Animal Themed Toddler Birthday Party

Animal toys, salt n' pepper shakers, planters, xmas ornaments, animal decor around the house.... everyone came together so happily trooping to celebrate A's wild imagination and 2nd birthday.

Creating animal party hats was fun and easy - got some craft paper, cut it and glued it like a cone, and added some pom-poms for a pop of color. After making one hat, and getting a hang of making them, it was so easy make them - glad that I did not end of buying the online, as there were quite a few shops on etsy selling the party animal hats. 

The rest of the wall decor was just simple, colorful and playful.

Since we setup the party as a play date, there were toys kept on the TV console that could be easily reached by the kids and in lieu of any other planned activities, the toys kept the kids entertained and busy.

And of course, there had to be plants and flowers included from G-mom's garden. The paper whites and the red dragon flowers were specially plucked from mom's garden as A had helped mom water these plants regularly and she regularly monitored their progress and growth - all to make sure that they bloom for her birthday!

A is currently obsessed with singing Happy Birthday (pronounced as "Happy tu-too" as she cant say Birthday) and cutting the cake. So... for the cake, we opted for a plain Chocolate Eruption cake with white icing. Since we couldn't get a bigger cake in the round shape, we got 2 cakes and layered them ourselves right before the party. To hide the slight gap between the layered cakes, we filled it with colorful sprinkles. And then the party animals from the B'day invite climbed the cake. A was quite delighted by the big cake, and also by everyone singing Happy Birthday to her.

Since it was an afternoon party, we just served snacks to everyone - samosas, Idlis with chutney, Cheese board, Berries and Grapes, Veggie sticks and graham crackers for kids.

So glad that it all came together so well and it lived up to a toddler's hype of all animals marching to the party. A has been talking about the animals coming to her party for days with excitement in her eyes - it also helped that we went to the zoo before the party to personally invite all the animals and also went to the zoo after the B'day to thank them for their attendance! ;-)

Floral Love!

Buying flowers and arranging them (and then clicking of course!) is one of my favorite things to do.

Happy Holiday! :)

Urban Garden

The garden is always a changing landscape.
From spring florals to fall foliage, its always fun to keep updating it. I am going to update it once again this month to a all bare minimal succulents and low-maintenance plants. But before that, here are a few shots of how it looked the last 18 months...

The urban garden is really limited to a 6x12 area with a tall fence. So vertical option is really the only way to add plants and decor. The yard sale finds that were collected over the last 3 years added life to the bare fence!

Then string lights were added for warmth, specially in fall evenings.

Fall is when the fairies and their Godmothers came out to play in the crisp air and to keep a check on the little halloween monsters!

Winters were really restricted to a few hardy plants like Euphorbias.

And Spring is when the garden was in full bloom!

 Looking forward to many more seasons and changes! :)

Fiddle Leaf Fig

Fiddle Leaf Fig was my biggest obsession for a long time. I could not find it in the local stores, but when Ikea had baby plants for $12 - I bought myself two plants and hoped that one day they will be 4 feet tall! That was in 2013. Read about it here.

Now the plants are more than 6 feet tall and are still doing well.

They are still in their original pots they came in which seems a little small for the big plant. I also noticed that the leaves were drooping for one of the plants, maybe due to lack of nutrients. So last year, I decided to experiment changing one of the plants to a bigger pot. I did not want to risk moving both plants into bigger pots at the same time.

I moved the plant in September last year, but got to blogging about it just now. The plant looked a little sad in the pot, so I did not want to wait till spring to move it. I am glad that the plant adjusted well.

Also looks like it grew about an inch since last September (although the leaves have started drooping again). Now its time to feed it some spring fertilizer and continue watering it once a week. Lets see how far this journey continues.

The next thing I want to experiment on the plant is to see how it can branch out instead of growing up straight. Maybe something to try next time. :)

Ikebana

Recently I found a few local floral shops around home and they are my favorite place to visit on weekends! One can pick up individual stems and make their own bouquet and it is so much more fun than to buy a regular bunch of flowers at the grocery store.

Today, I picked up a few stems to try an Ikebana flower arrangement. The emphasis on the leaves, shapes and stems really bring out the simple elegance in these arrangements.





















Ikebana is practiced in silence and is a serious form on art in Japan. To create a basic Ikebana flower arrangement, you need a shallow vase, a floral frog to hold flower stems, and flowers/leaves/stems of at least three different lengths symbolizing sun, moon and earth.

 

The left-over flowers fill a bonus vase for the bedside :-)

Have a lovely weekend! 

Happy November!

 

Happy November!

What a lovely chill in the air today! It's time to get the plants indoors for the winter. Also, time to plant the Paperwhites to force them to bloom just in time for the holidays.

Forcing Paperwhites is easy and they bring so much joy and life to holiday decorations. I love them when mom plants the cheerful flowers around the house. They make really nice hostess gifts too. 

So today I hunted down all the jars and decorative containers I had bought at various sales, the extra pebbels I had from two years back when I made an attempt at the succulent garden (btw - that was a failed attempt!) and I bought some Paperwhite bulbs.

Now all I did was fill the container half-way with pebbles, then placed the bulbs firmly in-between the pebbles with the pointed-end facing up. Then I filled up the container with water, keeping the water level just below the bottom of the bulbs and added a little moss on the top. 

Hopefully, they will bloom in 4-6 weeks.

Spring planting

 I made a huge investment this year and bought a bunch of bulbs for Iris (in blue, yellow and pink shades), Crocus (the flowers that produce saffron and look really pretty) and Hyacinths. Hope I get some good blooms in spring ..... patiently waiting now.
 

Yard sale

Although I have been reading all my favorite bloggers always boasting about the awesome finds that they picked up at yard sales and antique stores, I have never had any such luck.... until this week.

I randomly found a yard sale on the street and my eye caught these two clay suns that would be perfect for my yard. And then I also found another unique face to hang on the fence - totally made my day/week!

Balcony update

From the winter rags to the bright summery patio...

And here are the finer details of my happy corner!

Spring/ Summer Projects