Shalini's Sewing Space

Guest CT! [ First off, thanks for the well wishes for the guys. They're both doing much better. ] I am on Lie Fhung's Guest CT this month. What this means is that I get to promote her by creating layouts with her stuff for this month! I just adore her stuff. She is on my 'Top Four Designers to Work For' list (because I couldn't limit myself to 3 and couldn't come up with a 5th). You want to know my list?? ScrapArtist , Ztampf (Lie Fhung) , Designer Digitals , and Meredith Fenwick ! Yes, I'm ambitious. LOL! I created this LO for Ztampf! My first on this CT, telling everyone All About Me. Credits: Everything from Ztampf. Background: Branchessa Paper Pack Frame: Evening Falls kit Font: Scriptina and Retro Rock Poster (I can't stop using this font. LOL!)

Boo Both my guys are sick :( M brought the germs home and DH gladly accepted them. M started coughing last Thursday and it sounded like it was coming from deep inside him, not the regular cough. He also had slight fever two nights in a row. He and DH stayed home Friday and we took him to the Pediatrician that evening. He was already wheezing a little. DH was just starting to get the same on Friday, and it's full blown now. Yesterday was the worst day for him. M didn't sleep well last night and neither did we. I'm so tired. The guys become so needy when they're sick. I'm over it. Please get well soon, the two of you. I feel my throat is starting to itch too. Please No!! When is DH going to develop his immunity? I rarely get sick but he is completely the opposite. Even Mehul is getting better about selecting the germs now. Some are just not worthy of bringing home to the parents. LOL!

Oscars Fashion This time there weren't as many badly dressed elements as I had hoped! I missed the beginning of the red carpet segment on E! so forgive me if I don't include someone. Here are some of the best dressed - in my humble opinion ofcourse. I just loved the shimmer in her gown and the sparkly bit at the top. I'd have done earrings instead of the pendant but still, she was Stunning! I love her hair, the dress was just perfect. Love the way the gown cascades. And here are some not so nicely dressed. Is this the belt of the Baby Bjorn Ellen was offering to hand out? Did the seat fall off? What's that awfully ugly thing in her hand? Did she look in the mirror after trying that dress? I don't hate the dress but the hair? OMG! Shall we say 'Kool Aid!' What's up with all the flowers? And the back? I can feel the cockroaches. Ewwwww!!! And lastly, he was holding her the entire time he was talking and posing. Like she was going to run away! To keep the t...

Do I have a life? You be the judge. I have watched 56 of these movies. This meme has been circulating the blogs for a few days now. I wanted to post it earlier but kept having other things to post. This is ideal for a Sunday Meme on Oscar night! It's been said that allegedly if you've seen over 85 movies you have no life. Mark the ones you've seen. There are 239 films on this list. Copy this list, go to your own blog, paste it in and put x's by the ones that you have seen. Add them up, change the header adding your number, and post it. ( ) Rocky Horror Picture Show ( ) Grease (X) Pirates of the Caribbean (X) Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest ( ) Boondock Saints ( ) Fight Club ( ) Starsky and Hutch ( ) Neverending Story ( ) Blazing Saddles (X) Airplane ( ) The Princess Bride ( ) AnchorMan ( ) Napoleon Dynamite ( ) Labyrinth ( ) Saw ( ) Saw II ( ) White Noise ( ) White Oleander (X) Anger Management ( ) 50 First Dates (X) The Princess Diaries ( ) The Prince...

Just a Layout or two.. My newest font discovery. Check this out! Isn't it the Coolest Font Ever! Best thing, it's FREE. LOL! Download here Used it in both these layouts. 123 Play Credits: Background: Meredith Fenwick Slide: Marcie Reckinger Rustic Autumn Leaf: Marcie Reckinger Rustic Autumn Buttons: Marcie Reckinger Rustic Autumn Clock Element: Marcie Reckinger Rustic Autumn Binder Clip: Marcie Reckinger Rustic Autumn Florish: Michelle Coleman Flower: Michelle Coleman Ribbon: Diamante Designs Frames: Anna Aspens Work hard play hard Spiral Brush: Diamante Designs Flower Overlay: Diamante Designs Paint Circle: Ash Scraps Play Alpha: Meredith Fenwick Grungy Alpha 123 and Inspire Font: Retro Rock Poster Rock The House Credits: Background: (Slightly Recolored) Miki Ferkul's Vagabond at SBE Envelope and Coin purse: Miki Ferkul's Stuff It at SBE Swirl: Miki Ferkul's Spirits Enlightened at SBE Grungy Frame: Anna Aspens Work Hard Play Hard Butterfly: Amber Clegg's Charme...

