Baby food series - Part 1 - Wholesome veg soup

When my baby boy Aarya was about 6 and a half month old, I started feeding him stuff other than milk.
He has always been a foody since then and I have to constantly keep thinking of ways to bring in good nutrition as well as different taste and texture in his diet.

I do rely on packaged baby food at the times when we travel and it is not possible to prepare fresh food...
but there is no comparison when it comes to freshly prepared food with seasonal vegetables/fruits and all the goodness of home hygiene and most importantly your love for your baby.

Babies do have tastes and choices of their own and you have to go on a trial basis to check his/her likes/dislikes.

Also when you are giving any food to your baby for the first time, do make sure to feed very little quantity - a spoon or two - in the first go. If your baby likes and digests this well.. increase the quantity next time.

Like every other mom out there, I've developed some simple recipes of my own. Aarya loves almost all of these and I hope your babies will too.

This one is dedicated to all my friends who are proud parents of their lil ones..
I hope this comes in handy for you someday..

First recipe in this series is -

Wholesome veg soup

Ingredients bottle gourd (dudhi) - 4/5 diced cubes red pumpkin - 4/5 diced cubes carrot - 4/5 diced cubes Potato - 4/5 diced cubes Spinach leaves - 3/4 Desi ghee - 1 t spoon Jira - 1 or 2 pinches Hing - 1 pinch Turmeric powder - 1 pinch a bit of ginger finely cut coriander

1. Cook all the vegetables other than spinach in a pressure cooker till they become very soft.
2. Wash spinach leaves thoroughly and put them in some boiling water. Let the water boil for about 3/4 minutes till you can see the leaves cooked.
3. Do not cover the pan as it changes the leaves colour.
4. Run all the vegetables through blender and form a very soft puree.
5. Heat some desi ghee in a pan. Add jeera powder, hing and turmeric.
6. Stir in the vegetable puree. Mix it well and add some water.
7. Let the soup boil for a minute.With a fine grater, grate some ginger (only 2/3 swings should be good enough).
8. Add salt.
9. Add very finely cut coriander and mix it.

This is a good recipe to give your baby a boost of vitamins. Hing aids in digestion and turmeric is a good antiseptic, but both should be added only a pinch or two! You can also put some very fine pepper powder (just a pinch else it'll make it very hot) to give it a new flavor.
once your baby adapts to external foods, try this recipe with different veggies everytime.

Hope your little one eats this as happily as mine does!!

lantern baby mobile!'

Everything just so damn cute and innocent and precious in a baby's world!! They just touch your heart in a way that you can't help but feel thankful to God for his wonderful gift!!

I'm on a spree to create
baby stuff!!  I went one step ahead this time and created a lantern mobile. This idea is a borrowed one from http://justsomethingimade.com/2012/12/paper-house-luminaries-and-mobile/

Just love her blog..

The instructions are straight forward..

Take 12 copies of the house template on the reverse side of the printed sheets of your choice. Cut out the edges. Fold on the dotted lines. Stick the open ends together. That's all!!! Hang all the houses on an embroidery hoop.



 I did struggle a bit finding the right paper but in the end decided to go with various shades and patterns of sky blue..

It looks fab just as it is....

...or you could add some lighting.. which makes it even more beautiful..

I used string light rather than battery operated candles.. But everyone at my house loved it all the same..

Especially Aarya is really fond for lights..so this one has become his favorite...

More baby stuff is coming  soon!!.

Baby mobile!!

ITS BEEN A YEAR!!! one whole year... !!
I know it because my baby Aarya turned one on March 27 and all of us with the babies can vouch for the fact that the time just flies with them...!!

I was on a kind of sabbatical from the world of crafts and other hobbies for past one year... what with changing diapers, long sleep-deprived nights, keeping tabs of vaccination timings, preparing baby food for weekdays.. and ofcourse juggling between home and office...  I was just not crafting!! It was nowhere on the list of things to do!!..

but now its been a while.. and the I'm back!!! This time with a whole new set of crafts and handmade stuff for babies!! I'm planning to do a round of all the baby food recipes that I used for Aarya... I think they might come in handy for couple of friends of mine!! but thats for some time later..

Today is a time for baby mobile!!
Some time ago, during my pottery stint, I had made a few ceramic charms.. like birds, flowers, leaves etc... These were perfect for a small mobile that I could hang in Aarya's room..

With a set of those charms.. and a couple of key-rings that my BFF Janhavi had gifted to me.. I created an adorable mobile..
It even contains a couple of key-rings that I had bought from Swaziland...

All the charms are hung on two embroidery hoops that are embellished with ribbons... and I've used multi-coloured string rather than fishing line to give it more kiddo look!!

