Halloween MTD

My favourite muffin tin dinner of the year! Some of the regular revolting fayre and a few 'new' morsels this year....

The Menu

Ghostly spirit to drink

300 year old eyeballs

zombie brains

freshly dug up graveyard dirt and bones

tender severed fingers

mean mini jack o' lanterns

rotting zombie mouth

pickled giants toe nails

deep fried tarantula

witches broomstick

ghostly ghost

the deep fried tarantula - riceball wrapped in nori with cheese eyes

Tender severed fingers - tutorial here

Ghostly ghost - rice and nori

rotting zombie mouth - apple and almonds

300 year old eyeballs - tutorial here

Witches broom - steam asparagus, string cheese, nori
and painted with brown food colour

Pickled giants toe nails - yellow pepper in light vinegar

Mean mini jack o'lanterns - mini tomatoes with nori

Zombie brain - annindofu and strawberry jam*

Ghostly Spirit - milk with stickers on the glass!

I got the brain molds from Amazon jp but they  are also sold on amazon here. Want to see more Halloween Muffin Tin dinners then check them out HERE

I have put together my favourite Fun & Fast Ghoulish Halloween Treats into an ebook so you can whip them up at anytime (why just serve ghoulish food at Halloween?)

17 absolutely disgustingly delicious treat ideas... 

All fast and fun to make

All pretty healthy, made from kitchen basics

Most of them suitable to make with the kids too

PLUS a bonus labels pack too!

Halloween Party

Ebi-kun has been looking forward to the Halloween party all month, he changed his ideas for a costume about 7 times a day! Eventually he decided we should go as a family of witches and wizards. One of the cool things about living in Japan is that they have smaller sized cleaning items, like the broom, perfect mini wizard size! Took him a while to master hovering on the spot....

He also insisted that he needed evil make-up, my mom had sent a package with Halloween baking tins and some make-up but they didn't turn up until Saturday evening, which meant we could use the make-up but I will have to save the tins until next time.

Koko and jack who organised the party hired a room in the community hall and each child had a game organised, so they took it in turn playing the various games.

Here is Wizard Ebi manning the find the eyeball game. The box has two holes cut in the top and another cut in the back. There are 3 pairs of eye-balls (ping-pong balls), you have to put your hand in one hole and pick out an eye-ball then put your hand in the other hole and try and pick out a matching eye.

The first hole has nothing but the eye-balls and Wizard Ebi's hand hidden inside so he was grabbing the kids and scaring them, only works the first time with each kid though and worked great on the other parents. The other side had a plastic box with the eyes buried in konyaku noodles in it, which are wet and slimy and feel revolting, I think Mario's face sums it up lol.

After the games we had a pot luck lunch, I was glad to see that I wasn't the only one who took revolting food...

To finish off the kids designed a face for the pumpkins and we carved two of them, then it was a mad rush to get tidied up before we got kicked out of the room.

Once the room was sorted we walked over to Koko and Jack's house stopping at a cake shop to do some 'trick or treating'.....

The boys raced around in the park whilst they were waiting for another group to arrive, Koko and a lady from an English school had joined forces for the trick and treating so there were about 40 odd kids.

With it being an organised events the kids were led to the houses that were participating, this won't be obvious to those who don't live in Japan, but the neighbourhood where Koko lives is not Japanesey at all, the big houses with yards and gardens, big wide streets some of the pedestrian, I have never been to North America but it felt like we were walking around somewhere in America!

Good fun was had by all, Koko and Jack did a great job as usual and we are already planning on what to do for next year.....

Looking for some Fun & Fast Ghoulish Halloween Treats?
Grab the ebook and bonus labels pack too!

feeling peckish?

I have spent the day slaving over a hot cauldron ready for the party tomorrow, apparently the supermarket is running short of eyeballs so I decided on brains instead.....

I wasn't sure if there would be enough brains to go round, so I popped down to the local temple and dug up a nice not-so-fresh severed hand, hmmm delicious!

*there is bound to be someone who asks... the brains are made from annindofu with a spot of pink and brown food colour and a spoonful of strawberry jam stirred in which gives it some of them a aneurysm look to them.

The severed hand is white chocolate with a bit too much pink food colour then I painted it with food gel. Stuck it in a chocolate cake and crushed oreo cookies over the top. YUM!

I have put together my favourite Fun & Fast Ghoulish Halloween Treats into an ebook so you can whip them up at anytime (why just serve ghoulish food at Halloween?)

17 absolutely disgustingly delicious treat ideas... 

All fast and fun to make

All pretty healthy, made from kitchen basics

Most of them suitable to make with the kids too

PLUS a bonus labels pack too!

2:46 before and after shots...

