Tulika, Author at Obsessivemom

02/03/201315/04/2017

DIY castle

It was my niece’s birthday sometime back and Naisha wanted to ‘make’ a gift. After much thought we decided on a thermacol castle since the theme of the party was ‘Princess’. This is what it turned out as…

Here’s what we did…

I cut out a basic castle shape using a hot knife..my old trick. I nicked a shoulder of the castle but..
Naisha rationalised very pragmatically.. ‘It’s an old castle mama ..some of it has to be broken.’
And we were sorted 🙂

Naisha helped paint it pink. I tried to stick on the shoulder with no luck at all.

A little bit of detailing. The red ‘brickwork’ and the silver dabs.

Then we rolled some matching pink handmade paper to make towers

..this is what it looked like.

I wanted to add a princess somewhere but couldn’t quite figure out where. Rapunzel was ruled out.. we wanted no sad princess around on the happy day. Yes we are a little superstitious. With the birthday fast approaching we had to be satisfied with just this. What do you say?

Then we stuck/tied the bits together and we were done.

28/02/201315/04/2017

Red .. the colour of nostalgia

Thursday Challenge : “RED” (Things that are red/pink,…)

That’s a Malati tree in full bloom at our cousin’s Dehradun house/resort. The flowers come in

shades of red and pink and even white.

Wikipedia tells me it’s also known as Chinese honeysuckle, Rangoon Creeper, and Combretum indicum.

And there’s more

It’s called Quiscual in Spanish,

Niyog-niyogan in Filipino

Akar Dani in Malay and

Radha Manoharam in Telugu.

And the funny one…

The genus translates into Latin for What is that?

Never had I imagined this humble friend of my childhood had been to so many places. We used to have it in our angan when we were little. The creeper grew right up to the terrace. Some of my fondest memories include making flower chains that we’d wear as garlands and bangles 🙂 and watching the hordes of sparrows it sheltered.

So that is my ‘RED’ for the week.

23/02/201315/04/2017

F is for friendship

Linking to ABC Wednesday

22/02/201315/04/2017

A post.. finally!

I don’t want to even begin to analyse why this space seems to have lost it’s pull these days. It’s not to do with not having time.. I mean when do we EVER have time? I’ve always MADE time. It’s also not that nothing much is happening. I’ve got loads to write, the drafts are piling up but I find I cannot get through a complete post. Sigh!

This one should have been done for Valentine’s Day but since Shruti, the Artsy Craftsy mum, is still accepting entries for her February theme here it is.

For the record.. The Husband was out on V-Day but the kids and I made up for it by having a great day. Each time I get the kids to craft something for their friends, this time I thought I’d make something for them. BFF Google came up with plenty of ideas. I picked the ones that didn’t require fancy craft material. All I needed to buy was satin ribbons and wrapping paper.

First Naisha’s tiffin had a heart jam sandwich topped with gems which had to be pink, red and purple :-).

Once they left for school I made this heart curtain. Here’s the link. http://spoonful.com/crafts/curtain-of-hearts. The original had messages written on each of the hearts but since I was short on time I simply folded over wrapping paper and cut out hearts, stuck them on a ribbon added tiny bells at the ends and that was that. I fixed them to curtain rings so they can slide aside on the curtain rod.

Then a quick fridge magnet each with ice-cream sticks that had their pictures..

and finally these baskets from the Martha Stewart site. The link’s here..
http://www.marthastewart.com/306688/heart-shaped-crafts/@center/276967/valentines-day.

It seemed complicated (by my non-expert standards, of course :-)) but turned out to be pretty easy.

To say that they were thrilled is an understatement. For that one day I was the ‘best mama in the whole world’ . By next day of course I’d fallen from grace but it was completely worth it.

This is what they looked like..

No, she’s not crying.. this is just too much happiness.

13/02/201315/04/2017

A revival

Her hands full of soap suds she worked her way through the pile of vessels in the sink. Her mind wandered off to other piles that need attention. The pile of clothes to go in the machine, the pile of ironing to be put away, another pile yet to be ironed, the pile of books that needed sorting, the pile of toys to be cleared up, … Then there were her ‘happy’ piles – the piles of books to be read, the piles of half finished crafts to be completed, the piles of cookery books needing to be explored.

NO, don’t even go there, she told herself, sternly. Don’t think any of it . Not now, Not just yet. It could all wait. It had to.

There was something else, something far more important, that needed attention. Someone was dying and she had to do something, fast. After all it was she who had brought her into this world. Now, it was only she who could save her. She was special. Boy! was she special… a friend.. nope.. not just a friend.. best friend, confidante, counsellor. Just thinking of her made her smile. She hadn’t seen her friend in weeks… it seemed like ages. And now she was dying. She had to rush to her friend. Everything else could wait.. work, kids, Husband.

She put away the last plate, rinsed and dried her hands. Then she walked off to her study, switched on the computer and started typing. She had to save her blog from dying.