Updates and progress

As usual, there's sooo much to update you guys on. Wondering where to start, ummm . Ok let me first start with the small gathering we had at home in honour of my cousin's family visiting India.

My cousin, settled in New Jersey is currently visiting India for his annual vacation. As the visit is very short and they would be in Chennai just for a couple of days, I had a gathering of all relatives currently in Chennai. You see ours is a pretty large family. So, going around and meeting people would be a problem and extremely time consuming. We decided not to do any cooking at home and order some small eats from outside.

Except for the choco muffins, we ordered everything else. I could not take any pictures in my camera as I had run out of batteries. I will upload some pictures of the gathering once my uncle forwards his.

I made a small gift tag for my cousin's wife.

I got the design from "Cross Stitch Silhouettes". The card got slightly damaged while I was trying to punch a hole in it . But it was too late to re-do the finishing!!! Please, can you guys give me some suggestions as to how to finish it better??? Punching the card itself is not the thing, but how do I match the hole in the card and place a hole at the right place on the stitched piece? Also, what tool do I use to make the hole on the stitched piece??

And, yes this time I do have a picture of my name board too

Keeping my fingers crossed to meet my deadline of finishing this by year end and have it framed .

I start on my new project at work tomorrow (err, today)!!! Please do wish me luck.

Am sure, the christmas spirit is really high all over. Hope everybody has great fun getting ready for the day. Till my next update, aurevoir..

A Give-away

Karyn at The Teakettle corner is having a wonderful christmas give-away. Go over to her blog to see the entire list of things that are being given as a gift!!!

A few celebrations

We happened to have a couple of celebrations the last week.

One was our festival Kaarthigai Deepam. This time I tried making Pori with mom's help. All these years I only made appam and never ventured near Pori as it involved making jaggery syrup. I am slightly nervous making that. But it turned out to be a simple process and not all that time consuming.

Pori is made with puffed rice. We get various types of puffed rice. For Karthigai, we make the balls by mixing 2 types in jaggery syrup, which are Nellu Pori and Aval Pori.

The most important part is the lighting of lamps.

The significance being that, the month of Karthigai (as per Tamil calendar) is supposed to be inauspicious. So, by lighting lamps the entire month, we drive away the evil and bring home light. On the full moon day that falls in the month of Karthigai, we light many more lamps at dusk.

The second celebration that we had was MIL's 60th birthday. Though we normally don't celebrate birthdays in a big way, as it was her 60th b'day we decided to make a surprise visit. I had bought a beautiful Orissa silk saree in cream and copper-sulphate blue colour. I took the day off and baked a chocolate cake. Vaishnavi was extremeley happy with helping me decorate the cake.

It was her idea to add the cherries. So, while I cut the cherries in half, she decorated the cake with them. I added a few sprinkles. MIL was too happy with the gifts and the surprise. Doesn't it always feel nice to make others happy and see the happiness on their faces. Nothing can be more satisfactory than that.

You know what, out of the blue one day Vaishnavi said "Amma, you have stitched Vaishnavi and have not even started Akila. Go and do it now" !!! Of course she was talking about the name board. Now, do you think I would sit idle even with this. So, out came my project again after weeks!!! I am almost done with Akila (sorry folks no pictures of that yet). Hope to finish the project by year end and get that framed along with my peacock.

Of course, I made quite a few neck-hugging necklaces. Pictures in my next post for sure.

Meari wanted to know how to make samosas. You can find the recipe here http://sanjeevkapoor.com/Recipe.aspx?RecipeId=2944&Header=Searched%20Recipe&MenuId=0

So, with these updates, I am signing off. Till my next update...