What's Cooking?

I don't mean to boast but surely my cooking is looking and tasting (if hubby & kids are to be believed) better these days....

Does a certain new kitchen have anything to do with it?

A kitchen all bright with lots of natural light

A kitchen with a view of grassy green farmland

A kitchen that gets lots of winged visitors through the day

(And creepy crawly ones at night... eeks!)

Aah! but how does one cook better with so many distractions?

Isn't life full of contradictions! :)

Handmade Creations

I spent some time during the last few months creating artifacts for the new house, including some painted bottles and a glass-painted Ganesha.

You can see my painted bottles here. Pity I still haven't started using them around the house.

And here is a picture of my glass-paint Ganesha, complete with glitter outlines and highlights. This piece now hangs on the kitchen wall right next to my fridge.

I absolutely loved this phase of creativity as I tried out varied mediums to create new pieces.

Small Beginnings

As I may have shared before on this blog, our new house has four balconies and a large staircase lobby. So I have huge plans for gardening in all these areas.

If you remember I had bought blue pottery planters long back (see here) to start a herb garden on my kitchen window sill. But my plans flopped pretty soon after moving in.... as I realised that the sill gets plenty of light but no air!

So all I get to place here are the flowers my kids bring for me from their weekend morning walks with dad. :)

So for now the planters have moved to the kitchen balcony with small saplings to start with. No herbs yet because the intense summer heat is hardly the time to plant herbs. Even my hardy greens and succulents are having to put up a tough fight to survive.


The sparrows don't spare them either; they think it is a lunch spread for them :) and munch on my poor plants ever so often!

The only part that looks bright and cheerful as of now is the entry where we've put up a palm with pretty leaves that my hubby liked at the plant nursery.

Recap: Mar & Apr 09

To continue with the recap...

Mar09:


As the school session was to end this month and the kids' would get a week off, we decided this was the best time to make the final move.


But before that there were such long lists of things to buy for the new house.



Result: Shopping Frenzy!



I am not much of a shopaholic but this one month I shopped like crazy. That we had quite a few exhibitions on only propelled my mad consumerist soul to go all out. I visited the Dastkaar Haat which was really, really good. You can read about it here.



Then I stocked up on bedspreads, cushion covers and god-knows-what-else from a handloom exhibition at Pragati Maidan.



End Result: Excellent Retail Therapy! :)


So loaded with all the recently purchased goodies, on the 28th we landed at the new house all bag and baggage. Was it a coincidence that the radio played that old number Final Countdown by Europe as we drove towards our new home!!!



Me and hubby had a good laugh over this; this really was the final countdown, the final move.

Apr09:

This one month passed by in such a rush. Trying to adjust to the new life at a new place. Falling into the paces at a redefined tempo.


But the fact that we had moved into a relatively sububrban setting from the mad city rush somehow soothed our senses. We finally had time to stop and smell the flowers, at least over the weekends.


We had the time to go out for walks. I resumed my reading after years. This was just the wonderful life we had wanted.... touchwood! :)

Recap: Jan & Feb 09

Here's a recap of the past few months while I was away from this blog.

Jan09:

The beginning of the year saw us take the first concrete step towards turning the new house into a home. We moved our existing furniture on the 19th and ordered for some new furniture on the 25th.

Pictures of the sample furniture in the store display.

Feb09:

The smallest month of the year turned out to be big for us! We decided to spend the Valentine weekend in the new house, amidst all the chaos of unsettled furniture and a half-arranged kitchen. But the effort was well worth it. We got a first-hand taste of how life in the new place would be when we move, and realised that two things were essential to stay in this neighbourhood - a phone and a car.


My daughter catches up on some food in the midst of royal chaos.

So we promptly brought home our new car on the 19th and that sure brought a lot of smiles on the kids' faces. :)


As I went out for a ride in the new car on the 20th, the postman handed me a parcel from the US. Guess what? My pansy drawing that I have written about here had finally arrived! Didn't I tell you Feb was a big month...


We also shopped around for curtains and cushions for the living room and got some fab deals since the sales were on. Some of our new furniture was delivered towards the end of the month but that turned out to be a mixed bag. While the sofas seemed fine, the beds were not quite what I wanted.

And thereby hangs another tale that I'll cover in detail in a future post on this blog.

Back On Track

I am pleased to announce that this blog is back on track after remaining in hibernation for over five months. These last few months have entailed a lot of hard work, and I am glad that I can now reach out to you all from the comfort of our new home.

As the process of turning the house into a real home has begun, I hope to share with you snippets and nuggets from this fantastic journey.

My next post will touch upon the happenings of the last five months, and we shall move forward from there to the here and now.

See you soon on this onward journey!