Rangoli, ringing out, ringing in.....

Hello hello hello....so how was everyone's New Years Eve to-do??? I hope you are all back from a wonderful evening, ready and fired up to take whatever 2011 has to offer!!!!

I spent a good part of the last day in 2010 running around looking for Rangoli powder and all the necessary accoutrements.....our watchman's daughter and my father-in-law's attendant, both young girls in the mid to late teens, felt it was sacrilegious to have a New Year without Rangoli! So we took them Rangoli powder shopping, and they came back super thrilled with 12 rainbow colors, a quarter kilo of each color!!!!! Then for a couple of hours after that there was much discussion, and hushed conversations and rough drafts and sketches, and a lot of giggling and finally at about 4pm they started on their masterpiece!!!

It always amazes me when I watch people do this....they take a pinch of the white powder, hold it deftly between their fingers and like magic the outline appears...when I try to do this it looks rotten! Then they mixed the colored powder with sand - something about it being easier to spread - and filled in all the outlines. Everyone joined in.....while I took pics! Our dogs sauntered across the pattern a few times - making the girls really mad - leaving deep pink and saffron yellow paw prints all over the place.

The outline

The powder all sorted out by colors

Mixing in the sand

Filling in the colors

Getting there slowly....

Almost done

This was followed by a lovely dinner on the rooftop......even though the music from the club down the street and the coffee shop behind the house was deafeningly loud! We had Pink Floyd, Eagles and Beatles hits being horribly sung from the coffee shop along with Bollywood hits being even more horribly sung from the club down the street! Kishore Kumar and Don Henley singing together is NOT a good combo, trust me!

Then we headed inside for a great "ushering in" of the year 2011!!! My son and son-in-law are here and thanks to them, my husband and I abandoned our usual "laying on the couch in a stupor watching the countdown on TV and sleepily toasting in the New Year" routine....for a really fun watching of The Great Race...one of our all time favorite movies. And we timed it perfectly, so just when a kooky Jack Lemmon, a suave Tony Curtis and a gorgeous Natalie Wood ended their silly capers, it turned midnight!!!!

I hope to be back to my regular blogging routine soon....! Have a wonderful 2011!