DIY Furniture

I love painting on furniture. I feel its something that can brighten up a room. We had this stool lying in our house for around 2 years and every time I looked at it I thought I needed to do something with it. There are times when you feel something is naked and you need to make it wear clothes. My daughter loves this stool as it was like her table. She would take support with it and walk when she was just learning. Its a multipurpose stool .So now that my daughter seems a lil bigger I thought I can make her paint her own furniture. I am sure she is very proud of it. Of course I am very proud of her.

So there are some steps you need to take while making kids do any painting and of course painting furniture.

1. Complete supervision. If your child is the type who puts everything in the mouth I wouldn't recommend it.

2. Make sure all the ingredients are non toxic. Usually the paint bottle will say non toxic.

3. Make sure your child is well fed and is in a good mood.

4.Make sure the place is well ventilated.

5. Have all your ingredients ready before hand . Dont leave her alone with the material ever.

6. She is going to get messy. Make them just wear there diapers or wear an apron.Do the activity over a mat as arylic paint can leave permanent marks.

7.Be prepared to stop the activity at any time.They might just get bored and run away 

8. Be sure to wash there hands several times with soap after the activity is done.

These are some tips I could remember if you have more tips add it to the comment box.

Okay I admit it most of the stuff was done by me but she helped me as much as those lil hands could. She is just one after all. 

Here is how we made it.

1. Cleaned the top of the stool well with a dish washing scrubber as I did not have a sand paper. I think it worked pretty well.

2. Paste stickers onto the stool.I had stickers of letters so thats what I put. 

3. Time to get messy. Squeeze the paint onto the stool and smear it all over.

4. Use a paint brush and give it a good second coat.

5. Let it dry for half an hour or longer.

6.Remove the stickers carefully.

7. We coloured the leg of the stool with crayons.

8. Wrote the capital letters on the side of the stool with permanent markers (sharpies)

9 Paint few coats of varnish over it or spray paint with craft spray.

Her first ever painted furniture is all set to show off to the world.

She also wanted to show her wow wow the table she painted

Bridal shower cupcakes

Who doesn't love attending weddings. Maybe the only time I didn't like attending them would be when people would come up to me and ask me when I am getting married. Weddings in America are so different from the ones in India. Indians are amused by the American weddings as much as Americans are amused by Indian wedding. I remember one of my colleagues in the US was shocked when I said I had around 600 people for my wedding. She was like ,So did you know all those 600 ppl . Ofcourse not.
We were very excited when we got the save the date card for my dear friends wedding. I wish I could share the picture. it is truly amazing a picture of the bride and groom under water in perfect harmony. And it was not photoshopped. I am sorry I can't explain how beautiful that picture is. Supposedly it took 3 hours to get that perfect shot and over 700 pictures.
Anyway I had a lovely day yday. Actually this was my first official bridal shower I was invited for. Enjoyed the yummy food it was truly very good and all the games were fun. I could feel the love and warmth of the family. Wishing the gorgeous couple a lovely journey ahead.
I hope you liked the cupcake.Its a hummingbird recipe vanilla cupcake.wilton buttercream frosting and home made marshmallow fondant

Learning Technology

Girls Learning Code: Bring creations to life with electronics from Tunnel Media on Vimeo.

I am a new media designer by qualification. I love technology. I get a high when I am able to do a bit of coding.I remember while studying at NID I was one of the few people in my class who wasn't an engineer. I was very over whelmed. At one point I even wondered why they selected me . Though I am so happy they did.

While growing up if you were not an engineer or a doctor you were almost equal to nobody. Fortunately my parents didn't have that mentality. I feel if I was taught technology the way they teach in this video I would have surely been an engineer. I can hope my LO gets an opportunity to learn like this. Not that I want her to be an engineer :p I hope they continue designing and developing curriculums like this for children.

 Must say I have been working very hard on this blog. I know you might not be able to notice the subtle differences in my blog. But I have been busy hacking codes the last few days. Widgets for something as small as my signature, related post or a Pinterest button have taken me hours. I am not that smart when it comes to programming. But a big shout out to some really awesome people on the net who have made these codes available for free.

Some of the bloggers include
http://www.codeitpretty.com
This lady is simply fabulous. The way she gives instructions. I feel anybody who is able to read can follow her instructions.
http://www.carrieloves.com
Her designs are beautiful and have learnt so much from her.

Personalised Name Boards

This was for one of our relative Neer. He was turning 1 an adorable lil baby. His name means water in Sanskrit

Stacya is our family friend. She is a beautiful professional ballet dancer.

