Post-a-Card : From Lego Land, Billund

Above: Baby Blu making Lego towers.

The Blue family is slowly swinging back to action after little Blu brought back home a really bad bug.. and happily passed it on to us grown-ups too. Two weeks of aacchhoo!(s) & ouch!(s) , red noses, ER visits, soups & toasts and a TV running 24-hours ...we are now raring to go!

On the plus side, Blu who had so far refused to play with anything else other than "Cars"..has finally found another thing to do.. making Lego-castles for mommy after he saw Ellie ( his favorite elephant from Pocoyo ) making one! So it was a real surprise when we got a post-card from Legoland, Billund (Denmark) in last week's mail... just in time for the Lego sky-scraper-phase that we are going through now :) Blu's "Uncle Ribo" ( that's not his real name, but Blu's version of it ) was visiting Denmark and had posted a card for him from there.

Below: That's a picture of the postcard sitting on our table


As "jobless" as I can be, I decided to do some trivia-hunt on Lego and here they are! But before that, let me show you one kit put together by my beloved husband and partner-in-crime, Joe.. I call it his "Wheels (only!) in Dreams"- a Lego replica of the $1Million Enzo Ferrari (kit available online). It took him a few after-work-sleepless-nights though, to put it together.
Below: Two car fanatics checking out the works :)
Now to the trivia :

• The Lego brand of toys was first made in 1932, by Ole Kirk Kristiansen ,a Danish carpenter. The toys were made of wood and called Lego , a contraption of 2 Danish words "leg godt", meaning "play well".

• The Lego-brick which our kids get to play with now was designed in 1957 and was introduced to the consumers in 1958, and has remained the same in design eversince. So a brick made in 1958 would still be compatible with the bricks that are available now. read more
• Lego is the fifth largest toy company in the world and can be found in about 75% of American and 80% of European households with children
  
• LEGO has 4 theme parks all over the world, oldest and the largest one being in Billund,Denmark. The park opened there in 1968. The other 3 are in Windsor(England), Gunzburg (Germany) and Carlsbad (USA).
• The worlds tallest LEGO tower is at the Windsor Legoland made of 500,000 Lego bricks and and stands almost a 100 ft tall. (below)

Lego sculptures:
While scouring the internet for Lego sculptures, this name kept popping up - Nathan Sawaya . Mr.Sawaya is a freelance artist who designs and builds custom Lego sculptures. Check out some of his really cool and mind-blowing creations, below.

Circle Triangle Square (below)
Think (below) Reflection (below) Red (below)The Grasp (below)
Mt.Rushmore Replica (below)....and a Life Size Replica .

And if you cant have enough of these tiny bricks..visit Sawaya's website at brickartist.

Happy Weekend to all of you!!

Dedication: This post is dedicated to our dear friends' son Tim and his feverish passion for Lego's., and our baby Blu's "Uncle Ribo" who sent us the Legoland postcard from Denmark, inspite of his packed schedule, and inspired this post to begin with. Tim is the best Lego artist I have known personally; it takes him less than a couple of hours to put together a 3000pc sculpture , and that too without referring any directions :)

Houses on a Row : Back to Quilting (1)

Happy Mothers Day to all Mommas out there !!

This year I am treating myself on Mothers' Day and picking back up on a passion that I had left behind for a while now. 

"Before Prozac , there was Quilting"-Anon.

I cant agree more !! I dont know what Prozac can do for you..but I do know that Quilting can be quite therapeutic and much more !

I started quilting about 5 years back. My dearest friend was going to have a baby in the fall of 2004 and I wanted to gift her with something extra-special. And the best thing I could think of was a handmade quilt. Thinking back, I feel I might have been a little over-confident at the time ;I had very limited knowledge of needlework .. my proudest achievement till then was a cross-stitch I had made for Joe and that had taken me some 3 months to complete. So here I was, with no sewing machine, not even a proper scissor to cut fabric, but just enough enthusiasm to make that "extra-special" gift!

I enrolled for weekend class at one of the local quilting-supplies shop. In the two days I got an overload of information on the "gadgets" needed,how to choose a design, how to pick fabric to make that design successful, the layers that make the quilt, and even how to use a sewing machine .... and also at the end of the weekend each of us in the class had one unique crib-size quilt ready!

I was brimming with enthusiasm the following days . Got myself couple of books from eBay and was determined to learn more. As I flipped though the pages , I was amazed to get a feel of the passion poured into the quilting process by the quilters. I soon discovered that quilters in the US share a sisterhood.

That same year Joe got me just the perfect Christmas gift, a quilting/sewing machine ...and right after New Years I started on my next big project, a queen size quilt. Over the years I have come to like hand-piecing ( joining the bits of fabric by hand ) and hand-quilting ( doing the quilting stitches by hand) rather than by machine.

