Monday, December 31, 2012

Welcome - 2013

Wishing all my friends and readers a very Happy , Joyous , Glorious New Year - 2013






Sunday, December 30, 2012

Disturbing..:(

Its's so disturbing to read the news. I'm so sure everyone has this on their mind after the delhi gang rape took place. Every now and then , the media sensationalizes a murder or a scam or any violence crime cases. Not that they are not worthy of getting sensationalized.

But according to statistics, a woman is raped every 20 mins and our country India is the 3rd worst offender in rape. So imagine the no. of cases that go unnoticed, that goes unreported. Just becoz' this delhi case has got so much of media attention, there are so many people coming forward to report their's. Every day we see new reports of rape, so it doesn't mean, "Oh! people still dnt have a heart, one more case today!!". There are number of cases happening everyday. And still there will be happening.

I do not understand why do we have to blame the politicians soo much. Are they the one who are raping woman? I dn't mean to say they are not to be blamed, but the real one's to be blamed are our society. The society that we have created. Blame your own kids, blame your own neighbourhood. How many woman in your neighborhood get eve-tease, groped? How many men do you see following young women from their colleges or work places to their homes? How many men engage in verbally abusing girls and women on the roadsides for just fun? How many of us didn't face problem while traveling on public transport, let alone while walking in a crowded place? If the basic foundation itself is not good,these rape cases will not stop just by bringing stringent laws!

We need to teach our kids good morals, good behavior, discipline. keep all our ego's in check.Teach our fellow men to respect women. I dn't mean to blame all men. But there are so many out there to be blamed.  Take just in colleges, how many girls get eve teased or bullied? All these behavior in men becomes strong later on where they commit such crimes easily. Forget rape, what about dowry deaths, female foetacide, which happens even in educated families? All these things happen 'coz of the general attitude of society towards women.

Like our president mentioned in her speech, the whole attitude of society needs to be changed! one person on TV mentioned "charity begins at home" , yes true, teach kids the right morals.

I have a 3 year old son at home, I pledge today to teach him the right morals as best to my abilities.
Let all men respect women and so should all women respect men.






Thursday, December 20, 2012

Seasons Greetings!

Amidst of all the heartbreak and anguish over incidents in Connecticut or Delhi or in many other places that go amiss, with the end of the world conspiracies rising high , take your time and have all these victims in our prayers. That is the only thing we can all possibly do at this point of time.
Hope there was less negative things going around. Looks like the world has already end, what more can it end?

Let's all do many as good things as possible to counterfeit the bad things.

And wishing you all Merry Christmas from my family to yours.


Let's all keep the positive spirit going around.


Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Restaurant Review of Bahama Breeze and Tulum(For Vegetarians)

It was our 6 year wedding anniversary early december and we went off to Bahama Breeze to celebrate with their caribbean cuisine.
Well being a vegetarian, there was hardly any dish to  exemplify the caribbean cuisine.
To start off we had Lemonade with sugarcane juice, which was actually good and refreshing.


For Appetizers, we ordered Pita crackers with hummus. It tasted pretty good. My extremely picky eater son liked those crackers. There were  few more vegetarian appetizers. 


For the main course: 
I must say I was a bit disappointed with their choices in main course for vegetarians. There were in total just 3 dishes. We ordered this rice bowl which had a very distinct chinese taste to it. Im not a big fan of chinese especially american-chinese, Indo-chinese may be. So this dish was so-so to me.


The next main dish was Veggie Quesedillas. This dish was perfectly done. Their salsa was also good.


Coming for the best part. The Dessert. I do not have a sweet tooth guys, but this dessert bags the award. It's  their pineapple upside down cake with raspberry sauce.  It was one of the best dessert I've ever tasted in my life. You have to try it if you have Bahama breeze in your town.


So I would rate my overall experience based on food, hospitality ,cleanliness as 2.5 out of 5. Just 'coz they did not have good veggie dishes but they do have a good seafood variety if you love them. 


