Bullying? Is there a solution to all the despicable stuff that is happening in schools?

For the life of me I do not understand this concept of bullying in USA. I was born and raised in India, in the southern most state of Tamil Nadu. We have had this issue of bullying in colleges once upon a time, and when matters got worse people have taken their lives- freshers who just moved from school to college with totally different surroundings around 17-19 years of age. And then there was a highly publicized case of a life tragically lost, Sarika Shah, when some strangers tried to tease her and her friends, with one even triggering another until a life was lost. (http://www.hindu.com/2008/03/15/stories/2008031553880400.htm) I do not want to go into all facts of the case, or what happened in the court case that followed. However, with that one case came a heavy handed court and police declaration that all women be left alone in colleges and a term called "eve-teasing" became prevalent. Any female student who felt harassed by her seniors/any other college members could just write a petition against the person(s) who was harassing and put it in a dropbox that became mandatory in every women's college. The college authorities would have to take strict action - most often leading to suspension/dismissal of the perpetrator(s). Teasing of all forms was banned in colleges. To some extent this lowered the incidents and the fear for all freshers joining college.
        Now, the above case mentioned college. But, how about school? As far as I can remember, there is no teasing/bullying in schools. In fact, in our system, the class students do not move from one class to another every hour. It is the teachers who move. If you are in the 8th grade, you are all in the class where other 8th graders are. Every hour, the teachers - maths, physics, language, social science - come to the class. Only during physical education class does the entire class move out to the ground. Even then we would not have dozens of other classes outside. If during this hour 8th had the Physical education, the next hour it would be some other grade having PE a class far away from your class. You are supposed to walk to the PE in line and walk back to your class in line.  There was no concept of walking in groups, or your cliques at any point of time except during break hours. During class you have no time to talk, much less bully one another. Before a teacher is due to leave the classroom, the next teacher is out waiting by the door most of the time. We have a system where we do not talk back to our teachers. If a teacher were to say something, we "obeyed" it. Irrespective of whether we liked it or not. We "respect" our teachers. We have a saying - "Mata, pita, guru, deivam" - Mother, Father, Teacher, God. Just the four words meaning the order in which we need to respect. Starting from the mother who brings you in to this world, the mother who introduces the father to you who is one of your first teachers, then they who take you to the (school) teacher who teaches you about values, about life, about God, and then God which can also be thought about us our conscience or self-awareness. What I want is for others to understand that we obeyed all four and we were duty bound to listen to all four. So if something did happen in school, someone did say something hateful, you could either go to your teacher or your parents and get a solution for this problem. They put an E N D to the problem and the problem-maker by either warning/punishing or figuring out a way to bring things under control. We probably were afraid of teachers and punishments for not completing homework than what someone else taught about us or how we looked.
        Then I read in the paper/internet news article that bullying happens everyday in the USA. The teachers do not say anything to bullies or bullied, they do not interfere unless there is some form of physical abuse and only then they get taken to the principal/higher authorities and also that sometimes a bullied victim who is fed up of being taunted who hits or strikes is the victim in the school as physical abuse is dealt strictly. Really? do not people know- us as adults - don't we know that abuse - be it physical, emotional, verbal, sexual are all abuses? That most of the time a  verbal abuse is much worse than physical? We have a famous two line poem written by Thiruvalluvar - a great Tamil Poet - who said
"Theeyinal sutta pun ullarum aradhae
Naavinal Sutta vadu"
-Roughly translates to "The scar left by fire will heal but a scar left by words doesn't."
