Printable Freebie | Free April Wallpapers

I'm back with another freebie. I'd decided to create a free wallpaper for you guys every month since February, but I couldn't make it for March as I was super busy. However, I'm gonna try my best to stick with my plan, and here's April's! :)

Since the two most important highlights of April are Easter and Earth Day, I decided to create the wallpaper this way. 

Speaking of Earth Day, Earth Hour is only in two days which is March 28th, 8:30 to 9:30 local time. Please don't forget to turn all your lights off for only an hour to help change the climate. PLEASE!

There is a full pack which contains two versions of the wallpaper above for different iPhone sizes, the iPad and the desktop - 8 free items which you can download HERE.

Click here if you're new.

I hope you like the wallpapers and I wish you all a very lovely spring!

♥

Noushin

Nowruz Cupcakes

These are the cupcakes I made and decorated for the Persian New Year, Nowruz.

The two little fellas in the back are Amoo Nowruz and Haji Firouz.

They're plain cupcakes with orange flavor. If you'd like to make yourself some, here's how to:

This recipe makes 12 small cupcakes.

The ingredients:

♥ 2 eggs

♥ 1 cup flour

♥ 1/2 cup sugar

♥ 1/2 cup vegetable oil

♥ 1/3 cup yogurt

♥ 1 teaspoon baking powder

♥ 1/2 teaspoon orange zest

Preheat your oven to 180ºC (350ºF).

1. Sift the flour and the baking powder together twice.

2. Beat the eggs until they turn pale and fluffy.

3. Add in the sugar and beat until it's fully dissolved.

4. Add the oil and the yogurt together and beat for one to two minutes.

5. Add the orange zest and beat until it's distributed well in the mixture.

6. Now's the tricky part! Add in the flour in three parts, stirring it well and gently with a spatula every time. After the third part, your mixture will get a lot less runnier and will be a bit paste-like.

7. Fill 2/3 of each cupcake case with the mixture, make an X mark on top of each using your knife, and pop them in the oven to bake for 25-30 minutes.

Ta-dah!

For the icing, I used sweetened cream and green edible pearls. Then I sprinkled edible green glitter on top. I don't know if you can see the glitter in the pictures... And the toppers are hand-drawn by me.

Oh and the green cupcake stand is a DIY made by yours truly out of some cardboard and a folder binding stick! I went with a green theme for our Haft Seen as you can see in the previous post, so the cupcakes AND the stand had to be green too, even though there was no room left for the cupcakes on our Haft Seen table! I had to put them on another table in another corner of the living room.

This was my 55th blog post by the way! Yay!

♥

Noushin

Happy Persian New Year! | نوروز و سال نو مبارک!

I've been crazy busy lately getting ready for the New Year. But the holidays have finally begun; all the shopping, spring cleaning, and preparations are done and I can blog more often now! :)

As promised, here is my Haft Seen! Haft Seen (or the Seven S's) is a table setting, as shown in the pictures, that holds seven objects. The name of each object starts with the /s/ sound (the letter "Seen") in Farsi. Every one of the objects symbolizes a beautiful meaning.

The Haft Seen items are:

1. Sabzeh (سبزه) - wheat, barley, mung bean or lentil sprouts growing in a dish - symbolizing rebirth
2. Samanu (سمنو) - sweet pudding made from wheat germ - symbolizing affluence
3. Senjed (سنجد) - dried oleaster Wild Olive fruit - symbolizing love
4. Seer (سیر) - garlic - symbolizing medicine
5. Seeb (سیب) - apple - symbolizing beauty and health
6. Somāq (سماق) - sumac fruit - symbolizing (the color of) sunrise
7. Serkeh (سرکه) - vinegar - symbolizing old-age and patience

The other items we include in our Haft Seens are Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, gold fish, a mirror, candles, painted eggs (my last post was fully dedicated to the eggs I made for this year), hyacinth, Persian pastry, sweets, nuts and some other optional items.

I wish all Persians across the globe and everyone else who celebrates Nowruz a very happy New Year 1394, and all the happiness in the world. May this year be the best we've had yet.

♥

Noushin

Prepping for the Persian New Year | Norouz

The Persian New Year, or Norouz as we call it is starting in 10 days and I'm excitedly looking forward to it. Norouz means 'a new day', and I think we Persians have the most beautiful way and customs of celebrating a new year, not to mention we have chosen the most beautiful day out of 365 to set as the beginning of the year! No prejudice or anything; read on and you'll admit it too! Ha ha! New Year's Day is on spring equinox (how meaningful? *coughs*) when the Earth is reborn, trees blossom, plants sprout, birds sore and fly... Okay, enough poetry. Moving on to the traditions.

The tradition for the moment the Earth finishes a full spin around the sun (which is gonna be on Friday, March 20 at 10:45:11 PM GMT this year) is that the whole family, dressed up in new clothes, sit around the Haft Seen (which is a table setting that holds seven objects -each symbolizing a beautiful meaning [I'll do a complete blog post on Haft Seen] that start with the /s/ sound in Farsi), read poems of Hafez or Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, wish everyone well and celebrate the new year.

Enough rambling now. Let's get to the point of this blog post! One of the things we have on the Haft Seen, is colored eggs. This year (1394) is the year of the goat, so the eggs I made are a male and a female goat and green themed ones. I only wish I had photographed/filmed the way I did these eggs as I think some of them might come in handy for those of you who celebrate Easter. But I can give a few tips here:

1. I made the goats out of hot glue. After emptying the egg, I drew the pattern of the body of the goat (just the body - without the head), and then filled the pattern with hot glue. 

2. Then I drew the shape of its head on a flat cold surface and when it hardened, I detached it from the surface and glued it on the body.

3. For the horns, I dipped two curved short wire pieces in hot glue and once the glue was cold, I glued the horns behind the head. 

4. I painted the eggs green, and the goats white (with Pelikan watercolor; God it was so tough) and that was it.

4.1 The girlie goatie's dress is just pieces of red ribbon.

*YOU CAN FOLLOW THIS PROCEDURE TO MAKE EASTER BUNNIES ON YOUR EGGS.

Picture number 4 above has two needle felted hearts made by yours truly. I am obsessed with this art, and I cannot wait for the holidays to spend more time on it.

If you'd like any tips on how to make the eggs, feel free to ask me in the comments.

Last but not least, I "invented" these egg holders the other day and I'm so happy with the result! You only need 3 paper clips and some hot glue or super glue. They are flexible for any egg size and more importantly they're so convenient and light weight.

What a long blog post! I can't wait to share my Haft Seen here soon which I think is gonna make an even longer post! Ha ha!

♥

Noushin

DIY IceBlue Candle

I'm BACK! I have been so busy recently, I haven't even been able to check the stats on my blog! I missed blogging so much!

Do you remember the DIY candle jar I did a while ago? I decided to fill it up with some leftover candles and I went with a blue/iceblue theme. I had some dark blue tea lights, and a pale blue/gray candle, and some  half burned sky blue sparrow candles. I melted them in the said color order in a pan over steam, poured them in the jar, waited for each layer to solidate and then added the next layer. Oh I also stirred in some glitter while the wax was still liquid.

I'm really happy with how it turned out! 

♥

Noushin