Happy New Year 2011!!!!!!

I wish all my dear blog followers and readers a Very Happy and Prosperous new year 2011 with these roses from the garden in my home back in India.

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These roses were lucky to be clicked by Professional Photographer Mr.Jose. Can you see the difference?

All contents images and text, unless otherwise mentioned  are copyright of ©My world of euphoria.  A lot of effort is put in this blog, so do not copy and paste without permission.

Crochet Pen stand/Recycle series 2

This is the ice cream container  pen stand. Had yummy ice cream and loved the ice cream picture in the container and since I like to recyle,  reused it as pen stand.

Just 4 months before I started blogging crochet was my favorite hobby.

I got an idea to cover the ice cream pen stand with the yarn in which  I practiced crochet shell stitch.

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                                   A closer look at the corchet

All contents images and text, unless otherwise mentioned  are copyright of ©My world of euphoria.  A lot of effort is put in this blog, so do not copy and paste without permission.

Christmas Gifts

These are the gifts I got from my husband on the eve of Christmas!

Plum cake is the favorite cake of mine.Few days back I was explaining my husband the taste of this plum cake. Its was great surprise for me when I got this plum cake!!!!! I loved the Ice man . There is no snow here to make a ice man but I got the ice man which I can keep it in living room and enjoy.

I thank my dear husband for these lovely gifts!!!



The little orange Christmas tress



Christmas gifts  reminds me the story by O.Henry-The gift of Magi.This story was in our syllabus for English subject, but I don't remember in which standard.Our English teacher narrated this story, so nicely that at the end of the class tears loaded in my eyes.In this story, Della and Jim scarifice their only possessions to buy Christmas presents and those presents becomes useless for them but it showed the true love that Della and Jim had for each other.

Happy Christmas !

I wish all my dear blog followers and readers a Merry Christmas!!!!!!!!!!

Colours on my dinning table

With Inspirations from Preethi, who has a beautiful blog, I did this dinning table centerpiece.

How is it?
Thank you Preethi, for the Monkey see Monkey do post in your blog.
You can see Preethi's blog here

My Vinayakar painting

Lord Vinayaka is the remover of all our obstacles and we  pray to him before doing anything.

Moving away from India, temples is one among the list of things that I miss! So I painted Lord Vinayaka and hanged it near the front door of our house.

Now,

when I go out of my home,this painting reminds me to do a little prayer before I leave the house.

Giveaway / My Recyling Series 1

I visited a blog Compai, by Justina Blakeney a couple of days back.Her blog is amazing! Is full of inspirations for me. She has a extremely beautiful giveaway a sugar mold!

Visit her blog and  participate in the Give away here.

When I was posting a comment in her blog, I made a list of all the stuffs that I have recylced, this year.Thanks Justina! for making me think of my recycled stuff.Here is my latest  recycled stuff. Recycling has been inculcated to me by mother and my grandparents.

This ghee tin was reused for storing my craft supplies.A week back I read a post organise using bottles by Purnima in her blog a creative project.After reading that post,I decorated this tin with acrylics.

Now this tin looks like this...............

Another big ghee tin  also got decorated and  now it looks like this............

 The other side of the same tin..........

 Thanks Purnima for your tutorial! Now, no one can find out its a Ghee tin .If you would like to try it out check it here

Pappu soup/ parappu soup/Red gram lentil soup

This soup is easy to make.Last week was a bad week for me.I sustained an eye injury.This was followed by Sinusitis.When we suffer from respiratory infections we feel like having something hot.Just warm water will be soothing for the throat.I was cooking paruppu for sambar. It was at that time I wanted to have something warm.I usually boil red gram lentil with tomato, salt and turmeric powder for sambar.So it was easy for me to make this soup.
I just added 1/2 cup more to  the  usual red gram that I use for sambar.When the red gram and the tomato was cooked well, I took it in the soup bowl and mashed it with a spoon as it was already well cooked it was easy for me to mash.
After that I added salt and pepper powder according to my taste.Since I am lover of coconut oil, I added 1 spoon of coconut oil.The soup was ready.
You can add coriander leaves to garnish.I was in a hurry to have the soup warm so I forgot to add it.

Dinning table centerpiece decoration

The center of our dinning table  got decorated  with the fruits and mint leaves  this evening.

