#1:##9,10,11 - Wooden Initials for Home

Hello friends. I did disappear for the past three days but I have been working on this for more than 2-3 hours everyday. I realised that spending an hour a day is fine but spending 5-6 hours on a weekend is usually very tough because it is family time and besides, currently me and my husband are working on a personal project so we are doing some other kind of work on weekends which makes it very difficult for me to manage household work, cooking meals, doing the other work and then working on this too.

Now that I am done cribbing, here is the story for my creation ...  :)

We got wooden initials for me and my husband three weeks ago. And I was looking for cheap art supplies on the internet and some shops and took another couple of days for me to get my art supplies in place. I wanted to make our initials interesting and highly personalized. I am into the whole "personalize whatever you can" charade big time so I will try to do that at every possible opportunity and this one I had created for myself so it had to be special.

So I have tried to hand paint the wooden initial letter of my husband's name which sort of reflects his personality. I used acrylic colours and 0 and 2 number paint brushes to finish this work. Wanted to use sharpies to give it a final finishing touch but I guess sharpies do not work so well on rough wooden surfaces. I guess its only their nibs that don't work, the ink is formulated to be permanent on wood. How do I know? While getting the pen to work, I just gave the pen a big jerk, covering half my wall with the sharpie ink which seems like it is there to stay! :D .

Well, the overall experience was good. Used painting brushes after a long time and you can see my amateur-style in the work done. Thick and wobbly lines are not too difficult to spot. I am pleased with the concept and happy that for the first time in my life, I patiently did paint the whole background! (I would always find shortcuts to save some effort in colouring the background.)

I feel exhausted after completing this little piece of work and I do not want to start a new artwork today. But I have had a couple of ideas to work on my next creation. Hopefully that should get over faster so I might attempt doing it later in the day. Juggling this along with the adhoc important tasks that come in on a daily basis is more difficult than I thought. And mind you, I am not even employed!

Anyway this is a warm up. Once these 21 days get over, I would start working on the real thing - my design portfolio. And that is going to be so much more difficult. But we shall cross that bridge when we get there.

For now, here is what I did to the plain wooden letter.

#1: ##8: An Experience

Guys before I start writing today's brief, I want to tell you the going is getting tough. There are weekends, there are special days, there are days you feel blue and getting an idea is difficult and implementing it is another story altogether!

So yesterday was my husband's birthday and it was after 3 years we were together to celebrate his birthday. And as it is I am quite enthusiastic about birthdays and anniversaries and all that crap! I know it means nothing to an enlightened mind like my husband's but for poor earthlings like me, it still calls for celebration. We could not decide what to do until 8 in the evening. We sort of had plans of going out but he hates non-Indian cuisines... well, most of them. The ones he sort of likes are Thai or Indo-chinese because they are similar to Indian food in terms of spices. So well, at 8 we decided that we will sit at home and eat parathas and watch a movie - that is our favourite thing anyway.

We decided to step out and get some coke or something to accompany our food because at least it should seem like we had a "fine" dinner. No alcohol for both of us. I am just rehabilitating myself from an addiction (hehehe) and he is trying to control his triglycerides. So we got zero cal beverages to accompany our food. And while all this was happening, my creative juices started flowing and I decide to create a small experience by putting together whatever I had at home. 

So I decided to have a small three course meal along with our drink. No cakes for him (triglycerides, remember?) but we needed a cake and a candle to blow and make it seem like birthday-ish. Took 2 hours to put the three course meal together, accompanied my husband to the store to get coke, set up the table and took a few photographs. I do not want to show my face as yet, so will omit the ones which has my face in it but here are the two photos that shows the trick I pulled to make our 'stay at home dinner' a little special. It wasn't the food, it wasn't the decor. I feel it was just how I responded to a chance of making dinner on a special evening and hence it deserved its place on this blog.(Oh no, that is not screaming narcissism!) 