A friend posted this link on FB, there are a lot of photos taken just after the quake/tsunami, 3 months and 6 months on. It is amazing how much work has been done already but it is going to be such a long time before anything is back to 'normal', if ever.

Kesennuma, Miyagi-ken

Printing woes...

Up until now I have done all my pattern printing on my printer at home, which, when it is working properly prints out beautifully but it is rather tempremental and it costs me a small fortune in ink so I decided to look into some profession printing. Of course I have the disadvantage of not being able to read Japanese very well but I have found some places I can use. The most economic way if for me to do the colour printing at one place and the black and white elsewhere, I discovered that all 7/11's have really fancy copy machines and we have one just down the road so I can print out what I need when I need it rather than having boxes of papers all over the place.

So, in between school checks, birthday shopping, cauldron making and the usual everyday goings on I am re-formatting all my patterns so they will be set up and ready to print at the drop of a hat with the new system!

Now, this is a long shot and not really the conventional way to go about looking for staff but I am looking for someone who is willing to take over sales and marketing for me, preferable someone who speak Japanese as I would like to have the patterns translated for the Japanese market in the future. Plus, someone with a background in sales and net savvy. It will be a commission based position rather than a salary and completely flexible so you can fit it around the kids or whatever. If you are interested, lets talk!

drop me a line at jojoebi.designs 'at' gmail 'dot' com

Playful Spaces

Well, the Playful Spaces course has finished which is a bit sad, I was really enjoying it. This is the first time I have joined an ecourse so I had no idea what to expect. Basically Mariah had set up a Flickr group and the each week we were sent a video and links related to the weeks subject matter. Everyone was encouraged to share their pictures on flickr and there was a discussion thread for each week. Mariah also had Pinterest boards for each week too.

letter writing box

I got quite a of out of the course  but I think I would have got more out of it if I had done it say 4 years ago when I was starting out with Montessori and back then there wasn't so much information out on the net. So, I think the course is absolutely perfect for those just starting to set up their home for little ones or people with older kids who want to improve their home set up, it is amazing how much difference small tweaks here and there can make. The course isn't a Montessori course but Mariah draws on the Montessori philosophy along with Reggio Emilia both of which have similar idea on how a work and play space should be presented to the children.

poetry basket

The part I enjoyed the most was the sharing of peoples homes, part because I am nosey person (get that from my mom) and partly because it was a great way to get fresh ideas, use and adapt ideas that other people have and all the feedback you get when you post pictures, ideas on how to improve the space, links to useful sites etc. It is all very well seeing beautiful homes set up by people with plenty of money and of course if you are reading a book they are set up for the camera shoot but these are pictures of real people with real homes and real kids to mess them up!

art shelf

I also spent very little money on the changes I made but managed to change the house around quite a bit, a lot of the things I need I already had and most of the changes were really just a re-organisation of the space, I suppose it is like anything though, you could go out and buy all the recommended items and spend a small fortune or you can work with what you have got.

 

The biggest change for us was the studio, see, I even re-named the room! The way that it is set up now means that we can both work in there at the same time, everything is better organised and most of the Montessori equipment that he needs is already out. One of the smallest changes was moving a paper holder off his desk, since I have done that we can see his desk and it no longer looks like a paper Mount Fuji, small change, massive difference.

the studio

It is easy to get to get stuck in a rut and doing this course put me back on track, thank you to Mariah for all her help and advice and to all the other students for their input and all the new connections I have made, it has been great fun!

More books..

These two books were sent to us by Glogotton to review along with ones ones we reviewed last week.

The first is Toot Toot Zoom by Phyllis Root, a cute story about Pierre who lives by himself and has no friends so he decided to drive to the other side of the mountain to find some friends. Along the way he meets goat, sheep and bear. It is a fun book to read and I am sure most kids will be like Ebi-kun and join in with the 'Toot Toot Zoom' bit. 

Ebi-kun says 'I like the bit when they get to the top of the hill and have no brakes and the car crashes'

Ebi-kun gives this book ☆☆☆☆

I also give it ☆☆☆☆

The second book is Alpha Monsters by Chris Kennett, who has a blog over here.

The book is about a boy who finds himself in a strange land and helps Monster A find his teddy. The illustrations are fun and the text is all in rhyme and there is a nice happy ending. I thought it was going to be 'too young' for Ebi-kun but he really likes it. The teacher side of me wouldn't use this as an ABC learning book since all the monsters are in upper case and I am an advocate for learning lower case and phonics first but I think it would be a fun book for kids who have learnt lower case and I am sure there are some fun activities to be done with the kids creating their own monsters, it would be fun to have a whole class work on a monster alphabet of their own. We have been working on Halloween crafts at the moment so we haven't had chance to try any out. I did find a couple of places where the flow of the words didn’t work so well or maybe I need to read it in an Aussie accent!

