Spreading cheer!

I have been MIA from blogosphere, thanks to a sick and demanding child. I am beginning to dislike Bangalore weather, it keeps kids and lot of adults too, sick almost year round!
So in between all the trips to the doctor, sweet syrupy medicines and stories - tonnes of them, I noticed that spring is here. Though Bangaloreans might say that it feels like summer already!
What grabbed my attention were the pretty flowers across our apartment complex. And to add to that Rajee's post about flowers inspired me to share my favourites.

I love love love gerberas! I love the bright, cheerful colours. They look amazing with or without greens in between.

You can bunch them up together or one in each vase/tumbler.

Are you a flower person? Do they cheer you up? What are your favourite flowers? Tell me Tell me!!

Easy and Quick Banana Walnut Muffins

Of all the different areas under cooking I love baking the most. Regular daily cooking doesn't excite me, at all. But cooking for parties, making snacks or sides or baking gets me into action big time!
Ever since we have moved back to India from the US I have been slow on the baking front thanks to the lack of a good oven. But amongst one of the few things I have managed to bake are these banana walnut muffins.
These are the easiest, awesome-est, quickest and yummy-est muffins ever (apart from blueberry muffins maybe).

I had stumbled on the recipe at Saffron Hut long time back. I love her recipes and have tried my hand at a lot of them.

Here is the recipe that I use (I made some changes)! This makes 12 regular size muffins.
Enjoy eating these.

Ingredients: 
3 ripe regular size bananas - the riper they are the better
3/4 cup sugar (powdered sugar works best)
1/3 cup melted butter (unsalted)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups of flour (all purpose/maida)
1 tsp of vanilla essence
1/2 cup of walnuts, chopped/crushed


Method:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F or 200 degrees C.
Chop/crush walnuts.
Line muffin pan with muffin paper cups (I use the re-usable silicon muffin mould in my microwave convection oven).
Mash bananas well in a bowl. 
Add sugar and melted butter.
Add the vanilla essence.
Sift the dry ingredients one by one into the sugar, butter, banana mixture.
Add some of the chopped walnuts leaving a few to garnish.
Mix just enough using a spatula to bring everything together.
Fill muffin cups about 3/4 to the top.
Sprinkle with remaining chopped walnuts. 
Bake for 20 minutes or till the muffins are golden brown (the batch in the pictures above turned a tad browner than usual but they were still yummy inside).

I am linking this to Becca's Show and Tell Wednesdays.

Modern Family

I absolutely love love love it!! And am excited that Season 1 has started again on Star World Mon to Fri 8:30 pm.

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I totally dig the whole dysfunctional family scene. It is the one comedy series after Friends that does make me laugh and really like all the characters.
Phil and Claire (in the center in pic above) - They are so made for each other in their unique funny way. I actually can relate to Claire a lot - a li'l bit of the OCD, attention to details that don't really matter to anyone else, always looking for something to do or fix or take care of, brushing her emotions under the carpet most of the times. And Phil is the sweetest dumbest (in a nice way) husband. He is chilled out compared to the frantic Claire! His attempts at being the "cool dad "always amuse me. The kids Haley, Alex and Luke are super cute. Love Luke for the curious yet moronic kid he is!
Jay and Gloria (left in the pic above) are not our conventional married couple but they are the comical delight of the show. The over-the-hill jokes and Gloria's Colombian accent keep me hooked. And Manny is the little young "man" of the house. Like his straight faced humour.
Mitchel and Cameron (right in the pic above) play the gay couple with their adopted baby girl Lillian aka Lily. Cameron is quite the drama queen. His sweet little wisecracks at Mitchel and his family are funny.
How are they all tied together? Claire and Mitchel are siblings with Jay as their dad.
Happy Watching! I am going to record it every night so that I can watch it uninterrupted while N is at school.

Before and After - Master bedroom wall art

This weekend was fun fun and busy - I had a potluck lunch with friends which had super yummy food. Potlucks are great coz you get to eat a variety and learn new recipes. S and I got to meet some very dear friends who have twin boys about N's age. One of the twins has the same name as N! :)
Watched some World Cup matches, relaxed, lazed out and then - to balance all the happiness - came some bad news :( I came down with a severe bad throat and congestion. All the fun n frolic and carelessness (on my part) resulted in a very bad congestion, infection and fever. Ended up going to the doctor and am on antibiotics now. But before all this happened I took some pictures of my bedroom wall which was long due.

This is how our master bedroom wall deco looked like, till some time back. We had a single framed wall art. It has been made by Sarika of Kraftaria. I bought this at the Diwali Mela in our apartment complex. I love the wall art but the wall just looked empty!

Then I had this brainwave of adding more such framed wall arts to make a set. So I met Sarika and requested her to make 3 more. Voila!! This is how the wall looks now.

I know the blue one is slightly off level, need to fix that as soon as I am up and running.
But look at each of these quilled wall arts - they are so delicate and beautiful!

I wish I could paint the wall behind. But since its a rental apartment I don't have that option now. I surprised S by putting these up and he loved the art.
Hop on over to Sarika's blog Kraftaria and check out all the other stuff she has made. It is beautiful and innovative!

I am linking this to Patty's Weekend Wrap up 21!

Cutest picture!

Ain't this the sweetest, most carefree picture in the world (ok, in my world)??

This is N and his friend P hanging out at the Bangalore International Airport.
We had set out for a picnic at Nandi Hills one fine holiday morning. Unfortunately the monkeys atop the hill didn't like the idea of us sitting and eating food while they just watched (Ahem!).

So the scared, laughing and finally hysterical ladies decided to feed the kids in the protected interiors of the car. We did some sightseeing and then proceeded down hill. Our search for a nice shady spot with no animals around proved futile! Couldn't find anything for miles around. The airport was on the way home and the boys loved seeing planes go by every few minutes. So we decided to picnic at the airport and it was a funny sight I must say. Us and the trolley with our picnic bags.

We laid down our spread on one of the picnic tables near Cafe Coffee Day - ordered a few coffees too so that they wouldn't send us weirdos away. It was a very unexpected-fun day. And N wants to do it again. Though I feel, sometimes planned stuff isn't as much fun as the unplanned ones.