For those interested, the menu was:

Starters: Oven roasted garlic mushrooms

Main course: Curd and Gobi Paratha

Sweet: Waterchestnut (singada) flour halwa 

Drinks: Zero cal Fanta (for him) and Coke (for me)

Cake: Sara Lee cupcake :) 

Here is the pic of the celebration

And I also grabbed the opportunity to use my white flower to enhance the aesthetic appeal of my dining table! :)

#1: ##7 : Mindfulness mini campaign

I love running and I do meditate for 10 minutes everyday (well, on most days (if time permits)). But I am already trying to get to a point where I can make that statement without the brackets. I am a huge fan of meditation purely because how I feel once I am done with it.

AWESOME. That's it. That is how I feel once I give just 10 minutes of my day to my own self. This might mean having breakfast 10 minutes later, or making that not-so-important phone call or delaying the house chores by barely a few minutes. I read up on some book for mindfulness as a meditation technique a few days ago and I tried it for a few days and it made me feel pretty good and in control of things.

I had thought of doing some campaigns for yoga a couple of months ago and did not do anything about it. Suddenly yesterday I decided to do something using Adobe Photoshop for creating something for this blog and I thought of doing a banner. I started of with the same central idea but a different visual for this. I wanted to create a message for myself, while I am trying to discipline myself and everyone who is dealing with some or the other stress related issue that we run after discounts because it saves money which supposedly will help us lead a better life (or whatever). But mindfulness does not cost a thing! It is free and it ACTUALLY helps you lead a better life, reduce stress, improve focus, control your response and reaction towards your surrounding. Thinking logically, you might not find a single reason to not practice mindfulness.

If I have succeeded in creating curiousity in the mind of those not aware of this technique or not too sure where to start from but are willing to give this a try, here is your starting point. Before we start, a BIG round of applause for you for this fantastic decision! And without further ado, here are the steps:

• You will need a timer and just 10 minutes of your time. If you are using the timer on your phone, please turn off all the volumes that can distract you. 
• Find a peaceful place to sit down - a chair or directly on the ground but make sure you are comfortable. Also, you are required to sit straight - so if you cannot sit straight for too long, find a back support but do not throw your weight on your back support, use it to stop you from stooping. 
• And if possible, just warm up a little before meditating - like shake your hands and legs for a minute, move your neck in circular direction for a few seconds and sit down.
• Set the timer for 10 mins. If you think you can do better than that, be my guest :D
• Close your eyes and start taking notice of your breaths. Take five deep breaths by inhaling through your nose and exhaling through your mouth. 
• Next step is to scan your entire body internally just to notice how each of your body parts feel. But avoid moving or shifting. The idea is to start being mindful about how you are feeling.
• Now till the timer goes off, all you have to do is pay attention to your breath. Inhale and exhale normally without trying to change anything from your regular way of breathing. Just be a silent observer of your own self. Observe but do not judge. Also, keep counting your inhales and exhales from 1 to 10. Start again from 1 after you reach 10 (obviously). But what if you exceed 10 by mistake? Or forget your count? Or just drift away and start thinking about random things? Does not matter. The moment you realise you are lost, get back on track and start your count from one again. Just go with the flow. 
• Once the timer goes off, try to turn off the timer with your eyes closed. If not, does not matter, open your eyes but remain seated and calm. Once you turn off the timer, again scan your body internally about how you feel. 
• Take a deep breath and complete your meditation. 

Mindfulness means being in the present and being mindful of your self. If you simply just notice how you are breathing in the middle of something, that can help reduce stress and make you feel slightly more in control of things around you. Please try it.

Enough said. Now it's time to draw the curtains on my creation for the 7th day... The banner that argues in favour of you practicing mindfulness.... Take a look and give it a thought!

#1: ##6 Baked puris

Hello everyone! Today I have ventured into another area altogether. While I was wondering what to make of whatever material was available with me, I knew craft was a far fetched idea today :D .. I had to do something else. Maybe a photoshop image? But I quickly ruled that option out because I was not thinking of anything new. So I decided to create something totally different.