Answers Jenni: What crafts did you do (besides make ball point pens ;)) before coming to the US and how did that change after your move here? My sister (A) and I were very into crafts. We didn't have any particular hobby per se, but we were always doing something. Making Rangoli and Henna patterns comes to mind. Every year, we'd make this colorful Rangoli on Diwali. It is made on the floor with colored powders, flowers, rice, etc. and then accented with Earthen Lamps. The design is first chalked on the floor and then filled with these. Loved that. I still try to do it here and she tries to do it in her home now. We made a lot of wall hangings using various materials. Using ribbons, beads and thick rubber rings, using cardboard cut and shaped into something and decorated with velvet papers, mirrors, beads and golden threads, many different ways. I don't have a single picture of the wall hangings :( I do have Rangoli pics back home though. Cross-stitching only started after ...

Anniversary Gift This is what I gave him this morning. He LOVES it. It's going in the MBR. I had made the layout 11x14 size but this frame only had 10x13 opening. I *love* the way it turned out. This isn't the first poster I've done though. I did this one ages ago. Love that photo :) We had decided to go to Flat Top Grill for lunch. It is located near my previous office in Arlington. They have this buffet with rice, noodles, etc, and uncooked veggies, meats, and sauces. You load your bowl with everything you want and they'll cook it for you the way you want. They even have a special area to cook vegetarian stuff (a luxary for me!). I had been there multiple times when I was working there and I just LOVE it. Girish hasn't been so I wanted to take him there. Well, we started late from home because we weren't particularly hungry at lunchtime. We had a late leisurely breakfast and then I soaked in the tub for about 1 hour. Ahhh. Anyhow, we got there and found out t...

Meme Time As seen on Sparkly Things Blog Five Questions, and Five Things 5 Questions - Anyone reading this can ask me questions (Do I have any readers? Hello! It's lonely out here. LOL) I'll post the answers here soon :) Five Things - Things about me I haven't talked about on the blog. 1. I have made ball point pens. Seriously! My aunt had a dye cast pen making machine that converted plastic palettes to pen parts. I has so much fun on that vacation. My cousins and I came up with different combinations of colors to produce varying patterns. I've always loved patterns, you see :) 2. My acne has greatly improved since starting to use Proactiv 4 years ago! Love it. Can't live without it! 3. Have I told you about my love for food? Probably! I have tried so many different cuisines after coming to the US. But the kind I still love the most are South Indian and Indo Chinese (Chinese made Indian style). 4. I used to have a parrot. Two, actually. Those little twits never sta...

Another "Out of the mouth of Mehul" "ButtFly" "Watch It, Mama!" "Fuffob" Mom's Translation: SpongeBob Early morning. Looking out the window in Sitting Room onto a Snow covered backyard and beyond, mom spots a man wearing black clothes walking his dog. Shows son. Son: "Oh, look! Penguin".

It's official, I'm addicted Addicted to my laptop, that is! Hubby has been saying it for a long time, but now I'm starting to believe him. I almost never do anything without having the laptop within hand's reach. When I cook, it's on the kitchen island. When I clean, I try to finish it fast so that I can get back to scrapping or surfing. I hardly watch an entire episode without doing something on the computer while commercials are on. I logon as soon as I come down in the morning (only weekends, though). Toothbrush, washing face, brushing hair is all done upstairs. If it was done downstairs, I'd do it *after* checking email ;) One rule I do have is that laptop doesn't go upstairs. Or I'll sleep very late. Today, we had some friends over. While they were here, I thought (more than a couple of times) I have to check my email. Believe me, I was having fun conversations, but I still wanted to just check the email and pop into the gallery at DST once. I had p...

