Indoor Herb Garden

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I’ve always wanted to have an indoor herb garden. I also mentioned it in my last post. I had bought seeds for coriander, dill and spearmint. I bought these colorful planters from the dollar shop and planted it around early March.

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Coriander, Spearmint & Dill – March, 2017

I’ve got spearmint plants growing outside but just wanted to try growing them from seeds. It’s taking a lot of time to grow. The coriander and dill plants grew faster.

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Spearmint growing from seeds

 

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Dill, Spearmint & Coriander – April 20, 2017

Although it’s not sufficient for Indian cooking, I’m happy that I’ll always have some in my garden! 😀

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Growing Garlic & Dill

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Another ~40 days for the Sakura (cherry) to bloom and we are really anxious to see some fresh green colour in the garden. Last spring we were too busy with cousins visiting us and then a month’s trip to India. This year we are all set for our early spring vegetable gardening!

Bitter gourd was the only success last year. We lost many other plants to pests. The spearmint plants just dried up. I hope it does not repeat this year.

For growing coriander I had used the Dhaniya seeds used for cooking. But they didn’t grow into healthy plants. And Dill, I’ve always wanted to grow them but didn’t know how. I recently knew they sell seeds and I started to plan for the indoor herb garden.

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Coriander plants – Fall of 2015

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Spearmint harvest – 2014

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Spearmint harvest – 2015

We went to the Home depot to look for a good stand for the herb planters. We didn’t find a right one 😦 We just bought some Coriander, Dill and Spearmint seeds. We also bought a rose plant.

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Coriander, Dill and Spearmint Seeds

This morning, Ganesh was repotting the new rose plant. Just then the idea of planting garlic struck me. Few garlic bulbs in the kitchen were already sprouting.  I checked some gardening websites and decided to plant them. I also found that Dill was a good companion plant to grow with garlic. We planted both garlic and Dill. It was a nice start to the day!!

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Garlic & Dill  – 11 Feb 2017

I will update this post with the pictures when it starts growing 🙂

Thanks for reading! Have a nice day!

Update:

April 20

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Felt Peacock

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Felt Peacock Wall Hanging

It was 20 years back, when SV & I made a peacock rangoli for a Rangoli competition at school. It was 1996 and we were in the 6th grade.

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Peacock Rangoli at School

I learnt to draw this peacock from one of my mom’s embroidery sketches. I drew this everywhere. Mostly in the last page of all my class notebooks. SV, RK and I were the last benchers in 8th grade. RK had added a tree near the peacock neatly sketching the bark. Since then, I started adding the tree to the ‘last page drawing’.

Two years back I found a black velvet fabric board at the dollar shop. That was the time I was too interested in felt crafts. I immediately got the idea of peacock patchwork on the board using felt. I bought the board and it was lying idle for 6 months. Then I started to work on the paper cutting. Another 6 months passed. I started doing it from last week.

I used embroidery thread for the tree bark. I tried to cut the leaves from felt but it didn’t look attractive. I tried the leaf sequins and thought it looked better. I bought few coloured rhinestones during my last India trip. The colours were perfect for the peacock. The little stars are the ones used in nail art. Nail art stars suited better than the regular star sequins.

Hope you all liked it!

Growing Bitter gourd – Unexpected Success!

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It was my husband’s idea to grow Bitter gourd this year. I thought our balcony might not be the right place for the plant. I wasn’t confident and left it to him. But it turned out to be a great success. We harvested 3 bitter gourds in the first round. Expecting 5 more in the second. 😀

 

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First round of harvest

 

Handicrafts from around the world – Otomi

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Handicrafts from around the world – These are the ones that I love and wish to do some day. I know it’s not going to happen very soon. 🙂 For now, I’m just sharing all the info I collected. I hope you enjoy it. Please share your views and ideas too! Thank you!

I’m going to start with Otomi handicraft from Mexico. The thought of writing about different handicrafts struck me when I was reading about Otomi. So started with it.

Otomi Embroidery

Otomi people are an indigenous ethnic group from Mexico. Otomi people were hit by drought in 1960’s and the farming community found a new form of revenue through their embroidery.

