How to Design a Logo for your blog | Contest & Giveaway #SaturdayTutorials

by tinabasu November 26, 2016

written by tinabasu

Hello people. How is the Saturday morning treating you? This post was originally slated to get published last Saturday but I was down with a flu. For two days I felt like a patient napping through the day and surviving on hot soup, hot chocolates! I didn’t even open my laptop for a few days, but all that napping is making me crabby, so I guess I should be back at what I like to do – create wonderful things.

So what do we have for #SaturdayTutorials this week – *drumrolls *Your Custom Blog Logo – Shapes! Woot Woot. Are you excited? And there is a tiny contest and giveaway too at the end of the post. So wait for that.

Your blog is your brand, your blog is a part of you – your identity. It is always good to give identity to your blog as someone would give identity to a product. Human mind retains visual cues better and longer than just text. If it is me, I remember what I see more than what I hear or read. It is same for the identity of your blog.

Why do you Need a Logo?

Logo creates your image or brand identity – it represents you

Logo is one of the most powerful marketing tools for your blog – flaunt your logo in all your social media accounts

Logo enables you to claim ownership of your blog – when you and your blog (or service) is popular enough register your logo and get a Trade Mark.

Designing a Logo

There are many ‘logo-maker’ kind of sites out there where you can edit names and get your logo made for free. But none of them would be a custom made one. Which means two or more people can have the same graphic as their logo with may be some different text. Would you want that for your logo? Definitely NO.

Simple colors, simple fonts, simple elements goes a long way. What you need to ask yourself first is how you want your blog to be known? Are you a woman blogger who want the blog to look all girly? Are you a food blogger? Are you a photographer? Do you write only about blogging? Basically what is the niche and what comes to your mind first when you think of your blog?

Twinkling Tina Cooks is my food blog and my logo is not what you will find in a regular food blog. No fork and spoon, no leaves and spices. It rather has cupcakes, candies, chocolates – in short for all things sweet. And in general I post tons of desserts.

Whereas this one is a lifestyle blog and I write about a lot of things – I didn’t want too much complicated imagery nor did I want a regular label. That’s why I got a floral wreath – more on the olive wreath lines. [yeah ok, I crowned myself that!] But this one is more of a blog header and not the Logo. There is a difference between a logo and header and I’ll explain that in next week’s tutorial.

Types of Logo

There are a zillion ways of making a logo – text based logos, typography logos, illustrations, imagery, icons blah blah blah. You can’t understand everything in one day. It is an industry in itself. It is not just a design there’s a lot that goes behind it. And you can’t create everything using the free tools. But keeping all that aside we’ll design something easy yet nice that is perfect for your blog.

There’s going to be a series of tutorials on logo with text, illustrations (though the scope with free tools is very less), cliparts etc. So watch out for the #SaturdayTutorials on Twitter and Instagram.

Logo with Shape

Today I am going to make and share some simple shape logo using Picmonkey to give you an idea what all you can create.

Open a 700 x 700 px canvas. Always work on transparent background while designing logo.

Click on Overlays and pick up shapes to design your logo.

Under Overlays you will find loads of options of shapes, ribbons, pins, banners, arrows etc. Choose whatever shape you want for your logo.

Here are some examples that I made with shapes available under Overlays

Tina Says

I made this simple call out logo Tina Says using a comic bubble and some texts. The best part of these free tools is there are many fonts to choose from and you can try out different things.

Use the central handle for rotating the elements (text/ shape)

Pro Tip – Choose one dominant color and one subdued color unless you want your logo to look like a rainbow!

Even if you like to play with a lot of colors avoid too many bold colors at one place – it’s like killing the eyes of the other person. Just to show you how color combinations can go wrong here is a n example.

You might like Blue, red pink, yellow and loads of bright colors. But putting too much in one single logo can go horribly wrong even if they look bright.

The No-Nonsense Round Logo

A simple round logo can be clean yet chic. With subtle hues and clean fonts you can create something pretty like the one below.

Pro Tip – Even if you like Script fonts and the fonts that looks like handwriting, calligraphy etc don’t over use them. Mix and match with bold sans serif fonts.

More than Two Overlays

When you start fidgeting with the overlays more you will find these tiny illustrations that are free to use in your artwork. That’s how I made a little tweeting logo.

