DIY Watch case for Father's day

Father's day is almost here. So are the summer holidays. What better way to make the best use of both than making a DIY gift for Dad! (Even if its not vacation time in your part of the world, which kid says No to craft?). Also, this craft requires little help from Moms, so its a great way to unwind from the routine and bond with your kid.

P/S:  If you think sewing it is intimidating, take it from me, its easy peasy :). You can also use a felt glue if you think sewing is too much work.

Scion of Ikshvaku by Amish Tripathi

Read the first chapter Here 

RAM RAJYA. THE PERFECT LAND.BUT PERFECTION HAS A PRICE. HE PAID THAT PRICE.

Scion of Ikshvaku 
by 
Amish Tripathi 

Preorder @
Amazon.in

Blurb 

3400 BCE. INDIA
Ayodhya is weakened by divisions. A terrible war has taken its toll. The damage runs deep. The demon King of Lanka, Raavan, does not impose his rule on the defeated. He, instead, imposes his trade. Money is sucked out of the empire. The Sapt Sindhu people descend into poverty, despondency and corruption. They cry for a leader to lead them out of the morass. Little do they appreciate that the leader is among them. One whom they know. A tortured and ostracised prince. A prince they tried to break. A prince called Ram.

He loves his country, even when his countrymen torment him. He stands alone for the law. His band of brothers, his Sita, and he, against the darkness of chaos.

Will Ram rise above the taint that others heap on him? Will his love for Sita sustain him through his struggle? Will he defeat the demon Lord Raavan who destroyed his childhood? Will he fulfil the destiny of the Vishnu?

Begin an epic journey with Amish’s latest: the Ram Chandra Series.

Watch the trailer

Excerpt

Nilanjana sighed. She wasn’t even sure if the child would be a boy. But she wouldn’t risk the merest flagging of her mistress’ spirits. She administered some herbal pain relievers to the queen and bided her time. Ideally, the doctor wanted the birth to take place before midday. The royal astrologer had warned her that if the child was born later, he would suffer great hardships throughout his life. On the other hand, if the child was born before the sun reached its zenith, he would be remembered as one of the greatest among men and would be celebrated for millennia.

Nilanjana cast a quick glance at the prahar lamp, which measured time in six-hour intervals. The sun had already risen and it was the third hour of the second prahar. In another three hours it would be midday. Nilanjana had decided to wait till a half hour before noon and, if the baby was still not born,

she would go ahead with the surgery.

 Kaushalya was stricken with another bout of dilatory pain. She pursed her lips together and began chanting in her mind the name she had chosen for her child. This gave her strength for it wasn’t an ordinary name. The name she had picked was that of the sixth Vishnu.

 ‘Vishnu’ was a title given to the greatest of leaders who were remembered as the Propagators of Good. The sixth man to have achieved this title was Lord Parshu Ram. That is how he was remembered by the common folk. Parshu means axe, and the word had been added to the name of the sixth Vishnu because the mighty battle axe had been his favourite weapon. His birth name was Ram. That was the name that reverberated in Kaushalya’s mind.

Ram… Ram… Ram… Ram… 

Read the First Chapter @

About 
Amish Tripathi

Amish is an IIM (Kolkata)educated, boring banker turned happy author. The success of his debut book, The Immortals of Meluha (Book 1 of the Shiva Trilogy), encouraged him to give up a fourteen-year-old career in financial services to focus on writing. He is passionate about history, mythology and philosophy, finding beauty and meaning in all world religions.

Amish has most recently written the Shiva Trilogy (The Immortals of Meluha, The Secret of the Nagas & The Oath of the Vayuputras), which have sold over a million copies in the Indian subcontinent since 2010. The books that he plans to write in the future are also in the areas of mythology & history.

Amish lives in Mumbai with his wife, Preeti and son, Neel.

Stalk him @

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D day :) - IMC Treasure Box

Today is a special day for me! I have taken my first tiny step towards doing something I love to. IndianMomsConnect a website by Moms for Moms, has come up with a Subscription box, the IMC Treasure box! The box will contain a handpicked Indian children's book(which is hard to come by in the US, I tell you), a related craft kit, a kid-tested recipe and an App suggestion. 

And I will be custom designing the craft kit for the US :) It all started with me encountering IMC by chance and my heartfelt thanks to Preethi of IMC for giving me this opportunity! I hope its received well and I am working hard to make the craft kits simple and fun. You can avail a 10% discount on the first month using the code below.

More interesting stuff coming shortly :)

Cover Reveal - Love Again!

Cover Reveal

Love Again 
by 

Shrruti Patole Clarence & Sumeetha Manikandan
A Double Header Novel

Blurb 

Love, Again is a double header novel published by Half Baked Beans andFablery with two novellas - A Tulip in the Desert by Shrruti Patole Clarence and These Lines of Mehendi by Sumeetha Manikandan.

TULIP IN THE DESERT

SHRRUTI PATOLE CLARENCE

A historian in making, Charmaine has settled down in Amsterdam after her father migrated from India when she was very young. Life was picturesque until the final year of Graduation when she elected to specialize in Egyptology. Thereafter from the time she read the book about Cleopatra, revelation after revelation turns her world into a tornado!