It sways and swings and twirls and the ceramic charms even make some tinkling sound....
Aarya just loved it.. and so did I.. his reactions and the way he adoringly looks up at it.. makes me think of so many things I can make for him!! This is something new for inspiration....

I'm planning to put together yet another mobile that I saw on pinterest..  so thats something coming soon!!

Till that time... prachodayam!!

Before & After!! A mosaic makeover!!

Before and after! A stool makeover!

Some time back, when we got the house painted, the contractor used a wooden stool from our furniture.. and left it in such a messy state, that it used to take an effort to look at it and not feel disgusted. Poor piece of furniture must have suffered loads. (sigh!!)

One fine day, when the stool was lying in the corner of the dump-area of the house, I started wondering if only I could change its appearance and make it a piece of art. My brain started whizzing with all its might and came up with a design from the scrap items available easily at my home.

My dear hubby has got a beautiful, small workshop where he gets custom ceramic tiles designed, printed and processed. There are always scrap pieces of ceramic leftover taking their space in the workshop's frontyard. So I decided to a little mosaic design on the stool.

I started exploring the scraps and came up with a simple design of spiral with a light contrast background.

I sandpapered entire stool first and then pencil-sketched the design directly on the top.

The pieces of tiles were cut and pasted with glue adhering the sketch.
The inner design was done first and then the background.

After the pieces were set properly, I applied the cement mixture on to the pieces. The slurry had to seep into all the rough edges and gaps and then it was left to dry for about 10 hours. About midway through the drying process, I sponge-wiped the extra cement layer off the top of the ceramic pieces.

After the top was ready, the legs were wood-polished.

A closer look of the mosaic design!

And here is a before and after look!

So, yet another mosaic piece is ready to add to my collection!!!
Mosaic inspiration is still on and who knows what could be done next!!

Ceramic wall plaque

This one has stayed longer than others!!!! My ceramic love has not only stayed longer than other things that I've started doing in the past.. but also it is growing by each passing day!!
The fact that my ever-growing body is not allowing me to do much of it, I still managed to put together a sample plaque along the lines of Italian name plaques.

The photo of the raw sample is -

And the photo of the finished sample is -

Ceramic colours can be soo tricky and you are never sure what will the final result look like till you actually see it!! Same thing happened with me while working on this but still I was pretty satisfied with the end result. I think thats the beauty of handmade.. the runtime inspirations make each work so unique!!

As I've already told many of my friends, another mosaic piece is ready and I'll post it soon in the next blog. Till then keep the inspiration flowing!!!

Mosaic art

More renovation at home means more ideas cluttering my brain!!!
So when it was time to do the main door, I went with my all-time-motto of adding a handmade touch to it.
I can't even remotely think about doing anything to do with carpentry work because the nightmares of using the saws and drills during the engineering time was enough to put me off it!!
So I decided to go with embedding a ceramic piece into the door surface.

For the first time, I tried using the mosaic technique and now I'm in love with this. Mosaics is such a beautiful way of creating a kind of handmade digital effect to any picture or design.
Its no doubt a very time-consuming process and the intricacies of it can baffle a beginner like it did to me.

A brief process was -
1) I traced the design that I wanted to do on a piece of tracing paper. I actually drew it because the dimensions had to be precise.
2) Then I stuck the tracing paper on the back of a mosaic net that was cut to the dimensions.
3) On the mosaic net, I started sticking the pre-cut mosaic pieces in the colours of my choice.

Here are some more photos of work in progress -

After the pieces were set properly, I applied the cement mixture on to the pieces. I let them seep into all the rough edges and gaps and left it to dry for about 10 hours. About midway through the drying process, I sponge-wiped the extra cement layer off the top of the ceramic pieces and....

The finished mosaic piece looks like this -

So every time I enter our house, I can see he handmade mosaic piece waving out to me and inspiring me to make more of mosaic art on various other surfaces!! Who knows, in a few years, I would make a complete house out of mosaics!!!

Finished level 1 - Pottery

The finished objects of my pottery love has come into existence!!!
The jewelry box, the vase and the bowl are all here.

I actually did not mean to paint them all red.. but somehow they turned out so.
Look at the crackle finish on the bottom of the bowl.. Isn't it lovely?

My next project is a ceramic charms mobile to hang over the crib or in the window.
I've taken print-outs of various charmy things like star, heart, butterfly, flower, cupcake, sun, moon and cut them out. Using the cut-outs I'm in the process of making small ceramic charms. Lets see how it turns out. Till then.. keep getting inspired!!!

Love,
Prachi