I'm besides myself OMG! My Layout All That Glitters is featured at ScrapArtist Blog ! OMG! I am just besides myself! Must have had some good karma stashed somewhere ;) The fun thing is that I totally scrapped this layout in the spirit. I was feeling like we'd never get snow and now we're covered in it. LOL! I totally just went with it. As if just being feautred wasn't enough, I get to pick another goodie from ScrapArtist. Today is the last day of their Valentine's sale so I better hurry up and snag what I want (like, the entire shop LOL) Credits: Everything from ScrapArtist. Papers: NRJ Gold and Silver Paperset Decorative Edge: MCO Decorative Edges Frame: NRJ Frosty Flourishes Frames Tags: NRJ Painted Tags Freebie Buckle: MCO Written In The Stars String of Beads: MCO Chelsey's Dream

Gosh, that pink was bright!! It looked fine on my laptop at home, not looking so good here at work monitor. Sorry about that! Tried to be festive :D I've concluded that my sharing of a couple of recipes isn't going to make anyone come after me! It's not like I'm re-publishing books or anything, they're just a few recipes from various books. Hope the copyright police doesn't hang me! I just want to share these. The original recipes are mostly from Tarla Dalal (only exception is the Samosa Recipe which is Ripal's family recipe). I have made a few modifications. I have NOT tried all the recipes but they're on my To Try list :) Hence making the cards so I'll have easy access to them. The current situation is that I have so many books that it takes me forever to find THE recipe I wanted to try and have the ingredients for. The cards are sized 5x7 and they'll be printed and laminated back-to-back. So there'll be 2 recipes on each card. Credits: Eve...

Snowed/Iced in Daycare was closed today, DH and I worked from home. Mehul and I went outside for a little bit to have fun. The snow was hard as there was a layer of ice over it. M was able to walk on it and I kept breaking it LOL! He wanted to play ball, I took the ball outside but it was a bit windy so the wind blew it away. I wasn't able to catch it walking ever so slowly :( We still had fun trekking, slipping and sliding. I made carrot cake. Yumm. We don't have much planned for tonight. We usually go out for V. Day dinner but tonight we might just stay inside, warm and safe. I might do some shopping tonight. There are a lot of sales in the Digi world. I have already bought some goodies from Scrapbook Graphics. ScrapArtist has a 25% sale too. Speaking of which, I asked Michelle if she'd scrapped the card herself, and she said she did! It's so cool to get this beauty from her! I see a layout coming.. Happy Valentine's Day!

Reached home safely The roads were starting to get slippery. We got out in time! As far as tomorrow, they'll put an alert out if they're closed. My office will also put out an alert. We're getting pounded by snow and freezing rain. It's so cold rightnow. The Federal offices were shut down this afternoon! I got my purse today! And along with that I got a hand signed card by Michelle Coleman!! OMG I was so psyched! More about the card than about the purse, which is very nice! She had scrapped the card (ofcourse! Is there any other way?) The card is *so* pretty. DH says she didn't scrap it, it was pre-bought. Ha! He thinks this because it's printed on a differnt type of paper (cardstock?) I get my LOs printed on matte photo paper so that's what he's used to seeing. I've been bad about exercise this week. After my run on saturday, my legs started aching and it was so bad that night. Happened again sunday night even though I didn't run or even walk. D...

School's out.. Daycare is closing early due to the weather. It has been snowing a little bit since last night and rightnow we're getting rain mixed with snow. Not good because it will turn to Ice. DH dropped me off today so he's coming to get me and we'll pick up Mehul earlier. They didn't say what time they're closing because they want to give parents time to pick up their kids ASAP without pressuring them to come get them NOW. BTW, these reminders are pretty cool. I registered with www.schoolsout.com to receive alerts in case the daycare puts one out. Good to know they work ;) I'm pretty sure they'll either be closed tomorrow or delayed because of ice. That means Valentine Party will be postponed to day after? I'm not sure. Will ask while picking him up. I don't have to prepare anything for the party, just have to pick up a fruit tray from the grocery store.. I have a few layouts to show. One of those is this Valentine's layout I did for Lo...

