Valentine day table setting and treat ideas

We have three,well two and a half, girly girls in the house ( My older one is part tomboy),
Valentines day is bound to be a big thing so here are my ideas for this year.This is
our 10th anniversary year, and my girls are blossoming lil flowers, so My theme is
LOVE BLOSSOMS.

My Cupcake bouquet(details in the last post) serves as the centerpiece and I used small pots with heart lolipops,marshmallows as individual bouquets.I will be serving chocolate fondue and the marshmallows are for dipping.



For treats I am serving jello baskets

These are actually going to serve as my daughters preschool class treats.
All kids love jello.

Another treat is the Strawberry cream cheese sandwich.



HAPPY VALENTINES DAY TO YOU

Easy Cupcake Bouquet for Valentines Day

Valentines Day is nearly here,there is a lot of excitement in our house.Here is the first in a series of craft & recipe ideas for the day.I fell in love with the Cupcake
bouquet idea its so cute and economical,flowers look nice but are quite expensive so
why not try something that's not just pretty,its edible too!


I began with mini cupcakes with pink frosting with pink sprinkles

Here's a closeup of the rose petals I tried.

I used a low pot I had at home with green silk flowers as base.

Toothpick on the cupcakes as stems

Here is my final creation




Tomorrow a basket of love

International Day-Tricolor(tiranga) Pulao

Its international day at my daughters school and I decided to make Tricolor Pulao (Triranga) to represent the colors of the Indian flag.The Indian republic day is right around the corner on the 26Th Jan so this may good and easy dish to try.




the three different kinds of rice are Saffron rice,Mint rice and plain rice
(curd rice would do too)

Yesterday was an exciting day of new beginnings and hope.We celebrated with Obama cupcakes

Tea /chai

Baking has always been a weakness for me.Stories of how I burn things in the oven are famous among friends and family.I baked the perfect scones yesterday!!!
All thanks to Youtube.

I am hooked to the all the recipe demonstrations on youtube.When you read a recipe
the one thing missing is technique.The videos show you exactly what to do and More
importantly what not to.

Here is the Cranberry scones recipe -

Another recipe I tried from youtube were these delicious chicken finger sandwhich recipe. They were really really good. i just added walnuts and that made it even better.

Tick Tock clock countdown new year table

I was inspired by the table featured at the Hostess with the mostess website so i tried my version

MY COUNTDOWN CLOCK CAKE

I am no expert in decorating cakes but this came out quite well

The Disco ball ornaments made the whole house glow!!

Celebrating Diwali in the US

I know this is terribly late for (or early) Diwali but here is some glimpses into my Diwali celebration decor last year.Living outside of India my daughters don't get as much exposure
to our beloved festivals as I would like them to have.So they don't really know what it is to pig out on mithai(besides these day we worry about the calories).To light patakha's (fire crackers)
its illegal were we live .But each year I try to make it as exciting for them as I can. I still remember
my daughter being five and saying she wasn't really very excited about diwali "Not like its Christmas"!! We were going to the usual potluck dinner.That statement saddened me a lot but
I realize she didn't know how exciting diwali was she didn't really see the fun part of it as I did
growing up of course she looks forward to Christmas because its so festive here all her friends
are excited and THE PRESENTS!!!
So I thought why not adapt it to suit her environment. So I decided to have a diwali gift exchange among all her Indian friends( a big Hit) then the next hurdle was the fireworks Its Illegal in my county and not available anytime except 4th of July So we combined a Dusherra tradition of
burning the Ravan ka putla with Diwali. Diwali usually falls around Halloween so my friend used a straw scarecrow as a base for a Ravan.

she certainly put a lot of effort into it and here what happened to it !!


The Kids loved listening to the Story of Ramayan and burning the evil ravan.

I am not too good at rangoli so I did a mini rangoli as my centerpiece with
battery candles over store bought.Why fake candles ? just thought it was safer with so many kids around.