min-myinnersoul

Wishing you all a Happy Halloween! Hoping to share a few things with you all very soon. We are still trying to get back to normal after the craft fair:o)

A dog might prove to be the unlikeliest saviour of Formula 1, a sport that is direly in need of saving . Bravo India, for unwittingly pointing the way ahead for the sport. Today is the first ever Indian Grand Prix - held at Noida, at the Buddh circuit, just off Delhi. Why it has come up in Delhi is a mystery - the racing capital (of whatever racing there is) of India is Chennai or Coimbatore. But Delhi it is. This is the fag end of the Formula 1 season; the championship is already decided and there is very little to drive for. But then Bernie Eccleston, the boss of F1, has grasped that the future of the sport  depends on the growing audience in Asia - that's why in the last three or four years, new Grand Prixs have come up in Beijing, Singapore, Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, Istanbul (almost Asia !), Yeongam (Korea) ; to add to the more traditional Asian venues Suzuka (Japan) and Sepang (Malaysia). Now India. Formula 1 has become a bore. The results are completely predictable; superb safety

If you are a Sinophile, this is old news and you don't want to read about this anymore; if you are not, this may be new to you. Little Wang Yue, affectionately called Yueyue is dead. She was only 2. Yueyue, a toddler, wandered on to a road in Foshan, a southern Chinese city and was hit by a vehicle. A security camera filmed the whole scene. 18 passerbys saw her lying in a pool of blood, but walked on and did nothing to help her. The driver who hit her, drove on. Yet another vehicle hit her as she was lying injured. Finally a noble lady, a rag picker, Chen Xianmei, came to help her. Yueyue was taken to hospital. But she slipped into a coma and died. China is going through a bout of soul searching. The security video that filmed the whole grisly thing has gone on the Net. Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter (Twitter is still banned in China), has millions of messages bemoaning what happened. China is asking itself the question - has materialism and money become so domineering th

Schweddy Balls ice cream is brewing up a storm. It has caught the ire of One Million Moms, who are protesting about it. Wow ! Ben & Jerry's seems to be the flavour of the month on this blog. They are the lot who are churning our a limited edition Schweddy Balls ice cream, which they claim has risen to the top of the charts - presumably charts exist for ice cream flavours too.  Apparently it is "fudge covered rum balls" , whatever that means. Schweddy Balls is a take on a Saturday Night Live skit (a television show in the US). An innuendo laced old skit aired on that programme has the "memorable" tag line - no one can resist my Schweddy Balls. On Million Moms is some obscure conservative organisation based in Mississippi of all places. They are up in arms. They say the language is unsuitable for children. They have forced some supermarket chains not to carry Schweddy Balls and are petitioning the company to stop the production. Little wonder Ben & Jerry&#

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I made the kiddos some cookies this afternoon. Huge hit:o) For some reason I have been in the baking mood. I have made a peach cobbler and chocolate oatmeal cookies in the past week too.  Could it be that I am a stress eater and I am freaked out about this craft fair?  maybe:o) Anyway, I found a great cookie & icing recipe over at  Girl Inspired  today. The cookies were really really tasty...yes, were..not are...just kidding. I left a few for the hubs;o) I froze less than  half of them for another day:o) I hope that you all are having a great Tuesday. Mine would be slightly better if the cleaning fairy would show up;o)

In the good old days when I was in business school, Japan could do no wrong. A million books were written on the Japanese style of management. America was bust, Japan was everything. Case after case taught at business school was on how gloriously managed Japanese businesses were. At that time the two words we were thoroughly sick of was Japan and Walmart ! Time has since proved that there is a fair bit to admire about Japanese management, but a lot that is thoroughly rotten. A great example is what happened at Olympus last week. This is the company that makes cameras.They just fired Michael Woodford, their CEO, and a 30 year company veteran, two weeks after elevating him. They were brave enough to appoint a non Japanese as their CEO, one of a handful of Japanese companies to do so and foolish enough to sack him immediately. His crime - he didn't listen to the Chairman Kikukawa san and started probing into the financial skulduggery that seems to have gone on. The skulduggery relates

