Monarch Butterfly Wings Costume

Monarch Butterfly Cardboard Wings

The 69th Independence Day celebrations at our apartment hosted a fancy dress competition. I decided on a monarch butterfly costume for Nila(my 2 year old daughter) as she really likes butterflies and she used to flap her arms and say the words"Fly, fly, butterfly". Also, the butterfly costume is easy to make compared to other costumes ;)

After a failed attempt at making monarch butterfly wings from a black garbage bag by painting orange streaks(the painted area felt sticky), I finally went with the cardboard butterfly wings which was actually a backup costume.

Here is how the back side looks.

And the front side(excuse the messy ribbons),

I cut the butterfly wings from a used cardboard box.Black, white and orange and vermilion acrylic colors were used to create the vibrant wing design. To support the wings to her body, I used a harness style support made from black ribbon. I made two slits on the upper part and two slits on the lower part through which I slid the ribbon to make an "X" at the chest and secured it with a bow tie at the back.

I twisted the black pipe cleaners and wound them on a hairband to resemble antenna.

She really enjoyed flying(???) as a butterfly with her monarch butterfly wings.

Numbers 11-20 Printable

Numbers 11-20

A brightly colored chart that can help toddlers learn the numbers 11 to 20. You can teach them counting using these white dots alongside each corresponding number.

Download Numbers 11-20

Numbers 11-20 by Abhinaya Krishnadhas is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Shapes Printable

Shapes

This is a simple printable featuring few shapes like Circle, Oval, Triangle, Square, Rectangle, Pentagon, Hexagon, Star, Heart, Crescent, Cross,Arrow, Diamond, Pie, Trapezoid, Parallelogram, Octagon, Semi-Circle and Decagon.

Print this colorful shapes chart to teach shapes to the little ones. You can laminate the print for more durability.

Download Shapes

Shapes by Abhinaya Krishnadhas is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Birthday Decor

Nila's 2nd Birthday Decor

It was a blue, silver and black color themed birthday for my two year old daughter Nila. I used only three colors because I wanted the theme to be simple yet attractive. We didn't have any guests though, as she is only two years old and would have felt overwhelmed with the crowd.

The presents were all wrapped in different colored papers tied up with a silver ribbon.

• Pom-Poms made from grey and black tissue papers were hung from the ceiling using silver ribbon. 

• Paper fans made from silver and black colored paper. 

• Giant Number 2 made from blue crepe paper circles modeled into a flower like pattern and glued onto a thick blue sheet cut in the shape of number "2".

• Glitter Foam Alphabets which I had purchased from the Itsy Bitsy store. I stuck silver and black horizontal striped paper to the lower half of each letter.

• Party hats were made from black chart paper and decorated with fringed blue crepe paper, blue stones and blue hued stars. I used the party hat template from Oh Happy day.

• Paper flower headbands were made from colored crepe paper, green ribbon and green pipe cleaners. 

The wall decoration was inspired from Avanti Morocha's Coffee Filter Number post. I used blue crepe paper instead of coffee filters for the giant number.

The table cloth was just an old black cloth to which I stuck silver stars.

Garbage disposal in Bangalore

Image Source: Wikipedia

I have been ignorant about the garbage disposal system in Bangalore And I had been dumping my household waste without segregating them. I came across few resources that really enlightened me about garbage segregation in Bangalore . I am sharing them here with few pictures for all of you who wish for a cleaner earth.

Here the links to the resources that helped me to know about garbage segregation in Bangalore.

Bangalore Citizen Matters- Solid Waste Management Guidelines - This is an wonderful article with FAQs. I found it to be very helpful.

Indian Household Wastes - Categories and their management - This BBMP issued PDF file has detailed information on dry wet waste segregation.

Here is a simple illustrated chart by Swachha which can be helpful to understand dry waste segregation better.

Image Souce: India Water portal

Dry Wet waste segregation:

Lots of plastics ( like milk covers, milk cartons, oil covers, restaurant take out covers, plastic wrap, etc..,) have been disposed along with wet waste because they are wet. Here are some pictures which could help you to turn these wet plastic waste to dry waste, so that it can be effectively recycled.

a) I am using a knife to cut all the sides of the cover. You can use scissors too.

b) Scrub the cover using soap to remove the greasiness.

c) Wash it water and let it dry.

You can follow the above steps for cleaning other wet plastics too. Below are the pictures of few such recycled plastics and other materials.

1. Dosa/Idli batter cover

2. Restaurant take away covers

3. Yogurt/Curd cups

4. Snacks packet

5. Plastic wrap

You can leave these to dry on your window like this or whatever way possible.

You can store these dry wastes for a week or so until the bin is full and then you can hand over these separately as dry waste to the garbage collectors.

Sanitary waste segregation:

Blood, mucus or saliva stained cotton, swabs, tissues, sanitary napkins, baby diapers, adult diapers etc..,(anything that might contain germs) can be placed in a paper bag marked with a big red "X". This can be handed over to the garbage collectors separately.

Here's a picture of sanitary waste disposal

I will try to add few more explanatory pictures. Please feel free to ask me about any kind of waste segregation. I will be happy to learn from you too.