There are two sides to..

There are two sides to every pumpkin. Many more if you consider that it is round! At least two sides though, from a carving point of view!

With a lot of enthu this morning (thanks to a good night's sleep), daddy decided to carve up what remaining space was available on the small pumpkin from last night.(note the small circle, which was the little one's contribution to the drawing effort. Next year, we will ask her to draw a pillaiyar suzhi, which will be added to the carving and give a new desi twist to Halloween)

For added effect we decided to use the haunted house to create a shadow on the wall for the pictures.

Now that a more complicated pattern has been done, daddy is happy and will take a long afternoon nap to celebrate Halloween.

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Pumpkin baby ... baby pumpkin

Okay. There was a change of heart, although it came very late in the day.

Work has been gruelling the last couple of days and there was no strength left when I came home, but the little darlings gave me enough hugs and kisses to bribe me into taking them trick or treating to three houses,and make me carve a pumpkin, with some great help from friends!

After the witch beguiled me with her smile and the little devil drove me nuts with her details, we went to Mitr's and K.'s place to carve a pumpkin.

A few thanks first :
1. To a baby boy A. who graciously picked this pumpkin from his school
2. To the boy's parents for leaving that pumpkin by mistake with Mitr and K.
3. To Mitr and K. for graciously letting us use their table for the "step by step" carving guide on that pumpkin
4. To San for being very patient with me today
4. and to Jr. and little one for pushing their tired and sick daddy to get back into the halloween spirit, no pun intended!

Now for the step by step instruction:

Take a pumpkin (the larger the better!), spread a garbage bag or some newspaper on the table before you start.

They sell stencils or pre drawn patterns along with carving kits (a book with 12 patterns, a scooper to get the goop from inside the pumpkin and two serrated carvers, one coarse and one fine all come for 5$).

However, the better thing to do instead of sticking the stencil on the pumpkin, would be to free hand draw the pattern on the pumpkin so you adjust the picture to scale. This takes some practice. In our case little A. must have picked a pumpkin he could handle with his tiny hands and that made it challenging to draw any elaborate pattern and then carve it. (the smaller the features get, the more difficult it is to separate the pieces and get them out!)

Do not use a sketch pen to draw. Use a permanent marker! Once you are done with the drawing, slice out a circle on the top and clean out the top.

Then scoop out the stuff from inside and make sure it is clean! If you leave beind the fibrous stuff, you will not be able to pop out the carved bits easily..

Then delicately start pushing the carving blade straight down (perpendicular to pumpkin surface) and start moving along the pattern. Once you finish a section, gently push the piece out and keep going. Remember, slow and steady...

Then slice out the inside on thick sections of the pattern so there is some translucency and put a candle inside!

Granted, this years piece was not even close to the ones in the last few years, but this is all that we managed in the 15 minutes at K and Mitr's place. (previous years stuff here, here, here and here!

Next year, we will give you a Mona Lisa...

On a side note, they should move up Halloween ahead by two weeks. All this global warming is making every halloween worse than the previous year when it comes to the weather!

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Lights, Camera, Action

First the lights..

Now the camera..

May the godess Lakshmi (more specifically Sowbaghyalakshmi!) bless this house with a new lens in the coming year!

Okay, okay.. that was not the cameras fault. It was an accident! After taking pictures of the outside lights, on a tripod the extended family requested a group shot. Without realizing that it was on manual mode with 0.8 seconds at F/4.0! and on self timer, placed the tripod and this is what we get. Still does not hurt to ask the godess, right?!

That photo, came in handy! This is the first group photo with all the unrecognizable ladies published on the blog!

Now for the action...

My BIL, who is celebrating his Thalai Deepavali (first deepavali as a "hubby"), came up with this one. He was trying "night shot" mode, thereby giving this second picture, which would normally make the reject pile, find extensive use on this blog to show what was happening without having to do any photoshop to black out faces. This ensures that the folks seeking anonymity are happy and makes me happy as well (I get to post some photos!)

Happiness, is watching great looking happy women celebrate in style...

This was another candid classic from the BIL who is now trigger happy with his new Nikon D40 (Edited to chop off what remained of the recognizable faces. Ladies, my apologies! Next year will make sure all of you turn the other way so we dont have to do this).

That picture pretty much gives a brief overview of this years deepavali saree selections namely:

asattu karuppu with arakku border
mayil kazhuththu color with segappu border
deep magenta with gold border
etc. etc.. (colors which are undescribable, untranslateable and untransliterable in english)

The kids really enjoyed it!

We had a blast this year!

This Deepavali was much needed in this household which has otherwise become very gloomy in its outlook.. Time to think positive at home, at blogger, at everything!

Here's to the "lighter" side of life!

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Black and white

The girls now have matching black and white dresses (Courtesy of Pondy Bazaar shopping).

We did the usual photo shoot..

Jr. personally requested that these pictures go in the blog, so she can see the pictures after she grows older! Read a recent disturbing article that regular data CD's dont last long. They degrade over 12-15 years.. All of Jr.'s baby photos are already on CD's for the last 6 years. Not a bad idea to put these on blogger, huh?

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The Chronicles of Navrathria - Part 3

Now that Saraswathi pooja is over, it is time to release the rest of the golu photos!

Here goes..

The smaller? golus...When you have kids in their terrible twos, the golu tends to be empty on the lower steps and they put all the fragile dolls higher up. Don't remember noticing that when we were kids.

We will now demonstrate a method to calculate the LCM (Please refresh 7th standard Math) for the golus using a factorization method. This shows that the prime factors in a golu are...

Back to more photos..

The megolumaniacs !

This one had a mini Thirupathi setup on the side and it was amazing!

When you cannot capture the size of the steps at 28mm on a Digital Rebel and you have to resort to stitching, it implies that the golu just filled the entire room!

Finally, a couple of shots of our dolls in different paavaadais!

It was definitely fun, socializing, chronicling the golus, eating sundal(s) and watching the little one say "My paavaadai fits! It fits!" after last years experience of hand me downs (hey, if you are 1+ years old and have made only one India trip, chances are you are not going to have enough Paavaadai's that fit, especially if you are short and fare in the bottom 10 percentile for height!).

Here's looking forward to next years golu..

ps. We forgot to take the camera to some golus or simply could not get pictures without people in the frame.. so your golu's have not been featured?! here. Hey, there is always next year, right?

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