Saving a Logo

The main reason to choose Picmonkey over Canva for designing a basic logo is the transparent canvas. This is required when you have to place your logo somewhere – letter head, PPT with different background. You don’t want a white patch behind the logo! Save the logo in .png format.

What this does is it makes you place the logo on a colored background easily without having to think about how to remove the white from behind.

Something like this.

Limitations of Free Tools

While the free tools are good for beginners because they are FREE –obviously and also anyone can use them. You don’t need to know any design skill – well almost. But for someone like me who has spent about seven years in the branding industry it is like using a Nokia 1100 against an iPhone. – okay don’t hate me for that analogy!

The free tools are pretty slow.

Picmonkey has made half the things as Royal which includes a membership. Though it has a 7 day free trial you need to put in your card details and you will be charged after the seven days. So you can’t use all the fonts or all the overlays or effects.

Even in Canva a lot of the shapes and images cost and is not totally free.

Afterthought

As an afterthought I think I am going to do my next series of Logo Designing Tutorials using Photoshop and Illustrator and have some freebies too. Good ideas for now.

Contest & Giveaway

Now that you have learnt how to do a basic shape logo, create something nice and fun using a free tool and show me. I will select the one that I find the most attractive and the winner gets a 12” x 8” Canvas Print (worth INR 576/-) FREE courtesy Canvas Champ. We love everything chic. So why just get a photo printed when you can get a customized photo or your digital art printed on canvas! Excited!

Giveaway Rules

(1) Follow @canvaschampindia and @tinabasublog on Facebook

(2) Subscribe to my blog

(3) Post a comment on this post ( to confirm you have done 1 and 2)

(4) Post your designs on Twitter or Instagram tagging @twinklingtina & @CanvasChampIn

(5) Add the hashtag #SaturdayTutorials

(6) Contest closes on 30^th Nov 2016. Extending the contest and giveaway till December 9 2016.

Will announce the winners Next Saturday. Excited???? Stay Tuned guys

Subscribe Here to get 5 FREE Logo Shapes. Add your text and you are done. They are already in .png format. How cool is that!

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November 26, 2016 28 comments

Fiction & Writing #FridayFotoFiction 100 Word Fiction

5 Tips for Writing Flash Fiction – #FridayFotoFiction Week 4

by tinabasu November 25, 2016

written by tinabasu

Are you enjoying our #FridayFotoFiction challenge? Isn’t it fun and challenging to let your imagination run loose when you see a photo? What I like to see how diverse the human mind is. A broken house can make you think about poverty, earthquake, something super natural or even something lucky. And all that in 100 words! It’s not easy to tell a story in those 100 words. But flash fiction is good, it is challenging. So I thought why not share some tips about flash fictions. I have written a ton of flash fiction in this blog. Check the Fiction & Writing section on the menu for 100 Word Fictions, 5 Sentence Fictions, 55 Fictions and many more.

5 Tips to Write Flash Fiction

1.Limit Characters to Maximum of Two :

When you are writing a flash fiction you don’t have scope for too many dialogues or too many scenes. It’s hard to keep track of too many things happening in a few lines. Lesser the better!

2. Pick up small ideas/ incidents:

Since you are writing within a word limit of 100 words pick up one idea or one incident. It can be an emotion, it can be something fun, something sad. E.g For my last post I wrote about abuse and coming out of it. I didn’t get into the details of what kind of abuse, or described abuse, or how that happened and all that. Short and simple.

3. Start with an action:

Get the attention of your readers in the first sentence with an action. You don’t have to describe a lot. “Tell” what’s required, don’t “show” anything.

4. Reduce Adjectives and Adverbs :

Too many adjectives, too many adverbs add to the clutter of words. Better use the words to tell the story than describing the starry, bright, crystal clear, romantic night!

5. Save the Twist for the end:

I like to add twists in the stories. It can take your story to a different level completely. Check this for example.

Week 4 #FridayFotoFiction Prompt

With all these writing tips in mind let’s start a new week of #FridayFotoFiction and here’s the prompt.

Image Credit – Timur Saglambilek

The Dotted Lines – #FridayFotoFiction Week 4

One more country, one more meeting, one more signature and yet another merger.

