Hello there and DIY tiny planter

Hello there, all you lovely people. I know I know , it's been such a loooooooong time that you almost forgot this small space of mine on the internet, right? 

'twas a big change in our lives. We moved back to india, getting settled here, setting up the house, school, office, work , that and this, and oh you know how it is when we have to accommodate such a big change. 

So that was all going on and so this past year I was inactive in here.

Its joke time;
Hubby while watching cricket :yes its a six
My son: Appa not six,its seven;)

Moving on...

Now lets do a tiny planter. I'm in really love with those tiny white planter which succulents available in the market these days. So I thought of making one in my own style. 

What u need:

Rope or any thicker thread of your choice

Yellow and green felt clothes / artificial flowers

String

Sand/ pebbles to fill in the container

Any small container or an old box

Glue , scissor

How to:

I had this small thing that looks like a container. It's about the height of my index finger. 

Apply fevicol or any glue you have and start applying it from the bottom and simultaneously take a rope and start taping it from bottom up until you cover the whole container.

Next, time to make few felt flowers. I just made 3 of them .

Like see in these pics above, you have to make a small circle on a thick paper or cardboard and put the string around it, wrap green felt on string for the stem.

Cut  a long yellow felt ribbon, make tiny cuts along its length for the petals or just leave it plain and just roll it and paste it on one side of the cardboard. Cover the other exposed side of cardboard(that's the behind of flower with felt).

Now all you have to do is fill the container with pebbles or sand, place the felt flowers in it. I also placed tiny store bought white flowers ( or make your own ) along with it. 

Voila done! 

Now you can place it on your window sill like me or put it wherever , whatever place you want to adorn it with. 

Rain or Shine, it will make you Smile!

Happy crafting until next time.

Storytime: Ankush and his Candy update!

Friends and Fellow readers  dot dot dot
If you guys have subscribed for my blog in your google reader, you now know its closing on july 1st unfortunately. I have subscribed for many of your blogs in my reader and I have already switched over to feedly. So please keep coming back to check my blog, subscribe to any new feeder and have fun dot  dot dot.

DIY Refrigerator Clay Magnets

Me and my friend were travelling in the bus back home. We just felt like being a little naughty that day. Don't remember whose silly idea was it but we removed our water bottles from our bags.

No, we did not drink the water, neither used it to clean our seats nor did we use it to clean the bus.
Ok, why would we clean the bus?? Never mind. Lets move on.

We then did the inevitable !! Yes.

We sprayed the water on people passing by next to our moving bus! People on scooter, pedestrians, cycle..etc. We could see that the people were getting pissed but by the time they could react the bus moved forward. Most of them had no idea from where the water came from on that summer evening. But after a few minutes of our indulgence in fun and frolic of menacing all the oblivious people, the whole act came to a crashing end.

No, we still had water left in our bottles , enough to piss off probably a few more.

Two of the very infuriated passerbys on a scootor ,overtook our bus, stopped it, got into the bus , explained to our driver what had happened. I had never been so scared in my life before. I thought we were gonna be spending the rest of our lives in jail. They then started their investigation. They scanned each face on the bus but to our good fortune he couldn't recognize the poker face that we had. Neither did the back benchers in the bus who knew of our silly act admitted it.

They then walked away after shouting a mouthful of warnings! But we swore to ourselves we would never , ever, ever again do it .

Moral of the story:
Never Ever throw water on passers by from a school bus when you are in 3rd grade:))

Yes, it happened when I was in 3rd grade.That's probably the naughtiest thing I've ever did when I was in my primary school! That was the last for a few more years!


So coming to these refrigerator/fridge magnets.

Note:

* Use waste papers to do this project on as it is messy.

*Preferably buy magnets which as some kind of adhesive to stick it on. The adhesive side sticks to the clay.

* Amount of clay used should be small, check if the magnet can hold the weight of clay once you place the magnet on the clay. You can resize it but do it before you let it to dry.

* The magnet should be sealed properly after placing it on the clay, so that it holds the clay together.

*You can make different designs like you can see in the last pic! Use your own creativity. 

* I used air dry clay, but you could also try this project with other kinds of clay.

Gather your kid and you could have fun doing this project with them!

Yeah but tell them not to spray water on strangers.

Happy V Day Y'all

It's that time of the year again!  Happy Valentines Day everyone... Go get some love, give love, share love...
Do what u got to do on Valentines day!

Have fun!

My Guest post in Eve Of Reduction

Folks,
Check out my guest blog in EveofReduction: http://eveofreduction.blogspot.com/2013/02/guest-post-diy-decorative-clock-with.html


Plz do check out all the awesome DIY craft tutorials she has on her blog! Her makeover furnitures truly inspires one to  makeover our old furniture instead of tossing them over. Have fun cruising through her blog.


Enjoy!

AAAwwwwww...My Baby got his first homework!

Guess What ??
..

..
..

Yeah...You're right!!

My baby got his first homework!!!
Wait..How did u know that?
Did I somehow give it away :(
Hmm...
Wonder How!

Anyway..here it is!

I do not know why both of us got so excited looking at his homework. That's the magic the kids have on their parents. Every small thing they do or say ,gets the parents stand on their toes.

And the magic continues...

Welcome - 2013

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

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.

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.

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.

Photoberfest Week 3- Kids

My Sweet 2 year old son Ankush!!

Photoberfest-Week 2- Family

My submissions for the week 2- Family

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.

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.

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.

Restaurant Review of Olive Garden(for vegetarians)

Olive Garden is an Italian restaurant having many branches in the US. My love story with Italian food started with this restaurant. It was like love at first bite! And the love story has ever since continued.....

This Italian haven has quite a good  number of vegetarian dishes. The decor is so simple and pleasing. The service has been good most of the time we have visited excepting a couple of times.  The complimentary bread sticks are so always fresh out out of the oven served warm many a times.
I will be mentioning only the vegetarian dishes in this review.

Starters include bruschetta, caprese flatbread, artichoke spinach dip, lasagna fritta, smoked mozarella fonduta. We have tasted the first four and without a doubt all taste good excepting the lasagna fritta being too cheesy and heavy for my tastebuds.

The best part of this restaurant is their signature salad with their own dressing. I could just visit this place and order just a salad and still could be 100% satisfied. They also have a minestrone soup which I personally did not like much. But still it isn't bad to try once a while!

You can find a good variety of main courses among pastas. My personal favorite being ravioli de portbella. Never have got bored of it until now.

The below is a picture of Eggplant Parmagiani. It is a wonderful dish, which could also be substituted with penne pasta upon request.

They also have a good variety of wines and desserts. My favorite dessert is tiramisu, and the best part is that you can also get small portion of any dessert called dolcini. You wont even feel the guilt of eating all that decadent yumminess! 

You can also order an italian pizza which we have tasted and is good. Something different than the ones we usually order from dominoz or pizza hut.

This picture is a seafood dish which my friend had ordered the other day! It just goes without saying that non-vegetarians have lot of good options to choose from.

So my overall experience is always good visiting this place, the price is not bad for the amount of portion size and of course the good taste. Even the complimentary mint chocolate at the end tastes good!
Would I visit this place again?
I have already visited this place many a times and I would surely do so in future.

So if you are a vegetarian and you have an Olive Garden nearby, I would boldly suggest you to visit it and you wouldn't be disappointed.

Hope this review helped all fellow vegetarians.

Have fun you all!