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Does INDIA stand for I'll Never Do It Again ?? I cringed and held my head in shame as I listened to this podcast - this series is one of my personal favourites and represents some of the best of the BBC. It ends with a quote from a guy who did something Indians were very proud about - run the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games . But he says,  "I'll be very happy to ignore India. There are plenty of other places where they pay their bills ". Listen to the podcast if you can - it is only some 5 minutes or so. Is India one of the most difficult places in the world to do business ? In a recent World Bank survey, India came in at a staggering 134th out of 183 countries in the ranking of the places easiest to do business in. It is easy to dismiss such rankings, as indeed the podcast, as biased and taken out of context. For after all, doesn't  India have a vibrant and surging economy. Surely it can't be a bad place to do business and still be growing like it

These pictures are terrible..I should have taken them while the sun was still on this side of the house, but I am too excited about finally completing an item for the craft fair....that's in TWO WEEKS!   The rocking chair was given to me by some dear friends. It was a cherry color before I had my way with it.. The seat cushion is covered in an antique grain sack, and the skirt is a ruffled painter's drop cloth.  This is when I should have taken the pictures...if only the rocking chair had been done then:o) Isn't this aster bush amazing? This bush is unbelievable. When I planted this last year, it looked like a dying twig... see picture below. Can you believe that is the same plant?!? Beautiful!! We have lovingly named it the "Mozzie" Bush. Mozzie was my great grandmother, and one of the sweetest women that graced the earth. This plant started in her garden, and has been passed along to several family members and friends...what a way to remember such a beautiful pe

Do you like Ben & Jerry's ice cream? Most probably a resounding yes.  But this post is not about its ice cream. Its about what it has done on Tuesday. What it did on Tuesday was to go to New York's Zuccotti Park where the Occupy Wall Street protesters are camped and dole out free ice cream to all of them. Nothing spectacular about that, except that it went on to publicly declare its support for the protesters. It also published a statement from its Board of Directors that the company has the deepest admiration for the protesters and is standing with them. You can read what the Board said here . Ben & Jerry's has long been a left leaning company promoting a variety of causes. Its founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield started the company with a clear social and sometimes political agenda. So should this latest action be surprising. Yes, because, Ben & Jerry's is no longer an independent company. It's a subsidiary of Unilever, a global multinational compa

There hasn't been too much going on in the crafting realm...I have been tending to sick children (they're better now) and nursing a cold. There have been days where we were bored to tears, and days where boredom would have been welcomed. The hubs has started working on redoing the back yard...it is going to be beautimous! I can't wait to see how it all turns out. He used a sod stripper the other day and pulled out a ton of grass. Here the little ones are helping daddy clean up.  Here is evidence of how I had wished for a boring day:o)  S.R. lopped off half of her hair which caused Mommy dearest to come out:o) I was one UN-happy camper. Thankfully the child was blessed with naturally curly hair, so the 2 inch long hair blends in with the rest. She went from this: to this:  I had to cut 3 and 1/2 inches off the back of her hair....oh well...thankfully it grows back!! Oh yeah, this was also the same day when E locked the dog in the outdoor toy basket and we thought he was lost

 Yesterday I was a short order seamstress. The kids are on fall break right now. So I decided that they could tell me what they wanted me to make them, and I would make it right then and there....they loved it!  E got a pirate hat and pretend watch, and S.R. got a princess cape and mask.  While they were napping, I made S.R. this Halloween shirt.   This time of year is the only time that it is appropriate to wear such ghastly colors all at once:o) For those of you who are from my hometown...S.R. will be donning her new "Boo" shirt at a certain high school athletic event involving a white ball and net tonight:o) Maybe we will see you there!!  While we are on the subject of shirts...I made this one for S.R. a few weeks back for our family pictures.  The picture taking process was excruciating. There was a melt down, and then funny faces, hands in the mouth, tempers flaring, etc...but we all looked cute:o) The pictures turned out fantastic, and I can't wait to share them wit

Do you wish to improve your gluteus maximus muscle. If so , please buy Reebok Easy Tone shoes. Alas, you should have done it before Sep 30. Because on that date, the Federal Trade Commission poured cold water on gluteus maximus fans by ruling that the shoes didn't do much for that famous muscle.  If you are flummoxed by the Latin, don't run away. The rest of this post is in plain English. Reebok has been advertising for two years that Easy Tone shoes helped you get a firmer butt. Apparently this was endorsed by no less a person than Kim Kardashian, who is reputed to be having  that redeeming virtue. I wouldn't have known who this worthy was, until she got married to Kris Humphries, a NBA wannabe, who I certainly know about. Kris could have confirmed or denied the anatomical virtue of the said lady, but he has so far chosen to remain silent, so we shall let that pass. Reebok has reached a $25m settlement with the FTC for misleading advertising, which Reebok has decided to pa