min-myinnersoul

All bureaucrats are the same, but some are better than the others ! Each nation is blessed with a liberal sprinkling of "homo sapiens pointless bureaucracy-ensis". But the ancient land of India is surely the world leader in this matter. Meet Ramamritham - the quintessential member of this species. Readers of this blog will know of my partiality to caricaturing a typical member of a group by a name. The Indian female has featured here so often that her name is now acquiring legendary proportions (pun intended). Having been accused of gender bias, I shall now strive to correct it with describing the masculine equivalent. India abounds in Ramamrithams. Typically he comes from the state of Tamil Nadu or West Bengal - these two cultures seem to have a huge affinity for inhabiting the corridors of babudom. He takes great pleasure in designing the most elaborate and pointless of procedures. He squeals with orgasmic delight when he has the opportunity to add one more procedural step

My blogging has been fairly sporadic these past few weeks. This time of year is always insane. I am trying to stay calm, but it's never easy. When I get worked up, my left eye starts to twitch....it's been working overtime these past few days:o) Does eye twitching burn calories?;o) I have lots of projects to share with you soon....just don't have the time to share now, at least not in the detail that I want to share them.  I painted the kitchen the other day...comfort gray, same as the living room. I feel so happy when I see these two rooms right now. I purchased some new-to-me chairs for the kitchen table(more on those later). They are so cute and they ALL fit under the table.  My next project in the kitchen will be to put up board and batten under the bar. I have only two  barstool"s " right now. I really need four since the space at my bar allows for it...I FINALLY found someone who carries the bar stools to match mine... CSNStores.com . You have no idea how ex

Chicken Tikka Masala is reputed to have taken over as the national dish of Britain. Perhaps the best example of reverse colonisation, although it must be said that overthrowing "British food" is not as great an achievement; such being the epicurean significance of the cuisine in Her Majesty's land. Actually its a Bangladeshi takeover, given that 99% of the curry houses in Britain are run by Bangladeshis. But we shall lightly pass over Bangladesh propagating "Balti"cusine" and such other monstrosities. Stay with the chicken. British affinity to consuming this hapless avian is the only logic I can find (after much scratching of the head in vain) to explain the take over of Blackburn Rovers , a Premier League football team, by Venky's - an obscure chicken farming company from India. Firstly the facts. Blackburn Rovers is a struggling middling football side in England. Its been bought out by Sri Venkateswara Hatcheries for £ 53 m , an Indian famil

I made this ornament as a door prize for the Homemakers' Holiday Bonanza last Saturday. The Bonanza was a lot of fun. And Santa Claus gave us a little talk.  The idea for this ornament came from  Miss Mustard Seed . She is amazing in all that she creates:o) I used the same hymnal sheet music that I used on the  Sheet Music Wreath . I just cut the paper down a bit to make it ornament size. The picture of the girl in the center of the ornament is from  The Graphics Fairy . If you guys haven't checked out her blog, you are really missing out. She has some great free printables!! I hated to give this ornament away b/c I thought it was so pretty...oh well...I guess that means I have to make more:o) Here is one of the trees that I put up. This one is in S.R.'s room. Since her room is butterfly themed, her tree is loaded down with butterflies:o) Nice and spark-ly, and EXTREMELY PINK. She loves it, I love it, even the men of the house love it:o) I have been working on a few project

It took us 74 minutes two weeks ago to enter the airport. It is now time to experience the blissful experience of actually being in. Lets concretise the experience. Imagining you are taking an international flight out of Chennai airport, arguably the worst airport in the land. You may recall that the last step before being allowed entry into the hallowed portal is a painful check of your ticket and papers by an uniformed worthy. Immediately after you enter, within 10 yards, the same process repeats itself as you enter a fenced off area - another queue, another check. You then proceed to yet another queue - this time to screen your baggage through an Xray machine . Not even in Timbuktu airport in Mali, which is essentially a cowshed, does this process take place. Huge queue. People on overloaded trolleys banging you from the back. Since Indians have a general disdain for queues, seven sub queues form which ultimately merge into one chaotic rugby scrum . And unique Chennai practice dict