Dad will be happy.

Seated at an upscale Manhattan restaurant, Varun Arora the new CEO of Arora Industries had a successful business expansion. His industrialist dad felt proud of himself, for molding the son into a successful business tycoon, finally.

There’s a smile on everyone’s face here, dining and chatting, yet I feel alone. Like no one’s around. This isn’t the life I wanted. I did want to hold the Cross pen, but to write, not to sign on the dotted lines. Only if dad understood that!

Word Count – 100

#FridayFotoFiction Week 3 Winner

Last week we had received 12 beautiful entries. I was slacking a little in the reading part because of the flu and caught up with reading only today but Mayuri made sure she read everyone’s post. We both decided unanimously on one winner and that is Rohan *drumrolls*. And here is his winning post.

Congratulations Rohan. We’ll DM you about the prize.

How to participate in #FridayFotoFiction

Every Friday we’ll give you a photo prompt
Follow @twinklingtina & @Mayuri6 on twitter and wait for the prompt
Write a 100 Word story on the photo prompt
Use the badge at the end of your posts
Link up with Tina or Mayuri
Read, comment, share on host and co-hosts posts and at least two more posts linked in the party Pro Tip – Networking and commenting is good for your blog’s health and ranks.
Use #FridayFotoFiction in your post and share in social media using the same hashtag.
Every week we will have one featured blogger who is the best reflection of this community spirit

Grab the Badge

<div align="center"><a href="https://tinabasu.com/" rel="nofollow" title="Tina Basu"><img src="https://tinabasu.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Friday-Foto-Fiction.jpg" alt="Tina Basu" style="border: none;" /></a></div>

So people wait no more. Write a 100 word fiction on the photo prompt and link up here. Happy Writing!

November 25, 2016 4 comments

Thankful Thursdays

Thanksgiving Special #ThankfulThursdays

by tinabasu November 24, 2016

written by tinabasu

Hello Thursday and happy Thanksgiving Day. Are you celebrating Thanksgiving today? Are you planning to have a hearty meal today? Did you thank anyone today – for their kindness, for their friendship or just for being there? If you have not already then let’s do that now!

This brings us to Week 4 of #ThankfulThursdays – a month of practicing gratitude, remembering to say thank you to anything or anyone that has left a mark in your life.

Here’s the Prompt for this Week

I always say repeatedly that Experiences teach much more than anything else. I am actually quite happy that I have seen the good and bad of life (in whichever way it came through). Meeting weird people is also good. I have a habit of observing people closely. Over the years I have imbibed the good from people. I have also taught myself to learn from the bad. In a way I am thankful for all the good and the bad.

Source – Quotesgram

The recent demonetization in the country has put everyone in a tizzy. People are going crazy thinking about how to manage their transactions without cash. There’s cash crunch in the ATMs. But we should also realize that all the bank employees in every bank – private or public sector – are going out of their way to help in the moment of crisis. We all realize demonetization is a revolutionary step and will help the country eventually.

I am thankful to the banks that are setting up counters at housing complexes to ease the currency exchange. We exchanged all our old cash without even visiting a bank or standing in a queue.

I asked my house helps if I could pay them by cheque since I have not visited an ATM yet and got any cash. I am going cashless ever since the demonetization. And the best part was they readily agreed. Similarly my milk man asked me to transfer money in his daughter’s account and came back with his bank details. Everyone has been gracious enough to extend their helping hand and I am thankful to everyone.

I have made some wonderful friends over last few months who are positive and always ready help you out. I am thankful to across everyone who has left an impact on me.

Last week we had a fun prompt for #ThankfulThursdays about one life event. We read wonderful anecdotes and stories from your life.

The beautiful Geethica Mehra made sure her poem on life had us enchanted. Thus the winner for #ThankfulThursdays Week 3 is Geethica from Spectrum of Life.

Geethica is a poet at heart and skilled in creative writing. Look at her pinned tweet currently – it’s a beautiful poem woman.

Here is her winning post. Congratulations Geethica, we’ll DM you about the prize.

Another person who gave us a reason for double delight is Zainab from Slim Expectations. Love to the bundles of joy!

Thank you everyone for participating in #ThankfulThursdays. We love this community love and that everyone is spreading so much love and gratitude.

