Styling your Coffee Table

If there is one thing I love to do most with my home then it is decorating my coffee table.
Coffee table is an focal point that is looked upon as soon as someone enters your living room.  There are n number of ways to experiment with it looks and here are few of my favorites approaches.

Creating a vignette

The main idea of creating vignette is to create a mood with the still life objects and color co-coordinating these objects. Its simple, take a large tray and arrange few things of your likes like Buddha, vase, sea shells, boxes, jewelry, green plant, planters, candles etc.,  in it. Coffee table and the vignettes tell you about your tastes, likes and gives the personal touch to the living room. I keep changing these vignettes, some times its all brass wares, vase with fresh flowers, idols or sometimes just some shells and flowers in the pickle jars. I personally like to go for the natural trays like bamboo, or the grass,rattan trays that we get in the craft and handicrafts exhibitions in India.

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Coffee table book

Coffee table is incomplete without the books and you should display books if you have a large table. Many large, heavy books are available exclusively to be displayed on the coffee table. This could show your interests in the books and become a conversational topic among your guests. I sometimes put magazines on the table.

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Table runner

Deck up your table with an elegant table runner that matches the overall décor of the room. Remember it should go well with your sofa upholstery and the color of your walls. There are so many options available both online as well as many home decor shops offline. Fun part is that you can keep changing them according to your vignette and have throws/cushions to match them. If you like to stitch and embroider, put up your hand embroidered, or an applique work on display.

Flower Vases/Small planters

Choose a flower vase depending on the size of the room and the table. Fresh flowers are always welcoming but in case you are short of time to buy fresh flowers, choose artificial ones with best imitation. A short or a flat flower vase if you are keeping with other things.If you have green thumb then choose some succulent in attractive planters.

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Here are two ways in which I have styled my coffee table.

Having said all the above things do not clutter your table. Keep it simple and well arranged.

Small tour of my garden

When it comes to garden I am very much greedy. I want to grow every possible plant in the small space that we have. But its difficult due to reasons like --
We visit our native with family at least thrice a year days ranging from four days to two weeks. In our absence taking care of plants is done by a helper for whom I am always grateful. When we return, we find some plants would have died unknowingly.

In spite of this I have kept few pots in the balcony and around the house, before going out of station, I have bring down all pots from balcony, pots kept indoors for watering in our absence.

My garden is looking neat now, the secret is that we laid new grass. It not only adds green color but gives a sense of completeness. I am not sure how long would this picture lasts as soon, we face the termite problem.

Thanks to the Facebook group 'Organic Terrace Gardening' I have decided to take gardening seriously. I have been procrastinating the vegetable gardening all this while because of
* Monkey,rat menace
* Requires daily care and maintenance, pest controlling.
But there are so many people around us who have made a point to grow their own veggies. If it's possible for them, it should be possible for me too, moreover I have more time now than earlier.

I have grown few veggies outside my home. I just started with fenugreek seeds it was going well. But yesterday morning when I see it is attacked by the rat.

The star of my garden is the White Butterfly Ginger Lily. You can smell it even from inside the house. I bought this tuber from my mothers place and always remind me of the rainy childhood days where  these flowers used to adorn our hair.

The rain has made few new buds to come up in Red Ixora plant

I love Milkweed plant, as the name suggests its mostly grows like a weed bearing most vibrant flowers. I often cut them and put it into small vases.

My Purple Heart plant is growing in hanging pot.

There were/are lots of  Pomegranate flowers, small fruits but we didn't get any fruits to eat this year, everything went to the monkeys. 

Hope you have enjoyed my mini garden tour. Coming up next is the coffee table decor. Have a nice day folks!!!

Quick Coasters

I seem to be doing a lot of recycle related posts nowadays. I promise, this would be last for this month. You must have seen my garden some time back which was a total wreck due to renovation and painting of our home. The good news is that the me and my husband have managed to resurrect it back. Yes, the plants seem to be forgiving and they have decided to cheer back. I would be soon sharing my garden.

Coming to my post, this is about making coasters out of your old CD's. In the age of pen drives, mobiles the CD's are almost obsolete. My son's few text book publications have have attached CD's along with them. I didn't know what to with them other than throwing them once the year passed by. I had this fabric which I loved and bought it cheap to wrap the boxes. I utilized the left over cloth for the CD's. The project is very very easy and hardly takes time provided you know the basics of stitching.
Things you need.
CD's, Cloth, Glue, matching thread, needle, scissor, something to trace the CD

With the CD trace the outline of the CD. Leave 2 cm more.

Cut the fabric.

Apply glue on both sides of the CD and lay down the fabric on both the sides of the CD. Let it dry. Take care to remove any creases.

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Using the matching thread, stitch the rim of the fabric, I chose the simple blanket stitch and dark blue color,three strands.
Trim any extra threads.
Do not worry if its not perfect and enjoy your tea/coffee!!!!

