Of Headings, Beheadings and Banners!

This banner took forever to come into being…

Back to the tagline of being quirky and eccentric, I decided not to mention that I can be very very stubborn too 🙂 So despite offers of help from Solilo and Indyeah, and my wanting desperately to ask Chirag too, 🙂 I had to try something on my own.

After making a few samples on gimp, tutored by Solilo, and Soumya, who got me so many pages of help from the net, I just went ahead, and came up finally with this very raw piece which has most of the things I hold dear, and notions too 🙂 That I am a confirmed blogaddict is now unveiled 🙂 Finally! I cannot begin to tell you what a relief it is, confessing that 🙂

So headed, beheaded, and a header is born. Period.

Disclaimer: in the coming weeks and months, weirder creations are bound to be born and shared here. Reader discretion is advised :D!

Thank you for your patience, in condoning this 🙂

Edited to add (on 2 April, 2010): Finally after an age, got back to gimp again 🙂 Have been overwhelmed and amazed at the creativity of the headers that some of you have, so I just did very very basic experimenting, to create a simple one 🙂 i like my first one best, but this one is really close to my heart: it is a slice of a paddy field, during the monsoon, just outside my parents’ house. Always feel refreshed when I look at them 🙂 Very rejuvenating! Here it is 🙂

Sols 🙂 Hope I got this one right too? 🙂

Edited to add, yet again, (on 10 April, 2019): Just keeping a record of my experiments with the headers. This one is taken at my parents’ place, during the monsoons, in between rains. My brother was trying out a new camera, and how well it got the drops of water, on the leaves of this decorative plant, in my mother’s garden. Edited and used clone tool to fill up gaps between leaves… and I think that is pretty obvious :D! Sols, do tell me, when time permits :P!!!

Edited to Add, 15 April, 2010:

It’s Vishu today! Happy Vishu, and in keeping with the new found enthusiasm, here is a new header, with the konna poovu… ie Cassia fistula flowers, also called the Indian Laburnum. It is generically different from the Laburnum, as such! This slice is taken from a picture, of a Konna tree, at my parents’ 🙂 Wishes, everyone 🙂

Edited to add: New Header 🙂 11 July, 2010

Am planning a series on the extended family. First of the lot 🙂 That’s Appu the Alsatian and Paru, three years ago, when she was adopted, having been abandoned outside our home 😦 . Took her in, and there was this instant bonding between the hulking one year old male Appu and her 🙂 This one has been taken the day she came home, playing with Appu 🙂 She’s grown up as his daughter 🙂 🙂 And even now, there is so much love between them 🙂 Just the opposite with her son, Kuttan and Appu, though 🙂 Boys, I tell you :D!! But, more on those stories later… 🙂

Edited to Add, on 11 August, 2010 : Another new header 🙂 🙂

Had been saving this one up, for a season I love. The Onam season 🙂 It is a collage of a few treasures of my home sights, and experiences. The Kaala Vela (oxen decorated and carried, in a harvest festival… just models of course), the deity in  the temple atop a hill, another fav. , the wonderful decades old stone deepasthambham, the stone lamp, a pookkalam we laid out last year, the ottamthullal, all placed at a place dear to me, the entrance to my parents’ home, in a little village, in Valluvanadan Keralam 🙂

Edited to Add, on 12 April, 2011: New Header 🙂

It’s going to be Vishu, in a couple of days. This time the kani will be in my house as the SB is going to be home 🙂 So we plucked a few Konna flowers from Mom’s tree here at her home… and as we did, I decided they were going to grace my blog as well! Seasons greetings everyone 🙂 May your new year be prosperous and bright!

Edited to Add, on 5 Sept, 2011: New Header 🙂

This is one of Malu’s, my cat, about whom I have written here. She  has gone to Cats heaven, and I do hope she’s fine there. Miss her terribly… 😦 God bless sweetheart!

Edited to Add, on 30 November, 2011

Yesterday, I changed the theme of the blog template to Twenty ten, from the Vigilance that I had started with. A change I had been wanting to make, since, like a long long time ago 🙂 And here it is… with multiple headers that change at random! Am having so much fun uploading from stuff I’ve been wanting to share! There is Appu, the Alsatian (my parents’), Chinnu, the black labrador (mine), a tiny white collared pup, playing with Appu, and later as a mum with her own brat… that is Paru (my parents’), a “naadan”, or what one would call a common mongrel??, who was abandoned at my parents’ doorstep, and later adopted by us, and finally her first born, Kuttan, the fully brown dog (mine!! all mine!!). There is one of the fantastic foursome, as I am fond of calling them…my kids and their cousins… inseparable lot 🙂 I hope you enjoy them as well!

A couple of pictures are of the “Kalam ezhuththu” or the drawing of a ritualistic emblem of the Goddess Durga’s bangle… all free hand drawing and coloured with natural powders and dyes. Taken at our family temple. There are also those taken by the younger brother when he visited Cairo on the way back from Russia; specifically ones taken of the pyramids and the Sphinx :), and a shot from his aircraft as they flew back, of the ocean and shore below.

More later 🙂

Edited to add, 14 July, 2013

A blog makeover was long in the offing, and just when I am knee deep in papers and home and house work, I decide to do it. Typical 🙂 The new theme is Twenty Thirteen, something that lends itself to a three column or two column page. With each individual blog post you still have your sidebars ( I missed that with the Twenty Eleven – but perversely, I did not want sidebars then, and now I do. 😛 ). Choosing pictures all over again, and rearranging the widgets. Well, it was fun, though it’s going to cost me some 🙂 My spine’s already paying :D! So mesa off for now, till the next makeover bug gets to me.