Today's creation is a dish! It is called puris (crispy wheat flour chips). Puris are a very popular fried snack for some Indians and is usually had with hot chai tea. But I modified the way these are prepared. Usually these are deep fried but I wanted a healthy alternative so decided to bake them. With some patience and hard work I have managed to make it and I must admit while it is not mouth watering, it is pretty good and definitely filling and healthy. For those who are interested in controlling their cholesterol or their waist-line or both, this might be a very good option for snack because apart from it being healthy, you can store this preparation for around 5-10 days depending on the temperature of the stored location. Do not refrigerate but make sure to store it in a dry air-tight container and keep it in a cool place.

Here is the basic way of preparing these puris. Once you know this, you can prepare as many variations as you like.

For each cup of whole wheat flour, use one tablespoon of oil and half teaspoon of salt. With some water, usually a little more than half cup of water, knead the floor into a hard dough. It is not like the usual bread dough, you would have to apply pressure to poke your finger in the dough. But do make sure that the dough does not crack up. It should be bound properly. Apart from salt, you can add turmeric powder, red chilli powder, oregano or methi (fenugreek) leaves or palak (spinach) leaves or crushed green chillies, crushed garlic, crushed ginger, chilli flakes or just whatever spice you can think of :)

After the dough is ready, divide them into roughly 20 small pieces and roll them thin and round using a rolling pin. Once these are ready, preheat the oven at 400F or 200C. In the meanwhile, grease these puris with very slight oil on both the sides. Once the oven is preheated, put all the puris in a baking plate. Make sure they do not overlap on each other. It takes around 7-10 mins for them to get baked properly. Make sure to toss them once while they are being baked. Do not let them turn brown if you really want to enjoy the flavour but don't take them off too soon else they won't be crispy.

I sprinkled a bit of red chilli powder and dried mango powder to make them tangy and spicy after they were ready but you can skip this if you like.

And as per the tradition, after describing my story and method, here is the picture of today's creation.

You can notice one of the puris is bitten off, that is the one I tasted to let you know how the taste was... ;)

#1:##5 - White Flower

Hello folks!

I am back on track. All backlog cleared :D .. I was really not sure about what I would do today. I actually started working on something and realised that there could be a problem in completing the last step of my creation and had to restart the process to create something else altogether.

Now, for the past few days I have just picked up old and useless stuff lying around in the house and decided to make something. I have already asked the imaginary procurement team to get me some basic stuff that would help me create better and they say there are on it but I know them, they haven't done a thing yet ;)

Jokes apart! Today's creation reflects my mood for today perfectly. Both, the outcome and the processes were extremely relaxing. Like the title suggests, it's a white flower. How did I make a flower? - Using some leftover tissue papers we got along with our takeaway some days ago. I did get a few other ideas before I zeroed in on this one but this one really impressed me because I wanted to make an improvement in terms of my presentation and with whatever material I have, I can barely make anything look beautiful!..

So this one is a toned down version of the idea I picked up but as I had imagined it to be, it is looking much more beautiful that the original idea in my opinion. Besides, it goes perfectly well with the texture and colour of my dining table. I just used a pair of scissors and a couple of tissue papers along with a wire. I invested around 30 minutes in making this and I think now that I have some idea of how it will turn out in real life, I can do a better job by altering its dimension and playing around with the shapes a bit.

For now, enjoy watching what I did today... my white flower...

With this, I call it a day.. see you tomorrow...

#1: ##2 (delayed) The Website ...

I cannot begin to express my joy as I write this post to declare my success of finally shipping out my website! I feel 10 kilos lighter right now. This is one journey I want to go on writing about so without further ado here's how I lived to tell the tale :D

A month ago I decided to so something constructive instead of sitting at home all day long adding no value to my or anyone else's life apart from ofcourse, housekeeping and feeding two people everyday to the best of my ability. Earning money is one thing, being satisfied with what you are doing is quite another. My life did not meet any of the two criteria as opposed to my past where at any given point atleast one criteria was met. So I finally managed to find someone to whom I could offer some help and return get some peace of mind for myself. The requirement was "designing" a website. Now as I began the project, to my surprise, I started to realise, designing meant building a website in this particular case. 

Instead of going back to those guys stating that I would be happy to just design the website in terms of layout and over all look and feel and navigation and blah, I decided to just go for it and build the website. But later I realised, by designing, it also meant copy writing for the website. And I went with the flow. I decided to take that up too. This was easily more than what I could handle. 

