SOCIAL MEDIA

Saturday, September 29, 2012

10 girls, 10 kids and a lost umbrella!

I am still in Satara after the "wow!" trip with the girls!

We went to a place about 15 kms from my home!

And it was a beautiful place with a crazily wonderful experience!

We were 10 girls with 10 kids! And just 2 little boys in the group!

Here's a glimpse of my hometown by the night...


 

Here's a tour for you guys...


This was a car that was parked in the hotel that we stayed in... Really loved the beast!

We had a blast in the evening... We played on the slides and swings in the children's play area... We ran around tagging each other (playing run and catch as they call it) The kids were a bit terrified if the moms had gone crazy! But once they realized that we were okay they joined the fun!

We played a lot of games... What is the time Mr Wolf?, Cotton ball giggles.. And lots more...

It was awesome... we were laughing late into the night...
I think we slept at somewhere around 2.30... With big plans to go for a morning walk!

Only 4 of us got up... But it was worth it!

This was the panoramic view that greeted us...


The servant quarter of the hotel was surrounded by greenery and I loved the early morning look of the place...


The view from the hotel was breathtaking... It was indeed a good morning...


We had decided to wear floral clothes since we would be going to see the valley of flowers.

Here's the whole group!


The kids spent a lot of time sketching on the pavement in front of the hotel... There was some striking artwork there...


Here are a few flowers :


Some peacock shaped flowers...


We learnt a lot new things too... Here's a flower when you touch it at a certain place, the stamen comes out of a trunk like structure! Wow!


We also came across a few cobwebs which had dew drops on them...


I played a lot with the camera - especially the 28X zoom feature!

These flowers were just 5 mm in diameter and about 3 meters from where I stood! Now you get the idea....

There were a lot of different species...


Some of them, we learn there, are near extinction!

The kids tried to fly!


And we tried too..


The view was fantastic!


Here's me with the kids...After all it was me whom they called Didi (elder sister)and all others were aunties! LOL...


And the big girls' naked feet!


After this we went to the Kaas Lake..


Kids loved the splash around...


My little guy just loved it!


He was just a tiny it disappointed that he could not find Nemo here...


The climax of the trip was when our Umbrella flew and fell into the water!

It had quite a journey...




And then it was time to pack up and head home!


Can you spot the umbrella in this picture?

We had a lot of happy faces and tired feet!!!

What a trip!
There will surely be many many many more... (as many as our husbands will allow!)

Next destination : Goa!!!

Now that will be a blast!

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Sometimes you do not need words...









Playing with my Aurifil thread and the camera!
 
Monday, September 24, 2012

Guy Pillows for my Brother...

This project has been pending for quite some time... No apparent reason, but just did not move my a@# and get on top of it...





Pillows for my brother - Chaitanya... He got a new chair a few days (okay months now) back...

And also bought a pillow for it!

I told him I'd make a funky looking pillow sham for it!

Fast forward--- It has been a LOT of time since I did that and I reckoned I should make him a pillow sham BEFORE its time to buy a new chair!

So I finally got my bottom moving and whipped up these TWO - yes, two - pillow shams for him... It took mere minutes! No idea why I had put it off so long!

The first is a New York Skyline in Bright Red!


It still has the World Trade Center! I love it for that!

And the second one is absolutely cute and yet a "boy" thing!


I'm really hoping he likes them!

:)

Meanwhile, I'm going to go away for a little while... With a few friends and our kids minus our husbands! A girls' time out! Yay!
We're going off to my hometown - Its going to be the FIRST time I'll be going to Satara and staying in a hotel! But we're going there to have fun, right! Will be visiting mom & dad though, briefly!

We're going off to visit Kaas. It is about 25 kms from my parents' place... It is the time of the year when the entire plateau on the hilltop is covered with tiny flowers... They are simple wild flowers but so many in number that they are absolutely breathtakingly beautiful! If you ever come to India during August/September (just after the rains end) make sure you visit the place!

