Two cups of "Chai" and a year of blogging!

Last year around the same time of the year, we sat down one Thursday night after dinner to watch some movie. After a stressed out work week for both of us. All we wanted to do was relax. Silently watching a boring movie we were probably having the same thoughts going on in our head.

Here we were in a new country, just set up a new home, leaving behind family and the friends we knew. Just as much as we missed them and the social life there, we had been very excited to move here and were eager to start a new life, make new friends, have a wonderful time exploring the place and most of all having quality time with our precious daughter together as a family.

But none of that was happening. Here we were, rushing from dawn to way past dusk in our work life, and the little one was having as a hectic day as us, shuttling from nursery to home and then to grandparents house. Slowly there was getting to be no time for us. No time for family and friends, we did not like it a bit.

Switching off the TV, Zain quietly said we need to do something about it. He suggested why not start a blog.
I was apprehensive. I had no idea how blogging worked and did not like to put myself out there into the online world. I am a bit more private person. And how could blogging help us in any of our worries as above.

But then he just went on and make some of his trademark mesmerizing Chai and we went about checking out  some amazing blogs online and reading up how to start one.  We had never written anything worthwhile online or anywhere else ever before. And putting ourselves out there, even if in front of our family and friends was making us a bit nervous. A Engineer/ Banker and me a dentist, we had never worked with anything online and it was a start from the scratch. We even did not even have a proper idea as to why?

Exactly a year since we pressed that publish button on a post in blogger. This was the very first post, introducing ourselves The Spectrum of our Rainbow.
Whew!! What an awesome journey!

• We have a learned a lot, when we mean a lot, it means humungous stuff, about blogging, the designing, the content, promoting, the stats,  the nitty gritties.. all of it.
• This gave us time together as a couple, something to work together on, a common ground, considering the vastly different professions we were in. 
• This kept us in touch with family, the simple joys we faced in our day to day living was being shared and seen. 
• It vastly improved the quality of our day, we became more organised with our time, we planned for the weekend, started doing the hobbies we liked most with our daughter. The pleasure of sharing it was even more exciting. 
• It has given us friends, even if on a virtual platform and considering that it has only been a year, we love reading what every one has to say and love the interaction we get on our posts.
• It has made exploring the country we live in, all the more exciting, more news about whats happening around here, is reaching our ears and its so much fun. 
• Our photography has improved from a scale of 1 to about 4 on a scale of 10. A new hobby in the brewing. We are seriously thinking of upgrading from a point and shoot. 
• There is so much more to look forward to in a day, reading what other bloggers have written about, new inspirations, new places, new recipes to try out. What otherwise seems a drab day is always exciting now.
• We have gotten out of our comfort zone. Explored new places, shared our views written about them on a public space. Its an amazing feeling when you see comments and appreciation. 

So there is a lot we have gained from this year of blogging. Its become a new part of life we wish to continue for long. Zain was a bit apprehensive, that we would lose steam along the way and the blog would fizzle out. But its got us hooked on. 

All along we keep reminding ourselves to not let the blog become a pressure or ride over our life. That's the only thing we are vary of now, to balance the happiness we derive out of it without going overboard.

Now we dream of a day when our little one may want to pen a few words here:)

The blog for the past year managed to reach only our family and real life friends. But since the beginning of 2015, we love the fact that we have so many new blogger friends who drop down here every time we post and leave their sweet comments. Thanking all the readers so much. Stats and comments sometimes are very motivating to go on.

Coming to the celebrations. We went to one of a favorite places to unwind. 

If you have been to Sharjah, you would have probably seen this giant teapot "AL-BREEJ" on a roundabout in Qasba. Its serves one of the best tea and coffee, of the Arabic or Indian flavor. They also sell boxes of amazing Arabian desserts. The place is flocked with people and lines of cars in the evening and from afar and is up late until 2 am.
A news article on the Teapot here.

We were attracted to this place by its looks when we had just moved into Sharjah. Such a cute way to have a tea/coffee cafe, with the structure of giant teapot and huge lighted coal underneath. So we picked two cups of our favorite "Zaafrani Chai" and sat sipping in the Qasba corniche, watching the beautiful skyline of Sharjah being reflected in the still waters.