How to Participate in #ThankfulThursdays?

Follow @twinklingtina and @misra_amrita on Twitter
Prompts will be announced every Wed 20:00 hrs IST
Write the post and Link Up with Tina or Amrita
Read, comment, share on host and co-hosts posts and at least two more posts linked in the party Pro Tip – Networking and commenting is good for your blog’s health and ranks.
Use #ThankfulThursdays in your post and share in social media using the same hashtag.
Every week we will have one featured blogger who is the best reflection of this community spirit

Grab the Badge

<div align="center"><a href="https://tinabasu.com/" rel="nofollow" title="Tina Basu"><img src="https://tinabasu.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Thankful-thursdays.jpg" alt="Tina Basu" style="border: none; height: auto; width: 200px;" /></a></div>

So wait no more. Be Thankful, Write a Post, Link Up Here. We’ll visit everyone

Also linking the post to the Gratitude Circle by Vidya Sury because it’s Thanksgiving people.

November 24, 2016 12 comments

Life, Musing & Anecdotes Mommy & Parenting Parenting

Motherhood and All That Jazz – Bluey Chronicles

by tinabasu November 23, 2016

written by tinabasu

When motherhood was knocking on my door I knew one thing for sure, I wanted to be a hands on mom, I wanted to be a friend to my baby, I wanted to be there for my baby. I didn’t want to miss any moment from his childhood. And thus was the decision to quit giving my time and energy to a company and investing the same time and energy to my little bundle of joy.

Did I do anything Wrong?

Absolutely no! And I absolutely detest when people show me sympathy that I am not on a job. I have not said bye to my career. My baby has not stopped me from anything. In fact, he is the reason that I am working even harder – where I even get to spend time with him.

I have allowed myself the precious moments in life which I will not miss for anything else. I saw it when he first smiled. I saw it when he first rolled over on his tummy at one and a half month, I was there to help him to sit up. Bluey was lazy in sitting up and I bribed him to sit up by placing his bottles or teethers near his feet. And he did try to reach them and eventually he sat up.

Is there anything big in that?

Yes. I enjoy being with my child. I know at the back of mind that I don’t have a looming tension about his safety, about his well-being. I know, I don’t have to trust someone else for feeding him or bathing him. I know in heart I am doing everything right for him. This is the age when he needs me most.

Image Source – Huggies

And in return I get to experience an overload of cuteness. His antics, with almost everything that is within his reach.

His First Crawl:

I remember the first time he started crawling – I didn’t even realize he had crawled behind me and followed me to the kitchen! May be that’s where his love for kitchen had started!

His First Steps:

Bluey is going to be 16 months this 28^th and has started taking his first independent footsteps – which I have been waiting for some time now. I like how he never gives up even if he wobbles and falls down. He has also discovered this trick of maintaining his balance with objects in his hands. One day he walked some 8-10 steps holding two of my bangles in his both hands. Some other day I saw him walk up to the desk holding his pair of socks in each hand. So he is learning in all ways, I guess.

The Bluey Tunes:

I have tried my best to make him call me mom, ma, mum, mommy and almost every possible way of making him say M. But I have massively failed in that. Instead he says ‘baba’, ‘dada’, dadda, dodo dede and almost everything possible in language! Yes everything except anything remotely similar to the sound of M! And I have to live with it.

The other day he was listening to some rhymes and I was humming beside him the same tune. He started mimicking the tune in his baby language! And now makes long baby tunes! I guess he’s bored of the two syllable words. Now he is into aa-a-a-a-tada-raa-a-a in some sort of a tune.

But the moment I try to record his talking and tuning he poses for a photo stopping everything else! He still is not accustomed with video I guess.

My Way of Parenting

I was also sure about how I want to parent my child. I took up huge fight with my family right from his naming, to not putting the kala tika and nazar utarna stuff! Even now, I want to make him a good boy – a good human being first and then anything else. I pray I am successful in it, and in future I can feel proud of him being a good man.

Linking this post to #MondayMommyMoments hosted by Deepa and Menaka

Also linking it to #MommyTalks by Nabanita.

