DIY Diwali Lantern

Achooo....Achoo.....Chooooooooo......

Oops Sorry for that.

Oh No, its not the runny nose bcoz of the current bangalore weather. It's just that I was dusting the long unused space here in my blog which gave me the sneeze :)Too many cobwebs here!

Home is where the Heart is! 

Whats more fun than celebrating Diwali at home. The lights, the food, the laughter, the decorations, the people around, the family..it's the spirit and love that's enchanting about this festival.

This diwali I tried making a lantern at home. I used things lying around at home. 

Thermocol, crepe sheets, fancy silver sheets, stationary such as glue, scissors etc.

How I Made them are explained in the pictures below.

I had saved the thermocols from a package earlier and I now used them 

as a top hanger.

I then made holes 4 sides and run a string through 

it to use it as a hanger . Also a big hole is made in the centre to suspend lights inside.

I then took thick sheets of paper or thin sheet of cardboard which can bend you could say. Made 8 1" strips and stuck 2 each side and then stapled it all in a form of square

After that I used crepe papers to cover the lantern.

Last step is to stick crepe ribbons to hang down from the lantern.

And then hanged it. Lights could be suspended inside.

Hope you had a fab Diwali! And make them next time.
Watch this space for more such DIY's.

Refashioned 2 - It's all in the Jeans!

2 proverbs I totally believe in:

1) Tiny drops of water combine to make a mighty ocean

I so much believe in this one and truly have implemented in our lives whether it's saving money, water or learning, giving..almost in every aspect of our lives. And it has truly helped me.

2) Only stretch your leg so much that the mat allows you to. (This one is a literal translation of the kannada proverb "chapey iddashtu kaalu chachu")

I believe we should live our lives knowing our limitations to stretch our luxury/materialistic needs. Luxury should only be so much as to keep ourselves happy but not to do it to create an impression to others or in common terms -'Do Showoff'. !!

Coming to the topic refasioned. I refashioned few of my old jeans. Jeans could be easily turned into a skirt(among others ) , that too in different patterns. All you need is a sewing machine and of course sewing skills(Intermediate sewing skills are more than enough to do these). I you don't have any of the one, always look for a good tailor who can do it for you. But it's worth trying it with your old jeans rather than thrashing it.

Here are quick few looks of my refashioned jeans.

This particular one has a jeans turned into a skirt and have given a bottom frill with my old salwar.

With this one, I turned the jean pant to a skirt with a different pattern and combining it with crochet patterns.I hand sew the crochet onto the skirt .

In this one I turned my jeans and an old kurti top(which I got bored of wearing and whose material was still good ) into a new top/blouse. You can use jeans as frill also.

Old jeans could also be used to make wallets, kids dress, hand purse and many things more.
Check out my another skirt with jeans here.

A Reuse Tip:
While presenting gifts to others in a gift bag, it will be helpful if you write the name or wishes on a small card rather than writing it on the bag itself. This way the person who receives the gift can reuse the gift bag by just removing the card safely without damaging the bag.  Don't you think so?

Hope these tips help you and encourage you to reuse items at home.

Have fun until next post.

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.

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!

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!!

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.

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.

Mustardy Egg Omelette Sandwich and the 3 R's

It's a really funny thing to see someone sleep with their mouth open. Picture it on someone, ..... someone funny and your gonna laugh. Well, I happened to sleep this for few days last week. OK , Don't laugh. I had a cold. A damn cold which made my nose stuffy.
                If you've experienced this then you know that your mouth gets really dry if you sleep with it open. The first night I slept this way I had dreamed that I was so intensely thirsty, my mouth kept feeling so dry and I kept drinking gallons of water and yet my mouth still felt so dry and thirsty. And I kept searching for more water and I kept drinking and the same thirsty feeling. Thank God, then the alarm ran!
                The second night I slept this way, I again had dreamed that my mouth felt very dry and thirsty , And I was looking for water everywhere and I couldn't find any. And then I wasn't able to speak. And I kept looking and looking and I couldn't find any water. Damn!!! and again thank God that the alarm ran!
                I could only come to one conclusion from all of this. That I dream only during the early hours of the morning before I am about to get up. Right?? I guess all of us do the same. Dreams are so weird. I dream every night. I sometimes pray that I sleep dreamless. Bcoz they are always weird.