Which I feel is true. We still remember hateful comments/remarks made by people around us while a fist fight or a wound caused by that subsides in time. So who should be punished in this case? I think a lot of people need in the capacity to make changes have to think how can we intervene and how can we stop this? How can we make sure that another innocent life is not lost on what is being told about them or to them?
        I cannot imagine how my life as a not really beautiful, overweight, short, teenager would have been or how I could have survived a system like what is here in the US. Maybe there is a reason why the children move from class to class. Maybe it is because of the various options they have to chose from to study unlike the same curriculum that all kids used from the 1st to their 10th grade and there is again very less difference in the 11th and 12th grade -just say a science (physics, chemistry, biology) or a non-science (accounting, commerce, economics) class. So, when you have you students from different classes all meeting in corridors, you need to come up with a system where they do not get abused, wherein every class just moves from one class to another; no bullying happens in corridors. May be there should be a teacher walking the corridors every now and then to see if the students are just walking to classes or making idle talk or causing trouble. The teachers should not be locked in their own rooms oblivious to what is happening outside their door or outside on the corridor. If a teacher cannot do it, then you should employ staff who can monitor the kids. Everyone needs to be accountable. A teacher can ensure that every child comes to her class or doesn't make a roundabout way to the class. This can be done when all students of a grade meet at the same place the first hour and a class appointed teacher can take the attendance of the entire grade. The students who are absent can be notified to all other teachers who have classes with that grade. So if 'x' students were supposed to show up to a class at 11am, but only 'x-3' showed up and the remainder three are late for some reason, the teacher must ask them why they were late, should make them stand if they have just been hanging around doing nothing, make sure that they are not part of a clique and have not caused any trouble in the class or are being bullied. These are things that a teacher needs to do. He/she can definitely hang near the door and make sure nothing bothersome is happening out when one class leaves and another is going to come in.
        Another point I would like to make is how 'social media' has made us boundary less. Anything that happened at my home, in my school, in my street, in my city, in my state, in my country stayed there unless there was a BBC/CNN in my days of school and college. But now, I sniffle and I put on one of the 'social media' sites I am part of; I do this, we do that and it is all on the site. So the impact is also that much when something happens negatively. A slant, a crude joke, a remark travels the world thanks to these sites and the mass video jungle where again the whole world can see you. Somehow, in making everything public, we have lost our privacy. Our kids are the ones who suffer the most. Also, we cannot ban this on our kids alone if everyone else is on it. Then comes another problem with peers as to whether you 'belong' or not. I think that kids these days have to grow up more quickly; they have to mature more quickly; whether they like it or not and that is in some ways very sad.
        I have a toddler and I have started to worry already - is my son going to have a good childhood? Does he look okay? Do I have to keep him on a diet so he doesn't get any weight issues? Is he going to grow tall or is he going to be teased for his height? Is his name(of foreign origin) going to be a reason people will tease him? Is he going to have an accent different from the rest of the kids that will put him in a spotlight? Should I just do home schooling for him? I do not think I should be worrying about all this. I do not think that parents should be thinking of all this when their DS/DD is just born. A non-working system should be fixed. The numbers may not be great, but they are not mere numbers. They are someone's most beloved and cherished son/daughter. I do not have a right to take away that life; you do not have the right to do so either. Neither should a bully be allowed to terrorize nor allowed to take the life of some dearest son/daughter. Someone who talks and behaves hatefully should be punished - whatever the age is, in whatever way that is appropriate so that it stops, so that in future kids can go safely to school, happily to school and mothers and fathers can rest in peace and be content that their little one is getting close to being the adult they choose to become in a career they want to shine in.
       

