Birthdays are fun!

Skanda's (my nephew) 6th birthday was approaching, and there was a function organized for that. So I took that as an opportunity to bake a cake for him. Since he loves chocolate, I decided on a marble cake (vanilla and chocolate) with chocolate butter cream frosting. Sounds fancy right? :D

This time ditched my oven and used one of Amma's good old reliable griller/cake maker. (forgot the name). The cake came out pretty good and I spent almost an entire evening preparing the icing on the cake! Creaming butter and sugar with a spoon was tiresome! Anyways, the effort was worth it as the kiddo loved it! Even mom, who does not appreciate baked stuff, liked it! Don't have a pic of the cake when it came out of the oven. But there is one with the icing on. It does look amateurish, but hey that's my first attempt ok! Be nice! :-D

And oh! Don't remind me that an 'A' is missing!!

A day to remember

A very pleasant evening etched in my memory forever....
      the gentle cool breeze, the glow of moon visible from a canopy of pink and orange bougainvillea, the sounds of the temple surrounding us... the light banter and the more serious assurances..

A friend's birthday celebrated with grandeur...
      lights and colors, chocolate cake, talking and playing the entire night without a wink of sleep..

the chill early morning weather, good morning wishes, drive back home with a bunch of sleepy-headed friends..

touchwood!

Kahani do hafton ki

I went to a church on Christmas Day and the icing-on-the-cake? My parents tagged along. We were in Mysore and turns out they were left with not much choice! :-)

My college friends gave me a very cute surprise on my birthday. They came to office and whisked me away. What more?!?. They celebrated it with cake, balloons et al. Thanks guys, love you all.

Went to Kotilingeshwara Temple near Kolar. This place has one koTi Shivalingas. The huge Linga looks magnificent. The others were, well, I’ll just say very much serialized!

Also, I found a temple of Bramha, Vishnu and Maheshwara there. I was amazed, since a temple for Brahma is found very rarely, the Brahma temple at Pushkar [OK sis, you were right] being one of them or the only one!

Some of the pics below.

The various colorful stalls at the entrance to the temple.

The countless lines of small Shivalingas.

The Huge Shivalinga and Nandi Statue.

Entrance to the Bangaru Thirupathi temple nearby.

Hands adorned with Mehndi - The instant kind. There was a lady at the temple who put these. She was using a seal with pretty designs. All for Rs.20-30/hand.

Lake within the temple enclosure. Found it to be very pleasant and peaceful.

Sunset on the year 2006. :-)

I welcomed the New Year this time with friends. Sush, thanks for everything. Really enjoyed it and hope it was fun for you too. :-)

We had been to Bheemeshwari last friday as part of a team outing. It was fun. The organizers made us play some silly games. But our team won so no complaints. :-) We weren't allowed to go near the water, but we managed to squeeze in a walk by the river side.

River and the Monkey :-)

Elegant!