Orange is beautiful.

This is a necklace and earring set that I had put on ebay to sell it although I thought of keeping it for myself but secretly hoped it wouldn't sell and it did not so here it is.....

A bag, a message

Photo courtesy : Walmart

I like this bag and the message it conveys and hence the post. We can all be a part of this movement one bag at a time, its a start.

I love IKEA

I cannot get over how much I love Ikea and how much kids do too. Today we went furniture shopping at a local furniture store and the prices were so outrageous (high) that we didn't even stay for 10 minutes, I mean even the so-called clearance price was 2000 bucks for a sofa. I am a frugal shopper but we thought since we will keep the furniture for a long time it would be nice to get a quality piece. So even though we did not plan to go to Ikea we ended up there. We ended up buying two nightstands and placed an order online for home delivery for a queen bed, a sofa and a swivel/reclining/rocking chair and it did not cost us a paycheck. I mean I understand that buying locally can be a bit pricey but the store we went to was really not at all our budget. Maybe we made a bad choice. So our furniture is supposed to arrive within the next two weeks or so and I am excited already. We will get rid of our old futon which suffered a lot of abuse from our kids and their friends and I am going to miss it terribly. It made me feel sad for the futon but oh well there is a time for everything to go. Hopefully the colors we picked for our sofa will go with our drapes and the whole room in general since we still have white walls in that room. Besides that we went to eat out tonight and it was fun since we went with a couple of our friends and best of all with my brother who is visiting us from out of town.
Right now I am sitting with my left leg raised on a hopping ball (that my daughter plays with) since my dear brother just dropped his laptop on my left toe and it hurts. Other than that it was really a great day because we have been trying to accomplish this furniture shopping task for quite sometime now. I still would have loved to have more time at Ikea to buy all the accessories to decorate my guest bedroom and other rooms in our house but that is another day of shopping. Something to look forward to I guess.

My recipe is on a food blog I am so excited.

Today I received an email from Pooja saying that she has posted my recipe on her blog for the food blog event that she is hosting (VoW -JFI-BELL PEPPERS). I was excited and had to post about it. To be new as a blogger and to receive such a welcome in the food blogging world is very exciting to me. I actually got this recipe from watching FOOD NETWORK as I normally do everyday. It was my favorite show EVERYDAY ITALIAN. Its my daughter's favorite too. I absolutely adore Giada. She makes recipes seem so effortless and she makes me want to make them. I was watching Friends and Family feast episode and there it was , she was making Rigatoni with Bolognese sauce. I liked it because it had bell peppers, mascarpone cheese and they both happen to be my favorite ingredients. Anything that ends with cheese had to be good .. right !!! So thank you Pooja for the opportunity. Although I did not follow the recipe to the dot and made a few changes to it, it still came out tasting very yummy. Now I want to try Giada's Hazelnut crunch cake with mascarpone and chocolate ( again two of my favorite ingredients) since it has a very semi-homemade touch.

My ebay endeavor

So here it is my first attempt at selling anything on ebay. Hope this works out I would really feel good about myself. This is not to get any new buyers for the stuff but as a new seller online on ebay I am very nervous. Also I have put some money into these beads when I bought them in hopes to sell them on ebay. I felt very useless for the past few months although running behind the kids and getting the housework done is one of my many uses :) ha ha ha. Anyways I put a couple of items on sale on ebay and I will be adding more if this works. I selected everything personally on my last trip to India since I loved the stuff myself and thought of selling it. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Recipe post

I am supposed to be fast asleep now but I am not since I am on a roll tonight or today whatever you call it since its 10 after midnight here. I am definitely not sane LOL. Anywho recently I made this dish well its a leftover dish that I made. So its really simple and I am sorry I don't have a photo to show you but next time maybe I will. I call it Idli gujjustyle. So I had about 8-10 leftover idlis in my fridge and I thought that let me just do something with them so I cubed them up and put a tablespoon of olive oil in a pan and added some mustard seeds and curry leaves and hing to it and then added the idlis and some salt and sugar ( just about half a tsp of sugar-and that is why the name) and sauteed it and let some idli stick to the bottom of my pan and voila you have leftover gujjustyle idli. My kids ( both of them) gobbled it up and I had the crumbs, the caked on crumbs and they tasted yummy. So if you like this you can try it too and see what you think of it. I can post the exact recipe if anyone would be interested. But tonight I really need to sleep. Good night and sweet yummy dreams to all.

Memories that will last a lifetime

I went to India for 4 and a half months and came back thinking I will write so much about the things I did and what I thought of what I observed there but that certainly has not happened. But one thing is for sure that I brought back with me so many wonderful memories and so did my kids. These are a few things that I miss, the everyday sunshine, the hustle and bustle of the streets, the packed markets, the sounds of the rickshaws and the most important being with my ma and pa. I am really sure that my kids specially my son misses them a lot. He had the hardest time of all because it was his first time and he took to India like fish to water. I never felt even once that he was not happy there. he never fell sick there, he had a roaring good time. He would just wake up early in the morning and be with my mom and I could sleep in ( Oh how I miss that) thanks ma !!!!!! I owe you big time for this and so much more. My dad was his best friend. You know I have started believing in this thing called past life attachments because they were so close to each other and I used to wonder how it could be. He used to be crazy about my dad running behind NANA ( that is what we call our maternal grandfather) and the reverse was true too. The best compliment I have received in my entire life was from my dad when he said " You add a few more years to my life when you let me be with your kids" I never knew I could make him so happy and I thought to myself that maybe this is a way I am making up for all the disappointments that I gave him when I was a child and believe me I did when I say so. I was quite a rebel in certain aspects. Here are a few things my son definitely misses other than being with NANI-NANA. He misses seeing the street dogs and cows for sure no matter how much a nuisance they are to us adults but it was like one of the wonders of the world to my little guy. So today I want to thank all those cows and dogs ( and pigs for that matter) who made my son's day better. He misses going in the rickshaws with my mummy. He misses hanging out with the birds on the terrace. He misses playing in the dirt on our terrace. He misses getting baths from Nani. He misses all the hugs and kisses from everyone he met. He misses the pigeons that used to sit on our neighbor's front balcony ( Our neighbor auntie used to get so annoyed with them and she used to say take them with you to America :)). He misses going to the end of the street fruitwala and grabbing a few oranges. I felt like he was reborn in India and found his new self there. In my next post I will write about my little girl and what she did in India. I miss all of it so much too.