Ten on Tuesday : Xmas Special

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chrismtas, festivals, santa, ten on tuesday, xmas

I love doing Ten on Tuesday’s. Sometimes its so much easier to write and think in bullet points 🙂 So here at the ten things I love about Xmas

1. The colors, oh the glorious colors. The reds, the whites and the greens … Its love all the way

2. Plum Cakes : If left to me this will be point 1 to 10… I simply love love love it and so does N

3. Gifts, Gifts YAY… yes yes I am greedy for gifts but don’t those add a punch to life.. This time I participated in three Secret Santa games with three groups, one of them being the ones doing this month long marathon with me… I have got the gift from only one group now and the second one a mail that its on the way but I can’t tell you how excited I am about all this LOL

4. Xmas trees : there is something about a well decorated Xmas tree, though mine never looks as great as it should but I still love having it in my hall every december till the new year breaks in

5. Mulled Wine : Every Xmas I start making mulled wine at home a week in advance and we sip it in the evening 🙂 The spices the sugar the warmth… yumm yumm yummm

Picture Credit Google – I strangely couldnt find mulled wine picture in my folders and this year I havent made any because of the hospital rounds 😦 but I think I will make some today

6. Xmas Carols, Xmas songs : Growing up the only carol I had heard was Jingle Jingle bells but then some years ago our next door neighbors were Christians and come December every evening they would play some lovely carols and Xmas songs. Listening to it every evening became so much a part of my life that if they went out someday I would play it on youtube myself. Luckily even after moving houses we can Christians neighbors who play guitar and sing carols every evening. Bliss

Watch this amazing video of a carol

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8. Holidays : yeah who can have enough of holidays? Growing up it was 10 days school vacations, later for a while paid year end holidays and then worked for a company which had xmas shutdown and now its ojas’s vacation 🙂

9. Xmas movies : I love love love the movies around Xmas, be it Polar Express, A Christmas Story, Miracle on 34th Street, The Santa Clause, Jack Frost and many more

Picture Credit – Google

10. Happiness, Joy, Giving, Love : Last but not the least, love the spirit of Xmas, the love, the happiness, the joy it brings along

So here’s wishing u all a merry Xmas folks… Hope you have been good this year and santa is getting you loads of gifts

Have a safe and happy Diwali

Tags

diwali, festivals

When Happiness is in the air

Tags

culture, diverse india, diwali, festivals, india

That’s what this time of the year is. Time for festivals. It starts right with rakhi, janmasthmi and eid in August moves on to Ganesh Chathurthi to navratri , dashara, karwachauth and ofcourse the mother of all festivals for India – Diwali

I love this season, season in which there are celebrations all around, happiness all around and not to mention the yummy food.

What surprises me in India though is the diversity of these festivals, how the small things differ from region to region. So while during Ganesh Chaturthi a little gauri is worshipped in Karnataka its usually only the Ganesh is rest of the country. For navratri too its different beliefs., different celebrations. Up north people fast for 7 days because the little durga was hiding in a cave in Vaishno Devi during those days without food and on the 8th/9th day when she emerged out of the cave after killing Bhairo she went to a farmer house for food. So this is what is celebrated on, 7th days of fasting followed by feeding little girls who are treated as devis.. halwa, poori and chole before breaking the fast. While the same is celebrated in West with the lovely dandiya every night with all the fun, while in east its all about celebrating Durga with Pujo Pandals and sindoor khela with the final day marking the visargan of durga. Down south it takes a different avatar and people keep golu (lots of cute dolls lined up in stairs), people are invited home and little gifts are exchanged. One time so many celebrations, amusing isn’t it? Even the final 10th day i.e dushehra is celebrated so differently, while in North its celebration of Ram’s victory over Ravana by burning huge effigies of Ravana, Meghnath and Kumbhkaran which is preceded by 9 days of Ram Lila that is enacting Ramayana in form of drama, whereas in some parts of South of Ravana is actually worshipped.

