Uttarayan, also called Makar Sankranti, is the festival of kites and is celebrated on January 14.  Some portions of south India celebrate it as Pongal, a harvest festival.  In a nutshell, Uttarayan is the day when the sun begins to travel northward and winter’s end approaches (check out this article that explains it).  In addition to flying kites, another Makar Sankranti tradition is to make ladus using tal (sesame seeds) or mamra (puffed rice) and gol (jaggery), and to hide coins inside them.

My favorite Makar Sankranti memory is of the only one that I spent in India.  My cousins, brother, and I (all between 6 and 10 years old at the time) snuck into the family storage room and got into the ladu container.  We broke open and ate most of the many ladus that our mothers had made for the family, pocketing the coins to spend on balloons from a street vendor and to rent bikes for the afternoon.

Generally, my family’s India visits took place in December, so even though we weren’t in India for any other Makar Sankrantis, we were able to experience early kite flying with my many cousins.  In Mumbai, where many people live in multistory apartment buildings, the kids all climb up to the building terraces and fly kites together in the afternoon and early evening.  Some even cut each other’s kites down using their kite strings, which were coated in very finely ground glass.  Only the older kids used this kind of string because it tends to cut into the fingers as well (ouch!).  The kids compete to see whose kite will stay up the longest without being cut down.  In the book The Kite Runner, the narrator describes the same kind of kite flying competition in Afghanistan.

Some of the kites I saw in India were really amazing.  Many were made from upcycled biscuit (cookie) wrappers and other waste materials.  I always felt like India was way ahead of the curve when it came to upcycling, recycling, and creating products from natural materials (Did you ever eat out of those disposable leaf plates?  How cool were those!).

In honor of Makar Sankranti, I’m posting this “how to make a kite” tutorial from TLC Family.  It doesn’t look like these kites can fly but would be a fun indoor activity to pass the dreary winter days and teach your kids about Makar Sankranti:

http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/family/paper-kites.htm

Did you celebrate Makar Sankranti when you were growing up?  What are your favorite memories?

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So in this week’s post, I had planned to show you how to do a simple fingerpaint rangoli craft.  Out of homemade edible fingerpaint, no less.

First, some background.

Rangolis are intricate designs that women make on their floors or outside their doorways during Hindu festivals.  When I was growing up, every year my best friend and I created rangolis in the entryway of my parents’ house during Divali.  Divali will be here in a few weeks, and what better way to introduce my son to Divali than with a fun craft?

I had planned to adapt something like this:

 (photo credit: http://maplewoodlibraryprograms.blogspot.com/2011/07/rangoli-for-adults.html)

for I Am Baby, an infant, by dipping his fingers into the paint and helping him to stamp out a symmetrical design. (Yes, I’m trying to get my infant to do crafts.  No I’m not a tiger mom.). 

So, I cooked up the fingerpaints using this recipe.  It made a TON.  If you’re going to try this with one child, I’d recommend making a 1/4 batch.

I created some rich, saturated colors by using 1.5 tablespoons of edible fingerpaint base and several drops of food coloring.  I used an empty plastic egg carton to store the different paints, like so:

I even wiped out the egg carton with baby wipes so I Am Baby wouldn’t get salmonella.  (Because I knew I’d get the side-eye for making a baby do crafts.  I didn’t want to be a total pariah by getting him sick while doing crafts. While reusing an egg carton.  But at least I get points for recycling.).

I stripped I Am Baby down to his diaper, because I knew the food coloring would stain his clothes.  He grows so fast that he hasn’t “worn out” any of his clothes yet, so I didn’t have anything old to put him in.

So, we were all set to paint.  Then we hit the first obstacle.  The paint was too goopy and thick to adhere to the canvas that I had bought for the project.  So that went out the window.  Then I grabbed a piece of printer paper for him to paint on.

Second, my son can’t sit up yet (I know, I know.  There I was trying to make my son do crafts when we couldn’t even sit down to do them.  But stay with me here).  So I had to figure out how to get him to interact with the paint.  I finally put him on his belly and tried dipping his hand in the different colored paints and stamping them on a piece of computer paper.

He either didn’t get the concept or didn’t like having the paint on his hand.  At one point, he started crying when I put it on his hands.

Here’s what happened to the printer paper.  There was some painting and some chewing involved.  Oh, and sorry about the rudimentary Iammoms.com label.  I’m still working on my photo editing skills.

So, we cleaned up and decided to call it a day.

It was still a fun afternoon, and we got a lot of cute shots of I Am Baby with fingerpaint on his belly.  I hope that in a year or so, we can revisit this craft.

Have you had any art and craft debacles?  How are you planning to celebrate Divali?

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