The journey of blogging started with a cup of Chai (check out our pretty little CHAI-SPACE at home here). It is only befitting that we celebrate a year of blogging having a cup of tea at one of our favorite hangouts.

Hoping for lots more to come in this space.

ZAIN & FARZ

This post is linked to 
Best of the Blogosphere-Week-11
The Weekly Story-Wk-10

Lou Lou Girls Fabulous-Party-51

D-I-Y INSECT CARD: A Thank you card to our daughter's Kindergarten teacher

Our daughter is finishing kindergarten 1 today. WOW!! we really survived a year of sleepy mornings and running to catch the bus. 

But it seemed just like yesterday, when we packed off our little girl in her new set of uniform and sparkly new shoes, and a bag too big for her tiny shoulders, in her school bus. Trusting a bunch of new adults, to care of the most precious person in the world to us. 

Anyways fast forward now. The little one has  friends from the class, the bus and a whole new world of her own, which she loves. There have been days when she would go on and on about the day in her class. She adores her teachers. We can hear the giggles and the laughter as the bus comes to drop her back home. And her numerous tales of the day just shows us how great her school day has been. 

How does a teacher bring in so many new children into a class from the warm cocoon of family and transform these tiny babies into such amazingly active and bright children by the end of the year? Hats off to the educators who have begun the process of molding them into tiny human beings, infusing courage, knowledge, confidence and compassion into them. Truly amazing. 

Her teachers will have a new set of children to mold this year, as the students of this year go on. And year after year they will be doing this great task. They may not get to witness how beautifully these children have gone on to lead wonderful and successful lives. 

But the teachers who held our daughters hand, albeit even if it was for a short while, we will never forget them, for their role in our child's life. 

We made a card for my daughter's teachers, and she scribbled a beautiful THANK YOU and LOVE YOU in it. 

God bless them, for their hard work, we reap rewards.

FARZ & ZAIN

This post has been linked to

Best Of the Blogosphere Week-10

The Weekly Story-Wk 9

Lou Lou Girls Fabulous Party-50

GIVE ME SOME COLOR: Magic-milk color experiment

Okay. So I have been guilty of being little lazy for the past few days weeks. But even being lazy is a luxury with a 4-year-old at home, you know. My little daughter would not just settle for a "Lazy Mommy" anymore. And off I went to entertain her.

The festival of colors-HOLI just got over this weekend. So we were going to do something with colors today. When my daughter was younger we had done many of the common color activities, sorting, color play-doh, and so many other things. But this year in kindergarten she learnt the concept of the "three PRIMARY COLORS", so we decided to work on enhancing that learning. 

This experiment with milk is so popular over the internet that we decided to try it at home. Very simple, just a few common household ingredients and loads of entertainment.

Ingredients:
Milk
Dish washing soap
Food colors
Thats it....

Here we go.

Finally after the multiple attempts and various hues of colors, I was let go to be lazy again.

So there it is , a really simple and amazing experiment to witness a rainbow of colors.
The younger ones would just love to see the magic.
The kindergartners would love seeing the PRIMARY COLORS create so many colors. 
And for the older kids, lets talk about why it happens.

• The first ingredient milk (whole milk) has fat among its contents.
• Soap is a surfactant, that disrupts the surface tension of milk and reacting with the fat molecules.
• The colors help us visualize what actually happens. 

This link has more of the science aspect www.dow.com-Milk-Rainbow.

For now I will just stick with the PRIMARY COLORS and the other colors that can be formed with them. 

So the final question to my daughter on what she understood for the day.

And she replied, matter-of-factly, "the three primary colors make 615 more colors??!!!!"

Now I do not know what is the significance of that number. ;-)

FARZ

This post is linked to 
Lou Lou Girls Fabulous Party-49
Wake Up Wednesday Linky- 59
The Weekly Story Wk-9
STEM SATURDAY

Made for Kids 6 @ The Resourceful Mama