This Festival is celebrated for 9 days where we arrange Indian dolls and its a religious function. To go along with the Indian dolls, we had a tradition (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 son was super excited this year and built a farm 2 years ago and so this time he wanted to do something. I wanted to make my 4 year old daughter participate so I did a Rangoli design on a white card stock and took her help in painting the design and used her help to stick the flowers stickers.
I have explained the whole things as 3 projects, the center (Navarathri dolls), the Rangoli (as you see on the left side ) and World Racers Event (as you see on the right).
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 project - In India we draw designs (Rangoli) on the floor and use color powder and color them. Here, I drew a Rangoli design on the White Card Stock, and My daughter and me painted the design with acrylic paints and drew a border with red sketch pen. My daughter chose the colors for the Rangoli and also in buying the artificial flower to decorate the rangoli and fill the white area.
World Racers Event - called by my Son as a project. He used 2 Lego boats called the "world racers". He built those Legos all by himself. He created a race event between the 2 boats he had done with Lego's and people have come to watch the final race event. I've just explained his project in 5 parts.
Part 1 of the project - He used two shiny glitter blue card stock paper to make it look like water and placed the 2 boats. With Lego's he built the deck and placed it on the side. He also used a 3rd boat from his regular Lego's and used it as a Police boat on water. To surround the water we put wooden fence (we used clay and put the wooden fence on the clay so it stands).Part 2 was to build a road and parking lots. So in front you will see a gray card stock which he used to build the road and yellow lines to create a 2 way traffic. The road goes inside the building where the event takes place into the parking lot. The parking lot was with black card stock and he drew white lines to divide the car space. He added some orange Lego cones to indicate the exit.
Part 3 was to build the ticket counter, Lego store and restroom. So we put the artificial grass (for the lawn) , and created a path way for people to walk to the seating area. First on the right hand side we put a box and created a ticket counter and a Lego Store. Then we used another box and built a restroom. On the right hand side, you will notice a canvas painted by my Son (as one of his summer activities). The painting created a scene of lot of buildings (movie theater , bank, hotel ..etc) so we used this to create a background effect. The painting also had a gray road which we connected to the road we built so it was all connected.
Part 4 - was to create an audience. For this my Son he folded black card stock to build stairs where people can be seated. He put a green big card stock at the back wall and stuck the stairs to it and placed the other end to another box. He built a Lego stairs and connected to this box so people can climb to it. For people he drew people and colored them and I helped him sticking it on the stairs.
Part 5 - The Green board was completed by adding Lights, score board (this was my part as he was in school and I had to finish all this in one day). He had colored the "welcome sign board" which I stuck it in the middle of the green board and I wrote the 2 team names "Red skin vs Great white sharks".
To make it complete we put the fence (with tooth picks) on the audience stand, and also near the parking lot, also added some pots (with flower bush) to decorate the empty area.
The idea came from him and he took my help. This project looks hard but was very easy and simple. The major parts were done when he had a holiday one day. Then another day to arrange everything.
Indeed started of with a small thing, but by doing all this our hearts our filled with true satisfaction and felt like a grand one.
