 4T to size teen size 3.) Loads. Luckily, kids XL fits me pretty well, in stretchy tees and sweaters, anyway! Cute hooded sweater dresses in my future! (With pants, of course. I can't get away with mini-skirts. Like, ever.)
I also found L-O-A-D-S of sweet deals in womens. Pea coats for $15, then minus the 40% and the 25%, making them $6.75! Regularly over $40! I got a bunch of shirts, most around $2-3 each after all the discounts. Got some hawt corduroy pants for my sister, for around $4, and loads of sweet plain and striped tees for both of us, for around $2 each! My big 'splurge' was a trench coat for $18, clearance priced at $40, and I didn't even LOOK at the original price, but probably at east $60 or more. I've been lusting after a trench or pea coat for years, but they were always so darn expensive!

Anyway. Aside from giving you a heads-up on this fantastic clearance sale, (the extra 25% off when you use your card is going on for a few more days, I think!) it's a little background on where we were when my next little story happens.

So I'm perusing racks and racks of stuff. Kids' for Z, Women's for me and my sister, and Men's for Unka Seesee, since my husband wants to try stuff on, so I don't bother getting him stuff. Unka Seesee gave me all his sizes when I went to the sale last week (no extra 25% off then, but I did get 20% off for opening and account.) Little Z spent most of the time in the cart I cadged from Joann's, since it had my bags in it, to keep my hands free, and my kid in it, to keep my sanity. Plus we parked outside Joann's, so I'd be returning the cart on my way back.
At some point Z wants to get out of the cart and roam a little. I let her out and remind her that she needs to stay near me. She immediately hares off, and I fetch her back and remind her that her choices are to stay near me or go back in the cart. Then I do something stupid. I quickly pop away from where I was browsing to see if I can get their little light show thing to work, since she loves it, and I can let her play there and still see her from where I was currently shopping. But I didn't warn her, since I didn't want her to get all excited about the "light show" if I couldn't find the 'on' switch, which I couldn't.
This quick little distraction takes less than a minute. I'd say 30 seconds, but you know how bad we all are at telling real time, so I'm leaning towards it actually taking more time than it felt like. I turn back to where she should be... and she isn't. I start calling for her. "Z! I need you to answer me right now." I've told her many times in the past that if she runs off, she needs to answer me when I call, so I can find her again. When I remember to remind her beforehand on a shopping trip, she's pretty good about responding. And usually I can hear her little 'teeheehee,' or the 'slapslapslap' of her little feet. But this time? Nothing. I drop down on my hands and knees to look under the racks in the section I had left her, and when I don't find her, I head to the front, to case the door. On my way I flag down an employee, who, when I tell her "I, uh, lost my kid," immediately springs into action.
She heads to the front door, telling the cashier to turn off the overhead music. Then she gets on her headset and starts telling everyone to look for my little one, giving them a description as I give it to her.
This whole time, I'm pretty sure my little nutjob just ran off and I couldn't find her because the store is so big, and there's so many displays and walls in the way, and she had a good head start, since normally I notice within 5 seconds that she's no longer within touching distance. 85% sure it's all good. 14% sure it's probably all good. And 1% oh crap.

She was found right away. Just as soon as the clerk finished giving the clothing description... "she's in the Boy's department." Ohthankyougod. I thank her, and head back to Boy's.  The employee back there who found her is a young guy, and I'm sad to say I barely spared him a glance. I barely remembered to even blurt out a "thank you" before bursting into tears and scooping up my greatest treasure. I hadn't even realized how scared I was, until it was all okay.
I had felt kind of stupid, getting employees involved, and I was afraid they'd contact outside the store to the rest of the mall or something, and then we'd just find her playing near one of the baskets of balls or something and have wasted everyone's time. But really, I should have flagged someone down and stopped trying to find her on my own about a minute sooner. After a quick scan and a few times calling for her, I should have gotten help. More people, spread out, blocking the exits. It doesn't matter that the odds of her being abducted by a stranger in a chance opportunity are so low. Roughly 115 per year in the US is still 115. I don't need my child to be one of them. So if being embarrassed about looking like a terrible parent is the price I have to pay, it's worth it.
Luckily it all turned out okay. As I was 99% confident that it would. She was a little terrified, since I guess she had started panicking and looking for me at some point before I got to her, and I gather that the employee was trying to keep her there to wait for me (but he didn't touch her, or even get within a foot of her. He just tried to block whichever direction she was trying to go. I don't know if he tried saying anything to her, but she has such a severe stranger anxiety, she doesn't even listen to anyone.) I watched her little body sag in relief when she saw me, though.