Grilled veggie sandwich and bell pepper eggs.

Feeding my 18 mo is not a challenge. He simply is a good eater. However, I like to experiment and do different stuffs so my little one can have a variety. Being from India, the staples are always Idly(rice pancakes), dosai (rice flour savory crepes), thayir sadham (yogurt rice), and paruppu sadham(lentil rice.) Apart from these I make pasta dishes, bread sandwiches, cutlets, etc for him. That being said, I do not cook meat at home although I make eggs. He doesn't seem to like the taste of eggs and when I give him a boiled egg, he just loves to squish the yellow part and throw it down so I can go ahead and clean up the rugs for the next one hour! Phew!! Still, I try to boil, scramble, fry or do something or the other for him to eat to get him used to the flavor. Recently I kept seeing pictures of capsicum/bell pepper eggs and wanted to try them.  They were yum and we all enjoyed eating eggs that looked very appealing. So here are the pictures without much ado.

I did not want raw bell pepper rings and so I did char them a bit on all sides first. Then I broke one egg inside one of the rings. What I found was that the eggs just did not hold inside the rings as I originally thought it would but just ran all over. So I added a couple of other rings and thought I would try to get half and half in them. So I ended up having just the white in one more of the rings and the remainder of eggs with yolk on another ring. They simply ran out even then. I realized that may be I just needed to cut them out to shape in the end.

I like my eggs fried and done well on both sides and so I flipped them over and then while serving cut of some large chunks that were dangling outside. 

 Next, I had left over bell pepper rings from top and bottom and some zucchini slices and so I seared them on the tava and added them to a grilled cheese sandwich to finish off dinner for my DS.

 

One easy 15 minute meal ready! My LO just devoured the sandwich and egg. I should say that he loves just a hint of spice as of now and so he loved the red pepper which has a slightly sweet taste to it.

My favorite wraps!!!

I somehow like the idea of food wrapped around all snug and ready to eat. It is one of my favorite diet concepts (I usually eat half a wrap and store the other half for another meal). However now-a-days, I have this feeling that store-bought wraps are not that healthy and, I am not getting enough vitamins from vegetables because you cannot put a lot of items if you want the wrap to stay intact. So, wraps have become more of a splurge for me rather than my go to food because of the carbs vs vegetables war that I am recently engaged in. I have a goal to get 10 lbs off me, that I have gained in the past three years due to lots of reasons and I am not going to give them as excuses. Just a goal that I want to achieve in say over the next couple of months - slowly, steadily, and surely!

Onto the recipe: I had some button mushrooms and was not in the mood to make a sabji so I decided on wrap for dinner!

Button mushroom

 Mushrooms and vidalia onions getting deglazed with lemon juice. You can deglaze with wine or any choice of yours.

 The wrap cut down through the middle and to be stored for another meal. Not a lot of vegetables, still the store bought wrap is huge and I don't like to pack with calories. I did add a side of salad for me instead. I need to start making my own tortillas as I am sure they would be healthier and better tasting!

Mushroom avocado wrap

Mushroom-Avocado Wrap Recipe:

Ingredients:
Vidalia sweet onion-1
Button mushroom - 20-chooped lengthwise
salt- to taste
Any salad/spinach mix
Tomato diced -1
Avocado - 1 -cut in lengthy strips
Hummus/baba ghanoush/- 1 tbsp
Lemon-1
Oil  - 2tsp
Wraps -4-5

Method:

1. In a pan, add the oil  and when hot, add chopped vidalia onion. Saute in a high flame for 2 minutes or till the onion turns translucent.
2. Add the button mushrooms (or any other mushroom you prefer) in the pan and continue to saute. After a minute, add salt as per taste.
3. Add pepper/paprika depending on your taste. I did not add either.
4. After a couple of minutes, add lemon juice to deglaze.
5. Saute on high, till the mushrooms turn soft. Keep stirring to avoid burned mushroom.
6. Once the mushroom turns soft, turn off the stove and cool completely. Transfer the contents to a different bowl/plate to cool quickly. If not in hurry, let it cool on the pan itself.
7. Now prep the other ingredients as the mushroom cools down. Dice the tomato, and cut the avocado into lengthy strips.
8. Heat a griddle or tava, and put the wrap when the griddle is hot. Do not heat for more than a minute. Turn the wrap over and heat it, for around 30 seconds.
9. Turn of the griddle and place the wrap on a plate. Spread a tbsp of hummus/any other spread over it. Add salad mix of your choice in the middle along a straight line, leaving around an inch around the edges to be able to fold the wrap.
10. Top with tomato, mushroom, avocado, and and drizzle some lemon juice over. 
11. You can add some salad dressing if necessary
12. Wrap the tortilla as you would a burrito and serve.

Makes: 4-5 wraps.

Fabric Markers Fun!

