Finale !

Yayyyy !!!

Mission accomplished.

Although I wrote some nonsense sometimes and some sense sometimes (I hope others too felt it had some sense), I did write something and that itself is an accomplishment for me.

Some days it was pretty tough, with no energy or no time or no stuff or no mood, but nevertheless it happened.

I looked forward to reading all the others, sometimes it happened immediately, sometimes late.

I enjoyed conversing through the comments, although some are still pending.

I loved the orange notifications and the sound alerts.

With this successful task, I look forward to moving on to the other tasks of the year, be it goals at work, reading books or some craft acts or fitness attempts or vacations or family time or whatever !!

Happy ending to Blogathon and I hope I get to read all your blogs now and then in the coming days.

Happy rest of the year 😊

Today

• Weather that’s terribly cold
• Work that gives back bolts just when I think everything’s going smooth
• Kid’s Home work that never seems to come to an end
• Training module that gets completed only on the last day
• Brain that’s devoid of any ideas to write

Picture post

A friend sent this picture to us, a group of friends, this morning saying she saw this message somewhere and reminded us that we have just completed 20 years of friendship !!!

Friends are some of the beautiful things that happen to us , aren’t they !!

World beyond my world

Artists that are rocking

With their singing and dancing

Those urban sketchers

That steal the hearts of the onlookers

Tie and dye and decoupage

Making their presence in the craft age

Vegans with a motto

Showing others the way to go

Neatly lined up racks of books

Hunger satisfying joints of foods

A world filled with varied people

People filled with varied skills

Thank you HLF !!

It’s because of you that I got to know of a world

That’s beyond my little world !!

Never give up

I have this friend, who’s my super senior at college, has been an ex-colleague, is my colleague now again. I have seen her through different times, some most struggling phases. Fighter seems to be a small word when it comes to describe her. She has fought through all such difficult times, almost single handed, never giving up. She had to fight with people that are closest to her also at times. In spite of lack of cooperation from anyone, she moved forward with determination.

She has been struggling at work for the last couple of days for a target. It would have been challenging in a nice way had there been co-operation and help from others in which ever way possible. But it had been quite the opposite, with no cooperation and on the contrary, with people waiting to watch her fail.

This morning, when I saw a message from her that she just reached home after working at office the whole of yesterday including night, I just felt one thing, “Never give up”. Get inspired from people around you and keep working, keep moving ahead, how big the challenges might be !!!

And I sincerely wish she achieves whatever she aims at !!!

Bathroom

Has it ever happened to you that

• All superb ideas cross the mind while in bathroom
• All problems get solutions while in bathroom
• All great thinking happens while in bathroom
• All dilemmas get sorted out while in bathroom

Somehow my mind does some nice processing inside the bathroom rather than outside !!! Does that happen with you too ??

Ice cream cake

I didn’t know that something like this exists until the beginning of this month. It was the day of our trip to Vijayawada that the Birthday of V’s atta has coincided with. We reached Vijayawada before they arrived and thought of surprising them with the cake. The last minute planning didn’t leave us with much options and at that late hour of night, it was only couple of eateries that were open. It was then I got to know that ibaco serves ice cream cake and we promptly got it over. That was a nice surprise we had then and we enjoyed the cake too. But I wouldn’t say that I loved the cake, it was just different from the regular ones.

Yesterday morning, V told me that today is the day of his friends’ anniversary and we weighed down couple of options as ordering a cake to their place sometime today, or picking a cake by ourselves and visiting their place as the clock strikes 12, and we finally decided of surprising them yesterday night at around 9:30 after dinner. It was when we opened Swiggy for ordering cake, that we saw that Cream Stone served Red Velvet Ice cream cake !! We gave it a try and knocked the friends’ door.

The cake was super yummy and they loved the surprise and we enjoyed the time spent !!

Should I

Or should I not, is the constant dilemma I land up in when it comes to the matter of forcing A to take up an extra curricular activity.

At the moment, A is not into learning anything formally, other than the regular school stuff. She has tried some things in the past, one at a time, like drawing, singing etc, but nothing lasted for a long period. Whenever she wanted to opt out, I only tried to convince her to continue for some more time, but never commanded her to keep continuing. It’s the same paradigm I am following when I try to put her into something.

I never learnt any extra curricular activity as a kid and I keep wishing that I should have done something when I see someone singing, dancing or playing a sport. I really don’t know if A would feel that way once grown up, or wouldn’t care a bit about it.

But one thing I feel strongly about is that it would be nice to learn something, so that it gives one a break from the regular routine and adds up to one’s self confidence. But again, I don’t want to force my wish on A or burden her more or take away her leisure time. But but but ☹️

Triggers to learn stuff…

Most of my triggers come from A. To learn new things at crafts, academic related stuff, cooking / baking or blah blah blah….

So what’s the latest trigger and what’s my latest learning ??

A has been having a standard breakfast everyday for years for now, couple of spoonfuls of cereals, muesli. And I hate that she’s not having a proper balanced breakfast. We gave many trials at many times with idli, dosa etc but she somehow has a very little appetite in those hours of rushing to school.

Last weekend, she mentioned about her friend following a breakfast menu for the week and upon pushing, A too came up with this menu !

So today was the day for milkshake. And it has been ages that I have made a milkshake. Like the way I do for most recipes, I referred to Rak’s kitchen this time too and I wasn’t disappointed.

I followed this simple recipe, it looked quite good and sounded healthy. It came out well and both the parties are happy !!

Waiting to learn something new for the next time !!

Scratch card -> Treasure Hunt

Was the journey we had, or rather made FIL have, this morning.

If Birthdays are a celebration, planning and execution of the surprises associated with it are bigger ones for me. They give me an indescribable high !!

Today is FIL’s birthday and A started with the idea of a scratch card. She followed some instructions over the net and mixed acrylic colour with hand wash liquid in the ratio of 2:1.

On a slightly thick card paper, she covered the content with a tape and then applied the paste made above for around three coatings.

She then made a greeting card to be won by this first scratch card. She made one more scratch card which would give FIL the first clue to the treasure, which is a wrist watch bought by V. She made a set of clues and has placed them all over the house to reach to the treasure.

Morning was spent in execution of all these before the cake was cut !!

Birthday + Surprise = Double Fun !!!