Happy New Year: 2012

Here's to a Happy, Healthy, Peaceful and a Wonderful New Year. Cheers!!!!!

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What A Great Loss!

What a sad day today to say the least.

We lost one of the most brilliant people in the technical world. The technical world will not be the same without Steve Jobs. He was such a visionary and came up with such innovative products which the whole world benefited from.

Personally he was such an inspiration to me. I always looked up to him. He will be very much missed.

Sad day indeed :(

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I Love Lucy

Google made this cool doodle to celebrate Lucille Ball's 100th birthday. The neat thing about this particular doodle is that it actually plays 6 different clips from the original "I Love Lucy" show that aired in the 1950's. So the knobs on the doodle are actually functional. So cool!! You can read all about it on the Official Google Blog: We love Lucy.

Really Cool!!!!

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World "Cup" Cakes

Yay!!!!! India Won the Cricket World Cup finals. So how do we celebrate? By making Cup Cakes of course.

I started with white cake mix and baked some cup cakes.

Next we got some star shaped sprinkles and my kids help me sort them by color. My 3 year old enjoyed this job.

Next I mixed the store bought cream cheese frosting with some edible food color and frosted the cupcakes in 2 colors, blue and orange (our team colors).

Finally spelt out the words "CHAMPIONS INDIA"!!!

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Way To Go India!!

What a superb performance by Indian cricket team today in the semifinals of World cup cricket. It was amazing. When India beat Australia in quarterfinals a few days back it was unbelievable. Today they beat Pakistan, our arch rival. My dad would always buy sweets whenever India won a game, especially against Pakistan. What do I do for my kids? I baked a cake to celebrate their win!

Now we head to finals of the World cup. All I can say is way to go India. Good Luck in the finals!!!

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Driving Through The Winter Wonderland

My daughter has been bugging me since Thanksgiving for a vacation to Lake Tahoe during winter months. She wanted to go sledding. I don't blame her. It's been a while since we went to Tahoe in winter. So I finally booked a cabin in Tahoe for the President's day week. We were planning to leave on Sunday, the 20th and be back on Tuesday, the 22nd (to beat the traffic). The week before our travel the weather in California was gorgeous, almost spring like weather.

However as the travel date was approaching, the weather took a dramatic turn (no surprise there!!! Murphy's law always holds good!) There was a severe winter storm on Friday night leading to Saturday morning at Tahoe. According to local news there was a major gridlock on the roads leading to Tahoe because of the severe weather conditions. We were constantly checking weather for Tahoe to see if the storm cleared.

Luckily for us on Sunday it was clear blue skies where we live as well as in Tahoe, which made driving a breeze. We could reach our destination in 3 and 1/2 hours. Not bad!!! Also because of the recent snow storm, there was fresh snow everywhere. All the pine trees were covered in snow. All the rooftops were covered with a thick layer of snow, with icicles dangling on the edges. The drive was so scenic, it felt like driving through a winter wonderland. I took pictures along the drive with my iPhone. The pictures are not with the greatest resolution, I don't think they did justice to the scenery. However they say, pictures say a thousand words. I think it holds good in this scenario.

Enjoy the ride!!

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Long Live Democracy!!

What a great day for democracy. After 18 days of protests by Egyptians, President Hosni Mubarak has finally stepped down. It is truly a momentous day for Egyptians to finally have true freedom after 30 years of dictatorship.

Let me be clear, I usually do not follow Middle East (or North African) politics very closely and am not too clear about their conflicts. But when it came to Egypt, it was different. For once it was ordinary people looking for freedom in every sense of the way from decades of dictatorship. Also being from India, a democratic country and living in USA which also is democratic it is hard to imagine living in a country without freedom. From day one I started following it closely, mostly on BBC news and NewsHour on PBS. Both did a great job of covering it in-depth. Just yesterday, President Mubarak refused to step down until September 2011 as he has been saying for the past 18 days. Finally this morning I hear about the News of him stepping down.

What a difference a day makes!!!! What a difference the power of people can make.

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Christmas Cheer!!

Here are some reindeer I made for the Christmas decorations this year. I started with a template I downloaded and printed out in different color backgrounds. Then all I had to do was cut them, glue an eye, tie a jingle bell around the neck and finally punched a hole and tied a ribbon on top to hang from ceiling. Voila!!! You have this colorful Christmas decoration.

Trying to spread some Christmas cheer from my end!!! Makes me happy whenever I look at them. Smile on ....

