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A ‘scarepigeon’

Some time back I was reading this post at momofrs’ and it so resonated with me I thought I must do one of my own on pigeons. Actually I too have nothing against these bird brained birds. I totally respect their freedom to fly where they want, sit where they want and poop where they want. What I do mind is that they do not respect the ‘Your freedom ends when my nose begins’ thing. An open window is enough invitation. Try to shoo them out and they panic crazily enough to make you panic too. They then lose all sense of direction, get totally lost and proceed to mess up your entire room.


What’s more they walk all over the balcony, hop into freshly watered pots, then leave messy footprints everywhere. They feed on your fast depleting Tulsi plant and denude it by carrying away twigs leaving one to stare at empty planters. A sad task for someone already cursed with a black thumb.

Then they go and lay eggs with abandon and if you as much as go near them while clearing up the balcony they never come back. Then you have to deal with the maid’s accusing glances for ages for having murdered those baby pigeons, which BTW are called ‘squabs’. Plus you have to deal with the ‘paap’ of having a wrecked a family and NO you do not get to share the blame with the squabs’ parents who are brave enough to come mess your balcony the very same day yet don’t spare a thought for their abandoned progeny. Nope they’re not responsible.. you are. Oh the unfairness of it all!!

Anyway, the other day I was complaining yet again and the kids decided to make a scarecrow…um.. ‘scarepigeon’.

Two sticks were sourced from the garden, tied
together and a paper face cut out

Hrit spared an old shirt and the man’s ready to
guard my Tulsi plant. BTW he’s holding a sword.
Dare you come now pigeons!!

 Wierd as it looks it served it’s purpose… the pigeons are keeping their distance.

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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.
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Red .. the colour of nostalgia

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

 

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