Good Holidays to All Who Celebrate!

Paige had vacation all last week, so there were no bentos to post. She mostly lived off of mac and cheese and canned spaghetti and tomato soup. These were the things that were easy for her to make while I was at school. Because of gas prices, Pippy will be biking to school from now on to save money. When I explained the situation to her she was more than accommodating. I have great kids and don't think that I am not thankful of that every day.
This week I will be featuring bento made out of things at hand. I did buy some cucumber and grape tomatoes, but otherwise these are all things that you would find in my refrigerator after not doing shopping for the week. Since Pete is getting paid biweekly now, we try to shop for two weeks outside of little necessities like milk and eggs.
Today I tried to make an attempt at Charaben, well, maybe that isn't the word since they aren't actually characters from anywhere. Her two rice balls were shaped by hand with salted water to keep them from sticking. One of them is a chick with eyes made from cucumber peel (I forgot who suggested this, but THANK YOU, and a beak made of carrots. The other is a little girl with bangs made of soy wrapper and the eyes and mouth made with the cucumber peel. There are also three meat patties, balled watermelon and a cucumber and carrot salad made with Ponzu dressing. On the side is a small container of bulldog sauce. I took a picture of the container because it is new. We got two of them from a local Japanese store called Ebisuya. I shouldn't have spent the money, but they were just too adorable for words.