November 23, 2016 8 comments

Fiction & Writing #FridayFotoFiction 100 Word Fiction

Uncharted Roads – 100 Word Fiction #FridayFotoFiction Week 3

by tinabasu November 17, 2016

written by tinabasu

I told you some time back why writing Fiction was good for you. I have been trying to get you all to write something challenging. The photo prompt idea is to challenge you to think and weave something based on the trigger. It is to let your imagination run wild.

Last week we saw many interesting entries. And we loved reading all the entries. We promised we’ll pick a featured blogger who will be the best reflection of the community spirit and week 2 winner is Preethi from Preethivenugopala.com and here is her winning post.

Preethi is a Civil Engineer turned Literature enthusiast turned author. She loves reading and is an avid blogger. Here’s wishing Preethi a very happy writing and blogging journey.

A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it to be God.
– Sidney Sheldon

That brings us to Week 3 of #FridayFotoFiction where we give you a photo prompt and you surprise us with your creative writing within 100 words. Yes it is a 100 word challenge – keep that in mind. 98 – 105 is okay – not more than that please?

#FridayFotoFiction Week3 Prompt

Image Credit – Fotolia

Uncharted Roads – #FridayFotoFiction Week 3

It happened last night, yet again.

Last time he had promised it won’t happen again.

Every single time he had promised. Yet he never kept them.

Tears have dried up now, no one bothers about them.

But I have made a promise last night – a promise to myself, which I will always keep.

I will not take this anymore.

I will not let the life growing inside me go through all the abuse.

It’s time to think about myself and the life inside me.

It is time to take the uncharted roads for a new life, my happier new life.

Word Count 100

How to participate in #FridayFotoFiction

Every Friday we’ll give you a photo prompt
Follow @twinklingtina & @Mayuri6 on twitter and wait for the prompt
Write a 100 Word story on the photo prompt
Use the badge at the end of your posts
Link up with Tina or Mayuri
Read, comment, share on host and co-hosts posts and at least two more posts linked in the party Pro Tip – Networking and commenting is good for your blog’s health and ranks.
Use #FridayFotoFiction in your post and share in social media using the same hashtag.
Every week we will have one featured blogger who is the best reflection of this community spirit

Grab the Badge

<div align="center"><a href="https://tinabasu.com/" rel="nofollow" title="Tina Basu"><img src="https://tinabasu.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Friday-Foto-Fiction.jpg" alt="Tina Basu" style="border: none;" /></a></div>

So people wait no more. Write a 100 word fiction on the photo prompt and link up here. Happy Writing!

November 17, 2016 11 comments

Thankful Thursdays

Take Charge of your Life – #ThankfulThursdays Week 3

by tinabasu November 17, 2016

written by tinabasu

Hola friends. Welcome to another week of gratitude, another week of #ThankfulThursdays – the weekly Thankful Blog Hop that I host with Amrita. Last week we saw pretty interesting link ups on the prompt and had a great time reading through all of them. And we obviously have winners! Everyone loves winning, don’t we?

The winner of #ThankfulThursdays Week 1 is Aseem from Transition of Thoughts and here is his winning post. He is a consultant, an avid traveler having traveled across 20 countries and wants to visit all on the world map. I tell you that is a wonderful list to have Aseem.

And we have a first runner up in Manisha of Zarahatkeblog.

Congratulations Winners! We’ll DM you for Prizes.

This Weeks Prompt

That brings us to our Week 3 prompt and here it is.

Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life in itself is beautiful, isn’t it? Have you ever thanked life for making you what you are today? Or have you thought of life as your teacher – perhaps the best teacher. I consider my experiences to be the best teacher. Everything that has happened in life – good or bad- has had a lesson in it. I consider these lessons much more enriching than anything else.

Being an only child, I have grown up in a protective environment and the list of things that I ‘wasn’t allowed to do’ was longer than what I ‘was allowed to do’. So there were almost no movies, no sleepovers, no visiting friends (like really) but there was a lot of extracurricular stuffs that I used to do. The car was always with me to take me to various places. I used to accompany my parents for various parties, clubs but yes it was all under their nose.

