It's Holiday time!

I love holiday decorating and twinkle lights.  I put them up in October/November for Diwali and often leave them up through Valentine's Day sometimes. 

I would probably put up the tree early too, but it is just such a nice family activity to do over Thanksgiving. 

Our tree is pretty classic, white lights, random melange of vintage, modern and kids crafts ornaments and red garland.

Avinash and Nandini both loved it this year.  She loved staring at the lights and trying to taste whatever ornament or bauble was within her grasp.

 How does my husband always take the best shots?  I'm pretty sure he has never even heard of bokeh photos.

Playing games are always more fun by the light of the Christmas tree.  I made that angel topper at my friend Emily's birthday party in middle school.

We have these very attractive concrete pillars littered around our apartment.  Usually they just lie bare and I try to pretend they don't exist.  I finally got together a bunch of Avi's pre-school art (and some that we did together at the Children's Museum) and hung it up here.  It really looks even better in person but all that glitter didn't photograph well.  I probably should have Ryan to shoot it instead.

We made baking soda/cornstarch ornaments one day.  I put Nandini's foot print on one and snowflakes on the other.  Avinash kept squishing and balling up his hand print, but luckily brought one home from the school. 

And here are the remnants of the candy bar from Avinash's candyland birthday party.  While the party was more rainbow-colored, I decided to go with a red and aqua holiday color scheme and weeded out the stuff that didn't belong.  Red and aqua are perfect for all of the holidays we celebrate in our family, Diwali, Hanukkah, and Christmas. I added those red, aqua and gold ornaments together in a fish bowl vase.  The paper ornaments from last year are strewn about and some placed on my new peacock serving tray.  Ignore the birthday flag banner still hanging up there. 

And, I thought I would also share this flower petal rangoli I made with a friend for Diwali.  It was a lot of fun to do and looked really special, even though it lacks that polished feel.  And, it was super hard keeping these two from wrecking, but somehow we managed.  They were totally uninterested in the bag of flower petals I gave them to play with.  I used a basic repeating geometric flower design.