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It's all about number 10!!!

So for a year now, my daughter has been telling me how important her 10th birthday is going to be. She is right. She turned 10 on 10/10/10. So I decided to make it special for her. She invited her good friends to join her on this special day. We decided to go with the cooking theme. This is the menu they got to work on: Fruit Kabobs, Make their own Pizza, Salad in a Cup and finally decorate a Mini Cake. I bought aprons for each child, so they could take it home with them.

For the pizza's I got individual pizza dough and sauce from Trader Joe's. Well worth it. They started off by making their individual pizza and topped them off with various toppings of their choice. I had quite a few choices for them : Colorful bell peppers, Tomatoes, Pineapple, Jalapenos, Basil and mozzarella Cheese. I had to bake one pizza at a time. That took the most time. I also bought some empty pizza boxes from a nearby pizzeria. Once ready we put it in their own pizza box to take home.

While the pizzas were getting baked, they worked on the fruit kabobs. Again they could choose from, grapes, honeydew melon, cantaloupe and watermelon.

Next they got to make their own salad in a cup. They first poured a little ranch dressing in a cup and then put some of the carrot sticks, cucumber sticks and cherry tomatoes on top. It was time for lunch. They had their lunch and my daughter cut her ice cream cake.

After lunch they got to decorate their mini cakes. I had baked a dozen of these cakes the previous night and had them ready. For cakes, I gave them slices of strawberries, kiwis, raspberries and M&Ms. I also had both chocolate and white frosting.

I bought a white apron from Michael's for each of the guests to sign, so Hrishika can keep it as a birthday memory.

For goody bags I made personalized apron shaped cutouts with card stock and attached a $5 gift card from Yogurt land on the back. Yogurt land is one of my daughter's favourite yogurt.

The kids had a blast. After the party, before going to bed, my daughter gave me a BIG hug and said it was the best birthday party ever. That made my day. All I want is my children to enjoy their birthday.

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Colorful Kitchen

These days when it comes to kitchen gadgets and utensils, there is no dearth for color. They seem to come in all the shades imaginable. I for one love that.

These colorful ceramic measuring spoons. A departure from the usual. Love those colors.

These ceramic trays are lovely to serve food, with an added bonus of being dishwasher, oven and microwave safe.

These stacking cups are a perfect design. They occupy minimum space and make it easy to identify cups.

These colorful kitchen gadgets ....

Even the mixing bowls come in a variety of colors these days.

Colorful indeed!!!!

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Is This Product Necessary?

Photo: Courtesy Kleenex.com

Today, when I opened my email I saw this message from Kleenex® saying they are introducing this new product: Kleenex® Hand Towels. They think it is more hygienic versus a cloth hand towel used in bathroom. Click here to see what they say are some of its advantages.

The first thing that came to my mind when I saw this new product was how unnecessary it was. We already have toilet paper being used in abundance and which results in cutting down of innumerable trees. In the case of toilet paper, at least it is understandable. But for wiping hands, I mean come on. I think using a cloth towel is perfectly alright, as long as you wash your hands properly using an antibacterial soap. Then all the germs are already dead and all you are doing is wiping the wet hands. I don't see any harm in using a cloth hand towel. On the other hand if you did not wash your hands with antibacterial soap, wiping it off with a paper towel is not going to do any good. As per cleaning surfaces in the bathroom goes, I could use the toilet paper instead, which I already have in the bathroom. At least that's where I stand. That brings me to this point.

Is this product necessary?

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Guess What? Guess How?

First of all can you guess what you are looking at ( do not worry about the green stuff)? It is some kind of vegetable. I guess you know the answer. The color of the vegetable gives it away. Yes you are right. It is a carrot cut into circles and cored.

Now that you know which vegetable it is, can you guess how I went about doing it? It was quite simple to accomplish that. All it took was a carrot with a very hard core (in other words, a bad carrot). So once I peeled and cut them into circles, all I had to do was push the center core out with my thumb. That created the donut effect.

Cool isn't it?!!!!

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What Were They Thinking?

Today, when my husband got back from work, he casually mentioned that HP was going to acquire PALM for whopping $1.2 Billion. He also mentioned that PALM was in such bad shape financially that they were almost going to close down.

My 9 year old snapped back immediately. She said , "Have you seen the Palm Pre ad? One look at that ad and you will never want to own a Palm Pre." Actually what she said about the ad is so true. It kind of spooks you out a little bit. If a 9 year old could figure that the ad is not working, then why can't the people making these ads. It makes you wonder as to "What were they thinking?!"