My first student Devin. He loved John Deere. Must admit I had never heard of John Deere till I met him and once I met him I heard no end of it. I also wrote a poem of him and his John Deere tractor need to illustrate it.

Kory  loved Monster trucks and of course skulls.

Yoni loved planes

Antoinne loved to go bowling.

Cole loved his guitar. 

Siddarth is another sweet heart. Born and brought up in the US. Just wanted to include a touch of India to his room.

This was for my gorgeous niece Tayesha's  1st birthday. It was a ballerina themed b'day party. She looked like the perfect ballerina.

First of all am so excited about my two new followers Yipee Thank you ! I had quiet a few people coming to my blog today as I posted my blog on my facebook timeline. I was so excited with all the lovely comments. I am sure my husband would have seen me with an extra bounce in my step. I was just blushing :) Who doesn't like to be appreciated.Thank you once again. Hope I am able to stick to my commitment and come up with exciting posts.
Today's post covers some of the personalised name boards I made for my family,friends and some were middle school graduation gifts for my students.I would be so excited to see their reaction when they saw it.I feel there is something so nice to get a personalised gift. Something no amount of money can buy. There is a bit of you and a lil of that person in it.
I cannot post my favourite personalised name plate. It was for my favourite student ever. Unfortunately it has a picture of him and I don't want to get caught in legal issues:p. He looked a lot like Harry Potter and loved Harry potter too so I had superimposed his picture and written math magician.As he loved math. Miss all of my adorable students who taught me so much. Thank you.

Easter special

I hope you all had a great easter. We had a lovely easter with family and friends. Truly miss India though. I have spent most of my easters after leaving home with my uncle and his family. my aunt would have this huge spread for breakfast with sausage, bacon and eggs. Miss you all.

 So here are few things I made for easter. I decorated the easter eggs with a permanent marker and was inspired by Indian patterns. I made some chick sugar cookies  and decorated it with royal icing.The recipe for the sugar cookies is from country crock holiday cookies .
The bunny and flower bread recipe is from foodiva's kitchen. I like the name she gave to the bread its called Happy bread. This is supposedly a Bulgarian recipe and she took all the trouble to translate it. I loved the bread but I think next time I will add some garlic and may be parsley or oregano to jazz it up a bit.

Drawers makeover

The drawers I painted for my LO's clothes . Who was to know she was going to have a wardrobe bigger than mine. Its very useful since its close to her changing tables. I have her wipes on the top drawer so I can easily reach to it. Plus when I have to tell my husband where to find her stuff I can easily say its in the owl drawer, the butterfly drawer or the birdie drawer. It brightens our room up.

Every furniture in our house has a story to stay. Guess that's what happens when you live a students life. We got this ikea drawers from a moving sale and  I think now it looks much better just because there is a lot of love that has gone into it :)

Bookshelf makeover

This is the first thing I made when I knew I was going to have a LO. I didn't know if she was a boy or girl. So I wanted something neutral. Nature is always neutral. So this was a book shelf we got free while buying a TV from a moving sale. It was quite a rickety rackety book shelf. I mean it was something really basic. I knew it had lot of potential. Perfect place to keep the babies toys where one could access it easily as it was all open. I first made an outline with pencil. Then drew over it with sharpies(permanent markers)Then painted it with acrylic paint. I wasn't sure how long it would last. But well its been more than a year and it still looks just the same. So guess it works.

Spring is here

Spring is here and soon all the flowers will be in bloom. The tree outside my house which looked as though it was dead throughout winter has beautiful pink flowers. The birds are chirping and the bunnies are out too. Though we are still in our winter attire. Waiting to take my LO out to the park soon. These are some of the bulletin boards I made in school. Our school has 4 communities and I was a part of the blue community. The top pic was a board to welcome the students of the blue community. Used a lot of different textures in the board. The blue and white grass was some scrap fabric in the art room. We used pipe cleaners, wool, paper and pompom balls. The pic below was a bulletin board in our classroom. It was so much fun doing these bulletin board . I got a lot of help executing it. I do miss it. And I do miss the students and staff. Learnt so much out there.

100th Post:)

Like a rose
Trampled on the ground
You took the fall
And thought of me
Above all

Since we are approaching Passion week and its my 100th post. I felt this was an ideal post for me to post. I made this for my mother in laws friends who are sisters.

 

 

 

Tissue flowers

These cute tissue flowers can make any face festive. You can make lil ones and make a bouquet out of it. Or you can make huge ones and decorate a whole room.They are so easy to make and super cheap too.Here is a very good tutorial for these flowers.