To know more about the place and the flowers read this...

I will be back with a lot of photos after 2 days!

Till then...

C ya!

Orbit once again...

Remember Orbit?

Okay, let me refresh your memory...

A few months back, I bought a book that I fell in love with...

We Love Color compiled by  Susan Woods...




It sure is a fantastic book! The best part about it according to me?

Well, I have said this often and here I am saying it again - I do not get the beautiful quilting fabric that most of you guys use here in India! I know you all are going to tell me that I get some of the most fabulous fabrics here - the ones that you'll die for! But we always desire for that, that we cannot get! Isn't that the rule of life?

So, I dont get the beautiful quiltign fabric here! But Solids! I get them like none of you!

Here's just a glimpse of what a blouse piece store looks like - Do any of you have a fabric store with THAT many colors?

Image source

So solids is something that I can do without having to wait for 2-4, sometimes even 8 weeks before I get to see the fabric in my hands!

Apart from that, the fact that the quilts actually were popping out from the pages was also a contributing factor!

So I settled on making something that I had never attempted! The Orbit quilt by Jennifer Sampou... I loved it! I decided not to attempt the whole thing and let myself down! So I made it into a 16" x 16" mini quilt instead!

And here it is :

It did involve a lot of dense quilting... I had never done anything so close before (I did attempt it afterwards though)

It came out beautiful! And I'm totally proud of it!


I'm linking it up on the Craft Buds Craft Book Challenge...

Craft Book Month at Craft Buds


If you have made anything from a craft book in 2012, go ahead and enter it!

Have fun!
Cheers!!!
Sunday, September 23, 2012

A week that was...

It has been a hell of a week!

Some things happened that I never imagined, never wished... While I tackled some that I never thought I would!

It was both exciting as well as depressing!




The bad news first... My parents are selling the house that I grew up in! And the house grew with me...


This is what it looked like in 1985. I think this snap was taken on my little brother's first birthday... It was a 5 room house where 9 people lived! And what life it was!

My parents, my uncle and aunt, my grandmother and we 4 kids enjoyed being together!

And vacations were always full! All the cousins came over ad we had 10 kids in the house!

We had a swing on the terrace that could accommodate all of us! Most of our days were spent there... The mornings more than once involved treks to nearby hills (Satara - saat tara - seven stars - name derived from the 7 hills that surrounded it) We even slept on the terrace... I can clearly remember few of us, pulling blankets over their heads in the morning to avoid sun shining directly on our faces!


Come 1990 and the look of the house changed... We had 5 more rooms and another kitchen...

But we kids always stayed together... :)

We enjoyed cricket matches together - I remember the India Pakistan match when I was out running errands with mom and we came home to find walnut shells all over the staircase! When we reached the living room we found all the seven men of the house plopped on various chairs, even the floor, with walnut shells on every possible surface! Apparently they had eaten through 1 kg of walnuts and used the doors to break the shells open!

This is what my house looked like when I got married! Actually this picture is of the day I got engaged...


More recently this is what it looked like... At the time of my cousin's wedding!


I know my parents have valid reasons to sell this house and move elsewhere, but aren't these memories too precious?

The worst part : The new house will be so alien to me! I wont have any memories associated with it! :(

It will be very difficult to let this one go...

Okay, enough of me crying... I'm sure the new place will be fabulous and we'll make new memories there!

Moving on to the good news!

Well, I started working on a new quilt!

40 blocks - 8" x 8" each... Simple, isn't it?

Well, here's the twist : Each block has 256 pieces! 0.5" square finished!

Here are sneak peeks of Block # A8


I have pixelated an image in grayscale, and using those pixels as guides I'm working on making a potrait quilt!

My personal target for this one is diwali - 15 Nov! for the quilt top!
Though I'm not going to need it before February 2013!
 
Going to need a whole lot of encouragement for this one!
 
Cheers!