Happy Holidays

Merry Christmas

Diwali at my home - 2010 Photos

Coffee and Tea Creation

I won this creation in the raffle for American Heat Association. I am glad that I participated. I was donating money because it is for a good cause. This encourages me to participate more in this type of donations so that people get benefit and others get some support. 

Jammi

As dussehra is coming up, it reminded me of the jammi aakulu. On Dussehra day, we generally give some akshintalu along with some jammi leaves to elder's and take their blessings. I do not know the reason behind it but wanted to share it with all of you. Jammi chettu in english is called "Mimosa". I got small seedling from one of my colleague. I was excited to find that it is Jammi chettu.

Another chamanthi chettu beside jammi chettu at my home.

Batukamma - 2010

Long Sorakaya's from my Mama's home

This is the picture of sorakaya from my mama's home. which is too tall just like him.

Tried to capture the long sorakaya (bottle gourd) in a single picture .... but could not.... so took another picture.

The following picture is from my aunt's home where she broke the sorakaya into two pieces. Laid them attached, to show the length of the sorakaya.

I also took the next picture because I felt they just looked like twins :) .

Home grown - 2010 -2

Since I did not plant many this year, I am currently enjoying a good number of long green chillies along with cucumber and Gongura (Sour greens). Here are couple of snaps from different weeks.

Roses

Roses from my backyard:

Home grown - 2010 - 1

Gongura and Green chillies

Crochet - Pillow cover - 1

This is the first pillow cover with crochet work I am working on. I just finished it. I have to sew the pillow cover now and then attach the crochet work to the pillow cover. (decorative pillow). Will update the end product of this soon. Will also update the instructions on how to do this soon.

Scarf - 1

This is the first scarf which I made for my husband. Simple design - just simple knit-knit-knit until you finish the scarf. 

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Backyard Plants - 2010

Green beans

Mint

Green Peas

My First time harvest of the season. Mint leaves, Green beans and fresh peas.

My home decorations

Knitting for Chemo caps

Well this is my first lesson in knitting and I was excited that I got a chance to learn new stuff. Chemo caps are a popular word now-a-days. Basically it means that caps made for chemotherapy patients. These caps are made generally to donate to some hospital for chemo patients. I did the following two caps which will be going to help some chemo patients.

Although it was my first two caps I got good grip on the pattern I was making. The first one had mistakes which were seen by people who are good at knitting, and the other one was I was trying to mend the pattern to make it look more pretty. Anyways, both experiences taught me something to learn in a good way. 

Indian simple hanging piece

D.C from terrace level of Kennedy Center

More pics to be added soon.

New Goddess idols at home

I always had a dream of decorating home in india traditional style. One of the first steps that I took this time when I went to India was to get murthi's of Goddess laxmi (goddess of wealth) and sarawasthi (goddess of study, wisdom and knowledge). This is the first picture after I opened the murthi's, before arranging them as a decoration. As you can see that the home was a total mess after we came back from India. Lot of stuff to clean up and rearrange. So currently I am in that phase at home.

What I did not bring is maala's for ammavaru. which probably will be my next step. These type of idols can be bought at lepakshi stores or at authentic handloom stores.

Kondapalli Bomma - at my home

Birthday Decoration

Birthday decoration of my son's second birthday party in India

Cake at the party - Butterscotch flavor with bal hanuman on it

Baasara (Basar) trip

Basar is a famous place of lord Saraswathi devi, who is treated as goddess of wisdom/education/study. It is believed that children who starts writing at this place is expected to have the goddess blessings and do well in education.

We went to baasara for aksharabhyasam (Start of education) for my son. The picture below is a small utsava vigraham of lord Saraswathi.

We were 11 members so we hired the small van which is kind of mini version of swaraj mazda (very popular van in India for big crowd like 25).

We stopped at AP tourism place Haritha's to have breakfast. I was amazed to find the following playard for kids. My son loved playing in all the small rides.

Some more photos from Baasara

Charminar

a pictorial view of charminar

Inside Charminar

Steps to go up

View from charminar to streets