Party Henna

To me henna is celebration itself and Eid feels incomplete without it. Three of the guests at our Eid party could apply henna, so we asked them nicely and they found themselves spending most of the evening decorating the hands of the rest of our guests. I mentioned earlier that my sister had afound a henna paste that her friend tells her takes 10 minutes to turn deep red and lasts up to two weeks. Well the henna was called Al-Qamar (a picture is here and you can this online, htough it's about £1 in local Indian shops) and it deed indeed stain virtually immediately. I don't know if it will last more than a few days but it's brilliant if you don't have much time to leave your henna on (kind of an emergency henna I suppose). A word of warning though, if you have sensitive skin, I would suggest a patch test as a few people could feel tingling and this is not pure henna. In identally Umm Mustapha just had a post up about henna.

I love this design on my best freinds hand mash'Allah, it looks like she is wearing jewellery.

Little Lady got in on the act too and got both hands done on both sides. She want's to be a henna lady when she grows up (as well as a shop-lady, a make-up lady and a doctor - and a mummy)

Aside from the henna we kept ourselves and the children occupied with pass the parcel and musical chairs (using this nasheed which I like). We decide to keep childrens and adults games seperate as there was every chance that one of the kids would get squashed/stepped on/injured/sat on as the grown-ups games get silly and sometimes aggressive. (If you thought that hijabi's letting their hair down looks genteel, forget it).

One of the guests came up with an idea for a game and we agreed to award a prize to whoever could display the best talent. We had a cartwheel, a back-flip, a wandering eye (!) and belly-dancing from my bestest friend and her sister, of course the bellydancer won (no favouritism - honest).