Poolside Playtime with OREO

If eating vegetables were as fun as eating Oreos, parents wouldn't have a problem with picky eaters. The kids put eating Oreos in the same league as playing with toys. Twist it, lick it, dunk it kinda fun.

Add to the fun is the Oreo Strawberry flavor, a Princess flavor if ever there was one. 

Ok, I totally made that up. Seriously though, Berry loves it. She loves the fact that it's pink. And it's strawberry flavored. Your little girls will take a shine to this flavor, if they don't already.

Oreos though, whatever flavor, are such certified hits that when Berry invited some of her friends for merienda and some poolside fun...

We made sure to pack some Oreos in the goody bags we prepared for the kids.

Berry and Xavi even enjoyed putting the goody bags together themselves. Fun for them, less work for me. Win-Win.

Of course, when her friends saw their goodie bags, they were thrilled. A tub of Play-Doh, a Ring Pop and Oreos to bring home, simple things can truly bring so much joy!

How about you? How do you play with Oreo?

For more on how to Play with Oreo, follow @OreoPH on Twitter and Instagram and Like Oreo on Facebook.

Two Kid Friendly Eats in Greenhills

If you live in the Greenhills area, frequent it, or on the off chance that you happen to pass by with your kids, you ought to bring them to Slammin' Mini Burgers in Greenhills Promenade and Rita's Ice in Virra Mall.

These two fairly new places are guaranteed to get your kids psyched to enjoy some mini burgers and crisp fries, and then a cool dessert. I promise you, they would want to keep on coming back for more. Yes, even if they are picky eaters.

Slammin' Mini Burgers

Inspired by the movie Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, Patrick Dy, Slammin's President, thought of opening a mini burger shop, because there was nothing quite like it here in Manila.

And just like that of White Castle's sliders, their 100% beef chuck patties for their mini burgers "are onions steam grilled".

Slammin' Mini's burger shop in Promenade is equally cute. Here's the counter, mini-sized but big enough to prepare all their sliders, fries, even chicken wings and beer-battered fish.

Berry & I shared a triple order of the Slammin' Cheese Slider, chicken nuggets, and fries, and Berry loved how the burger was perfectly sized for her.

The mini burgers do have a lot of kiddie appeal, because the little ones feel like the burgers were made for them.

PS - The fries I have to stress, are yum! Perfectly crisp, and never gets soggy. After all, the group behind Slammin' is the same group behind Belgian Fries.

For more on Slammin', Like their Facebook Page, Slammin' Mini Burgers

Rita's Ice 

After you get your fill of mini burgers and fries, head on over to Virra Mall. What used to be Milky Way is now Rita's Ice, a popular chain from the East Coast, with roots in Pennsylvania, known for their Italian ice and frozen custards.

This was how the counter looked during the dry run, pre-opening. But since it officially opened in November, it has become very busy, with a line to the door, most of the time.

Rita's Italian ice is made fresh daily, and made from real fruit and/or fruit juices. Quite healthy, and super tasty!

Xavi had like three taster cups, all different flavors, and his favorite was the mango Italian ice.

A Blendini is a mix of Italian ice and frozen custard, and you may choose to have a signature concoction, like so...

Or blend your own, like I did. This is cookies and cream Italian ice with frozen custard and crushed Oreos. Yes, I do love my Oreos.

Berry had frozen custard with gummy bears. Simple, sweet, and fun to eat!

The kids had fun here, and I did too. Really worth checking out, I tell you!

For more on Rita's Ice, Like their Facebook Page, Rita's Ice Philippines

Halloween Trip and Treat with Oreo!

My mommy friends and I wanted to do something different this year for Halloween. 

We figured, wouldn't it be nice to have a small Halloween event, where kids don't have to walk too far to get their treats, it won't be as noisy and as crowded as public Halloween parties, and us moms wouldn't be pressured to come up with fancy costumes?

Luckily, Oreo, everyone's favorite cookie, gamely and happily provided us with lots of treats!

Then, my friend Fifi Wong offered to host a Halloween party for our kids at his friend's hotel, Hotel Kimberly in Tagaytay. 

And we were pretty much set!   

The Costumes

Before we headed to Tagaytay for our Halloween Trip and Treat, my first agenda was to come up with costumes for the kids. I didn't want to spend on costumes any more, so I decided to get Berry's help in scrounging around their closets to come up with something fun that will still look like we made an effort. Haha.

I told Berry maybe she'd like to be a garden fairy this time. So she chose an old ballet uniform of hers and paired it with an old flower head dress that she got from her Flores de Mayo stint in our province back in 2012. 

We paired it with fairy wings and a wand that I bought years ago at H&M.

Because I told her there was some outdoor walking involved, she decided to skip her ballet shoes and wear her Mini Melissa mary janes, her current favorite pair of shoes.

Here's how she looked, sans flower head dress, which had fallen out by then. Oooops.

trick & treating at Hotel Kimberly's pool area

For Xavi, I took inspiration from Buddhist boy monks:

I put together my orange pareo from Clarins, a gift with purchase haha, some red jasper beads and his Saltwater sandals. With his shaved head, I figured he'd make a cute mini monk.

