Recycled Earring Holder

A travel brochure you no longer need can have other uses too! Such as becoming a earring holder. Stick together a few pages to create thickness. The lazy bones in me decided to use duct tape to stick just the edges together. Stick an extra page to the front and back cover as well. Then start piercing holes with a pointed object. Do this carefully - we don't want any injuries. Your earring book is ready to hold all your earrings now!

Banana-Coconut Surprise

I found the recipe for Banana Nut Loaf in Mum's old microwave book and modified it to make the Banana - Coconut Surprise (for lack of a better name). A great dessert recipe for the health conscious.

Ingredients:
60 gm butter, softened
60 ml milk
1 large egg
125 ml mashed bananas
125 ml shredded molasses
250 ml self-rasing flour (or use maida with a tsp of baking powder in it)
125 ml grated coconut

Topping: Coconut tossed with sugar, with a pinch of cardamom

Method:

1. Mix butter, milk, egg, banana and molasses.
2. Add flour and coconut. Beat well.
3. Pour into greased and floured dish.
4. Sprinkle topping.
5. Bake about 8 mins in the microwave.Serve warm.

Cut n Craft

I put my cookie cutters to good use. They now grace the door to my kitchen. I tied colourful threads to paper clips and hung the cutters using the clips. Thus while being a decorative item, the cutters can also be easily removed for baking purposes.

Yum Chutney

Time for some food posts . .

I found this terrific chutney recipe at http://anuzhealthykitchen.blogspot.in . It truly is yummy and goes well with idlli, dosa, etc. Maybe even chappati?


Coconut-Onion-Tomato Chutney
Ingredients:

1/3 cup desiccated Coconut or fresh coconut
1 Onion chopped
1 Tomato chopped
3 Garlic cloves crushed
Salt to taste
1/4 tsp Turmeric powder
1/2 tsp Oil
(Note: You can also season the chutney...but I didn't)

Method:
----------
1. In a pan add oil, when it's hot enough add the garlic, onions and fry until translucent, then add tomato, turmeric powder and salt and cook until tomatoes cook and soft.
2. Now add the coconut and fry for more 3-4 mins. Off the flame and allow it to cool.
3. In a mixer add the sauteed ingredients and grind it to a paste. You can add little water if you need.

Photo magic

I stay  in a rented appartment and my landlord insists I do not hammer nails. That's how I thought of sticking photographs to decorate the place. I turned to Snapfish who provided free prints for new customers. Being an avid amateur photographer, I had no dearth of pictures to print. Have fun arranging them around. I used double-sided tape to stick them up. These are just some basic ideas. You could always have more elaborate schemes.

Using paper clips, attached pics by sis-in-law onto a rope with a tassle at the end. Used a clothes peg to attach it all to the window sill.

Pics printed in miniature size, attached to back cardboard squares and pasted on the walls.

Animal pictures with a chocolate box hung from the light above it.

Wrote out love quotes on scraps of paper and added those to the display along with some glittery flowers.

Internet Humor

I printed quotes I found on the Internet as well as interesting signs, and posted them around the house.I have placed these:

Near the kitchen

Near the dining table

Above the washing machine

Headrest of our bed

Bedroom door

Bathroom door

Above the shoe rack

Another wall of the dining room

Spices rack

Can 'Em!

My stash of cans came in use when I searched around for a vase. Tall vases usually cost a pretty penny. So I racked my brains and came up with this! It's pretty easy too.

Materials required:

• Tin cans of similar size, cleaned and tabs removed (number varies on height you require)
• Lots of coir rope (or whatever rope you might like to use)
• Strong glue
• Small piece of black paper
• Twigs
• Pom poms
• Decorating material for vase

Instructions:

1. Take a tin and trace a circle of the top surface on the black paper. Cut aside and keep. 
2. Arrange tins and glue them together. You may fill the lowermost tin with sand or something similar to prevent the finished vase from toppling over.
3. When dry, put a spot of glue at the base and press down the end of the rope.
4. When dry, begin to wind the rope around the tins. I had to use several lengths. So I used spots of glue where ends would overlap.
5. At the top put a spot of glue, and when dry, trim the end.
6. Stick the black paper on top after a cutting out a small hole over the opening.
7. Decorate vase with embellishments.
8. Take twigs, apply glue and stick the middle of the pom poms on them. 
9. When dry arrange flowers in vase.

My first autographed T-shirt!

This T-shirt was autographed by my first batch of students. I thought it would be a wonderful way to remember them by. With an old T-shirt and some permanent markers, they penned their thoughts, creating a work of art that I would cherish.