I wanted to personalize a pillowcase to send to my son's daycare. Due to regulations and standards, all nap items for our tots are to be sent in a pillowcase and I hated the plain pillowcase that I have been using for almost a year now! I had meant to go shopping for a nice pillowcase for him but never finished that task! So here I had a bunch of colorful markers with which I had colored my key holder and I thought, why not create my very own special pillowcase for DS. Of course, I took a lot of inspirations from fellow pillowcase painters and came up with a design I liked. The end result is not fab, but hey, my 18mo is too young to notice the flaws and he just absolutely loves the "star" and "truck" and he just is able to say those words like a million times for the amount of them in the design!! Win-winner!

Tofu Tikka!

Paneer is one of my favorite dishes although eating all the paneer butter masala from USA has made me hate it so much! Every potluck, every restaurant, every dinner always has one paneer dish as it is very easy to prepare and is always a winner as most people love it. Probably because of the fact that I was having more and more of it, that I started to stay more and more away from it. I buy Tofu, instead, which looks similar but god forbid! doesn't taste similar and also coz it's healthier. So I wanted to try to make a tikka out of the tofu this time and so went ahead with the experiment. I cleaned and pressed extra firm tofu to remove all water and cut them into big chunks. I sliced half way down the tofu and put some coriander thovayal(Cilantro quarter of a bunch  cut and slightly sauteed in about 1/4 tsp oil pureed with 2-3 dried red chillies also sauteed and salt to taste.) in it. Then I added in a separate plate some turmeric powder, chilly powder, amchur powder, ginger garlic paste, garam masala and oil and mixed well. I then carefully put the tofu one by one in this mixture and coated it as good as possible and refrigerated for around 2 hours. Then back from refrigerator, into a hot tava with a few teaspoons of oil. I made sure they were well cooked on all four sides from the tava till they all got a nice brown coat on them. A pack of extra firm tofu yielded around 10 cubes of tofu and me and DH had five each. I forgot to take the picture and it was finished too soon! Was very filling as I was unable to finish my dinner after eating the 5 pieces. Next time, should marinate with some yogurt/lemon and also add vegetables - onions, tomatoes, peppers to make it much more interesting in presentation and also take pictures. So here are just the pictures from my prep.

 As you can see, the tofu is a bit more crumbly than a paneer would be, but in the end, it did hold well on the tava as I waited till they were done on each side before turning over so that gave a little bit of firmness to tofu as it got done on the tava.Sorry that there are no pictures of the final result, but I am going to do them once again just for the sake of the pictures!

Verdict: A fulfilling snack - protein rich - add along with vegetables and it is great food! Kids can have this itself as a lunch in their boxes along with vegetables. But remember, don't expect paneer tikka - tofu tastes different!

Hummus No Ways!!!

Don't get me wrong. I absolutely love hummus and I am not sure whether it is with tahini or not as these are from hummus that I have ate at food courts and restaurants. Well, I know what the basic ingredients are, how to mash it up in a food processor and of course, I had all ingredients plus a bunch of carrots and celery that DH bought to use. So, I mused, I'm making up hummus to eat these vegetables...And because I did not have tahini in stock, borrowed a  recipe from online - here!
        No big deal, just rinse well your can of chick peas, add some salt (remember canned peas already has enough!), two garlic pods as mentioned in the recipe, 1/4 cup olive oil, and chilly flakes (My own addition for heat!)  Blended it all to a super cool mushy hummus and here it is!

Verdict: Loved the textured, but I did not like this hummus at all. Zilch. For me the 2 pods of garlic was very overpowering that it caught in my throat. It has been a week and I gave it to DH for lunch but am not eating it. I guess it will go to trash in another few days :(

Mista Pasta

Pasta, is a comfort food for me to cook for my 1yo when I am out of options. This is because I always will have some vegetable in fridge/freezer, pasta is always in stock, as also milk, tomatoes, and some italian seasonings. This is one of my favorite dinner meals for my lil one. I do not like the marinara as I come from South India and if it is not hot - hot enough for you to sniffle and have a few tears down your cheeks, then the food is not really worthwhile ;) However, cheese is an acquired taste for us desis who grew up without it in India and so can eat it bland. This is why I would easily make a white sauce instead of marinara for my ds. Here is my usual routine for him for pasta.

