Last finish of 2012

Wishing my dear friends a Merry Christmas. I hope you all had a wonderful time with your families

It's that time of the year when there's a lot happening, mostly lot of fun. Even at work it's fun time. We usually have the fun club activities kicked off early December and the activities go on till mid Jan!! We have a whole lot of outdoor and indoor activities, games and finally is closed with a big family event.

Usually around Christmas I go around to the hotels and malls in the city to take a look at the various decorations that have been put up. This year too we did that. Frankly it was quite disappointing. The main reason being that the biggest mall (as of now) in Chennai did not have a tree as is the norm!!! What a shock that was

 Though the decoration is definitely good, I expected a grand tree standing there majestically, and was disappointed to see a Teddy house instead :(

Trying to catch up with all the festive baking, I tried my hand at snow-ball cookies. But due to some reason, the cookies went absolutely flat. I was then left with about half of the cookie dough and I did not want to make cookies with that. I went on a spree hunting for ideas to use up left-over cookie dough and found a choco-lava cookie dough muffin

It turned out absolutely yummy. Got the recipe from here. This was quite adventurous again. The recipe called for melting chocolate chips in a microwave. When I tried that, the ziploc started to burn. I never got the runny chocolate, it just was a little powdery paste. I lost patience and used that as a filling. But it gave a great crunchy texture. After all this, we got 4 lovely cookie-dough muffins and topped it off with cookies 'n' cream icecream and hershey's chocolate syrup!! Oh yumm it was

I love fruit cakes and usually buy from a store every year. This time I decided to try baking one myself

It turned out well, except it was quite dense. I used flax seed instead of eggs. Recipe from here


Now for my finish..

Isn't it pretty as all other cottages. I did a little cottage swap between August and July. I have used the August pattern to make July. That's because I need a flag in my August, and July has a flag.

It's now time to actually finish and mount the cottages to put up. I went about shopping for backing materials and mounting boards over the weekend.

I also found some good even-weave/countable fabric at this place where I got the materials for a very good rate. The store had about 2.5mtr left and he was ready to give the whole thing to me for Rs.150!! Would I miss such an opportunity.

Now I have to find a good way to use that.

Well, that's about it from me today. Till next time.. Take care.. Be happy.. Keep stitching.. Au Revoir

Bloggoversary and TUSAL

Goodness, it's actually 4 years since I started the blog. Thank you all my dear friends who have kept me going real strong and made me stick on to this world. Thanks to you all, I now am much more courageous in trying out new things in baking, beading and mostly cross stitch. I am not sure I would have achieved even half of what I have done, if I had not started the blog and come to know you all by means of this vast world. And not to mention the number of new friends I have made with the help of the blog. It's amazing how small the world can be with the help of the net. Thank you all again

And now to update you on what I've been up to. Well, I can't believe it's been almost a month since my last post. So much has happened since then - my cousin's wedding, then a trip to Trichy to celebrate M's uncle's 80th birthday and the festival of Karthigai deepam.

First, today being new moon here's the TUSAL for the month. I actually am posting it on time - woohoo

We had great fun during my cousin's wedding, the mehendi being the grand start of it all. V, the bride's sister and I got a small "tattoo" made.

That's us showing it off

V wore a ready-to-wear saree for the main event.

She was swarmed by people and the photographer as soon as she stepped out of the room all dressed up. She got so upset with all the attention that she ran inside the room again and refused to come out. Soon she started crying and wanted me to change her dress :)

I baked a cake - a vanilla walnut sponge with choco buttercream frosting.

This was mainly to celebrate Bhagwan Sai Baba's birthday which was just the day of the mehendi.

Now for the stitchy update.

Here's where I am with July - yep still stuck with it. With so much activity there's not been much progress. And then Mr. froggie made an appearance and I had to frog out all of the cottage and the tree on the left, and re-do the entire part.

So, with that my dear friends I take leave today. Till next time.. Take care.. Be happy.. Keep stitching.. Au Revoir