Fun Ok Please: Something interesting for your little ones

I had mentioned it in one of my earlier posts about an Indian kids content website where I had landed up just by chance. After browsing through few pages, I decided to give their iPad app a try and man did I like it? Oh yes, a lot! Loved the freshness of the content so much that ordered some of their books as well and I wasn’t disappointed at all. Content was indeed interesting with appealing illustrations.

I’m speaking of “Fun OK Please”, a new age children’s book publishers based out of Mumbai. They focus on contemporary Indian content for children in the age group of 3-10 years and offer stories set in modern context. Relatable characters, practical messages and their made for India philosophy are some of their key differentiators which attracted a mom like me to check out their whole collection for my little one. I read four books from their 'Toto and Pattu' series and absolutely loved it. 

Toto’s stories are all about adventure and having fun while also solving problems and helping others. Toto is a lovable, cheeky little autorickshaw who lives in Mumbai with his driver Pattu. Toto, by character is brave, kind and a do-gooder. He loves to help others and make new friends. Involving people, animals, vehicles and objects, Toto’s stories aim at building character and developing positive self esteem in children.

What I loved about this series:

• Unlike the typical bedtime stories or fairytales, Toto stories are set in real cities with a backdrop of our day-to-day lives.
• Messages are practical and pertinent to current generation kids. Morals taught are not preachy but realistic with an added punch of fun.
• Problems addressed are more of what kids face in their regular lives like hazards of watching TV continuously or repercussion of feelings like jealousy and insecurity amongst friends.
• Presentation is interesting with rich visuals that will appeal to younger kids for sure.
• Each book comes with an activity section at the end making the books more engaging and fun for kids.

In nutshell, Toto series is all about being “practical yet fun” and “interesting yet informative” at the same time. It’s something that I surely look forward to offering it to my little one when he grows up. As of now also, he loves listening to the Toto song on iPad app. So, all you parents looking out for some good Indian kiddie content, do check out this collection by Fun Ok Please. Two of my friends have already bought the series and their kids loved it! 

You can check more about them at their site or on their Facebook page.

B’day and Cocktail

A big thanks to all my blogger friends who remembered to wish me last week. It's surprising, how we started to interact with each other in virtual world but now some of us are such good friends in real world too.

This b’day was indeed very special to me. After all, it was my first b’day as "Mumma" and that's what my b'day cake read :-). Though the little one is too young to wish me in words but his cute little activities whole day were sufficient enough to make me feel special and happy about the day. And the funniest part of the day has to be the way I got my first “Happy B'day Mom” card. It was not given by him rather snatched from him and that too with full force! After the cake was cut, N gave a card to the little one asking him to give it to me. Card was quite colorful and the moment he got this vibrant piece in his hands, he crushed it and put it in his mouth within seconds. Yes he has got something for papers, whenever he spots one, even the tinniest of pieces, he pounces on it with devilish gleam in his eyes and immediately stuffs it in his mouth.  The card also met the same fate. After some good amount of struggle we finally took it out of his mouth and hand. So, the card was literally snatched by me and it came to me all wet and crumbled and torn…ha ha ha, quite a b’day wish it was, sort of self claimed and forced.

As part of b’day celebration, I finally got to watch a movie. Oh yay, after more than five months I visited a multiplex. Now those who know me or have been reading me for long know my love for movies. From five movies a month, now my movie watching stats has reduced to a movie after five months. And I thought I would love any movie when I’m getting to watch one after these many days. But how wrong I was! Cocktail was quite a mediocre rather a disaster so to say. Still wondering what exactly they were trying to show esp. when you know that the movie has been made by someone like Homi Adjania of 'Being Cyrus' fame. So, what did one get out of this movie?

• That men like to have all the fun with the hot chick and then make the seedhi-sadhi, puja-path wali as their final pick!

That there are still some men in this world who use one-liners (that too such cheesy ones) to hit on women.

That you go to whichever part of the globe but if you are an Indian woman, you will be only considered a marriage material if you wear salwar kameez and do stuffs like laundry, cooking etc.

That… well this list can go on and on and on…

And how much so ever hard Saif tries he still can’t justify this ‘cool dude with all hot women in my pocket’ kinda look anymore. Even if you decide to ignore those wrinkles and horrible dialogue delivery, still he cannot and should not do such roles that advertise his age so loudly and desperately. Ufff overall an absolutely pathetic movie which I could have easily ignored! Not even worth watching on television I think.  

Did you watch this movie and how has been your reaction to it? 

Chalo time to log off for now, will be back with my next post soon.

My Guest Post on "India Inspired Designs"

Hello people, what's up? Hope you all had a good weekend. This week offered its own excitement and challenges to me. Excitement as little one is six month old now, that means we also started with some solids apart from milk and challenging as never ever I imagined that introducing new food to baby was going to be this tough a task! I mean really I don't have words to describe the effort and patience required for this. 

A detailed post will surely come up on this :-), for now please check out my new guest post titled "Indian Inspired Designs" on Curating Fashion blog. Curating Fashion is an online journal for the Design Museum London website. For more information, you can check out their blog here.

Bbye for now, will be back with my next post soon.