I don't know if it is cutesy enough for most girls but it is definitely a good boys book.

Ebi-kun says 'I like it where the different alphabet monsters were doing things, my favourite monsters are X and U with frozen underpants *sniggers*'

Ebi-kun gives this book ☆☆☆☆

I give it ☆☆☆1/2

IQ tests, Cauldrons, Shopping and Books..

Not the catchiest title I'm sure! Yesterday Ebi-kun had the day off so daddy-ebi took the morning off so that we could take Ebi-kun for his pre-school IQ test and we thought he had a health check too but apparently not. We also needed to go to city hall to get some papers registered to do with the land and we FINALLY got our proper address - we have only been here 4 years! I'm not going to try and explain why because I don't really understand myself. We came home, put another layer on the cauldron had lunch then went shopping to get daddy-ebi a birthday present.
Ebi-kun is not a fan of shopping so I suggested that he took some money with him (Baa-chan recently gave him some to buy books with), the deal was that we got daddy's present and then we would go and buy a book and then go to Starbucks for a drink and re-charge. Cunning plan worked! I didn't know where the books were in the book shop, he was after a specific maze book so he asked a clerk, she showed us some but they were not the right ones and then she took us to another area and we found the right books. They were wrapped in plastic so the clerk unwrapped the one he wanted to look at then went off and came back with a little chair for him to sit on so he could sit and read through it, got to love the book stores here!

He really wanted another of these maze books, I think this is the third or fourth one he has, they all have different themes, this one is famous legends.

I must admit, I like these books too, you can spend hours pouring over the pages looking at all the details, there are all kinds of hidden pictures and messages, a big maze and small maze to complete then there is a special maze the jumps from page to page, like the Where's Wally books but so much better. This is the Robin Hood page if you look hard you can see animals shapes in the paths, hidden pumpkins, elves and sprites....

So, after we had a re-charge we finished off the shopping then popped into Book Off on the way home, we were in their ages, Ebi-kun kept pulling more and more books off the shelves to read, he eventually settled on two. The first is about Japanese ghosts, the kids decided to set up a haunted house but of course the house is already haunted by three famous ghosts, the faceless woman, the lantern and the umbrella.

This looks SO Japanese to me, the artwork, the kids, the room decor and of course the weird ghosts. It is a cute, fun book, Ebi-kun thought the story was very funny.

The last one is a riddle book which kept him quiet on the train home! Book Off used to be much cheaper, generally the books were ¥105 but in recent years they have increased the prices so now most of the books are half the RRP which isn't too bad as long as they are in good condition. I have also managed to drop on some good English books at times although that is rather hit and miss, they do still have a ¥105 section but it tends to be full of Anpanman, Pokemon and the such like.

ensoku...

Photo Credit: timdesuyo

Today we had to be up and out the house by 7.10am because Ebi-kun had his yochien ensoku - a trip to the zoo! One of his classmates gave us a lift, thankfully otherwise we would have had to leave much earlier. They needed to take a bento, I was more than happy to provide Ebi-kun with a pocket sando (a sandwich that is sealed around the edges) since that is what he requested, to make it fancy I used food pens to draw a lion on the front, the rest was the usual bento fare and sorry, I didn't take a picture and because I am not a yochien slave, I made it the night before!

The kids were all super excited as we packed them off on the coaches, I had a bit of the 'what if's'  as we waved them off, this is the first trip he has been on without me or daddy since the big earthquake in March. Last year when we sent them off, I just had the normal mommy worries (I am assuming they are normal!) you know, what if he gets lost or separated from the group but this time it was more about if there was an earthquake, what if it happened when they were in the zoo, would the lions escape and eat all the kiddies? - yeah I know, totally (mostly) irrational. Well they all made it back OK, no children with severed or missing limbs!

Photo Credit: saname777

Once the kids had set off the moms went to the yochien to prepare for the autumn fair, this year we have to prepare the crafts for the 'make your own toy' stall, right up my alley you would have thought, not really, far too much faffing around and time wasting for my liking, seriously, I could have got it all done and dusted by myself in the same time it took 20 adults to do it. I escaped around 11.30am saying I had to meet a friend, she teaches until 12 so I checked out the new stationary store to kill a bit of time then we went for lunch. We had a good gossip and catch up, it has been a while since we have had a natter then it was back to yochien for 3pm to meet the kids. They looked like they had a great time but all look shattered and so did the sensei's! Ebi-kun said his favourite this year were the penguins and the panda's. So, tomorrow is a holiday and Ebi-kun is going for his elementary school health check, the one we missed last week and we also have to crack on with the cauldron if it is to be finished by the weekend.