Today I have two ornaments to share with you. The first being super easy.  This ornament is nothing more than a feather boa wrapped around a Styrofoam ball, with a little hot glue here and there. I had one feather boa on hand and purchased one more. I got them from Hobby Lobby and if you  use your 40% off coupon, you can get them pretty cheap. I made 4, and the main reason I wanted these was to use them as filler for the tree. They are nice and fluffy and fill a lot of space. This next ornament was great in theory, but in practice....it was extremely painful. I burned my fingers so many times!! I had planned on making the twine go all the way to the bottom, but after the blisters left on 2 fingers occurred, I decided to just glitter the bottom. There will only be one of these ornaments hanging on my tree:o)  I gotta hurry up and get that tree b/c the ornaments are starting to pile up in the office:o) The hubs isn't really thrilled about the prospect of owning 4 trees....oh well:o)

Here is another Dollar Tree Find. Don't you just love the Dollar Tree? You can do so many crafts with what they have available. This particular ornament started out as a tea light holder. I am not a tea light kinda girl, but I thought that the front would make a perfect ornament. I bought 3. For some reason, when I buy ornaments, I purchase them in 3's...dunno why. Anyway, I used some sort of wire cutters and cut the wire off. I had to be super careful not to shatter the glass.  I then tied off some twine at the top and voila, instant ornament. You would never know that this ornament came from the Dollar Tree except for the fact that I just told you;o) Participating in:

It has begun.....I have started decorating for Christmas. Crazy...I know. But I have my reasons. The main one being that I need to help my mother put hers up and she has only slightly less than I do:o) I have 3 trees, and I am about to get one more. I set up S.R.'s tree yesterday and it is so cute. I will share pics of it soon. She LURVES it;o) I put E's tree up as well, but his is lacking a key element....ornaments! Once I get the new tree, it will need ornaments as well. Ornaments can get expensive, so this year I am making them.  Today's ornament is super easy, super fast, and most importantly, SUPER CHEAP. These frames came from the Dollar Tree. I flipped them over and popped the backs off of them. I went to the  The Graphics Fairy , and searched the Christmas tab and found the pictures I wanted to print off. I copied and pasted into word and resized the pictures to fit the frames. Afterwards, I glued some twine on the back to hang the ornament. Easy Peasy and cute to b

Beijing, everybody knows. Shanghai, is equally well known. But most people's knowledge of China stops right there. The more enterprising will know of Shenzhen. But then , that's about it. The rest of China remains a mystery to many who have not ventured in that direction. Well, its now Guangzhou's turn to be in the spotlight (pronounce the zh, like a j). The Asian Games start in Guangzhou on Friday, the 12th. It was my home city, until recently, and so, if I may, I will dress up the long suffering bridesmaid, as the bride that she will be for the next two weeks. You may know Guangzhou better as Canton. The province in which Guangzhou is situated is called Guangdong which the British , long ago, transliterated to Canton. Confusingly, they ascribed the name to the city, not the province. But, even in Guangdong, the bride is often, the brash noveau riche, Shenzhen. Even in her backyard, Guangzhou remains a bridesmaid. But for most of China's history, when the culture tur

I hope that you all had a wonderful Halloween. We had a blast! The days leading up to that fabulous time were MISERABLE! We all had a nasty stomach bug. I thought I was DYING! Ya know, when you are sick, the house always goes to pieces, especially when mothers are sick. So I have been spending the past few days trying to get the house back in order. In the midst of doing that, I had to get a Thanksgiving center plate in the middle of the wreath. The Halloween one had to go:o) I got some scrapbook paper that was more "fall-ish" this time. I found the turkey over at  The Graphics Fairy . If you haven't been to her site....you need to. It is amazing all the FREE printables she has there. I used some Mod Podge on the feathers and glittered him up. For the banner, I just used my sticky dots to hold the paper in place and cut the edges to make it look like ribbon. The hubs thought it was cut, but asked, "Who's "Hankfu"? Yeeeeeah....the 'T' and the