Festive Days - Part 1

The last few weeks have seen lots of festive celebrations and our home was no exception. It was special this year cos I could deck the little one up and get her involved(read help) in the preparations. The festive season as usual kicked off with Varalakshmi Vritham. Its not performed at my parents house and I have only started doing it after marriage. Last year, my in-laws were here and hence every pooja was performed as religiously as possible(within limitations of this country). And this year, I wanted to do at least half as much. Also we've a few friendly neighbours who are Indians and whose parents are here. So I could easily spot people for tamboolam.
Var Pooja fell on a friday and we started preparations on Thursday. We went home, cleaned and cleared on top of the chest of drawers(so it could not be reached by my little tot)and proceeded to decorate it with a kalasam and coconut. We subsititued local flowers/leaves which added a bit more colour. Then comes decorating Goddess Lakshmi which is my favorite part. We put a few necklaces and stuck them to the photo frame with turmeric and decorated the mandir area with more flowers. Food and prasdam form a very important part of any Hindu festival. Once I was done with the altar decoration, I went on to make carrot halwa that night. Woke up early next morning to make the actual prasam of kadala sundal and sarkarai pongal.
We wanted even number of dishes, so made a quick cucumber kosambri for prasadam. We then assembled for pooja and performed aarthi and neviedyam. Daddy them rushed off to work and I tried giving Diti some of the prasadam - halwa and pongal. The little girl prompty turned her head away and refused to eat anything sweet. So I fed her usual breakfast, sulked about her dislike for sweets to my mother and left for work that morning. In the evening, we had invited our neighbours(Indians from the friendly state of Karnataka) for tamboolam. The aunty was a classical singer who sang a beautiful song on Varalakshmi and we had a good time chatting for a while. The little girl was dressed in pattu pavadai and she looked so adorable.

The next day was raksha bandan or avani avittam as we call it. Basically men change their sacred thread and recite the 'Gayatri mantram'. The function itself was very simple with Prashanth doing the pooja and we simply sat around. The little girl enjoyed herself and learnt to do the namaskaram just as we do it and enjoys doing it ever so often at various places as desired.
Part 2 - Janmashtami celebrations & pics coming up soon