1. Cook pasta, al dente. Strain and keep aside.
2.  Microwave, steam, stir-fry, or grill vegetables
3. Make white sauce, and stir everything in it.

This takes utmost 8-10 minutes especially when you can do each in different stoves. 

For white sauce, I don't follow any particular recipe. I just put a pat of butter on a pan in medium high and once the butter melts add about a teaspoon of flour and just fry the flour for a minute or two and before it browns, add milk to it. I usually add the whole milk as that is what I give my 1yo. I probably would add around 1/4 or 1/3 cup of milk and then simmer till the sauce thickens. Once it is to my desired consistency, I add salt, a few dashes of pepper, mix well and then put the strained pasta as well as the veggies and voila I have a one dish wonder for my 1yo. Of course, I make enough so me and my DH can eat a few teaspoons! Non-guilty pleasures :)

Pasta with bechamel sauce

Pasta with white sauce and zucchini

Verdict: My 1 yo absolutely loves this pasta and so does DH!

Valentine's Day Special - chocolate cake and cupcake

I was to have the company of my nephew and niece on V-day but it turned out they couldn't make it until Saturday and I had already thought of making them yummy cakes/cupcakes to enjoy their time with their aunt and I also wanted to do some pastry puffs for savory. As you already know, I am no baker and so bought the "Betty Crocker super-moist chocolate cake" mix and set up to work on it. I just followed the instructions down to the 't' and the cake couldn't have been better. The recipe called for a 9X13 pan. All I had was a 7X11 pan so added some in it and made 6 extra cup-cakes also for the little ones aged 9,7,and 1. And, what is a cupcake without icing?? I actually checked the internet to get a chocolate icing recipe and whisked it to finish as I do not have any of the electric beaters. Not a bad deal, is what I think. I took the recipe for chocolate icing from here. The recipe is as follows:

Chocolate buttercream frosting

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter (2 sticks or 1/2 pound), softened ( Do not melt in microwave. Keep it outside the refrigerator and smash it down with your beater once it is soft ;))
• 3 cups powdered sugar
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract(optional)
• 4 tablespoons milk or cream

Method

1. Prepare the dry and wet ingredients separately until ready to mix.
2. Sift together the sugar, cocoa powder. Add salt and keep it separate.
3. In a separate big bowl, add the butter and mash till it is creamy. I use a whisk and so mashed it up to a softer butter. If using electric mixer, probably use a low to medium setting to mash it up. 
4. Add all the dry ingredients to the bowl. If using a stand mixer, I will assume that you have the mixer off, unless you want your dry ingredients all over you and all around ;) If using an electric mixer, turn to lowest setting and slowly incorporate the dry ingredients with butter. With a whisk I had to do slowly to first mix and then start mixing up vigorously to incorporate the two. It will look a lot like crumbs but that is right.
5. Add the vanilla extract, and the milk/cream and incorporate. Now as you mix, you will begin to see that you get the proper frosting. Once whisked well and you take the whisk, you will find the icing sticking out. For a stickier icing, add more sugar. For a thinner icing, add more milk. Do this till you are satisfied with the icing consistency. 

 Verdict: The icing I did not realize then, was thin and so you can see how the cupcake icing kind of sagged, fell, and did not hold shape while I was able to clearly write well with it on my cake . This was my first time at making a cake, and icing so I am not unhappy. It was a successful effort and who cares about the decor when the cake, cupcake and frosting was yummelicious ;) The kids and adults all had a good treat!

Banana Blueberry muffin trial attempt!

