Gowri- Ganesha habba

The Ganesha-Gowri habba at house was celebrated with much enthusiam and love this year. It was actually fun and it felt (after a long time) very close to the celebrations we had back home in India. I sure missed my parents and their way of celebrations, but sure, tried to make it as close to tradition and fun as possible.
The preparation for the festival ran almost week long. If I were to account for the planning part then it must have been 2 weeks prep work. it was decided that Gowri habba (festival) lunch would be at my place and the Ganesha habba lunch at my sisters'. But there was one hitch though, both of us were keen to have a Ganapathy mangalarathy (customary to invite friends in the evening and share prasad / gooddies) as is the tradition in Karnataka at our places. We both had separate set of invitees as well. So it was decided that after lunch at my sister's place we would rush back home and get ready for the evening gathering of friends and family.
Deciding on the food list for the mangalarathy and not trying to duplicate the items at both my sister's and my place was tasking and fun :) Finally it was decided that I'd make Mango rice, Mosaranna (curd rice / Bakala bhath), Usli (seasoned garbanzo beans), Benne bisuit(baked creamy cookie) and jelebi was to be bought from the stores.
I wanted to make this festival real special for my daughter as well, as she had shown real liking towards the traditional pooja. I wanted to take advantage of her keen interest and pass on some of the traditions my parents had passed on to me. We started the Gowri pooja at around 8:40am (our plan was to start at 8:00am but thanks to my sister, we got delayed). After the pooja, we had a delicious breakfast of Sorekayi Idli / Chutney. Then the men left for some last minute shopping for the next day after helping us with some lunch prep work. Cooking did not feel exhausting at all. (Perhaps because I was done with most of the veggie chopping and stuff the previous night). We had a scrumptious lunch and loads of fun discussing about our festival experiences back home.
The Ganesha pooja was a smooth sail as well. We performed the pooja on time and headed to my sister's place for lunch. The evening was fun with a lot of people visiting us. My daughter was more than excited to share her toys with her friends and play with them. It was amazing to see her come down the stairs every time one of her friends came by and lead them to her room upstairs. The only sad part was that I had prepared all the food items in excess. There was so much left at the end of the day.
All in all, it was an amazing experience and I thoroughly re-lived some of my moments in India.

ps: Its been a week since the festival and I have been lazy to blog these days ... but wanted to vent out all my excitement before it was gone :)