A Peek into my Life

The 10-day Ganesh festival has come to an end. The kids had a 6-day mini-vacation for this social festival in Mumbai. People come together to celebrate and worship Ganesha. Our building also had a Ganapati kept for 5 days and people came together for Aarti and activities. It is most exciting for the kids. My daughter didn't miss a single evening aarti or any of the activities organized for the kids. Ganapati in the building The daughter was quite excited about the kids activities and I was surprised to see she wanted to practice for them. :) I hadn't seen that much enthusiasm for school work. These festivals are a way to make childhood memories by breaking the routine and bringing on excitement. There was lemon and spoon race, musical chairs and a drawing competition. She was sad she didn't win anything but kids being kids, she quickly recovered from it. She also wanted to go for visarjan but we had other appointments that day. So, she sportingly agreed to wait till ...

Rakshabandhan is around the corner. I thought, why not try to make a rakhi instead of buying it; especially for the kids. It would be a fun activity for the daughter. It was a school holiday in the middle of the week due to Maharashtra bandh. This was a good way to utilize the day. I looked around the internet and saw a couple of DIY rakhi ideas. Then it hit me that we have a flower kit in which there are foam flower cutouts which can be stacked on straws to make flower branches. I thought of staking the foam flowers to create a rakhi. I used some decorations from a broken bracelet and old rakhis to give it a finished look. I used wool threads to create the string for tying. Here's how I did it. Cut out woollen thread. I measured around my wrist and doubled the length. Tie 3 threads together with a sewing thread. I used 2 orange and 1 yellow thread. I used red thread to tie them together. My daughter braided one to make a cohesive thread. For the other one, she wrappe...

Last summer, I did some crafting on glass bottles and vases. I love glass as a material. I like shiny and glamorous things :) (although I am sure you wouldn't guess that if you saw me) Lets start with the shiniest of them all. I used glass gems on this one. These glass gems come in a variety of colors at any craft store. I first sorted the gems by their color. I also cleaned the bottle. I removed the label, washed and dried it beforehand. I used some rubbing alcohol to clean the outside of the bottle before gluing the gems on. A clean surface is highly recommended for any glass craft. I did not want to cover the bottle entirely with the gems and wanted some of the beautiful color of the bottle itself to peek through. I drew a design on the bottle with a marker to roughly mark where I need to leave out the gemstones. I tried to keep the lines equidistant but I am not good with measuring and straight lines. I just tried my best. I glued the gem stones starting from the bot...

This week I had a few unexpected highlights in the kitchen and outside. I thought of putting them together in one post. Beets sabzi with pickle masala It was just a normal afternoon and I made a simple daal and rice for lunch. These days, I do not feel right about skipping vegetables in any of the meals. So I wanted to add a vegetable element that I could get done real quick, to go with the daal and rice. I had beet root and carrots in the fridge so I thought of making a quick saute with them and then, it went in a totally delicious direction when I noticed the pickle masala in the fridge. The cashews and chana dal add a wonderful crunch. I love the aroma of the tiny bit of bell pepper but it is totally optional. rice, masoor dal, beet sabzi and pineapple chutney Ingredients: 1 beet root 1 small carrot 1 small onion 1/4 cup chopped bell pepper 1 tsp oil 1/2 tsp mustard seeds 1/4 tsp hing (asafoetida) 1/2 tsp cumin seeds 1 tbsp cash...

The school year is coming to an end. My daughter has some really great teachers at her preschool. She loves them. So we wanted to do something to thank them. We made some cards using a wine cork stamping technique I had seen on this blog . We actually found a wine cork on the road when I had taken the daughter out to ride her bicycle around the apartment complex. I put blobs of a few colors (blue, red, yellow and white) on a plastic container lid. The daughter swirled the wine cork around and picked up random colors and stamped a circle to make the flowers. I had drawn a circle on the paper to help her understand where to stamp. I also drew a few leaf shapes on the paper and she painted them green. I used tempera paints. When the paint was dry, I cut out the flowers and leaves leaving a tiny border of the plain yellow paper around it. I let the daughter stick the flowers and leaves on craft paper folded into cards. She put a dab of glue on the flowers and leaves and stuck them...

Today's post is just me showing off the new lamp which we made using a glass bottle as a base. Last year, when we had gone for strawberry picking at a local farm, they had some gallon cider jugs (like this ) out to take for free. I have a thing for glass and I just couldn't pass up a beautiful and free glass jug, even though I had no idea what to do with it. I looked around for ideas sporadically on the internet and I finally decided to make a lamp out of the bottle. We got a Bottle Lamp kit from walmart and a lamp shade with ring with goes under the lamp. The lamp kit makes it very easy to convert a bottle into a lamp. There are lots of tutorials on the internet for bottle lamps ( like this ). I did not drill a hole in the bottle for the wire, like some tutorials say. I just let the wire hang behind and it is not very noticeable at all. I had used a plain lamp shade and the lamp was looking a bit boring. I decided to dress it up with ribbon. I found a nice ribbon at ...