Okay here I had a DS - 18 months old-who just loves bananas, two beyond recognizable over-ripened bananas with almost a black skin exterior dangling on their hooks and him wailing for them. My immediate reaction was to toss them out in the trashcan as I always used to do but somehow in the past one week saw too many people mushing up bananas into bread and muffins that i thought, hmmm, time for me to start baking as well! So i search online for some recipes as I have never baked myself (of course, i tried my hand at an easy brownie some 2 years ago and my DH made me promise that I will quit baking!) and after an extensive search found this one link from cooks.com that will just use 2 bananas, exactly two as that is all I have.
        I wanted to make chocolate cupcake for Valentine's day and so had armed myself with a big mixing bowl, two big packages of baking and icing essentials boxes that I had got from a discount store (mind you, I was not planning to shell out hard earned $$$ at state of the art equipment to bake, when I wasn't sure I would love it and continue doing it.) and left it safely in the garage to bring it when and if I baked. I had also got the usual baking powder, baking soda, all purpose flour from a grocery store so that I can bake when I need to. I ended by though, having to go back to the grocery store as I had ended up buying not the usual baking soda but something you keep in the fridge and throw away and I was not planning to puncture holes in this one to use the soda.So went and got myself the baking soda, and some buttermilk in case the recipes called for something of that sort.
        The recipe made 12 muffins and I thought I could live with that. I could eat it, if it came out good, and would trash it if it was horrible. So went ahead and took one 7-cup round pyrex and started mashing up my bananas and when trying to add sugar found that I had only a 1/4" less of sugar than the desired amount. The recipe called for brown sugar and since I had only white sugar substituted that but had only about 3/4th cup and so used that as I reasoned with myself that white sugar was more sugary and hence a 3/4 cup is enough. Then on to butter and I find myself staring at one 1/4 stick of butter and around 2T of butter. I told myself that I dint want to experiment with half butter when I already had done enough with the sugar and decided to take another trip to the grocery store. Did so and came back with confectioners sugar, regular sugar, 2 butter blocks, and another big bag of flour.
        So mashed up the 2 bananas, 2 eggs, 3/4th cup of sugar and got a nice gooey stuff that I was scared to lick. I was supposed to add melted butter. I had left one stick of butter out as I went to grocery store to get it at room temperature but ended up adding that another stick onto the microwave for 30secs to melt. Adding that to the gooey mixture got me into some not-so-good-looking mess(I was sure of that!)as the butter did not blend well and looked like curdled milk that stands out on top of the milk. I just closed my eyes at this point and added some vanilla and very little fresh blueberries - around 10 of them as I dint want to end up wasting blueberries in case the muffin turned out bad. I then found out that the recipe called for a bigger bowl to mix all dry ingredients and realized I had taken the big 7-cup round pyrex for the bananas when according to the recipe it called only for a medium bowl to mix them. Hating myself, I took another 7-cup round pyrex(We need to thank God, don't we for he had foreseen this day and made me get two 7-cup rounds?) bowl and whisked the baking powder, flour and salt (I had no cinnamon powder and so just left it.) Now added the banana mixture onto the baking powder mixture and realized that the contents filled up and I wasn't able to whisk. At this time, I was ready to dump the whole mixture out so just left it around and went ahead and fed my DS with his dinner and played with him and made dinner for all of us and then I had this lightbulb moment when I remembered that not just the icing and baking essentials but I had also bought a big bowl for mixing and there out in a flash I was to the garage with the most prized possession of the day- a VERY large bowl indeed. I transferred all the contents onto this bowl (after I washed it with hot soapy water and towel dried it as it was new.) and whisked them away. Now they all seemed to blend well and I got courageous enough to take a bit and lick it! Yum. Yum it was and I was so happy, and thrilled. Thanked God, that I did not pour the mixture down the drain and so took the muffin tray and lined them up with cupcake liners and added a scoop onto each of the liners using a ice cream scoop. Of course, I wasted one liner and scoop when the scoop managed to fall down a little on the liner and more on the tray! Trashed them both!
        So off went the tray to the preheated oven and I turned on the light and set the timer for 25 minutes. At the 25th minute mark, I put a wooden skewer and found that it came out clean, but the top wasn't browned and I kept it another 5 minutes to brown the top. Also, I dumped the remainder of the mixture onto a small loaf pan because I did not want to waste the oven's heat for another 25 minutes by doing more muffins as I had only that one six-muffin tray. I saw the muffins and the loaf split a bit, but that was okay I re-assured. And after 5 more minutes of browning after the 30 min mark took them out.

