Bread maker

I got this as our house warming gift and finally got a chance to open and try it after 5 years. Will post some recipes soon with this. 

Diwali pics at home

2012-Backyard-4

I wanted to show some pics from part of my backyard grocery store. :) Here it goes

 Lots of karela creeper at home this time. So we are having karela curry once every week (since 3 weeks).

 Some brinjals (eggplants) from my backyard. I had 3 varieties of brinjals coming at home. They come often too. But to make a curry I wait for a week or so or about 10 days. still good nice yummy home made brinjals.

Tomatos.... its a story to write this time. Because of some bug/small virus kind of thingy which spread all to the plant. Do not know what name it is but the tomatos season in our home ended early this time. (in end of august)

 Some combination of one day from my backyard. There are some jasmine (malle poolu), couple of mandaram's, some brinjal, couple of bhendi's and lots of gongura.

Starting of the July, till middle of the August I had the luxury of enjoying indian cucumber (dosakaya)

Good that we have keera(cucumber) as home grown.

 Some bunch of brinjals and couple of capsicums plucked in weekend. Yes I do have capsicums... but for some reason, they grew good, gave a break and now they are coming back again.

The following two pics are the tulsi's, which we are planning to donate to temple so that somebody in need can get it. Hopefully we can make it to the temple this weekend and give them away..... 

2012-HomeImprovementProject-Day3 (Last day)

Last day of flooring completion included the closet and steps. Steps took longer time but finally finished by end of the day.

2012-HomeImprovementProject-Day2

Day 2 - We had the 2 bedrooms and loft completed hardwood flooring. Here are the pictures:
Second bedroom view after hardwood flooring

 Second bedroom view from inside

 Master bedroom finished flooring

 Master bedroom view from inside

 loft view after finished flooring

2012-HomeImprovementProject-Day1

We are in the process of making the flooring change in our home (upstairs). Since our mail level is already either wood or tile, we plan to do it even upstairs now. It gives us couple of advantages: ease of maintenance with kids and less taking care over all (dropping the chances of allergens etc).

Here are some pics from Day-1:

Before the project started here are some pics:
I could not take pictures in advance (totally forgot about the idea from mind ). This is the first picture and what you are seeing is the loft.

Loft connecting to two bedrooms.

 another  view of the rest of the loft

 Second bedroom upstairs.. which will also be part of the project in removing the carpet.

 Another view of the second bedroom

 Entry to the master bedroom

 Remodeling of the master closet to get more space(I should say making it efficient way to add more room ).
As you can see there was extra space between the wall of the master bedroom and the closet door. So our idea was to move the closet door out to the wall.. so that the unused space here will be included in the closet room and we can have lot more hanging (ofcourse to put more clothes in efficient way)

And here are the pictures, after the first day of work:
As you can see in the following picture, they were able to finish part of the loft. They were stuck at the corner as they were missing one major tool (to cut the edge wood at the start of the stairs. So hopefully they will be able to get to it tomorrow :).

 One major one was .. they were able to remove the door from the closet and add it to the wall, giving us more closet room (as you can see in the second picture).

That's all update from me tonight. See you tomorrow.. with tomorrow's home improvement project update (flooring upstairs). Have a good night !!!!!

Point pleasant beach, NJ

We went to beach last weekend, and couple of shots from there.

Some more pics while coming back from NewJersey.

New Nikon lens(55-200) and few test pics (2012)

My husband got new lens for my existing Nikon SLR camera. Here are some pics taken with above lens:

These are the pics taken from my backyard.. so this post is kind of covering both my new lens testing as well as my backyard pictures.

 Brinjals (eggplants) coming in bunch.... still blooming

 Cucumber flowers blooming for becoming cucumber soon and also some small buds of cucumber.

 Tomato's in the early stage from my plant bed.

 Red mandaram from my annual plant. My lucky one... because it blooms to give me at least one good flower every day for my goddess at home.

Tulasi.... my mom loved when she saw all the Dalalu. I wish they come more often, so that I can offer more to god. Thanks Tulasi maa....

Karela creepers blooming wiht some flowers to give me couple of bitter gourds. :).

The above bird comes every morning in my backyard and was finally able to take a picture a little clear (without it being flying away with sound of opening door), with my new lens. I am still waiting to take a picture of a red bird and a yellow one which comes in my back yard. Good luck to me !!!