Box of Treats

A couple of weeks ago I spent an evening making 50 of these pillow boxes for a colleague’s son’s birthday. He has a September birthday and September babies are irrefutably the best!

The name tag is a big silver chumki with a white circular price tag sticker. The bow is made from some stiff wire-ish twine that I found at a local stationary store.

Atul’s mom filled the boxes with some walnuts, almonds, toffees and a small laddu. I am amazed at the amount of goodies she managed to stuff into that little box!

Birthday Confetti

Nothing says ‘Happy Birthday’ like a card that says ‘Happy Birthday’ right?

I’m entirely unimaginative when it comes to birthday messages and just stick with the usual. And this gift of a whole bunch of birthday confetti from a colleague was perfect and simple.

And as her birthday was around the corner, I made her a card that I hope doubled up as a thank you.

Every Rose Has Its Thorn

And so does the entire plant kingdom. I mean cacti, if the pictures have not already made that clear.

My parents have had green thumbs as long as I can remember. Gardening is a leisure they take much joy and pride in.

It is after a long break that I have started gardening again and I love it!

A colleague was talking to me about having a small indoor plant to brighten up her workspace and I thought a cactus would be low maintenance.

Ebby and I found an old tin and painted it a bright red. The light green cactus looks so beautiful in it.

Also attached a quote from Dr. Seuss, cause no one else can pack a punch and ‘wake up the brain cells’ like he can!

Hope she enjoys it!

The Chocolate Factory

"Who can take the sunrise, sprinkle it with dew
Cover it in chocolate and a miracle or two"
- Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory

50 chocolate cupcakes that got sold out at MIL's school today!

I Heart September

After 4 years of marriage, my husband fails to realize that he can’t say “It’s a surprise!” and then expect me to wait for the surprise… not another second, forget about an entire month!

So my birthday is just around a corner and just thinking of my birthday gets me excited. And no… it’s not just this year that I’m super excited. It’s every year. What can I say?  I love my birthday! J

I also make it quite a task for my family to live up to my expectations. My husband especially!

This year, after years of clothes, perfumes, watches and everything nice, he decided to build me a small piece of furniture. I would so opt for all the other things, but I never turn my nose up at a DIY project.

Coming home from work one day, my lungs filled with the smell of paint. (Yes, my husband didn't realize that painting should be done in well ventilated areas).

Anyways, I sniffed out the surprise and here’s what I found. (This is the final product and it took him a couple of more days after my discovery to finish it.)

 I love my little bedside stand! I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world!

Epic

…. FAIL!!! My intentions were good, my vision…set in stone. A sprinkling of common sense was really what was lacking.

I had my head in the clouds for quite some time before my husband’s 30^th birthday. Dead broke, I thought I’d bake him the cake of his dreams. Some dream that turned out to be.

Procrastination, the motherload of all sins got me. I put off every single thing until 4 hours before the birthday family gathering. And then the other motherload of all that it’s cracked up to be, panic, set in. I could’ve done with some ‘last minute- examination- quickly grasping half theorems’ panic… but obviously nothing useful was going to happen to me on that day. Instead I got a case of the useless nerves that just had me running around being counterproductive.

It’s supposed to be the sky, with a biplane flying through the clouds. Yeah… takes a whole lot of imagination.

Those white blobs… *shuffling feet and staring at the floor, super embarrassed* … are cake pop clouds.

Changes in photography angles weren't going to do the cake any favours either. 

My saving grace? The cake (considering all the drama) was pretty good to eat.

And… I did Google motherload. It apparently means something else. 

We Built This City

I just couldn’t resist it. Throughout this project I kept singing this song and drove my husband mad.  Anyway… we built a city. Kind of.

Like my husband doesn’t have enough fun at office with the music band and free food, they ask the teams to describe their business process in creative ways. And while other teams opted to create PowerPoint presentations and videos, it was paper models for my husband’s team. I have this strange feeling that he must have edged them on knowing he has a wife at home who’s crazy for anything paper.

I spent my entire weekend recycling paper, inhaling thermocol dust, building models of non-existent buildings and cracking useless jokes with my apprentice a.k.a husband. The last time I mentioned him in a post, he was an assistant. And now he has successfully graduated to apprenticeship.

So here’s how our conversations rolled:

Husband: I think I’ll call this city ‘Constantinul’

(Yeah, he said 'Constantinul' cause he thinks, “Istanbul is Constantinul’ rhymes and sings much better that “Istanbul Not Constantinople. )

Me: What? Seriously? That’s so lame!

Husband: Can you think of something better?

Me: Yeah. Cityship.

Husband throws me a you-stupid-troll look. And I throw him a look-who’s-talking-you-man-who-married-a-stupid-troll look right back. Ok, my look was much longer and he might’ve turned halfway through thinking I’m weird for looking at his nose for so long. But you get the general idea… any idea? No? Nothing. OK… So moving on…

Here are the buildings I’ve been rambling on about. The picture clarity isn’t great. The roads and the sets were all done by my husband’s colleagues. My only contributions were…

The club house….

The hospital… (I did not stick that larger than life doctor there, in case anyone's wondering :D But gotta love the ambulance!)

 The green roof house…

      The purple hotel...

 And the red roof house and the grey hotel. 

The black and yellow office building was made entirely by my husband.

After all those less than perfect, hurriedly constructed buildings, here’s a beauty that just blew us away. My husband heard about a businessman who might be able to help with making model buildings. He churned out this beautiful building in wood with just 3 days notice. My husband describes him as an old soul. He constructed this building for us free of charge; just for the love of it. How refreshing it is to know that people like him still exist! Here’s the amazing building, the design of which is loosely based on a Larsen & Toubro building in the city.

Completely unrelated... I plan on continuing using song titles as blog post titles. For some strange reason “We didn’t start the fire” keeps ringing in my mind. I could wear a black suit, stand in front of my husband’s burning paper city and sing that song. Ohhh… with glares. I’d so totally pull off the look!

P.S: My husband and I maybe suffering from a slight obsession with the classics J But who isn’t right?