Navarathri Festival 2012 - Sanfrancisco Bridge

Our Navarathri Festival which is celebrated for 9 days where we arrange Indian dolls and this festival is mainly to worship the 3 Goddesses (Durga, Lakshmi , Saraswathi). To go along with the Indian dolls, we had a tradition in my family  (when I was growing up) to build something and keep it for those 9 days. My whole Family used to participate in creating or building some theme and be excited with this event. My kids are equally excited as me to build something innovative, so its really fun to do with them.

This year kids helped me build this San Francisco Bridge project, mainly my Son's idea and and little participation from my daughter and me. I helped him build the San Francisco (a depict of Golden gate bridge) , along with his contribution was the football field and base ball field. My daughter helped us paint the buildings (buttermilk cartons to depict) and the trees and arrange the people and beans which you see. Detail explanation of this project is given below.

I have explained the whole things as 3 projects, the center (Navarathri dolls), the Rangoli (left hand side ) and San francisco bridge (right hand side)

Navarathri Festival - Rangoli (on left), Main dolls (on center), Bridge project (on the right).

1. Navarathri Dolls :- As you see in the center of the photo, is a stand. We have placed all the Indian Dolls used for this tradition. There are some important dolls which are a must, some are Indian Gods and some are Indian Dolls representing a story behind them. They are all arranged to fit in that shelf. Each year we buy one new doll to add to the shelf.

Rangoli and dolls

2. Rangoli :-
In India we draw designs (Rangoli) on the floor. This time I decided to try out this ready made Rangoli designs made with colorful stones. Each piece is individual, I made this pattern of a big flower on this white card stock.
 The dolls you see was made with paper, christmas  ribbons, wooden head. My sister sent me the wooden round head (which she got from a kit), and I used paper for the body, pipe strings for the hand, and Christmas ribbons for the dress. The body is done with paper, you make a cone and fix the wooden head, Then take the pipe string and tie it around the neck and cone and bring it out as the hand. Then using the Christmas Ribbon make the dress for the doll as shown.


3. San Francisco Building project :-

San Francisco Golden Gate bridge project.

This was My Son's idea to build the Golden Gate Bridge, and we started with that, but made it big project by adding the football field and base ball field, and connecting all the roads , with parking lots, few tall buildings.


The Bridge is done with popsicle sticks,  colored the bride red, added thin sticks to get the height and used a twine string to give the effect. Used black paper for the road and coming down and connecting them to the other road which you see around just to see they are all connected. The water is blue glitter cardstock, The plastic piece from the cookies we cut out the section where the cookies are placed and used them for boat. My son drew people sitting on the boat and a lego man as you can see. Around the water we used wooden blocks to block the water. You can see between the roads and the water  we used white kidney beans (lentil) to depict rocks or stones.

 In the Front, he built a base ball field by putting grass and fence. Then he drew picture of field on paper, drew pictures of the players, and we used tooth pick to make them stand on a clay to give the 3d affect. Similarly on the back left side is the football field he printed out the field on the computer and he drew players and made them stand. The people watching the football game was done as last years project and we are used them this year too. He just drew people and we made them sit with tape.

Side view of the project.

The trees were drawn by my daughter and we used tape to stick it to the wall. The buildings you see on the right are buttermilk cartons, she painted them purple, yellow and blue, I helped her cut the windows and we placed them there. She arranged all the beans as stones, she drew all the white lines on the roads and parking lot.  The buildings on the canvas on the extreme right was done by my Son few years ago and had buildings and road and we used it this time also.

Then both of them arranged all the cars we had on the roads and on the bridge. Turned out to be a big project than planned but everybody who were invited loved this project.