Bollywood and awards ceremonies!

I wrote an article for my apartment's annual magazine and here is the glimpse of the magazine followed by the article.

Its awards season and Bollywood has been having so many of them!
Frankly what's with Bollywood and so many award functions? These celebrities are just not happy with one. I think they secretly suffer from a narcissistic complex and the more they win the happier they become.

Did you know there are not 1 or 2 or 3 but atleast 6 awards given out every year for the same set of films? Here are some of them -
1) Apsara Film & Television Producers Guild Awards
2) Star Screen awards
3) Idea Filmfare awards
4) IIFA awards
5) Stardust awards
6) Zee Cine awards
Each one of them claims their uniqueness in being truly-one-of-a-kind or the oldest awards or the most prominent award or the people's choice or for-the-industry-and-by-the-industry. And they say that they are all fair too! But being a part of the audience I wonder which one is the real one?

I am not too sure about the acting skills of most of the folks in Bollywood but yes they did pay attention to their probability lessons at school. They support all the awards hoping that if not one ceremony then the other will fetch them an award.

And with more and more sponsors turning up every year, the time is not far away when we will have award ceremonies sponsored by Jhandu Balm, 555 jhadoo and even Harpic Toilet cleaner!! You don't believe me?? Look at some of the actual sponsors for the Zee Cine awards - and notice that they change every year!
1998-2001 - Lux Zee Cine Awards
2002-2003 - Fair View Zee Cine Awards
2004 - Pan Parag Zee Cine Awards
2005 - Sunfeast Zee Cine Awards
2006 - LIC Zee Cine Awards
2007 - Aditya Birla Group Zee Cine Awards
2008 - Lux Zee Cine Awards
2011 - Marina Bay Sands Zee Cine Awards

Why can't we have just one set of awards and trust a set of jury people to make the right decision? Oh well then how will all the Stars, Zees, Ideas and Filmfares make more money? And the Munnis and Sheelas too!

Weekend plans

I am so excited about this weekend!

 

1) I received my copy of Chanakya's Chant yesterday and am already hooked on to it! It is a page turner so far. Thanks once again Kiran!

2) Its N's first Annual Day at playschool today. And I am the one who is anxious and nervous! I hope N keeps that black bow on and doesn't black out - atleast till his act gets over [Cross my fingers]. To make sure I enjoy the event, I have lowered my expectations reasonably, what else do you expect a nervous mom to do :) I volunteered to help the teachers with decorations and will be taking the still pictures too! Looking forward to it :)





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Anniversary gift

S and I recently celebrated 5 years of being married! Its been a beautiful 5 years. I love him as much as I did when we were dating. My heart still skips a beat when I see him turn down the corner, it melts like butter when he holds me (ok maybe not like butter but it does become a li'l mushy) and I miss him when he is away, even for a day!

In addition to his "demand" for a 2nd remote for his Wii Sport as an anniversary gift I decided to make something (well not exactly make make) personal for him. Something to mark this milestone of 5 years.

I was browsing through Blue Cricket Design and came across a wall art by Tammy of She Wears Flowers. She had created an eye test chart art for her anniversary. I  loved the idea and this looked like the perfect thing for the occasion. Nothing too mushy and yet personal!!

So I went ahead to the website that allows you to make a custom eye test chart for free. It also allows you to make custom road signs, receipts, prescriptions and more :). Once I customized the letters on the chart I saved the image file to my laptop.

I opened the image file in Microsoft Paint to erase the last line of text at the bottom.

When I went to my local Printo store the guy said the resolution was really low on the image file and it wouldn't look great when printed. So I downloaded the Photoshop WORKABLE version (PSD) from Tammy's post. I basically know nothing about Photoshop so I had the Printo guy help me. He modified the letters to put in what I wanted. If you know your way around Photoshop, Tammy's post has all the details about fonts and sizes.
I had a couple of different ideas about the wording but eventually went with what I wanted to tell S - "I Love You Today Tomorrow and Always". I got it printed on a 9x12 semi-hard poster sheet. This is how it looked like.

