We had a wonderful start to the new year and the first event we had was DD's performance at Pongal Vizha hosted by Washington Tamil Sangam on Jan 27th.

There were 10 kids participating for a medley of 3 tamil songs. I was the primary person choreographing the dances and along with a few other parents helped the kids practice. It was a gruelling 2 months, I must say but the kids did wonderfully!

Here is a link to their performance. N is the second one from the right.
http://youtu.be/r0wccEnemyA

I really enjoyed creating the accessories for the girls.

Here is a photo of N's hair or "jadai". My daughter has short hair but we wanted all of them to look traditional. So a few of the moms came up with these ideas. We bought felt cloth from Michaels and made a pinnal. Then those white rose flowers were stitched on and gold ribbon was tied around this braid. We bought Disco balls and covered them with this felt cloth, stuck semi-precious stones on them to form a pattern or design and tied it all together with yarn to make a kunjalam at the end of the pinnal.Finally, we bought yellow and red roses from Walmart, and strung them together to form the "poo" at the top of the pinnal. We even made an oddiyaanam and nethi chutti from gold ribbon. We enjoyed every step of the process!