Let's take a quick look at my background before we proceed. I like to write but I am not an expert at copywriting - infact I have very recently learnt how to write professionally and it is a difficult job. I cannot do so without supervision. I have developed liking for designing in the past couple of years, not exactly graphics design but design as a method to build things that they make sense and address the need. And I do know a little bit of graphics design too. Apart from that, I completed by bachelors in computer science so I do know coding but the last time I coded was in 2008 and that was mainframes. I took up an altogether different profession after that, which did not need me to deal with code directly. 

So, I got into a totally non-comfort zone. I could do all of it but I wasn't too sure about anything. I started anyway. Lots of design ideas and writing and scrapping it all and starting all over again happened a couple of times and I did take my own sweet time to freeze the design - which was three weeks to be precise! :) I had one more week to go before I should deliver the website and that's when the situation got bad. It had been more than 8 years that I did anything to do with html programming and I was about to build a website in HTML5. I thought how bad can HTML5 be? It should be a cakewalk! And it wasn't too bad but just that I decided to do it in the best possible way and drive it using code as much as I can. That scr**ed me up. jQuery and javascript is not too difficult but it takes time. Had it not been for stackoverflow.com and w3schools, I would not have completed this. I almost learnt 3 scripts in a week's time. And one thing really made life difficult for me, my old habit with incorrect syntax. I have spent 3 days just trying to figure out why would a certain functionality not work and the reason was just improper syntax. That's the kind of error that's very difficult to detect because your code just breaks and YOU DON'T KNOW WHY?

Finally a day after the designated deadline I did finish the work and then I was like, next 15 mins and I should be done. I just had to host the site. No points for guessing. The hosting service was horrible and more worse was the folder structure created by someone who did not believe in logic. I could do it yesterday but I realised I had not been paying attention to my poor husband at all. So decided to give it all a break and spend a nice evening with my husband. Today morning, with a fresh mind I tried attacking the problem and within minutes decided to give it up and call the customer support guys and get that resolved. That was done two hours ago and the site was up. Shot an email to the guys I am working with. Now waiting for their response.  

So after long working hours, really shitty meals (because I would make them while still thinking about the code and end up adding or not adding a few ingredients), a messy house, lack of sleep/communication/exercise I did finish this project that I feel has turned out to be quite ok. 

  

Here's the first version of the website and I am waiting to receive some information for the banner after which the banners will be updated. That along with some cosmetic changes should complete my site. But I am too excited to share this..

http://thehumandevelopmentcompany.com/test/website/home.html 

#1: ##4 Now a jewellery container

Hi there! So after my yesterday's effort, I decided to change my strategy a bit. Instead of coming up with crappy ideas I decided to see what is available on the internet. There are undoubtedly so many creative individuals who are doing something or the other all the time that might be of great interest to me. What I did was, decided what object I was going to use and then simply searched the web for ideas. The notion was to pick up some idea and make it a little better. I learned that one should be proactively looking for a source to copy from, not for the sake of replication but for the sake of enhancing it and creating something out of it. Here's a cool sketch of how originality and creativity don't go hand in hand. It has been one of the most inspiring sketches I have saved.

Now coming to today's story. I started my search to get some ideas of what I could do with an empty bottle, originally an empty pill's bottle. Earlier my plan was to make a decorative tooth pick container which also looked like a lighthouse. But I wanted to make something more useful. And with 15-20 mins of search, I went from pill's bottle to plastic water bottle and from lighthouse to a bird feeder to a jewellery container. 

The basic idea was to cut the bottom of the bottle to retain its base which can act like a container. I had thought of making a wooden bird feeder a few days ago. So I was like, why not make this into a bird feeder! So I began to wrap a small paper strip along the sharp edge of the cut bottle base to make sure it is safe for the birds. But I had to stick it with an adhesive which has a very strong smell and my husband suggested that there is a possibility the birds might be repelled by the smell. That was a good suggestion so I dropped that idea completely and decided to make this into a jewellery container. But that was the idea I took inspiration from and I wanted to make it better. Therefore I decided to decorate the container. I do not have paint colours or coloured paper at the moment else I would have made it look like a proper flower. I just used a basic white paper and cut it out to look like flower petals and wrapped it around the edge. It is not very well done but it is complete and it serves the purpose so I will consider this as progress as compared to yesterday. 

