Saturday, May 28, 2016

Celebrating #WorldInteriorsDay with Ruchi Gupte & Asian Paints

It's World Interiors Day on 28th May 2016 and Asian Paints invited a few bloggers to their Colours store in Mumbai.

The colours store is a beautiful place that you definitely must explore if you're redoing your home (if you're a creative person, you can visit nonetheless). Read more about the store here.

We had Ruchi Gupte, a production designer from the industry, as our guest speaker for the day. She's worked on movies like Taare Zameen Par, Aisha, Khoobsurat, Lunchbox etc.


She enlightened us with the theme for this year's World Interiors Day I.e. Intelligence in interiors. It's very apt, since everyone wants the use of technology everywhere. She started off by telling us about all the thought, homework and research that goes behind creating each set and different scenes in a movie.

Did you know that the props and sets are inspired by the characters personality traits and back story. They pick some personality traits of the character (and not the actor) and make a colour palette for them and apply in their sets, clothing, accessories etc. For instance, Sonam Kapoor with whom she's happened to do two films, goes well with purple and variants like lilac.


She also told us how they make sure each room has a totally different paint colour to make them look entirely different. Otherwise, usually in our homes we have the same or similar colours in every room. On this note, she did tell us that we're the characters or heroes of our own life. Infact they get inspired by real life homes and people all the time, for their movies.

She also gave a quick tip that throw out all the horrible white lights that make your dark circles look worse, and invest in yellow lighting that make colours look beautiful and add warmth to the house.
After this, there was a quick session where different boxes contained furniture, wall, colour, fabric inspirations and we had to select what we like and put together a mood board. 


It was fun to put this together and this is was final outcome -


For the living room I went with geometrical shapes which are quite contemporary. As far as the colour goes, I kept it neutral to genders as the living room is a space for everyone! Once my new home is ready, I just cannot wait to get on with the painting and decor part of it.

There were some snacks and we were sent off with a goodie bag that had DIY wall art. I got an Eiffel Tower themed one and I cannot wait to try my hands on painting it! Will update it on the blog once it's done. Thank you Asian Paints, for having us over.

About Asian Paints
Since its foundation in 1942, Asian Paints has come a long way to become India’s largest and Asia’s third largest paint company, with a turnover of Rs. 141.83 billion. Asian Paints operates in 19 countries and has 26 paint manufacturing facilities in the world servicing consumers in over 65 countries. Asian Paints has always been a leader in the paint industry, pushing new concepts in India like Colour Idea Stores, Ezycolour services like Home Solutions & Colour Consultancy and Colour Next trend forecasting.

Thursday, May 19, 2016

Buying the perfect gift for a mom-to-be and new born daughter!

I had my kiddo when I was 25 years old, and that is a young age for today’s time and age. Hence, now that my kiddo is almost 2 years old, it’s the time when my friends have started getting married or having babies.

One of my close buddies, a friend from college, recently gave birth to a healthy and gorgeous baby girl. The mother, my friend herself is a very pretty woman! We stay close by so I was thrilled that my kiddo now has a friend to play with. I’ve to go to meet her once she’s discharged from the hospital, and was wondering what to buy as gifts.

The best thing about having a baby girl is all the adorable and cute dresses for girls out there. Frilly frocks, short skirts, in-fact you even get jumpsuits and all the latest trends for the fashionista baby! I started browsing the vast variety of outfits on Myntra and it got so confusing what to buy and what not. In-fact I ended up ordering 2-3 outfits and also a little bummed that I wouldn’t be ever able to play dress-up with my baby boy (but maybe I’ll try).


 Photo Caption: Aren’t these dresses from Mothercare absolutely adorbs!

Now that this was sorted, I thought, we always just take something for the baby, why not something for the new mom? She totally deserved to be pampered even after giving birth to her kid, right? Now my friend absolutely loves accessorizing so I thought maybe I’ll buy something cool for her. I kept in mind that it shouldn’t be something she wouldn’t be able to wear because it would irritate the baby or something with beads etc if the baby tugs at, breaks in a go (Been there, done that). I picked up a quaint choker-necklace for her, while browsing jewellery online I also stumbled upon this creative “make your own” necklace that reminded of the old times when we used to get beaded key-chains/bracelets made. My friend is a very creative person herself and loves art and craft (her paintings are marvelous I tell you), so I ordered this too. She can have her baby’s name in it, or anything else she likes. I’m almost in the mind to order this for myself too.

  


 Photo Caption: Which one do you like?

I’m pretty sure my order will get delivered by the time my friend (who’s also delivered, pun intended) is back to her home! I’m pretty certain she’ll love the stuff (or else there always is free returns, hassle-free) but I doubt I’ll need to.

Monday, May 9, 2016

The all new Vodafone U!

I got invited to Hard Rock Cafe this Friday for a surprise event by Vodafone. Since I love being at HRC and I definitely do want to keep the FUN, ALWAYS ON, I was there!


Usually these launch events get very sales/product orientated, with a lot of boredom and a li'l bit of fun, but Vodafone inverted the proportion with a li'l bit of product knowledge and a lot of fun! The event was kicked off by Sandeep Kataria launching the new plan (and app) called Vodafone U - meant for the millennials, the plan has really cool (and fun) features.
Fun takes centre-stage with Vodafone U which will be offered in two packs – one for first time pack users and the other as Recharge packs – both available in Large and Small variants suited to different needs.

Vodafone U lets you splurge lots of data without burning a hole in your pocket. It brings you closer to your best buddies with happy call rates. And it’s also gets the party started anytime, anywhere with free music downloads. Because for Vodafone U, the centre of universe is quite literally, you.


And after this announcement the party got started with celebrated YouTubers Kanan Gill, The Viral Fever & Raftaar! They first played this new song created by all of them and then performed live and there were some witty Q&A's after that. Check out the cool track here:

Some of the Fun Features for U include:

o   Data Allowance: Now keep surfing day and night at leisure. Get a separate night allowance so that you don’t have to miss out on single moment of fun.
o   3 Buddy Lifelines: Don’t skip the fun details of every story you’ve got to share with your best buds. Call 3 of your closest friends at a special call rate of 20p/min
o   Data Loan: Has running short of data forced you to cut corners. Breathe Easy with data loan of 60MB of 3G/4G for 2 days, when you need it the most.
o   Music, always on: Uplift your mood or tend to a broken heart with just the right kind of music. Get unlimited free music downloads for 2 months.

The Data Loan is a brilliant initiative, after all we live in the Roti, Kapda, Makaan & Internet generation; where without internet we feel pretty left out. I am definitely going to buy the pack on my prepaid Vodafone card, specially because of the free music download for 2 months which is a limited period launch offer! Fun, always on!