Lights, Flowers & Love – A simple Diwali Tale

This post is more of a retrospect of our Diwali 2021 celebration at home. It was rather small & simple this time just because, the weeks leading up to it was quite busy for us and we did not have time to get the home ready & decked up elaborately. My prep started just the day before and I was a little bit crazy to think that I would get marigold the evening before Diwali. Because what is Diwali without strings & strings of marigolds adorning your home?

Gah! Something had to be done, Diwali possibly can’t be like just any other day! I started by hunting around attic for string lights. Found 2! Gathered all the diyas, brought out the brass Kutthu Villakus and few other brass pieces. Fortunately, I had Zinnias and Cosmos from the garden, few marigolds from a friend’s garden and I ended up getting one flower bunch from store. And, on the way home, clipped few magnolia branches from the neighborhood park!

I was rather skeptical if I could pull it off and in a part guilty if I was doing enough to offer the festive vibe to my daughter. My plan was to set up an arrangement on the coffee table and a small snack buffet on the dining table.I started by draping the 2 string lights on the main window & door in the living room. The flowers and branches were arranged in an assortment of vases.

For the coffee table:

The key is to have varying heights for more visual interest. Flowers in vases of different sizes and a tray with floating flowers. I lit two tall brass lamps and I also had incense in my terracotta holder.

For the Sweets Buffet:

We thankfully had an assortment of sweets all credits to our parents! I simply arranged the sweets on different platters. But felt there were still lacking some color as my serving platters & sweets were all in varying degrees of brown. To counter this, I used banana leaf & paan leaves as a base! Simple & effective! Even in bigger parties, this could be used for individual servings. I used a small whole banana leaf on one plater and cut one up in the form of tear drops on another as I wanted the beautiful board to show as well! The betel leaves under the ladoos was my kid’s favorite! The fact that they were already in my backyard made them readily accessible.

The result looked wild & mismatched and not in theme with Diwali at all but none the less warm & inviting! For the most part I used things from around the home that I already use on a daily basis. Flowers & leaves from the backyard and did not need much preparation at all. Even though I did this was on a smaller scale, it can easily be scaled for a bigger party too.

Being away from India, I realized how wasteful it is using flowers that are imported just for a couple of days use. What about about the plastic ones on Amazon that if you buy once, it could be used year after year? But, what joy does it really bring though? Think that over, will you?

You could read more on hosting an eco friendly Diwali here and here.