Now, it's showtime....

That is it for today from me.

See you soon.

P.S. I am about to host my website on the domain. Should be done in an hour. Will post it as soon as it is up.

#1: ##3 - Coin pouch using an old sock

As promised, I proudly present my today's creation. A (pretty lousy) coin pouch made from an old sock. So amongst all the household work, project work, cooking meals and watching TV, my day passed by without starting today's creation. The background process was still running and I just could not determine what to make. I did expect that I will run out of ideas pretty soon, but today is practically just the second day and I was blank!

The idea of tearing the sock to make something had crossed my mind. Make what? I had no idea. Earlier I was thinking of making a stuffed spade to decorate my keychain but that seemed a little difficult so I accidentally took on a task which was more difficult. I decided to sew a small coin pouch from the sock. You must be wondering what can be so difficult in just bidding the edges of a sock because the "pocket" was technically ready. i.e. the closed end of the sock. Well, the material stretches.. which makes it very difficult to keep track of the next hole you're piercing in the fabric and before you know, you have a unique set of stitches - no two stitches look similar! So the edges went for a toss. The second difficult was also related to the "stretchiness" of the fabric, the stitches will not really serve the purpose. It did not seal the open edges AT ALL. And I was hoping that it would at least hold the coins. Any guesses what I am about to say? - I was mistaken! It will keep them together only as long as the pouch is not disturbed too much. If the coins happen to collect near the flap of the pouch, they can easily slid out of the pouch with a little bit of push. While testing this, I could sense my hour's work doing down the drain.

To summarise, had it not been me who created the purse, I would not take full two seconds to describe this as an atrocious design - not because of its aesthetics but because of the choice of cloth and the way it tailored. The upside is that I created something today and did not let work become an excuse. Anyway, afer hearing my story of today's creation I should not make you wait any further. Here you go.....

Btw, those interested in knowing what's happening to my website, I am happy to inform I am giving my finishing touches and have to add just one last functionality. But the functionality is more like an improvisation than a necessity so I think I will call it a minimum viable product for now and incorporate that functionality a little later when I get some pending information from them. I will need to host it so that I can make the link available to you all. Will mostly do it tomorrow morning.

Till then, so long!

#1: ##2: Website but WIP...

So, I was bragging about how philanthropic I am about helping an NGO and blah. I was thinking of putting the website I created for them as my creation on the second day. I had all plans of completing it yesterday... BUT... (yeah yeah, look down upon me) .. I could not finish it. There have been hiccups and I am absolutely not willing to compromise the quality of my code and instead preferred to give it one more day to finish it, so I need today's day as grace period to finish the product as it should have been.

Here is how the arrangement works:
1) I finish the website and put it as the continuation of the ##2 hopefully today.
2) If I can't complete my website today, I keep it for another day's creation and put something up for #2 - latest by tomorrow.
3) Irrespective of whether I complete my ##2's creation today or not, I will create something today for ##3.

Btw, a fun fact: Anytime I start something and go on record, Murphy's law will suddenly be as applicable as gravity! But I feel this is just an initial glitch. I am doing everything in my capacity to get back on track. Yesterday was crazy but fun. Loved the tension and the pressure of trying to get something out. But I am assuming I have an audience to answer to and a no show requires justification. So before I start my day today, I wanted to get this out of my way - remember the background process?!

See you around! Bye for now!
 

#1: Day ##1 - Doodling my life away!

Currently I have a background process running that scans everything within my vicinity for ideas to create something new. I am working on a pretty (self-induced) tight deadline as I did not start the work until this task was in "Red" :) (Signal for a new habit??) . And the background process is taking up a lot of my CPU resources so I decided to first come here, finish what is due and then go back to working on my original and easily, more important task!