Linking this to Craft Schooling Sunday of 2nd July by CreativeJewishMom

Recycling for the Environment Day

Hello friends, how are you doing? World Environment day was over a few days ago but that should not stop you from celebrating this day whole year. Here is one very tiny recycling project that I did a few days ago.

There are many things in our daily life that we throw away when no longer working or finished their shelf life. My analog clock was one such thing which under went repair twice and often took change in the batteries. I am being a green person was thinking to recycle it instead of  throwing it. For many months it laid low as a small stand and finally one fine day it caught my husband's fury. It was the time to act upon and I thought a good way to use it. I removed the internals of the clock.

Before

Our native is on the west coast of India and its just 2 km from my home. For us the sea fascinating, the waves, sand and varieties of  sea shells. Visiting the beach is complete with few collection of shells every time.

What better way to store them in the clock, this way I had kill two birds with one stone.

It had plain brown frame so I just doodled something with acrylic paint. After painting it, I felt it didn't turn out to be that great. I sealed with the screws. For now it is more sitting like a photo, as I am a bit apprehensive about hanging it. 

After

So tell me how did you like it? Have a nice day!!!!

Linking this to Nifty Thrifty Sunday

I am back..

Hello friends

I have been missing in action for a long time. When kids have summer vacation I do visit my parents and in laws. Although the holidays should be carefree, its the hardest time of the year where we spend our days in hot sultry coastal weather. Seriously, after returning back to Bangalore I felt I was in AC room.
While kids enjoyed their long break, my days were very busy in my mother place, it was either helping her or taking care of the ailing grandmother. At my in laws place its complete the opposite. I am totally free there and have to devise few things to keep myself occupied. In those times  I completed two books by Anirban Bose. They both were good and interesting reads. I also half completed a small cross stitch project taken from here . Since I had chosen my own colors set, the end is sure going to look different.

My visit to native is never complete without visiting Airody Pai shop on Car Street of Udupi, Karnataka. This time I bought a brass utensil to use as a planter. The shopkeeper kept on praising how the utensil is hand made and blah blah, would not have if he had known the real reason I was buying it -:))

Have a nice day everyone. I will be back soon with my small treasure from the sea in my next post.

My small library makeover

With growing kids there is always a need for more room for toys, books, clothes etc. I love arranging, re-arranging things at my home, but arranging my sons books is always frustrating. I keep them in some fashion, after a while they are just thrown here and there. Besides there is constant fight library space, books among my sons.
This was how the kids library looked. It's usually worse than this.

I was looking for cheap and best deals online for bookshelves so that my younger one could easily reach them, take care of it himself.
One option was from Urban Ladder(BOEBERG BOOKSHELF) and another one from PepperFry( McAnna Storage Shelf, MollyCoddle).  I could not go for the Urban Ladder one, not yet since it did not get along with old computer table in the same room and for me to purchase it, first I had to dispose this computer table.
Since the necessity was urgent I bought these storage shelves from PF. They came disassembled in four packs. It was easy to assemble as it comes with instruction and people who have drill gun can easily do it themselves. However the PF carpenters will also do it for you in case you are not comfortable with it. These come in different vibrant colors perfect for Kids room, also you can have many options like closed, open, and different shapes and sizes. I bought four of them, 2 open ones and two with doors. Since they were of the same size I could arrange them in vertical fashion. These are made from MDF and easy on pockets.

By having two separate small libraries, I can entrust them the work of arranging the books for their personal libraries. This reduces my work and headache.

Kids crafts: Rainbow flowers

The summer vacation has begun for the kids in Bangalore and its two months of freedom from school activities. Well, my generation enjoyed the vacation in carefree ways, my kids are constantly complaining of boring holidays. It's my conscious decision to keep them away from tab, computer games, mobile in holidays.
It's Action time for mommy ME, to teach them art and craft at home. I spend at least some time with them with various art and craft activities, few simple and some complicated.
Here is a simple flower tutorial. My younger son(who takes after me in love for crafting)enjoyed doing this while my elder one as usual with an expression "what's all this nonsense?""Why I have to do this?"

What you need

Colored sheets, glue stick, glue[optional], floral wire or any thin stick or any craft stick to hold the flower, scissor, cardboard to stick the petals.

Make squares of colored paper, we made two sizes one of size 5 cm and another of 7 cm. From a square shape we can make two triangles and hence two petals from them.

Cut these squares to two triangles.

1.Fold the triangle in to half, opening it later to get a crease at the center.
2.Join the two edges into a rhombus shape along the crease.
3.Glue the edges in cross.
4.Take a circle shaped cardboard. Make a dot at the center.
5 Stick each petal around this dot.
6. Hold your flower with a wire/gluing to a stick

You can further make leaves to make it more beautiful.

Adding this craft to Craft Schooling Sunday April 09 link party by Creative Jewish Mom