Got it framed in a simple black frame, like Tammy says to make it look more authentic :)  Gifted it to S on our anniversary and he loved it! Though I wish I had used a brighter colour of ribbon to wrap it up.

Thanks Becca and Tammy for sharing this with your readers.
Have a great weekend everyone!!

Update - I am linking this to Patty's Weekend Wrap up 20.







 

And Show and Tell Wednesdays on Blue Cricket Design



Yay! I won a book!

Kiran over at thirtysixandcounting has a contest and a book to giveaway!! Check it out here.
She is giving away the book "Chanakya's Chant" by Ashwin Sanghi. Its his 2nd book after The Rozabal Line. Read the review on her blog.
All you have to do is send in your favourite Chanakya quotes and the ones that she likes will win a copy of the book. So hurry guys, there is only a total of 10 copies to be given away!

I have already won my copy. Yay!!

Here are my top 2 Chanakya quotes -
1) “There is some self-interest behind every friendship. There is no friendship without self-interests. This is a bitter truth.” – One might say no this ain’t true for all my friends but look at it this way – we like being with our best/good friends 'coz they make us happy and feel good about ourselves! The feel-good factor is a self interest too.
2) "Before you start some work, always ask yourself three questions – Why am I doing it, What the results might be and Will I be successful. Only when you think deeply and find satisfactory answers to these questions, go ahead.” – I for one, need to practise this before I put my hands into anything new.

I am excited and eagerly awaiting my copy :)
Thanks Kiran!

The best compliment ever

I visited a fellow blogger - Sarika of Kraftaria today evening and N tagged along too. 
Once we were there N said hello to Sarika and her daughters. And then proceeded to play with the younger daughter while the mommies were chatting.
He likes to ask names so his first usual question when meeting someone new is "Whatsh your name?" followed by "My name is N".  He did that with the girls too.
After a few minutes I got up to leave and told N to say bye bye.
He grabbed hold of a small stuffed toy and said "I want to keep dis back". Saying this he ran to keep the stuffed toy back at the place where he picked it from. Said bye to everyone and came and stood next to me.
At this point Sarika's elder daughter K says "He knows his manners aunty!"

You should have seen my face beaming with pride and happiness :)
Couldn't have received a more genuine and honest compliment - coming from a 4th grader it felt sweet as in hard-work-pays-off sweet!! 

Thanks K. You made my day!! :)

The latest addition to my home...

... is this beautiful console table and a mirror.

You can see a glimpse of my mask wall in the mirror on the right edge. The mask wall in a separate post!

I think this console looks very similar to the 2nd one in this post. I love the colour, and the clean simple lines. I also love the fact that the console table has a mirror in the bottom half too.

I am still experimenting with the decor on the table so consider it work-in-progress for now.

And another favourite addition is this lovely YELLOW pot!! I wanted something bright that brings a pop of colour into the room. At the same time it should complement the room decor and colours.
Add a few gerberas and voila!!! I absolutely love this look. Bright peppy and cheerful :)

I set this up over the weekend and I am linking this to the Weekend Wrap Up 19 over at Patty's.





Happy Monday!!

N's favourite books

N loves reading! He loves to be read to and now flipping books on his own too. There are some books that he knows by heart now and can tell the story in his own words.

One of his latest favourites is The Rooster and the Sun by Meren Imchen.

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It is a Tulika Publishers book. The story is based on a folktale of the Ao tribe in Nagaland in northeastern India. It is a bilingual book and is available in a couple of language combinations. N has the English-Hindi combo and he loves to read the story in both the languages. The illustrations are simple yet expressive. The story in short as mentioned on the back cover of the book -

"A farmer is working in the field. It is a very hot day and the farmer quickly gets tired. He shouts at the sun. The sun feels hurt and goes away. It does not return and there is darkness all around. Finally, it takes a rooster's trick to bring the sun back into the sky."

