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

Paan

This is one of the pics taken at thirupathi after our food. ofcourse, you can see this picture at any pan tela's you find. But for those who are unaware of it, Pan is had after you have food. People say it is kind of gives boost to digestion after heavy lunch or dinner.

You can see the sweet pan making in this picture. It looks so inviting after you have your tasty lunch. you can also japatri which is a special one added in sweets. People say (by experience obviously) that if you have little of japatri it gives you so drowsy feeling (almost equal to after what you have alchohol).

Happy New Year 2010

Happy New Year 2010

Javascript: getElementById works only in IE - Solution

I always find wierd problems and solutions to it everytime I use javascripting. This is one of the many which I would like to share with you all. Logically the solution is easy if you have the following kind of code:

in javascript code:

var v = document.getElementbyID("test").value;

and you code has hidden value of test in it probably like:



The above code works fine in IE browser and fails in firefox or other browsers. Simple solution is we are not used to add id in the input tag and we are calling element by Id. so I solution for above is either change in javascript:

var v = document.getElementbyName("test").value;

or in the code as:


Easy isnt it. Let me know if things are more complicated than this. I will try to find solution. :).

Snow time this weekend

Our car after we backed up from our drive way to opposite parking lot. Still lot to clean right !!!!

Our front yard view from our door while it is still snowing on saturday afternoon/evening time.
Our backyard, after it snowed all night. This shot is taken on saturday afternoon, while it still continues to snow.


Our Home at night after a little clean up of our driveway

First rays of sun after snow day

I wanted to capture the first rays of the sun on the first snow of the winter 2009. However I could not get a good shot but here is one which pictures my backyard. You can see that our whole backyard had a layer of snow on it, which then was melted mostly on the same day because of the sun. :) I like it.

Traditional Mehendi design

This design is a traditional one, which people used to keep with the leaves of maide ka leave se. Now a days lot of new desins have come up but when you feel traditional or bored or want a quick design I feel going for this. With two infants at home maintaining a smart design for me is a lot of problem because we need to keep it on hands for few hours for it to look right and have nice color. Since I do not have lot of time or patience currently, I opted for simplest design as shown below:

Diwali - Nivali Thali

Indian art

This indian art is called "muggu" in telugu. There is a festival especially for this which comes in january time frame called "Sankranthi". Here is just a sample of it which we did at our home before, to play batukamma festival at our place.

The colors and design is done by my mother and I filled in colors in them. We used a wet chalk (sidewalk chalk pieces) to do the layout and filling colors.

DIY - BackSplash-3

Finally we got chance to finish our backsplash project after so many days of break. We got the grouting part very easy. I am planning to publish my lessons learned from this project so hopefully someother person who is willing to do doesnt have to repeat the same mistakes as we did.

We started around 9:30 in the night and it took almost 2 hours to finish 90% of the grouting before the grout we got is finished. So here it goes for grouting of tile:

first mix the grout as per the manufacturer's instructions. (Use the mixing tool for this, which will be effective, fast and easy to finish this part). Now take the trowel used for grouting with some grout mix and start spreading on the tiles in 45 degrees angle.






After you are done, leave it aside for 10 minutes and then take a damp sponge and start cleaning up the tiles one part at a time. clean the sponge, sqeeze extra water and then clean the tile again one time.

After cleaning with the sponge,according to our manufacturer's instructions we have to leave the grout for 3 days before sealing. Here is how our backsplash tiling with almost finished will look like. Since we used darker grout it actually dominated our color of the tiles which we choose, but it gave kind of a professional look I feel.

Ganapathi navratri celebrations

This picture is taken on first day of Ganapathi navratri celebrations this time. Starting on August 22nd - August 30th.

DIY - BackSplash-2

We bought some tiles and then got home and started looking at design which suits the background along with our countertop. We then settled on one of the tile sheet. (if you are lazy then select tile sheets, less work to do with them). We selected mosaic tile sheet with another stone type tile to go with it in between (for 3 lines).
We then started out our project by clearing out the area we want to add back splash. Before you start on anything add scotch blue tape in the area outside you want to add. for example, if you are adding it above granite countertop piece, then add blue tape on the edge and start of the wall and granite countertop piece. Then you select the thinset that goes with it. We used the adhesive instead of thinset. Adhesive goes well with glass tile or mosaic tile. Layout the structure you want on a plain surface. Cut the design in the way you want it.

Note: Consider the electrical outlets or any other hindrace in between (while laying out the design). Cut the design accordingly by considering all the above.



By using 3/16" trowel, we then spread out the adhesive on the wall. After the adhesive is spread out (for around 2 feet) we then use the angled side to make it even.


Note: while applying thinset/adhesive you should apply it by keeping trowel at an angle. if you apply it straight it wont stick fine. You will know this, by experience.


Now all you do is attach the tile onto the wall starting from down to top. press the whole tile/tile layout once.






Next step to do is grouting after 24 hours.