Verdict: First the pictures, then the verdict.

 As you can see that I did get the brown effect, though, along with it a taste as if it was a biscuit not a muffin. Although, I am not sure how muffins taste, as I have not tasted that many in my life. My foray into baking is also only because I started eating eggs which is around three years back but the muffin was sweet and good on the inside. Not much sweet perhaps because I ended up with 1/4 cup less sugar than the recipe, but all in all was pleased by the result. Nothing was sticking on the pan or the liner or causing trouble when we ate and neither were there any repercussions in the morning! So i can say it was a successful attempt.

However, on an ending note, I would like to add this: Do not, let me underline to emphasize. Do not take up this task of using up old bananas unless you have ever hungry kids, or you love to bake, or you have all the time in the world! It took me another half an hour to hand-wash(yes! the labels said do not dish wash the pans) the trays and the bowls as my dishwasher was already too full to accommodate another 3 bowls. In the end, it got me into thinking how nice it would have been if I had just tossed them in the trash before another thought had killed that thought as I stretched myself and went to bed!
P.S. Me, DH, and DS all three had a banana muffin/bread breakfast this morning and I am happy I baked. Guess I will continue to bake, after all :)

Rising and shining

True to my own words, I have decided to rise and shine myself! To start off, I have always loved the artistic people who seem to do so much with their hands and have always envied them and wondered how I have never been given that one talent (as if I have every other talent in the world :o) by God! I loved how a close relative painted her own dresses, decorated her home with her hand made stuffs, a friend of mine decorated her son's nursery with her own paintings, how another decorated her different rooms in themes and how there seemed to be a big gap or a hole in artistic skills where I was concerned. I had even got myself a set of fabric paints to paint my son's tee to celebrate his first birthday but never got around to doing it at all!!!

  Then I remembered that I had always begged and cajoled my mom into finishing my school art projects - drawing, sewing, cutting, trimming, gluing and all the rest. Wondered if it was because I was incapable of doing any of it or if I did not care enough about it, or whether I did not have enough patience for it, or was too bored about it. I still am not able to figure out what it was exactly. But I keep wondering how all of a sudden I have this huge urge to do something artistic. I want to sew, to paint, to cut, to glue, to make something out of my hands that for some reason or other have never done so far.

       So I go on a trip to Walmart- our find it all store- and try to go to the art and supplies section and load my cart with all things I want to do. I took some fashion jewellery making supplies, took some paint supplies, and some DIY projects that were half completed and half left to us to complete and marched home. And then, they sat at our home for a long time, being the procrastinator(Oh my God! did i just declare it online to the whole world!) that I am!  I decided at one point this year that enough was enough and scheduled the best time I could squeeze between my work, and my other commitments to commit to doing something with all the projects that I had ended up buying. I must say that looking back, in the one month since the new year, I have accomplished something..No, no coming from the person I am, I have accomplished a lot. So here goes, I am going to first show a couple of the initial projects that I started with and then go ahead and add more along the way. BTW, did I let you in on another secret? I am an Aquarian and being the Jack of all trades --look at the spread of stuff that I started on! From painting, to sewing, to jewellery making, to baking! Here are some of it. I feel good, I feel great and I cannot believe January is not yet over and I have tried them all.. I am going to keep doing all of this until I can say that I have fallen in love with one particular line that I want to continue. Or, who knows? I may be doing them all!!!

Keys: I got a wooden unpainted block of key hanger and using 'Painter's' markers, just added color to the wooden block. Just something to see how the paint turned out to be.


















Earrings: These again I got the beads and all from a DIY kit and got myself busy doing it. As you can see from the shape and quality of the hooks, these are my first ones!

My Second earring pair

My first pair

Another new year

This past year had a lot of good things but a bunch of bad times for me from the end of the year...Yes! things I wished to change had not changed and I realize that things don't change on their own...I have to be the instrument of change...Hoping that this new year I can be the change I wish to see. So happy new year everybody! Rise and shine!!!