After clinging to each other for about a million years, we resumed shopping. We talked about how scared I was when I couldn't find her, and why I want her to stay near me when we're out in public. She spontaneously apologized several times throughout the evening for running away in the store and scaring me. And I think she twisted the part about when I remind her of why I want her where I can see her; she could get hurt, she could get lost, or someone could take her. She started saying that she was scared when she couldn't find me and the man wanted to take her. I think she's transposing the kidnapper scenario onto the clerk who had found her for me. I talked about how I had found an employee to help, and did she hear the talking about her on the radio? Did the man have a name tag to say that he worked at the store? Did he tell her that I was coming to find her? Etc. I'm hoping she doesn't cast him into the role of villain and create an imaginary nightmare scenario in her head. She tends to decide to be afraid of things, after seeing someone or seeing a show about someone being afraid of something. I know *I* still tear up when I think about it.

On the other hand, if it makes her stick to me like glue in public in the future, is it worth it?

Tried-It-Tuesday - 2011, Week 3

Link up or leave a comment on something new you've made, cooked, done or tried this week!


I made Valentine Craft Kits for my daughter's classmates. Technically not an entirely new thing, as I did it last year too, but it's the best I could think of, considering I did nothing else new today. [It's not like sitting around all day in my bathrobe while my kid watches Spongebob counts as anything new!]

WFLW - Hangin' With My Peeps!

This week I did two bentos for Tuesday! One for Little Z and me to take to gym (which didn't end up happening. We were running so late, we would have missed over half the class. So I took her straight to an indoor play area we had planned on meeting other mommies at after gym and ate in the car.) The other bento was Monday night leftovers from dinner at the mall for my husband!

Hangin' With My Peeps

PB celery, Hard-boiled egg, PBHoney sandwich,
crunchy peas in chickie container, broccoli and carrots, apples and blueberries.

We just restocked our celery, and The Princess is actually able to chew it up now, so I'm trying to remember to use it more. Plus it's yummy with peanut butter!
I originally only had the one little ducky pick in the hard-boiled egg (the last egg from my recent batch. Need to look up the directions again and make more!) but Princess grabbed the transparent pink and green chicks and jabbed them in too. The little container is a sauce container, but I put salt in it for the egg.
I just bought some crunchy 'baked peas' from an Asian market (along with the ducky sauce container, large chick sprinkle container and the transluscent chickie picks) and put some in my new chickie container. Her Majesty didn't like them. There's a disposable Ranch container from McD hiding under the broccoli, and a caramel dipping sauce one under the blueberries.
All in my new 4-compartment Lock-and-Lock container, also from the Asian market.

 

Year of the Bunny

For my husband, I packed his leftover teriyaki chicken and fried rice into an EasyLunchbox. I jammed some fried rice into my new rabbit rice mold (bought Sunday at the Asian market) and placed a pea where the eye would go. The containers in the top left compartment contain: (orange square with bunny) Sriracha hot sauce, (green bunny head) roasted sesame seeds and (pink bunny bottle) soy sauce. And a cute bunny pick to top it all off. I couldn't make it all too cute, especially as he whined and moaned about having to drag the containers on the bus to work and back and told me not to bother.

Super Bonus Bento

I made this bento in my Sassy On-the-Go box  for Z to eat in the car on the way to my sister's house last Wednesday.

PBH bear sandwiches, apple slices, cheese curds

Random other bento last week.

PBH sandwich, string cheese stick, baby tomatoes, carrot sticks,
apples and blueberries, with Ranch in the little blue container below.