I think you might find it pretty interesting to know that so far I have considered drilling a light bulb to make a wind chime maybe, making something out of an old pair of socks, cheat by using the mug on which I drew something yesterday and showed it to half the world (my world consists of 14-15 people) or maybe give shape to an idea that struck me a few days ago. Using drawing as a means of communication - infographics?
Maybe no! This communication is a story. To draw a story, not to animate it. So here is something I have scribbled. It has a lot of words as of now but I will try to improve. I want a still image to say a story. This is my second draft and it was prepared in 90 mins.

This story is about me. It is about how my interests evolved as I grew up and how I feel about the future. Take a look and let me know your ideas about my idea! My scanner ain't working so had to take a photo and put it here. Maybe when I have more time at hand, I will be able to fix my scanner and put images in a more professional way. At this moment, I gotta run back to working on my important task!

See you tomorrow. Please comment!

Mission #1: Declaration

Hello!

Welcome to this blog. This blog is started with the intent of recording my journey of forming new habits. This is my journey journal :D . So what has 21 days got to do with that? It is said that a new habit takes 21 days to form and each one of us are just a compilation of our habits. Did you know, 80% of the "decisions" we make during a day are merely habits? Our brain fools us into believing that we performed a great task of deciding what to eat for breakfast but in reality it just goes back into it's little store room and pick up a 'breakfast pattern'. It is much easier that way for the brain. So lazy but smart!

But life is about exploring, about things that are out there that you don't know of. Yes, most of the times, we don't know what we don't know. And as we find what we don't know, we tend to discover ourselves. For instance, I have grown up having instant coffees with milk and sugar - no water. It was just a couple of years ago that I got to know about how people in other parts of the world consume coffee so I tried it and fell in love with it! I prefer ground coffee beans over instant coffee and espressos over lattes. Had it not been for me giving a break to my "coffee decision mechanism" (habit), I wouldn't know what kind of coffees I really like.

Well that is a very stupid example but holds completely true and I am out there to scale it and test it. I want to get into the habit of breaking habits and forming new habits, hopefully better ones. I love observing people, I love design, I love exploring new things and making what did not exist yesterday. Guess, I am a creator type of personality. I live everyday with the dream of acquiring capabilities that will allow me to practice design as my profession but not some run of the mill job, a job that really makes a difference, solves problems and answers questions. I am a slow learner and I take time to get wherever I want to be. My friends and peers are running around, pursuing careers and ambitions and six-figure salaries; some are starting their families and some others are trying to achieve either or all of the mentioned activities. I am sitting and watching it all go past by and doing just what I feel I need to do. It can get a little unsettling but maintaining physical distance from these people seems to be helping me.

But then, what am I doing about what I feel like doing? Well, I am helping an NGO build a website and working with them to promote their cause and spread awareness. Apart from that, I experiment with food - both, making and eating. And keep dreaming about things I want to do and come up with whimsical theories that involve me getting high on a new mind game every once in a while. This blog is a result of one such venture and here you are. I used to do this as a part of a personal blog but that did not have the focus I am trying to maintain with this blog. I needed a clean notebook!

I will be posting 21 days journey of each of my new missions. After trying to wire my brain for happiness and trying mindfulness, I am going to try my hand at creativity. The mission is pretty simple, create a new thing everyday. Rules?

#1 Create just about anything. Paintings, new dish, blog posts, essay, websites, web-app, decorating objects like mugs or name plates or create something out of waste material at home and the list can go on. The idea is to invest energy in creating something that did not exist until yesterday in my life and meets the criteria of "new".

#2 Quality does not matter. This is a hack - quick and dirty is acceptable as long as it is functional and looks complete. If it is a prototype of, say, a windmill, it need not be coloured but it should work whereas a painting might not be of the likes of Picasso but it better be coloured :)

#Don't judge, just make it. The idea is to get into the habit of creating something without waiting for the best idea to enchant you. Once you get into the habit of creating, quality of ideas will improve. When you give form to your idea, you are necessarily sharing your ideas with whoever can access it and likely provide their feedback or ideas on what they see or access - leading into an exchange of ideas - which I believe can only improve your thought-process, making you more aware and eventually enhancing your creativity.

So let the fun begin!