Unfortunately, he refused to wear this costume. 

I had a back up costume, his train engineer costume where he just had to wear his engineer stripe Osh Kosh overalls with a white shirt, a cap and a red bandana but he still would not let us change him. Two years old palang, hindi ko na maloko. Oh wellz!

So our souvenir Halloween photo taken by Stanley Ong turned out like this. Xavi not in costume. Not very Halloween like, but cute pa din!

The Trip

We started off that early weekday morning for Tagaytay, meeting up at the Shell gas station in SLEX, and filling up our tanks as we headed up to Hotel Kimberly.

Celsi and Stella, Kris/OC Mom in Manila's very able staff who met us at Shell SLEX, gave us more Oreo cookies to snack on for the duration of the trip. We were off to a great start!

When we got to Hotel Kimberly, we had plenty of time for the kids to play, freshen up and have lunch before the main Halloween event.

Part of the fun of this trip was that the kids had this huge jungle gym all to themselves, 

And a petting zoo filled with cute animals to keep them entertained:

Xavi feeding a bunny

a flock of bengalas, chickens and ducks

rams and billy goats

The Treats

For our Halloween event, Michelle/My Mom Friday prepared a Halloween program packed with games and activities. From a treasure hunt, eating contests, an Oreo quiz, relay games, to a pinata, a table full of prizes awaited the winners!

Mish/Momma N Manila, with the help of her daughter Gia, baked and prepared all these Oreo themed goodies from scratch!

All of these came beautifully together with the Halloween themed sugar cookies that Didi/The Candishhh Tales contributed, the fantastic graphics that Tina/The Phenomenal Mama designed (you can even download the printables, just click on my link to Tina's blog), and the other Halloween themed elements that Cai/Apples&Dumplings of Paper Chic Studio prepared for our scary, sweet, stupendous DIY dessert buffet!!!

Of course, the kids had a grand time picking up treats at the different Trick & Treating stations scattered all over Hotel Kimberly, which was the highlight of their already action packed day, of course!

at the front desk

at the restaurant/dining area

by the cabanas

by the petting zoo

Was it the best Halloween ever? You betcha! Kids, friends, a road trip, adorable animals, the cutest desserts, and lots of Oreos is a formula that guarantees loads of fun!

For more Spooky Cookie ideas from Oreo, check out, https://www.facebook.com/oreo.

OREO Bento Together

My good friend Naomi is the poster mom for bento baons in my book. She makes the most amaaaaahzing bento baons for her twins. Check out her IG account, @ma2xbento to see what I mean.

While I enjoy looking through her bento baons, I have never even dared try to do one for my kids. I fear that I do not have enough time, and well uhm, I am not super creative when it comes to making characters out of food.

Plus, Naomi has invested a small fortune on her bento making supplies and seeing what choices are out there, as collated by the Bento Mommas (who facilitated our workshop), I am not yet prepared to make the jump into bento baon territory.

That is until I took baby bento steps, thanks to the OREO Bento Together Workshop that I attended with my mommy friends, thanks of course, to OREO!!!

I realized, I can actually make do with the supplies I have at home. All that we basically need is a container, some cupcake liners, scissors, knives, surgical tongs and such.

Of course, I would suggest that we have dedicated tools for food, and we don't use the same scissors and punchers for our kids' craft projects ahihi.

That said, it turns out it's easy to do bento baons as long as you've got everything laid out for you. 

Naomi usually gets her helper to prepare everything so that all she has to do is layout and make something out of the food. The Bento Mommas did the same for us, so that all we have to do is focus on the bento part.

I was surprised at how easy it was, Berry actually took the lead in shaping and putting everything together, that I just helped her refine her work. For the session, we made a bento rice bear and it really was just like that "big circle, small circle, big circle" song we would sing on how to draw a bear.

Big, siopao sized circle for the face, molded into shape using a sandwich sized ziploc bag...

2 small circles for the ears...

Another big circle for the nose...

Et Voila! A rice bear! Eyes and nose were made out of nori.

We then just added fried chicken, corn, and broccoli to complete the lunch set, plus a slice of apple and OREO cookies for dessert.

The Bento Mommas then proceeded to teach us how to make animal theme bento sandwiches, made more special because they're put together using OREO cookies! After their demo, we were then tasked to make our own.

Berry and I were challenged to make a bento bear sandwich! This was made out of a chocolate chip loaf bread from Gardenia, chocolate cream filled OREOs, milky Chiz Whiz, white chocolate chips for the eyes, and good 'ol nori to fashion into the eyes and nose.

Making four of these OREO Bear sandwiches took Berry and I an hour to make though. I realized, it took longer to make the baon than have it eaten for recess!

I laughingly told the Bento Mommas how labor intensive bento-ing is, but they assured me it just takes some practice and getting used to. 

That said, Berry enjoyed making the bento baons and eating them too, I really ought to just train her to make bento baons for herself and Xavi.

Berry, practice makes perfect!!! Lolz!!!

PS - Check out The Phenomenal Mama's OREO Bento Together post for more bento making tips, plus a how to on how her kids made their winning bento cat sandwich made with OREOs!