OK so coming to the sandwich I'm about to write today.
Its more an omelette between 2 pieces of bread, but with a little twist in making the omelette. The omelette is good and different by itself .

Ingredients for omelette: (Serves 2)
2 Large eggs
Half a big tomato chopped finely
Half of a potato boiled and finely chopped
1 big bulb of garlic chopped
6 leaves of mint
2 green chilli cut half
2 tsps of spicy brown mustard (use 1 tsp for just eating the omelette by itself)
pinch of sugar
salt to taste

Put some oil on a heated pan, fry the garlic, green chilli first for a min or so. Then add the potato, tomato, pudina in that order, fry for few secs, then add the spicy brown mustard, salt and a pinch of sugar to taste fry until everything is incorporated. spread everything evenly on pan, then pour 2 beaten eggs onto pan to make the omelette. Cook till done. 

For the sandwich part:

Ingredients: (serves 2)

4 slices of bread of your choice (I used whole grain honey oatmeal bread),

2 slices of your favorite cheese

chopped lettuce

Any sauce of your choice( ketchup, tamarind sauce, mint chutney or you could even try my world famous cranberry sauce!! )

Spread 2 slices of bread on a pan after dropping a few drops of oil on the pan on med heat. Roughly break it into pieces and spread them on the bread. Use a whole 2 slices if you don't mind all the extra calories/fat. Now cover it with a lid so as to lightly melt the cheese. Remove bread once it is lightly browned so as to have a light crunch.

Now place a piece of omelette on the bread slice, then chopped lettuce(adding sliced tomatoes at this point would be good), then spread your choice of sauce on this which I completely forgot before I took the picture. Then place the other slice of bread over this.

And then bite into it for that mustardy feeling..

OK ,On a totally, totally , totally, different context, a context so different that is so outworldly. Yes , you got it. The same old husband and wife conversations, or jokes you may say. This silly talk between me and hubby the other day happened when some silly thing happened and I so  asked him in a silly way: "Are you mad? "

Guess what he replied??

...


...


...


Hubby : "No, I'm married"

hehehehhehe....


If there's any letter thats in fashion these days, its the letter 'R', that too not once, but thrice. ;))
It's the 3 R's - Recycle, Reuse, Reduce which just means that by recycling all our used stuff, reusing all the possible things for various purposes, and reducing our waste we do good for our planet, and in turn for our future generations.
All of us should keep these things in mind when we go out to shop. Agreed most people are spontaneous shoppers , with all the colorful, beautiful , attractive stuff we get in shops which exactly what the manufacturers target. We quite often end up buying stuff which we are hardly in need of. We either buy 'coz we either liked the look of it or just in case we might need it in future.
I have in recent months developed this habit of resisting this temptation. The moment I feel the need to buy anything, I pause. I pause and give myself a minute or two to consider ,which is pretty much enough to stall the need to buy or procrastinates my shopping which by then I loose the interest. Which is a good thing.
I was in need of a shoe stand to be placed in my closet. I kept delaying buying it until I got the idea to make one with all the diaper boxes I had. I made the below stand with just diaper boxes and duct tape.

Sneek peek of the process of making a cardboard box shoe stand.

See you can make use of so many of the waste stuff at home. I recently used milk cartons cut into half as pots for my gardening (I shall put up pics and tutorial in future). All the old clothes, boxes could generally be put to good use.
I am sure all you have ideas of your own to recycle and reuse stuff at home. Please do teach your kids to use less. For Eg: Instead of using a whole sheet of paper towel, you could teach them to use half of a sheet of paper towel at a time (which is actually the amount necessary if you observe). Don't worry, it's not being frugal, your just teaching them to be sensible towards the environment.

So always remember the 3 R's.
With that note , I could safely end my long post here .

Chao until next time.