That kind of reminded of the Burger King ads. One look at the king and your appetite goes out the window. I guess they were trying to copy the Jack in the Box ads without similar results. Even without any controversy I hated those BK ads. Then there was this King's gone crazy ad, which was considered so controversial, it had to be pulled off the air. That I feel actually worked out in favor of BK. At least we don't see that idiotic king character anymore.

I don't know what they were thinking?

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Earthquakes: 2010

Since I live in California, I suppose, I pay close attention to earthquakes (no matter where on earth they occur). Year 2010 has bee very peculiar in that regard. We are only one quarter of a year into it, and we have already seen eight major earthquakes (magnitude 6 or higher) and ten if we count magnitude 5.5 or higher. That's a lot of earthquakes in such a short time period. They have been all over the world.

Of these the Haiti Earthquake of magnitude 7.0 on Jan 12th was one of the deadliest. The other major one was the 8.8 magnitude earthquake in Chile on February 27th. There was a quake in Mexico on April 4th of magnitude 7.2 followed by 7.6 magnitude quake in Indonesia on April 6th.

I do know there is a lot of earthquake activity that happens on a daily basis. However much of this activity is either not high enough magnitude or in densely populated areas. So they go unnoticed. Hope we don't see too many of these quakes, the rest of the year!

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Happy Earth Day!!!

I want to wish all the earthlings a very happy Earth day. As a living being on the planet Earth, it is our responsibility to take good care of our planet. So this earth day I researched the web to find some useful sites on going Green!!!

1. National Graphics's Green Guide
2. Planet Green , A Discovery Company
3. The Daily Green
4. HGTV Green Home Giveaway

In the meantime we all can make some simple changes to help planet Earth:

1. Use cloth kitchen towels instead of paper towel, wherever possible.
2. Use a permanent coffee filter instead of paper filters.
3. Use filtered water instead of bottled water.
4. Bring your own reusable bag for grocery shopping.
5. Use bamboo products for cutting boards etc.
6. Use pressure cooker for cooking (saves lot of energy)
7. Try carpooling.
8. Use bicycles or walk whenever possible.
9. Minimize the use of water and electricity wherever possible.
10. Replace all the bulbs with energy efficient "CFL bulbs".
11. Use solar powered lamps for landscaping.
12. Use clothesline for drying clothes in summer.

Or maybe some big ones .....

1. Use energy star appliances.
2. Try to harvest rain water if you can.
3. Buy a hybrid car.
4. Try to use solar panels for power generation (if you can afford it).

The list goes on and on . So on this earth day and in the future, Think Green, Act Green and Go Green!

Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! That's the mantra.

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Cock-A-Doodle-Doo

Need I say more ..... You get the picture .....

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Window Shopping

One of the fun things about Disneyland are the colorful window displays. I have always enjoyed looking at them. Of all the windows "Ratatouille" captured my attention. Because they actually had a character moving. The display is so realistic, with all sorts of details. You can see a refrigerator, kitchen utensils, recipe book etc. Here are some pictures and the video of that window display. I only wish I did not see the glass reflection in my pictures and video.

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It's A Small World!

We had been to Disneyland just recently for my daughter's spring break. It was one hectic trip no doubt. No matter how well you plan your trip, there is only so many rides one can cover in a day.

Of all the rides, "It's a small world" is very different, and the message is wonderful - unity in diversity. It promotes the sense of togetherness and peace, which is so much needed in this world, with all that is going on.

Here are some pictures I took of the ride.

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Easter Egg Hunt ....

My hunt for Easter eggs started on Saturday, April 3rd. We are lucky we have a Walgreens close to our home for procrastinators like me. I found these cute Easter baskets, some pastel colored plastic eggs and bite size candy all in one quick stop. It cannot get any easier than this. I filled the eggs with miniature Snickers and Hershey's candy and hid them in our backyard.

Fast forward to Sunday, and here you can see the results of my kids' Easter egg hunt.

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Refrigerator Magnets

There are some things which get noticed lot more than others. I don't know what it is about them. Somehow most of my friends who visit our home, seem to like these refrigerator magnets. I got them years ago at Pier 39 in San Francisco. There is a store in Pier 39 just dedicated to refrigerator magnets. There is tons and tons of variety. I picked out these since they looked very cute.

I know, I know ....... one of the dolls is missing a shoe. I need to glue it back on. One of these days it is going to happen, I promise (myself)!!!

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