Source – Good Morning Quotes

For the longest time I knew I had to learn to live – like living on my own, bracing the hardships of life, facing the challenges that were to come on my path. That’s when I decided to move away from my city and do everything on my own. I needed that. I went to Delhi and Bangalore for the post graduate exams on my own. Selected Bangalore over Delhi for safety reasons! (Yes I wasn’t too impressed with Delhi, in the first place). Came down to Bangalore, went through the admission process on my own and handled a lot of cash. For the first time I had taken out so much cash from an ATM. Bangalore was a new city for me. But I knew at heart there is no stopping me.

It is when I started living on my own that I saw life from close quarters. I picked up several life skills which I was not even bothered about before.

This meant, managing a home, managing finances, not running back to people for advice instead I turned a good listener to my friends. I started doing freeelance work for some extra pocket money. Today I am thankful that my parents trusted me with handling my own life in my way. I also made myself strong enough to realize nothing can put me down in life – whatever that is. I will hold my ground and stand by myself. Life does teach you a lot – doesn’t it?

It is good to take the charge of your life in your hands and not wait for someone else to make you happy. Do what makes you happy.

How to Participate in #ThankfulThursdays?

Follow @twinklingtina and @misra_amrita on Twitter
Prompts will be announced every Wed 20:00 hrs IST
Write the post and Link Up with Tina or Amrita
Read, comment, share on host and co-hosts posts and at least two more posts linked in the party Pro Tip – Networking and commenting is good for your blog’s health and ranks.
Use #ThankfulThursdays in your post and share in social media using the same hashtag.
Every week we will have one featured blogger who is the best reflection of this community spirit

Grab the Badge

<div align="center"><a href="https://tinabasu.com/" rel="nofollow" title="Tina Basu"><img src="https://tinabasu.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Thankful-thursdays.jpg" alt="Tina Basu" style="border: none; height: auto; width: 200px;" /></a></div>

So wait no more. Be Thankful, Write a Post, Link Up Here. We’ll visit everyone

November 17, 2016 6 comments

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How to Design a Logo for your blog | Contest & Giveaway #SaturdayTutorials

Why do you Need a Logo?

Designing a Logo

Types of Logo

Logo with Shape

Click on Overlays and pick up shapes to design your logo.

Here are some examples that I made with shapes available under Overlays

Tina Says

Pro Tip – Choose one dominant color and one subdued color unless you want your logo to look like a rainbow!

The No-Nonsense Round Logo

Pro Tip – Even if you like Script fonts and the fonts that looks like handwriting, calligraphy etc don’t over use them. Mix and match with bold sans serif fonts.

More than Two Overlays

Saving a Logo

Limitations of Free Tools

Afterthought

Contest & Giveaway

Giveaway Rules

Subscribe Here to get 5 FREE Logo Shapes. Add your text and you are done. They are already in .png format. How cool is that!

5 Tips for Writing Flash Fiction – #FridayFotoFiction Week 4

5 Tips to Write Flash Fiction

1.Limit Characters to Maximum of Two :

2. Pick up small ideas/ incidents:

3. Start with an action:

4. Reduce Adjectives and Adverbs :

5. Save the Twist for the end:

Week 4 #FridayFotoFiction Prompt

The Dotted Lines – #FridayFotoFiction Week 4

#FridayFotoFiction Week 3 Winner

Congratulations Rohan. We’ll DM you about the prize.

How to participate in #FridayFotoFiction

Grab the Badge

Thanksgiving Special #ThankfulThursdays

Here’s the Prompt for this Week

How to Participate in #ThankfulThursdays?

Grab the Badge

So wait no more. Be Thankful, Write a Post, Link Up Here. We’ll visit everyone

Motherhood and All That Jazz – Bluey Chronicles

Did I do anything Wrong?

Is there anything big in that?

His First Crawl:

His First Steps:

The Bluey Tunes:

My Way of Parenting

Uncharted Roads – 100 Word Fiction #FridayFotoFiction Week 3

#FridayFotoFiction Week3 Prompt

Uncharted Roads – #FridayFotoFiction Week 3

How to participate in #FridayFotoFiction

Grab the Badge

Take Charge of your Life – #ThankfulThursdays Week 3

This Weeks Prompt

How to Participate in #ThankfulThursdays?

Grab the Badge

So wait no more. Be Thankful, Write a Post, Link Up Here. We’ll visit everyone

Tina Basu

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