Raj, another aspiring Historian, walks into her college and her life like a whirlwind. A simpleton from Delhi, Raj too finds mysteries unfolding before him from the time he enters the college library right through to their educational tour to Egypt.A series of events throws them together at every step of their college life despite Charmaine wanting to maintain a distance from ‘this’ natural charmer.

A twist of fate puts Raj and Charmaine in the most unthinkable situation that finally links back to their ‘revelations’. Raj must face a choice again…A choice of history over his love… or does he have the mettle to change history and create his own?

THESE LINES OF MEHENDI

SUMEETHA MANIKANDAN

Beautiful and efficient Lalitha loved to deck up brides for their wedding, though her own marriage was in shambles. When her estranged husband suddenly commits suicide she realizes that things wouldn’t be the same again…

Shrikanth thought that he was a confirmed bachelor but when his mother refused to get herself treated for cancer unless he got married, he had to get a bride in a hurry.She needed a husband in name, to save her career while he needed to marry to please his mother. Will they find love second time around? Will they lower their shields and succumb to a mutual passion?

About 
The Authors

Shrruti Patole Clarence

Shrruti has been a voracious reader since early years and took to composing poems when she was very young. She has worked as an Aviation Manager for over ten years with various airlines, she has been on a sabbatical for her two son's aged six and one year respectively. She enjoys this welcome break from career, to be able to pursue her passion, writing!
She has to her credit six short stories featuring in different Anthologies; a Hindi poem featuring in Tumbhi’s contest Ehsaas judged by the famous screenwriter Javed Siddiqui.Shrruti is a warm and friendly person who loves music and watching sports when she is not writing.

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Sumeetha Manikandan

Sumeetha Manikandan is a freelance writer and an author who loves to write and base her plots on the tambrahm community of Mylapore, Chennai. She is the author of ‘The Perfect Groom’ that has been a best selling ebook on the top 50 charts of Amazon India ever since its publication in 2013. 

An avid reader, she loves to read across different genres – romance, historical fiction, non-fiction, mystery, fantasy etc. A history buff to the core, she is currently translating Ponniyin Selvan – the evergreen tamil classic epic history by Kalki Krishnamurthy into English.

Married to film maker K.S. Manikandan, Sumeetha lives in Chennai, along with her six year old daughter.

Stalk her @

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Are you ready 

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Silly animals - Horton hatches the Egg.

This is an activity to go with the book 'Horton hatches the Egg' by Dr.Seuss that I did for Indian Moms Connect.

Have you read this month's recommendation from IMC, Horton Hatches the Egg by Dr.Seuss? I loved it! The beauty of the book is that there are hidden treasures in the book that when unraveled will make it all the more fun for your kids. So here is an activity to go with the book. 

Since Easter is round the corner, I managed to grab few plastic eggs.And you need some cardstock and colors.

Print and color the animals and paste them on cardstock for easier use and cut them along the dotted lines. 

Mix them up and add one each of the three portions to each egg. 

Hide the eggs all over your home and let your kid go on an egg hunt. 

Let the kid arrange the pieces and check out what silly animal hatches from the egg. Have guaranteed giggles giving silly names to these silly animals.

For older children, you can add a chit containing adjectives describing Horton and Mayzie and discuss why the adjective fits them.

Have fun!

A new play area for a new home!

As I mentioned in this post previously, we moved to a new home and had to redo the play area for my LO again. Here is a pic,

And a mini library. This got her so excited!!

The Book Club Blog Tour - Breach

Breach 

by 

Amrita Chowdhury

The Blurb

How secure are your secrets in the virtual world?  Weeks before pharma-giant Acel is ready to file a global patent application for cancer wonder-drug Colare, its offshore data centre in Mumbai is hacked. The charismatic, young leader of its Indian business, Dr Udai Vir Dhingra, finds himself being blamed for negligence and breach of security. Battling market pressures, media scrutiny, livid American bosses and crumbling relationships, Vir must find the perpetrators, or see his career – and his life – spiral downwards. But the deeper he gets dragged into the shadowy world of masked online identities and muddied digital footprints, the more Vir discovers that nothing is easy or obvious, and everything has a price. Set across Mumbai, Washington and Guangzhou, Breach is a compelling and edgy cyber thriller that explores the dark and dangerous underbelly of our increasingly virtual existence

Buy @

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Watch It 

Meet the Author

Amrita Verma Chowdhury is the author of Faking It, an art crime thriller about fake modern and contemporary Indian art.

She holds engineering degrees from IIT Kanpur and UC Berkeley, where she was a Jane Lewis Fellow, and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon (Tepper Business School). Her work as an engineer in Silicon Valley led to seven US patents for semi-conductor fabrication – something to show for those bad-haired days. She has done Strategy Consulting and Board Effectiveness work in the US and Australia and has spent long nights fitting five-syllable words inside two-by-two squares. She has worked in the rarefied bastions of Ivy League education bringing together ideas and people. She currently works in publishing.

She lives in Mumbai with her husband Sumit, their two children Shoumik and Aishani, and an assortment of pets including a cocker spaniel, a guinea pig and two turtles. She loves travelling, baking cupcakes with her daughter and hearing from her readers.

You can stalk her @

                          

         

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