After quite a long break, I am going start quilting again. This time to pick up on an unfinished project that I started 3 years ago.It was the picture of a row of houses in a magazine I saw at that time, that inspired me to design this quilt (picture below). I made the image below in MS word, just to give me a overall picture of the color composition and the yardage ( fabric needed).. so please forgive the imperfections ( you can see that some of the blocks and borders are out of place).

After I started the project 3 years back, I got distracted with some smaller projects and a cross-stitch ...and of course , my in-house tornado of a toddler! So here I what I have done so far :

The 6 finished blocks ( another 36 to go ). Though I started off with all hand-piecing..I don't think it is going to be practical given the size of the project..hence planning to switch back to the machine now.

Here is what one finished house (block) looks like . Each finished square is made up of 17 smaller bits of fabric. The block shown below is one of hand-pieced ones ( all the bits of fabric are joined by hand).

Here is the stash.. all the fabric that I intend to use in this quilt. I have already cut the fabric for the house-blocks and segregated them in individual bags (lest the little-tornado would swipe away anything out in the open and in plain sight ). I am yet to cut the green , grey and red fabrics for the borders.
The finished quilt would be almost Queen/Full size ( 82" x 92") with 42 house-blocks and adjoining borders.

I hope to get working on this tomorrow itself. Will post updates in a month. :)

How much would you spend for this ??

Saturday's Lunch (pic above)

I am in love with a hand-painted planter-urn from one of the local stores .. and it costs a 'whopping $40.00' in 2009.. If this was a year back I would have just bought it right off the shelf without questions. But with so much going on around the world and people struggling to make ends meet , I feel wastage is tantamount to crime.
In the meantime , the planter is still beckoning at me. I have already laid out in mind, the perfect place for it in my house ..in the entryway, grouped with the other "use-less" vase that I had got last year( please note that by use-less i just mean non-utilitarian, it still serves the purpose of pleasing my eyes). Now that I mentioned use-less, the practical side takes over. The tug-of-war continues... and we walk out of the store.
On the way, we try to come to a reasonable solution. Lets try and save this $40.00 elsewhere and then we will come back and get it ( if it still there!) . In the least , it would be test on what spending is absolutely necessary and what is not. Suddenly we decide to have lunch at home instead of eating out as planned earlier...We get home and and try to whip up ( heat-up rather) a quick lunch : Joe grilled some chicken sausages & English muffins while I assembled a quick tomato & caper salad, Persian cucumbers and some strawberries for the little-customer. Wonder how much we would have paid for it if we were to eat-out ? Any thoughts ?

The lunch was gobbled up in no time.. As the ad goes: 1 pack of sausages- $2.00, 1 pack of English muffins- $1.50, Fruits and Veggies -$ 4.50 .... time spent together on a lazy saturday "priceless"!
Now, I am not even sure if I will go back to the store to get the urn.

Random Clicks

These are some snaps from our everyday life , random objects at home...putting the camera to some use :) Nothing in particular...

Our Tewa Horse from Trail of Painted Ponies. When we got him, we were all set to start a collection. Then Blu came along and needless to say.. everything else took a backseat. Hope to get a few more ponies from the fabulous collection in future.

A brass candle-holder with Andalusian(Moorish) cutouts. It's really nice to see the flame glowing at night, so I hope to have another posting on this sometime in future. Surprisingly, we didnt have to make a trip to the exotic Casablanca to get this one- its from a favorite local store-Target!

An impromptu table-scape (above). The branch above fell off from one of the plants in our tiny garden.. the flowers looked so fragile, we felt like saving them in a rescued Starbucks Cappuccino glass bottle. Some things in the background include our distressed black farm-style table, and a graceful platter from one of our trips to Filoli (we will have a post on Filoli soon).

Can u tell if these succulents are real? Honestly, neither can we, even from close quarters! Some of the real cactii in our garden outside, pale in comparision with these, and the only way to make out is to pinch a leaf. :-) These are miniatures and add a lot of life to wherever we keep them. They have so far adorned the kitchen and the guest bathroom. The picture above is the foursome collection sitting on the kitchen window sill.

Above: Clicking away on a lazy day- The Reclaimers- a guide to salvaging hardware- everything from really rusty tubs to screws and kitchen hardware sits on a game set called "Stretch Run", an equestrian board game which we are yet to figure out how to play.

A lonely kenyan soapstone thinker flanked by two wine bottles and other trivia on our mantle. The Walt Disney Treasury of classics is over 30 years old, and from Joe's childhood- a gift that his Papa gave and treasured to this day.

This one is from our studio! I painted a plain old white Ikea bowl into this as a gift for Joe many years ago. There werent much rules, and the basic idea was to just play around with all four basic colors- Red, Blue, Green and Yellow- in some shade or form. This one is reminiscent of our days together after we got married and took some ceramic painting classes together. It was such fun! The paint is Pebio ceramic paint, which is believed to be one of the better quality ones- and non-toxic. After painting, the dish was baked in an oven to "set" the paint in, so that it cannot be washed away. Ceramic painting is a really fun hobby to have, and we are hoping to catch up on it again.