Otomi embroidery mostly depict birds and animals. Otomi people draw it free hand and don’t use stencils. These embroideries are colourful and take a very long time to finish.

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Otomi embroidered pillow cover Source: http://www.tlallidesigns.com/

Otomi Dress -Image Source: ArteOtomi

Otomi Handbags- Image Source: http://casaotomi.myshopify.com/

Otomi pattern printed fabric is also available. They are used for curtains, table runners, pillow covers and many more. Unlike the colourful embroidery, this comes in single colour.

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Printed Otomi fabric   Source: http://www.hyggeandwest.com

The below picture shows a upholstered headboard using printed Otomi fabric . For DIY instructions, click here DIY Upholstered Otomi headboard

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Otomi headboard  Source: http://www.designsponge.com

Otomi patterns can also be painted on walls, furniture and fabrics using stencils.

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Table top stencilled with Otomi pattern  Source:http://www.royaldesignstudio.com

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Wall stencilled with Otomi pattern Source: http://m.cuttingedgestencils.com

Papier-mâché 

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These are the baskets my grandma and mom made using Papier-mâché. Mom was a little girl then. She painted them. These are more than 40 years old!! Grandma still uses them. 🙂

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40 year old paper basket

Materials required:

  • Bits of paper
  • Fenugreek seeds
  • Water to soak
  • Blender
  • Paint

Soak bits of paper in water with fenugreek seeds. Let it soak for more than 24 hours. Then remove excess water and blend it into a paste. Mould it into a shape or apply it on a bowl or basket. Let it dry for one or two days. Once its completely dry, paint it.

I haven’t tried it yet. I will try it very soon and post the step-by-step pictures.

Ugadi 2016

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Back to India for this Ugadi! 🙂 Having a great time with everyone at home. My sister & sister-in-law are also here to celebrate. Lots of fun!  This time I wanted to experiment with the rangoli stencils instead of flower rangoli. We went to the market and bought few of them. These are some of the stencils I bought.

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On the night before Ugadi, we made this rangoli at our place.

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The next morning, we went to our grandma’s place.  We three of us tried the rangoli using stencils and some flowers. It’s summer here and we weren’t much comfortable doing it as we were sweating all over. We made Obbattu, Vada & Ugadi pachadi. My mom took this opportunity to add Dill leaves/ Sabakki leaves to the vada to make it healthier. My sister is an expert in making Ugadi pachadi. It’s made of jaggery (sweet-happy), tamarind(sour-disgust), chilli(hot-anger), neem(bitter-sad), salt (fear)& mango(tangy-surprise).

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There was another wonderful moment. My LO was playing with his Great Great Grandmother 🙂 It was very cute!

 

Succulents – My new found love!

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Recently, I’m more interested in growing succulents in our garden. They are very easy to grow and maintain. I’ve had no problems till now.

This post is about the cacti we grow at home. (Almost all cacti are succulents)

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The three cacti in white containers are from IKEA. We bought it last summer. It grew well until winter. I hope it will start growing again now that its spring.

The other cactus is called a moon cactus. It’s a grafted cactus. The upper cactus lacks chlorophyll and thus red in color. As it cannot survive on it’s own, its grafted on a green cactus. We bought it at a local garden center.

And that’s a pair of Shisa from Okinawa :). Shisa are cross between a lion and a dog from Okinawan Mythology. The left Shisa has it’s mouth closed and the right has it’s mouth open.

Toothbrush Holder Makeover

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This is our toothbrush holder bought (by my husband)many many years ago. Plain. Dull. Boring.  😦 Although I was tempted to change the holder several times, I didn’t do it!

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!

Instead I gave it a makeover.I had planned to paint it using acrylics (long term plan 😉 ) but ended up using some stickers/seals from my craft box. It took me less than 15 minutes to do this. Now my LO is all happy with it. 🙂

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From a dull and boring toothbrush holder to a colorful one!

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Getting bored with household stuff is common. But little makeovers can make them interesting.