First Post of the Year

We stepped into a 2021 on a very holy note with a visit to our Kula deivam temple and our Guru. For the last 4 years, every time we planned a visit to our Kula deivam temple, something would come up and the trip never happened. Finally, all graces worked to make it happen. 

Work suddenly picked up pace too all of a sudden after almost a year's lull. Schools are gradually beginning off-line classes. Vs classes will be beginning on Monday, thrice a week. Offices have not opened yet, but I did visit office once this month to pick up my laptop

Front line workers slot for Covaxin will come to an end by end of February and people over 50 years of age will get their chance. Probably rest of us will get our chance around May, fingers crossed 🙏 

Baking

I wanted to bake these cookies around Christmas, but it's never too late for these 

Peppermint cookies. I could not wait to find the traditional striped candy canes, so used Andes mint chips instead. Here's the link to the recipe

 V and I have been watching The Crown on Netflix, because of which we get a lot of suggested videos and facts about the royal family. One that caught our attention was about the royal family's favorite food. 

One of those is this super easy, no-bake dessert. It is so rich and chocolate overload. V made a white chocolate topping to add to it. Here's the recipe link

Stitchy Update

I already have my first finish of the year!! Unfortunately, it is a secret project and I cannot share pictures in any social media till I am able to give it to the recipient

But here are the ORTS from my first finish. It is going to be a gift to a very special person 

So dear friends, that's the update from me today. Till next time, take care.. stay safe.. be happy.. keep stitching.. Au Revoir!! 

Wrapping up 2020!!

It's time to say goodbye to the most memorable (?) year ever!! As bad and challenging as it has been, on a positive note, it has done a lot of good for my crafty progress. Here's what I have done all year

Reading

                                          

The most memorable books were Becoming and the Maeve Binchy ones. Erica James and Ava Miles are light and feel good books. Bomb girls was good too - my first ever war time read

Baking

These were the only baking that I did. Most of the baking was done by V this year 😊

Beading

We did quite a bit of beading this year, lightening the stash considerably 😄

Stitchy Finish

I can't believe that I actually managed 4 stitchy finishes this year - all thanks to the lockdown!! 

While we step into a brand new year, hope we are able to go back to some of the old normal while retaining some of the new normal. Let us be able to have a fine balance between the two. Hope we have a healthy, peaceful, prosperous year and have loads and loads of crafting 

With that signing off for this year dear friends. Till we meet next year.. take care.. be happy.. keep stitching.. Au Revoir!!

A Finish and a start!

Hope all my dear blogger friends had a Merry Christmas!! We are finally in the last week of the year

Baking

V and I wanted to bake Christmas cookies this year

Linzer cookies and 'snow' cookies as we called it. We did not add food color to the icing, and with the silver balls topping, don't they look like snow :)

Stitchy Update

Put in the last stitches in Coffee last weekend. I am very happy with how it has turned out. I will be taking this and a few others that I finished earlier this year to the framer later this week

Started on a new project, which is going to be a gift. So, I am not going to talk much about this or post any further update pictures, till it reaches its new home :)

So, that's from me today dear friends. Enjoy the rest of your holidays. Till next time.. Be Happy.. Keep Stitching.. Au Revoir

Dec ORTS 2021

 And here's the final ORTS post of the year dear friends!!

I wanted to post only after I complete this, but that might take another week based on my stitching speed 😀

I am totally in love with this one and how it's coming up. So, that's it for today friends. Till next time.. take care.. be happy.. keep stitching.. Au Revoir

Nov ORTS & A New Start!

We are almost at the end of the year (with just a month and a half left) And all our festivals are almost done, we just have Karthigai left. This year has been different, but we definitely had fun. We limited the number of in person visits for Navaratri, and 'met' people virtually. We sent the vethala paaku and diwali sweets via swiggy/dunzo (local delivery apps).

All through this year, I have been posting an entry @ of one post per month - mostly for ORT update. This is another ORT post

Diwali 2020

So, this is how we spent diwali

These were my diwali looks - white saree for diwali eve, garden picture on diwali morning and the red saree on diwali evening

V and I went totally crazy with the sweets, as you can see here. We started preparing about a week before diwali and went on till the diwali afternoon!! We had lots of fun preparing and sharing with everyone

Stitchy Update

I started this new project, which is a free coffee pattern from Pinterest. I am stitching this on perforated paper and using anchor thread from my stash

All ORTs are from coffee progress. The jar shows YTD-am quite happy that it's almost full this year😊

So, dear friends, this is the update from me today. Till next time, Take care.. Be Happy.. Keep stitching.. Au Revoir

A Finish!

It was dad's 73rd birthday on the 18th. We had a small cake cutting at home with my brother's family joining us over zoom

We wanted to try a new flavor cake this time - use some recipe that we had saved but not tried yet. Dad is not a great fan of chocolate cake. So that was out. I had some mawa in the fridge and dad likes the Indian flavor. 

                                                        

                                            Eggless Goan Mawa cake with saffron buttercream frosting

Another cake V baked was this apple dates cake. Link to the original recipe is here - https://www.davidlebovitz.com/apple-date-cake-salted.../

                                                

The changes we made are - use whole wheat flour instead of apf; olive oil instead of butter; flaxseed powder instead of egg

And yay, I have a finish!!

Snowy Day by Lizzie Kate. I used 18ct Aida from my stash. All threads are anchor from my stash too. I do not have the shade numbers as that's how I got them from the nearby craft store. He had just kept them in a cardboard box and sold them all to me. So, some of the skeins do not have the numbers on them. I tried to pick the closest match based on colors

Here's the ORTS from last month's stitching. The jar has YTD 

I have not yet decided what to stitch next. Probably I will do some beading before the next stitchy project

So friends, that's the update from me today. Till next time.. stay safe.. be happy.. keep stitching.. Au Revoir

Sweet 16!!

Guess who turned 16 this week.. that's right, V is sweet 16 now!! 

She wanted a chocolatey cake this year. A friend had shared this recipe for Salted Caramel chocolate cake sometime back and I had a bottle of store bought salted caramel. 

Basic recipe idea is from this link - https://bakerbynature.com/salted-caramel-chocolate-cake/. I used my go-to eggless chocolate cake recipe from Nita Mehta's Eggless Bakes book. Used the buttercream frosting recipe from this link. For the first time, tried caramel shards as topping

Chocolate Cake with Salted Caramel buttercream frosting

Stitchy Update

Here's progress on Snowy day

All I have left now are the whites. Hope to finish it by next weekend

So, that's the update from me today friends. Till next time.. be happy.. stay safe.. Keep stitching.. Au Revoir