Tulum:
Tulum is a mexican restaurant in pembroke pines, FL. 
Vegetarians- Keep outa here. 
We only and only liked their complimentary chips and amazingly tasty salsa. 
Everything else tasted not good. 
Try your luck if you visit.

Keep looking for more reviews.


Sunday, November 4, 2012

DIY Owl Halloween Costume

We had a fun Halloween day yesterday. It was the first time we were actually part of the celebration. I was absolutely flabbergasted the first time I saw the halloween day. Everyone would be out in the streets / malls in their own costumes, doing their trick-or-treat thing. We would see someone wearing these costumes in India only on fancy dress competitions in our schools whereas here in US , everyone participate flaunting their costumes from day to night which is kinda fun to watch.

I made an owl costume for my son. I would say it's more a basic idea how to do an owl costume. My 2 yr old son is extremely fussy about wearing any accessory whether on head or like a chain or anything. So I wanted to keep it as simple as possible and hence did this basic idea of an owl. This costume could be improvised in many ways to fit your child's needs and look.

Materials needed:

Sewing Machine
Thread
Cloth Materials to stitch the owl(I reused all my son's old clothes in this project. It would be nice to actually find some fur materials)
Scissors
Glue

Procedure:

This costume is simple in means of wearing it. Simply stitch the pattern on a pant and a t-shirt and wear it directly without any hassle. I used my son's old pajama and t shirt. The pant has the lower portion of an owl, the t-shirt has the head of an owl.

Lay the pant on any piece of material the pattern could be stitched on.Draw an outline of the pant, cut it like shown in this below pic. We need 2 such pieces. Lets name this piece as AF (front piece) and AB (behind piece).


Next cut out  feather looking pieces like this from preferably white material. Use fur if available. We might need enough to cover the piece we cut earlier.


Starting from bottom of AF , arrange the feather pieces side by side and stitch using a sewing machine onto AF. Go from bottom to up until the whole AF is covered.


Coming to the wings. Cut 2 pieces like the one in the right side of the pic.Cut out long feather like pieces from shades of brown like this pic. 

       

You could use 2 methods here. One secure all feathers onto the wing using pins like this and stitch under a machine. Run lines on it . Second, just glue everything together to form 2 wings like this below.

Place the wings on AF, place under a machine and stitch along yellow lines.It's optional to stitch the whole length. Stitch half way and it gives a different look.


For AB, I covered the major portion  with light brown and stitch dark brown feather pieces around it.



Place AB and AF on 2 sides of the pant, stitch each on top joining the pant, then stitch AB and AF together half way through.


For the head portion of owl, Cut yellow/orange piece to cover the middle portion of t-shirt in the shape as shown and 2 big circles of black for the eyes and place and glue everything together. 


Cut 2 ears in the shape of a half pointed oval and glue this in the top extreme ends of the body of t shirt.Cut feathers and glue them all over the t shirt. Your t-shirt is now done and So is your Owl costume.




Now make your dress creatively using this idea, using your own style and materials. Have fun. Sorry for the late tutorial by the way. You can try it out next time.


Oh! Trick or Treat!!



Thursday, October 4, 2012

Submissions for Photoberfest

My submissions for the PHOTOBERFEST 's first week theme: ME



For more Info about the photober contest visit, Katie Evans's blog @ http://kevansphotography.blogspot.com/. 

Katie has amazing , simple tutorials about photography.. Oh! Don't forget to check out her 2 little cutie pie's.



Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Restaurant review of Salsa Fiesta & Brio(For Vegetarians)

Great eaters and great sleepers are incapable of anything else that is great - Henry IV of france.

I had been to this mexican restaurant called Salsa Fiesta recently. 



I was so missing some good mexican food since we left Arizona. Looks like this place filled the void and I went bananas for their food!

OK, so we ordered Tostada fiesta. As you can see it has all this amazing tostones, taquitos, tortilla, tabita, teapot, tarpone.... and...Ok wait.. !What am I saying!  

