The night before Diwali.

Happy Diwali to everyone! Wishing you a bright and festive holiday!

{An artist's rendering of the bug attacks taking place.}

After barely surviving the mosquito-armageddon of Houston over the weekend (I seriously had over a hundred mosquito bites on me at least!  I never even came close to that in India) and accidentally missing the Diwali fireworks show at the mandir over the weekend, we geared up to decorate around the house a bit.

Ryan and I hung lights around the house, while Avi helped by blowing the fuse on at least two strings on lights.  Don't ask me how he did that.  I have no clue.  And, yes, I know he shouldn't be playing with them, but it is awfully hard to keep him away from that which he must not do.  Ha!

Nandini got in on the action too.  She missed the major coloring that took place during her nap, but woke up just in time for finishing touches.  And to pose for pictures of course.

As you can probably tell, I did not use traditional rangoli materials.  Just chalk.  But it worked out well.  Pretty sure the brown basmati rice that I have wouldn't look that good anyway.

Avi helped with this one too.  Mostly by coloring in his footprints and splashing water all over the place.  Thankfully he obliged me by not splashing water on me.  I also made lots of flower garlands and am still debating about where to hang them up. 

I also decided to make a nice Indian dinner at home since we may go out tomorrow to the temple.  I made channa from scratch.  Boiled it all afternoon and then roasted in the oven with onion, garlic, tomato, ginger, and peppers (from the garden).  And lots of ghee of course.  Then added watercress at the end to make it all fancy.  I also made pulav with basmati rice, cooked in ghee and water, then added garlic and green onion towards the end and fresh ricotta, diced cucumber, and grapes right before serving.  Plus cucumber raita with fried lentils for crunch.  It is nothing like the Diwali dinners my mom makes.  No delicious fried breads or any sweets, but it still turned out really well.  And, ps, fresh grapes are about a thousand times better than raisins in pulav.  Case closed.

We lit some diyas and did aarti after dinner.  Avi put tikka on everyone, so it was a bit more like Holi for a while.  He was so cute and insisted we read to him from his Hanuman book after so we all read the story of Ram's victory and return together.  And, like a true holiday miracle, both babies went to sleep early and haven't heard a peep out of them since, whew!
{linked up at the idea room.}