A full view of the decor



My cute little fruit magnets and the yellow ribbon rose (made by me!)
That evening  I planned to prepare mint chutney(Pudina chutney).So the decor lasted only for few hours.Once I removed the mint leaves, I saw the fruits covered with water bubbles which looked like dew drops, I asked husband to click a picture of the apple with the water droplets. He did it for me and here is how it looked.



I hope, with all my blogging friends, I will become very creative.
I visited  Susan's blog http://betweennapsontheporch.blogspot.com and got this idea. Her blog is amazing! Just after reading it, I jumped into action and did this decoration.I just improvised Susan's idea with the fruits and mint leaves that I had in my fridge.To add beauty to the already beautiful glass jar with apples, orange, lemon and mint, I added my cute little fruit magnets, the yellow ribbon rose and a dancing couple surrounding the bottom of the  glass jar.It was fun and enjoyed looking at it.The fragrance of the mint leaves was spreading across the table.It was a feast to the eyes!
You can find the how to of this decoration in Susan's blog in this link   here 
Thanks a lot for sharing your idea, Susan!

Thakkaaya burfi/Thengai burfi/Coconut burfi

Coconut has been used by our ancestors and they lived a healthy life.Coconut has a lot of benefits.Its is rich in fiber, vitamins and minerals.Coconut oil has medicinal properties,you can find in many of the Ayurveda medicines.My mother says that when we are seasoning the dish with coconut oil it destroys the germs present in the food and is good for the stomach.Coconut oil is good for the skin and helps for the growth of hair.Drinking coconut water is good for kidney problems and intestinal disease like dysentery.It also gives instant energy.Coconut oil has disappeared from most of the kitchens because people have false perception that including coconut in any form will cause heart diseases etc,(my husband is a victim of it).I did a google research and explained him the benefits.Now he is slowly including the dishes prepared out of coconut oil or coconut in his diet.

Tengaya or Kobbari is the name of coconut in Telugu my mother tongue.I am a lover of coconut in any form.My mother being from Palakkad uses coconut in almost all of her dishes.For my birthday my mother prepares coconut burfi sweet.

For this Deepavali, I planned to prepare coconut burfi and searched for the recipe, I wouldn't call my mother as my Internet phone was out of order. I was a silent follower of a blog- mydiversekitchen by Aparna. Since Aparna and my mother hails from the same place most of her traditional recipes are similar to how my mother makes it, so kept following this blog for one and half years.In fact she is  my inspiration to start my blog.I have tried most of the traditional dishes in her blog and most of the recipes came out well in the first shot itself.This is mainly because of her detailed explanations.If we watch the cookery shows in  TV  we forget something but in Aparna's blog she describes beautifully, even a person who have not tired cooking yet will end up cooking good dishes.

I google searched the coconut burfi and couldn't find the recipes for coconut burfi as my mother makes, then I realised I have to check out in my diverse kitchen.There it was with great explanations. I went into the kitchen and prepared coconut burfi, the results was amazing!.The only change I made to Aparna's recipe was, I used cashew nuts to garnish coconut burfi and cut it in diamond shapes.

 



A closer shot of coconut burfi



Check out Aparna's blog here http://www.mydiversekitchen.com/2009/09/thengai-barfi-cardamom-flavoured-sweet.html for the recipe.I am sure you will become a follower of  this blog.In her blog she has Useful links, I learnt a lot from those links. Through this post I would like to say my heartfelt thanks to Aparna for sharing her knowledge!

Strawberry topiary

We bought our lovely dinning table recently and it is treated with great care since its new to our home! This week we had a long weekend and had guests for dinner.I was inspired by my friend Purnima in decorating the dinning table.So thought of decorating my dinning table after going through the tutorial in her blog.She had the tutorial for tomato topiary, for a change, I tried the tutorial with the strawberry.
The results were awesome! Thanks a lot Purnima for the tutorial!


Have a look at it.

Strawberry topiary on my dinning table

This shot I took before it was made perfect

I hope you might have guessed how it was done.Don't try it without checking out  Purnima's blog here http://acreativeproject.blogspot.com/search/label/tutorial


She has explained in detail, also I assure you that you will get many more dinning table decor ideas from her.
The pink colour table runner you see her is my dupatta ! I got this idea from Purnima. For a long time I have not used this dupatta (shawl worn on the shoulders ) because the width was short.Thank you Purnima, I am glad that I reused my dupatta! 
The fragnance of the strawberry tempted me to have one. The guest praised me for my creativity, but the real credit goes to Purnima for sharing this idea! Enjoyed doing this. Try it out and surprise your husband or your guests!