I just made up the last 3 words. I'm silly sometimes...
Getting back, tostones are fried raw plantains, Crispy taquito is deep fried/baked  filled burritto, Pico de gallo is nothing but a particular kind of salsa. The crispy corn tortilla had all kinds of toppings on it including black beans, salsa, guacamole, sour cream, cheese ... This dish not only tasted incredibly good, it was mind-boggling. All ingredients were so fresh.



The another dish we ordered was Ole Ole(Vegetarian Spanish Omlette) Sandwich.
It comes with a side of nachos, pico de gallo and a different kind of a dipping sauce.
I had never tasted such a kind of sandwich earlier. It had potatoes and caramalized onions, arugula and spanish omlette. It was lip smacking. Well this dish isn't strictly vegetarian. It for those egg eating vegetarians like us:)


For my son we ordered Kids menu which had rice, black beans, cheese quesedilla. My son loved the quesedilla.


There is also a salsa bar where the gamut of salsa's and dippings tingles your food senses. We have options of tacos, burritos, enchilladas , salads, soups which could all be custom made for vegetarians. They have a seperate brunch menu other than the lunch menu. Kids also have their menu.

The decor is very urban, pop. Don't miss this restaurant next time you think of eating out. It's located in the whole foods market campus for those in pembroke pines area, FL. All dishes we brought were under 10$. Genuinely priced. Service was good. http://salsafiestagrill.com/
Would I visit this again? Yes, I would definately. Again and Again:)

Brio:

This Italian restaurant is located in the Shoppes at pembroke Pines, pembroke pines, FL. Had been here for my b'day with friends. This extravagant looking restaurant does have few vegetarian dishes. A seperate brunch menu is also available. 

It was a long time that I had visited this place, had clicked the pics and safely stored it in my laptop. Safely. Untouched. 
And now I open these pics and my really awesome bad memory fades about the names of these dishes. So I do not exactly remember this particular salad, but it was ofcourse vegetarian and of course it was very tasty.



This is their complimentary bread and one of a kind of cracker/tortilla you could say. Don't-know-what-it-is-exactly-called was good.


For the appetizer we had ordered Roasted Red Pepper and fresh Mozarella Brushetta. It was the first time I tasted this particular bruschetta and I wasn't disappointed. It has very distinct taste because of the drizzle of balsamic vinegar.
 And Oops! Sorry for the bad pictures. The phone, you know. The Night , you know. :(


For the main course, we had ordered Ravioli di bello. This dish is very similar to the ravioli portbello available in Olive garden restaurant. It tasted good, creamy.


The other dish was Penne Meditterranean. It had an interesting blend of mushroom, spinach, tomatoes, feta and pine nuts.


There is also a kids menu. Apart from these they also have few more dishes in the appetizer section and one another main dish called eggplant Pomodoro. Prices are ok! Not too heavily priced neither too cheap. The 2 times I have visited I surely had issues with their service. May be b'coz it's always crowded. We had to wait and wait for ofcourse the waitors but not for the food. It's ok to visit this once in a while. Would I visit this again? Yes, I would definately.

P.S: Oh yeah I remember now. It was the Brio chopped Salad.



Tuesday, September 18, 2012

DIY Mail Organizer

I hate mail. Paper mail.

This is along with hating noodles, pollution, kheer, corruption , mosquitos,  rice pudding, puris, dirty hands, apple pie , dirty lakes/ponds etc etc etc.

Wow, I sat here about 10 to 15 minutes to just think what I hate. Why did I do that? 
Anyways, coming back to paper mail. There's always so much of junk paper mail everyday.Whenever we get the mail from our mailbox, almost 7 out of ten times, the papers get strewn around our house. My adorable son loves to spread all the papers around and I just hate it. Here, there's another thing I hate.

I wonder how much of trees are cut up just for these paper mails. Anyways I was in need of a paper mail organizer and here's how I did it. 