And here I have just pointed out the differences in the navratri, the pattern just continues in all festivals. The diversity and the reason I love India some more

Leaving you with a picture of my thali for the kanjaks at home this year, halwa,poori,chole, mars in a kung fu panda plate…

Thursday Challenge : Lights

Tags

diwali, diya, festivals, lights, thursday photo challenge

The theme this week is

LIGHTS (Holiday Lights, Candles, Street Lights, Fireplace, Fireworks,…)

 

Santa Are U Listening

Tags

festivals, santa, wishlist 2011

Santa Santa this is my list… I am late, naah…. I know u know it 😀

1. A good maid… please I think this one tops my list, please give me one… one whom I can trust and would stay for sometime atleast one year…

2. A job on my terms… a company which agrees to let me do work as I want to now that I am thinking of going back to work 😉

3. A good pair of golden slippers to wear on weddings ahead which are not tacky but still dressy

4. Holidays lots of them, I would do with 6 weekend trips and one 10-day longish vacation

5. That Delhi-Leh drive it has to has to has to happen this year

6. Some one who makes music like Flyod again (dreaming are we?)

7. Patience loads of it

8. To lay my hands on fresh blueberries…. Blueberries they seem like my new obsession

9. A stable BP through the year, its damn irritating to keep fainting now and then because of the low BP

10. A pair of good solid wash non torn mid-rise jeans, gosh I never felt buying jeans so tough before, I must be getting old 🙂

Wishing u all a merry Xmas

WW22 : Merry Xmas

Tags

cake, festivals, home, Ojas, pictures, santa, wordless wednesday, xmas

And where we celebrate

Tags

eco friendly ganesha, eid, festivals, ganesh chaturthi, ganesha

Both Eid and Ganesha….

I think God really must think that I am good person, otherwise why is that my house always is a spicemen for national integration…

Do u remember the post I did last year around Ganesha… a sunday for all religions? I had a live in maid then who was keeping rojas and a chirstian cleaning maid, the live in help has got married and we have moved houses so the cleaning maid has changed too… but would u believe if I tell u the equation is still the same?

My full time maid (though she is not live in) is a muslim and the cleaning maid is chirstian again 😀

So this saturday we celebrated both eid and ganesha again and it was a total dejavu… I tell u… we did a full eid feast on Friday night with biryani, haleem, brinjal salan and semiyan

And then we celebrated Ganesh Chaturthi with the usual puja, flowers and ofcourse ladoos for the elephant god were made

This time too I went for eco friendly clay ganesha and was happy about it… hope it makes our dear Swaram also happy 🙂

here is the rangoli that me and ojas made

and finally Ganpati Bappa Morya….

And now I am dreading the visargan in sometime (which I am planning to do in a bucket BTW and then water my plants with it)… Ojas has been sulking and crying since morning as he doesnt wanna let ganpati bappa go….

So how were ur festivals? or the long weekend in case u didnt celebrate

Fire Rewadi Dance Popcorn and more

Tags

bornfire, dance, festivals, india, lohri, music

yeah thats what Lohri is all about… a big bonfire, lots of til rewadi, moongfali, popcorn… a dhol and lots of dance… and ofcourse when everything becomes quiet sitting with your friends around the bonfire and chatting late into the night till the last amber is burning

I miss miss miss this festival… the happiness that floats around and the fun that is had… I am planning to go to the small celebration we are doing in the colony this evening… u guys have a happy lohri too

Leaving u with some snaps clicked on our first lohri after marriage… we celebrated that one in Delhi in full blast

and btw thats my grandpa putting the rewadi in the fire….

and thats me doing the kikili in the spirit of lohri with my cousin… my hands full with the lovely chooda…

and finally the relatively newly wed posing before the function began… gosh I was so thin

Sunder Mundriye Ho…. Happy Lohri

Happy Diwali

Tags

festivals

Wishing all of u a very happy diwali!! May the festivals of light bring lot of happiness and brightness along

And I am back

Tags

blogging, break, festivals, friends, love

The break that was just intended to be for a short vacation became so long courtesy my laptop’s adapter that gave up and took soooo long to be replaced that I started having withdraw symptoms 😀 😉

But this break yet again proved that what a loving place this blogworld is…. the comments, sms’s, mails and calls asking me that why I am missing and is everything all right…. guys I love u 🙂 hugs

But now I am back to bug u again… and my reader has a scary 1000+ unread items… I will get to it slowly and finish it hopefully sooon but with the festive season around and then a Delhi trip planned immediately after that not too sure

So what are ur plans for the festive season…… I am hoisting my teen patii party on Friday