Tag

featured

Browsing

This post is a collection of some of the easiest and best DIY ideas to decorate your home this Diwali tastefully – mostly with items found around your home and garden. Fresh flowers. Nostalgic scents of sweets wafting from the kitchen. The fragrance from hand-poured scented candles dominating the air. Eye-catching rangolis at the entrance. Vibrant cushions. Opulent silverware. Corners decked with lacquered brassware. Polished copperware reused as vases. Shimmering candles alongside earthy diyas. Glittering festive wear. And an overload of memories from the yester years. It’s a date with divinity, and that pretty much sums up the season to indulge. Thanks to environment-conscious kids, what’s missing these days is the subtle hint of sulfur nitrate and nitrogen-di-oxide from the crackers in the air. Even though Diwali is a week away, the mental preparation starts much before that when you start visualizing what rangolis to make, what sweets to prepare, what dresses to…

(Updated in October ’22 with the latest designs) This post is a compilation of over 15 colouring ideas to decorate your earthen / clay/ terracotta diyas this Diwali in festive colours, some offbeat ones and some usual, bright ones. If you don’t have the time, you can click the link to buy. Last year, I asked my son to paint a terracotta urn. I let the glazing colors and his imagination flow uninhibited. True to my expectations, it was a riot of colors. We filled the urn as a centerpiece for diyas at the entrance, filled with water and floated some candles and flowers. It was amazing and every time someone commented it was beautiful, he beamed with joy. Then this summer, got him a dozen diyas and asked him to paint and decorate. The painted diyas will get lit up this Diwali. I’m sure you’ve tried it. If not,…

4 hours, 31 minutes. That’s the time I spent researching to buy a rug/dhurrie online. That was before  House of Ekam sent me this beautiful embroidered cotton rug. Thanks to the time tracker application on my browser that documents how (un)wisely I spend my time. In my defense, I was being over cautious after the last rug fiasco; I had recently bought a navy handwoven dhurrie at an exhibition that has now turned into light grey. “Your thoughts become things.” Rhonda Byrne Do you believe in the universe your thoughts? Now, I have reason to. But, you know what I was more glad of? To receive some words of wisdom from Tanvi, the founder of House of Ekam. I picked her brain to understand more about rugs, how to buy rugs online, how to clean or wash them periodically in the dusty environment we all live in India, and live…

Out with the old, in with the new. Isn’t that what Diwali is about? The festive season also sends many households into a cleaning frenzy. This was all new to me until I saw an adorable North Indian family that lived downstairs turn the house upside down over a week of Diwali cleaning: that’s where I learned about this ritual and even though we don’t do clean as rigorously during Diwali, the habit has stayed with me over the years. All the cleaning was quite stressful on the women with everything from fans to spoons getting a shine. when I first began to clean, I didn’t have a method to it. I just did whatever I felt like cleaning, sometimes for hours over the weekend that got exhausting. Soon, I realized that just doing one task a day over several days meant a spick and span home. There are deep…