Things needed:
2 Cereal boxes, more or less of the same size.
Scissors
Cello Tape
Glue
Any Nice looking paper
Marker
Measuring Scale / Ruler

Take 2 cereal boxes.

 

Cut one elongated side of both the boxes as shown. Close both the shorter sides (the top and the base) using cello tape on the top side of the box. 



Now apply glue on the bigger side of one box and place another box over it as shown. After this, seal all the closed edges with cello tape.


Now I measured 4 cms on the side of one box, and using a marker draw a line joining it to the top of other box as shown. This is just to get an oblique look. Do this on both the sides and cut along the line.


This is how it looks after cutting it on both the sides.


Now , I had these Shopping paper bags which were just lying in my cupboard. So I gave them some work. I cut them up into pieces.


With the help of glue I stuck these pieces all around the  cereal boxes. I salvages the letters M,A,I,L from the shopping bag and finished the look by sticking it onto the finished piece. 


So here's how you do this easy, peasy, neat mail organizer. Oh, wondered why I used 2 boxes? One is for the mail to be sorted out and the other section is for the mails and coupons that are in use.

Ok, I can't leave this post with those words of hatred. So for some love here's this lovely picture of dolphins flying in air momentarily before plunging into the blue water.


OK then have a lovely time until we meet next.





Monday, September 10, 2012

Refashioned



Hi there, 3 things I need to mention. Okay, Let's make it 6.

1. My parents had been here in US with us for 50 days on vacation, and we had an amazing time.

2. I ended up being lazy coz you know, mom used to do all the work around the house! And now that they are gone back to India..:(((

3. On our 2nd visit to disney land , Ankush enjoyed there a lot. I mean really a lot.

4. Ankush says 'wheels on the bus' song in his own sweet way, although annoying sometimes when it gets repetitive for long time , I derive great deal of gratification seeing him sing with his 'cute as a puppy' actions.

The next  2 things will be mentioned later in this post. Oops! See I told ya (remember #2), I got lazy. I procrastinate, even writing!


                     I had mentioned in my blog earlier that I don't like wasting things and about the 3 R's - reuse, reduce, recycle. Well here are some more examples.

I did this makeover for the wall clock using the packaging foam plates that comes with your vegetables in your grocery store.Cut out the designs , stick it around the clock and Voila, that's the most simple makeover.





The next 2 projects are 'Mom and Me' projects. Coz we both did it. I had borrowed my friends sewing machine . No we did not stitch this skirt, then why the machine???
Well , It was actually a white jeans pant, which we converted into a skirt. The white and black patterned material is store bought.
 It's now refashioned and ready to wear! See don't dispose your old clothes, you can somehow try and make it work in some or the other way.


This following bag I call it as a 'Mom and Dad' bag. Nopes, my dad doesn't know to sew, neither did he help in the project. It's still 'Mom and Dad' bag in the 'Mom and Me' project. Coz we did this bag using my Mom's chudidhar/suit and the inner lining of this bag with my dad's casual pants. Both of their clothes had accidents while ironing. And we thought why not use them instead of throwing away and we sew this bag.



See, before throwing away anything , think twice if you can come up with a way to use it, and surely you will get some amazing ideas. 

Here comes the next 2 things that I didn't mention earlier and has nothing to do with the 'Refashioned' topic.

5. I made these clay Ganesha idols for this Vinayaka/Ganesha chaturthi pooja. My son saw the idols and he said 'Gaaeesha'. 


6. Here is the bounty of Wheatgrass that I grew in my  balcony. The pot is nothing but a milk carton cut into half. See.... another reuse.



And here's the recipe for the very healthy juice that I made out of it.

Put WheatGrass in your blender. Put some water, run it, strain the juice. Put the grass back into the blender and keep repeating the process until almost whitish green fibre remains. Now stir in some honey and lemon juice to the juice and enjoy . One pot of grass was enough for 4 .



That's it for now. Have a happy week ahead.