His other current favourite is Rosie's Hat by Julia Donaldson and Anna Currey.

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It is a Macmillan Children's Books publication. Its a very sweet and rhyming story of how a little girl Rosie loses her hat when a gust of wind blows, the adventures that follow and the climax of whether Rosie gets her hat back or not! There are not too many words and the pictures are pretty. N loves hearing the rhyming words and then speaking them out.

But his all time favourites are -
The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Goodnight Moon.

                                                

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These 2 books have been with him since he was a baby. He's read them almost every day and as a result they soon looked worn out. Eventually N and some of his very passionate friends managed to tear them up over a fight of who gets to read the book (I know I should've been around, was just out for 2 minutes to get the pop corn for the kids!). So I had been looking for these 2 books in India since a long time.

I finally managed to get The Very Hungry Caterpillar at Crossword. Yay!! :)

Have any of you seen Goodnight Moon in any of the Bangalore bookstores or you know of any online websites that could deliver these to Bangalore? Lemme know!

Happy Valentines Day: Heart Envelope tutorial

It is that time of the year when all one can see around is pink, red, hearts, flowers and all the mushy stuff that goes with it!
So what did I do for V day? I gifted my hubby a pass to freedom!!! Yay! 
Now don't get your thoughts running. It was just a set of tickets to the India Australia practice match before the ICC World Cup 2011.  This was my way of saying "Go have fun, do your guy thing (Minus the wifey and the kids tagging along)!"
Though S scored points by asking "Where are tickets for you and N?" as soon as he opened the envelope!
I made this valentine(y) envelope and put the tickets inside. The match just happened to be on the day before Vday hence the hearts and all!

Here is a tutorial of how I made the envelope [Warning: Long post] -

My raw material - a sheet of thick black chart paper, fevicol, scissors, ruler, the tickets, some heart shapes to stick on to the envelope.

I used a black rectangular piece of thick chart paper - rectangle to match the size of the tickets. I cut enough lengthwise so that I could fold it 3 times into 3 equal sized parts.

I folded the bottom part to make the base of the envelope. The top part was cut into a triangle shape to make the flap (see picture below)

Thin strips were cut from the sides of the lower-most part so that the middle half could be folded over to seal the edges of the envelope. The sides were then glued with fevicol.

For the hearts, I had some old cards with different sizes, textures and colours of hearts.
 I used some of those hearts directly or to trace on to other material.

One of the hearts was out of this eye mask lying around from N's 2nd birthday. It was red and glossy and matched my requirements.

Voila! The envelope with the hearts glued on top and the tickets went into it!

S liked it and had a great time at the match. He went with a friend who is a great sports enthusiast so it was all the more fun. N and I even got to see them on TV!!
Have a great day and may you all be blessed with lots of love in your lives.

P.S. - I am linking this to the DIY Feb Carnival at The Key Bunch and to Show and Tell Wednesdays at Blue Cricket Design!

Blogger Meet!

I had my first ever blogger meet this weekend and it was fun!!
4 of us - Arundhati of Arundhati's blog, Sarika of Kraftaria and other blogs, Shruti of Mindfull Meanderings and I got together on Saturday at Arundhati's place.
What followed was lots of talking, fun and food in a warm, friendly atmosphere! It felt as if we knew each other pretty well through our blogs. The food spread was great and we plan to have more of these get-togethers in the future.
Here are some pictures from our party -

From L to R: Arundhati, Sarika, Shruti

From L to R: Me, Sarika, Arundhati



And I also got my Madhubani kite bookmarks which I won at Shruti's 100 followers giveaway! Here are my very own bookmarks in the pretty bag. Loved them Shruti!! Thanks!! :)

The fish one is my favourite!

Update - I am linking this to Patty's Weekend Wrap Up 18.