PROJECT TULASI

 My idea of a Good traditional  Hindu home is
1) A house  that welcomes with a nice Rangoli/muggu in front of the house
2)A house that always looks bright with lights and deepams
3) A nice Pooja room with deeparadhana everyday
4)A House with Tulasi Kota with a healthy Tulasi in it.

After marriage, I moved to overseas with my Husband. I lived in USA for few years and am currently residing in Australia. I always dreamt of maintaining a Good traditional telugu home with all the above mentioned points. However, finding a nice Tulasi kota to have in my home was a very difficult task. Here in Australia, with  Indian population being so scarce, finding a readymade Tulasi Kota is just as good as searching for water in desert :-)) It is also equally difficult to get it from India as the customs would object importing any soil or related products from foriegn countries :-((

We bought a new Home in Perth and ever since we moved to the new home,everytime I see our empty backyard waiting for us to start some gardening work,my desire to have a tulasi kota grew stronger and stronger. One day, I saw a Tulasi kota similar looking plant pedestial in one of the shops. when I enquired the price, it was around $450 which is very expensive. Then an idea sprung in my mind and i thought why not we buy plant pedestials and convert it as a tulasi kota. I immediately told this idea to my husband who is equally passionate and we started searching for some nice plant pedestials. Also while I was browsing online, I found an excellent blog where a Tulasi Kota was decorated very artistically.
http://achampetraj.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/blog-post.html
I got inspired by his blog and purchased color paints, some art work etc and finally with my Husbands help..created a beautiful Tulasi Kota.

we had to buy 2 different pots from Bunnings (our local store). The first pedestial luckily has similar shape to tulasi kota but has no hole in it to plant the Tulasi. Hence we bought another pot to place on top of it for the plant.








We first painted the pots with outdoor grey color coat and then painted with Yellow color. It required 2-3 recoats to get the desired color. Then we wanted to paint some nice red and green flowers. So after extensive search, we were able to find flower stensils in Spot light ( local arts & crafts shop) and then painted our yellow pots with nice red flowers Slowly the work began to seem more and more interesting for both of us and we were eagerly waiting for the final outcome.

 

 

Now I wanted to paint Aum or swastik on the empty space of these pot but was hesitant to do hand painting. Again, thanks to my hubby who gave an excellent idea! He took print out of all the required symbols, laminated it and cut it as required to make it as a stensil. Then using them as Stensils, we

painted all the symbols.

 

 

We also took print out of Godess Lakshmi and laminated it so that it is protected from outside weather and then did final decorations with beads, stickers and glitter powder. It really looked Amazing and way gorgeous than I imagined.

 

So, this whole Project took approximately around 3 weeks time and finally we got some nice Tulasi plants from Bunnings and planted them on June 15th 2014.Now I am happily putting deepam near Tulasi Kota every Friday and enjoying the blessings of Godess Lakshmi on our family.