Kumta Onions

If there is one thing common in the houses of coastal Karnataka it would be onions from Kumta. They are pink, medium sized and have long strands. These onions are sweet and less pungent unlike the regular ones.
These onions are grown in winter in few selected villages around Kumta, North Kanara. The coastal climate and the soil is best suited to grow these onions.
Since they have more water content they cannot be stored for long time unless one take lot of precautions to preserve them.
These onions come to market in the month of  April. They are available in most of the grocery shops in the coastal regions as well as few Mangalore stores in Bangalore.

Once we buy them from the shops, sun dry them for 3-4 days.

 Make a plait out of the stands.

 Tie them to any pole high near the ceiling.

These onions are a must when some non coconut dish is prepared at home. If you are from coastal Karnataka you would know what I mean -:)

What's blooming in my garden..

It's the season of spring-summer and my garden is yet to pick up the colors. Sharing with you are few small joys in my garden.

Lovely Blue daze. What I have observed is it thrives well when kept in a height, above the ground, may be give out best results when put in a hanging pot.

Mexican petunia. They have propagated all across the pot.

Crape Jasmine(Nandi Battalu in kannada). I could successfully propagate this from a stem/stick cut  from a large tree from the garden in our layout. It gives me one or two flowers per Week.

Kids crafts - 1

What do you do to keep the kids engaged on summer holidays if not send them to any camp? Well I am clueless just like you. I wish they didn't have such a long break during summer(cruel of me to think that way -:( ).
My son is not interested in drawing, crafting or any creative work, all he wants to do in play, play, watch T.V, eat junk.
Engaging such a kid in craft is a challenge. Half the way through he would get bored, abandon everything and go. With millions of kid craft projects on the Internet, I decided I would at least make him do something. Something short and cute.
So here is our first project together.

It's from http://krokotak.com/2013/02/paper-flowers-2/

Colorful fishes

With my son's exams finally over, some relief to me for another 1 and a half month on the study point of view. So this weekend I had a little bit of 'me' time and did this wall hanging. Inspired by the leather work of Andhra Pradesh, I drew out these fishes and colored them to my fancy. I had few wooden beads at home so used them and made a wall hanging. Welcoming spring in my own way, colourful isn't it?
Linking this to Colour's Decor Weekly Story.

Happy B'day my home

It's again the time of the year where my sweet home is celebrating her birthday.
It's so true that you build your dream home only once, isn't it? The excitement of seeing your dream come true is wonderful, decorating it is even more wonderful.  Wherever I go, I long to come back to my sweet abode.
Sharing with you another corner of my home where I spend my evening sitting with a cup of chai.  I love to sit here when it rains.

A Window makeover

If there is any place in my home which I dislike that would be our bed room's king sized window. Why?
1. It is high, I can't open/close it without the help of stool.
2. Due to west facing, it lets in lot of sunlight in the afternoon.
Somehow I am not convinced with the idea of putting vertical blinds to this window, so I covered the half of the window with curtains. The other half  i.e. slanting in size lets in lot of afternoon sunlight directly on the bed, making difficult to take nap.

We knew we had to fix this problem by consulting an interior decorator and but we keep on postponing it. 

A recent visit to Mahabalipuram, I had an idea, which would lessen the problem. While shopping, I found these hangings made from the sea chips. So we bargained two of them for Rs 700 and bought them.

I dis-tangled them(didn't have the heart to do it) and made them to linear hangings.

For time being I have just tied them to the window railings. These hangings block the sunlight to some extent.

The best part of the project, like to see the shadow it creates in the evening!

Wind Chime from Xylophone

Who doesn't like the tinkling sound of the wind chimes? When there is ample space and constant breeze I think you should hang a wind chime in your home.

                          

I recently came across a post Creative ways to re-use your old toys  from Swapna's blog The Mom Views.
I liked the idea of re-cycling the xylophone to a wind chime. Three of the bars from the xylophone had already come-off, but it could still be played with.  I wanted to try this idea so badly that I took off the remaining ones with children hardly noticing the missing xylophone -:). I tied it to the pergolas in the backyard.
It doesn't look great, but it keeps tinkling all day. That's what I love to hear..