There is a Valentines Party at Mehul's Daycare. I only came to know about it yesterday when his teacher 'reminded' me about signing up for an item for the party. Umm..I didn't even know about it. Apparantly, DH forgot to tell me about this and the fact that we're supposed to give all the kids Valentines Cards. I signed up for bringing fruit platter (easiest, LOL!) Their entire menu is high on sugar - Cupcakes, fruits, fruit juice, cookies and chips (ok, salty, but not any better!) Ms. Jessy said it's good that they have a gym class after the party where they can burn all the energy. Yeah, good luck controlling a bunch of sugar-high toddlers LOL! So, cards are done. Ofcourse I scrapped them. I made a version last night but it seemed too girly (but it was cute!) with pinks and reds. This version is more attractive and little boyish I think. My sister reminded me that I never posted about the speech issues the teacher had brought up at the last Parent Teacher Meeti...

Snow Day was here.. And it's almost over :( I took the day off today because of the snow last night. It was drivable but I just wanted it ;) If I had my work laptop with me, I'd have worked from home but I didn't. I downloaded a bunch of quick pages from ScrapArtist. The fun with QPs is that they're QUICK! Here are a bunch that'll adorn my purse soon :) ajaabney's iscraptoo's MMacLean's need2create's Julie's Credits to each one are in ScrapArtist Gallery

Messy, Recipe, Sleepy 1. Messy layouts. I'm loving this new style. It fits like a glove. And yet it challenges. 2. I've created a whole bunch of recipe cards. I'm afraid posting might be copyright infringement for some recipes. I'm not sure if I can share them because most of the recipes are from published books. I've made modifications but the main recipes are from books. Guess I'll keep most of them just for me. I'll either put them in a 5x7 photo album or get them laminated, punch holed and threaded. 3. Sleepy I am. Didn't even watch much TV last night because it was super bowl but still slept after midnight. Don't remember what I was doing. LOL. Is it time to go yet? Unique Perspective Credits- Papers, paint, flower, stitching: Diamante Designs Forever in Love kit Knotted Ribbon: Diamante Designs Fashion Ribbons Swirly stamp: Diamante Designs Scribble Swirls U = Diamante Felt Alpha N = Diamante Rubbed Alpha I = Diamante Furry Alpha in Valentin...

Bounce Bounce! My work finished sooner than I had expected. I was able to get back to the snapshot I took yesterday afternoon, and then re-did the rest of the work. It's done. Wasn't too bad, actually. Worst part was the waiting for disk check to come back. It took 3 hours! But the BIG NEWS!! I had participated in a quick page making contest at ScrapArtist. I received this email from Michelle Coleman yesterday. I am one of the 4 lucky winners to receive the purse!!! Plus a free kit from the shop. Woohoooo! This is the first time I've won anything in a contest. I don't participate much (I think I've done one before) And my page will be available for download (among the 20 total winners) Princess Purse Quick Page . I think there were about 80 entries. I am going to download some of the other pages and make a few more for my purse. This is fun! Here is what I had submitted - This is what the purse looks like - Awesome!

Not a good ending to the week. All the work I'd done yesterday on my Virtual Machine is gone. I use VM software for work. It's basically a whole machine with it's own operating system, disk allocation, memory allocation in a file. It appears that the file has gone corrupt. Though it's possible that the external hard disk it was on might have bad sectors. I'm hoping that's the case because that means I'll be able to save some of it. I'm checking the disk for errors rightnow. It has been running for over an hour. If this doesn't fix the problem, I'll have to redo all the work from yesterday. Argh!!! BTW, I wanted to post that I don't want to seem like I was being too judgmental about the other mom's child rearing methods. We all think we know what's right for *our* kids. I feel that way and I'm sure others do too! Scrapping - There have been a few layouts done that'll show up here over the weekend (because I don't feel like ...