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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Cock-A-Doodle-Doo

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

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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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Melon Baller Magic!

What do you get when you start with some seedless watermelon and a melon baller.

Voila !!!





All I can say is YUM!!!!
Cheers to some easy, healthy deliciousness!!!!

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Choclate Chip Cookies!!!

My kids love CCC (Chocolate Chip Cookies). I guess most kids do. There is always a request for CCC at snack time.

So I usually end up buying the cooking dough and baking them. There are so many choices when it comes to cookie dough these days. They really made it easy to bake cookies with these readily available cookie doughs.

Once my kids tasted these semi homemade cookies, they do not seem to like the store bought ones anymore. The taste is not the same. I'm sure the cookies made from scratch are much more delicious. But for now, I'm happy with the semi homemade version. It saves me a ton of time.

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The Sun, The Rain And The ....

Today we have seen the weather go from cloudy to sunny to rainy. It was changing all throughout the day. Very unpredictable. But with the unpredictability came a beautiful surprise at the end of the day.See for yourself.

I have been trying to capture the rain for a while on my camera, but didn't know how. Today I finally got the idea, when I saw the rain drops on my french door. It was a perfect shot.

It was a beautiful rainbow. My 2 year was super excited when he saw it. I don't know what it is about the rainbows, but it brings some kind of joy when you spot one, at least for me!! I'm so glad I was able to capture it on my camera.

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Organize: Kitchen

I have been trying to organize my kitchen a little better. So I went looking for some drawer organizers. I finally found the Expandable Bamboo Gadget Tray at Crate and Barrel. It is made of bamboo, looks sleek and it is expandable. It fit my drawer perfectly. What more could I ask for. So I have finally organized my gadget drawer. Here take a look ....

I was told that spices last longer and stay fresher when stored in a refrigerator. I decided to store mine in a refrigerator too. I like the idea of using glass bottles instead of anything plastic for storage. So I ended up using the Starbucks coffee bottles and Classico pasta sauce bottles for storage. It was very easy to peel of the labels off the Starbucks bottles. I just washed all the bottles once in a dishwasher before filling them with my spices. I could fit 4 Classico bottles in the back and 5 Starbucks bottles in the front row perfectly. It looks neat and I didn't have to spend a Penny on these bottles.

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Too Cool For California

It has been really cold for the past 2 days. In fact I have some pictures to prove it. The temperature has been in the 40's. Here you can see the local temperature on my yahoo weather widget for Thursday, December 10th.



The water in the birdbath turned into ice overnight. So when I rinsed it off, the ice shattered and the pieces fell down. The white pieces next to the birdbath are all pieces of ice.

There was snow on the hill tops surrounding our home. Snow happens very rarely.

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Dancing Birds

This morning I was delighted to see 2 birds kind of dancing on the fence in our backyard. They were just moving towards and away from each other in some kind of symphony. So I decided to capture it on my digital camera and here it is ....

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What .... Green Thumb?

We have been living in this house for past 11 years. But when you look at our backyard it seems as though we just moved in. It hardly has any plants. All thanks to my "not so green thumb".

We had this orange tree for so many years now. We only got one edible orange out of it. If we look over our fence our neighbors seem to be growing fruit in abundance. We also planted a lime tree at the same time as orange tree and we are finally seeing some limes. This morning my daughter was so excited to pick out a fully ripened lime. I took a picture, since in our house the home grown lime is kind of like a celebrity.

Then there is this bird of paradise plant. Apparently there are different kinds in that too. When we planted it we thought we got the usual "orange and purple" variety, but no..... ours is a super special "white" bird of paradise. It hardly ever blooms. So far it bloomed only once, a couple of years ago.

Then there are these 2 hibiscus plants (yellow and orange flowers) which I purchased from my local nursery and planted them. One with orange flowers died and the yellow flowering one barely grew in so many years and gives very few flowers. The only plants that keep coming back each year without fail are the bulbs which bloom in spring. We had these for past 6 years and each year from March to April we see them flowering.

My mom on the other hand is a super green thumb. She once got a small branch of a white hibiscus plant (without a single root) from her friend and planted it in our backyard and it grew so well and all through the year it blooms and gives beautiful flowers. How do you explain that. She also planted a small sapling of an avocado plant last year and it grew into this giant tree. You should see it to believe it.

The only flowering plants I'm successful at growing are the "wild flowers". Thank God for the wild flowers, we had some color in our garden, even if it was temporary.

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REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE

There is a lot of talk these days about Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, the 3 R's campaign. Finally I see the government got involved in the 3 R's campaign in a major way. These days we are quite frequently bombarded with the water bottle advertisements, where they talk about the bottles ending up in landfill. So true.

I'm all for using the tap water with some kind of filtration. In fact who isn't. I guess we all agree that we need to keep the planet in a better condition for our children, grandchildren and the generations there after and so on.

So to do our part, first we had a water filter installed in our kitchen a few years ago. Next I went and bought reusable water bottles. I got mine at container store. I liked that they came in a set of 5 and are perfect for my daughter's school, one for each school day. The designs are cool too. These days these water bottles are everywhere, which is nice to see.

While EPA is doing all it can to stop the water bottles from ending up in the landfill, there is a new problem cropping up. I think it is the same water bottles with some simple additives and new labeling.

For example Propel Fitness Water. This is what it is ... according to Wikipedia. So it is water with some added vitamins. I also noticed that they have "Propel Fitness Water mix powder packets" in different flavors. I think I like this instead. So you can use your reusable water bottle and your filtered tap water with their added mix. Another example of this is Glaceau Vitamin Water. As the name suggests, it is water with some vitamins and some flavor enhancers. I did not see any flavored mix with this brand. Too bad.

So what is the verdict? Don't you feel all the money the government is spending to educate people about the 3 R's is a utter waste if people are fooled into buying products like Propel and Glaceau water. Don't those bottles end up in a landfill as well? I think so!!!

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