Sorry...I need to park this first

Sorry but I need to park this blog first because i'll be concentrating on my other blog http://myjourneyinconceivingababy.blogspot.com.

Come and visit me there if you have time :)

Back from A Very Long Hiatus!!!

First of all I apologize to all my readers, people who has been leaving messages and those who wanted to exchange links. Unfortunately, it was a very long hiatus for me. Yes, I actually hibernated for such a long time for unknown reasons. I didn't even bother to check on my blogs.

Anyway, again for unknown reasons, I decided to visit my blog and write again (WOHOO!!!).

Some updates, let me keep it short because I don't want to bore you guys with endless details.

1. Changed my cook again and she has been with us for almost 5 months. So far so good (crossing my fingers!!).

2. Just came from a shopping trip in Bangkok a week ago. Unbelievable shopping!!! Highly recommended if you want household stuff, clothes, etc. But beware of the weather, it is hotter than ever (I believe worst than Manila). Ended up having coughs and colds from that trip (HMPH!!!).

3. Had minor renovations in our house. Had bookshelves and cabinets made.

4. I am currently in the process of weeding out old clothes. Believe me this is the worst thing that I can ever imagine. It is so taxing, tiring, irritating among others and above all, it really, really takes a long time to finish.

5. Had a major hair cut, went from shoulder length to chin length hair. Oh my, what a relief. It feels so much lighter!!!

6. Current obsessions are korean dramas and a variety show. Believe it or not despite the fact that I don't understand a single thing, I bother to watch this variety show (We Got Married) live via on-line streaming. Yes, I am that addicted (ha-ha).

7. Another obsession right now is playing all "hidden objects" game in the computer. Yup, I love those games.

8. Shopping is still a must but I sort of got guilty recently knowing times are really hard right now especially the rising cost of gas.

So far those are the major stuff going on in my life. I'll share some pictures next time.

It feels so good to be back again :)

Bring It On!!!

I am so stressed!!! Its been a friggin week and I think there will more this week. I hate this!!!!Waahhhhhhhhh!!!!

Why???

1. The guy who bumped into my mother-in-laws car is so friggin slow. Its my problem because I was the one using it on the day it was bumped in the parking lot. It was just parked and minding its own business when this stupid guy who was about to leave his parking space, backed up into it. His excuse, he didn't see the friggin car!!! Man, how can you not see a parked car. Anyway, this happened during the holidays and until now his insurance company has not completed all the required documents. Meaning, the car is still not fixed after more than a month. My mother in law, meantime keeps on following me up about it. I do understand why she's doing that but its really stressing me out. What can I do????

2. My mother in law asked for my help to look a maid for her. I have an aunt in the province who normally sources maids for us. So I asked her if she has 2 maids available and she said yes. So I started coordinating this since Christmas and guess what, the maids are still not here. I already sent the money for their plane fares and everything has been set and they were suppose to be here Monday. By unfortunate circumstances, one of the maid needs to have her teeth pulled out and because she had her period they had to postpone the trip again. Waahhhh, so again my mother in law has been following me up about this. What can I do!!!! I hate having problems about things that are suppose to be simple.

3. Our water bill arrived and imagine my shock when I saw that it increased by a 100%!!!!!What the f*** happened here?? Since I don't know any plumber, I had to call my mother in law for her plumber. Of course, I had to tell her the reason. This other maid of mine then told her that there's something wrong in our guest bathroom. So, I told why didn't you tell me. On the other hand I felt so guilty and mad at myself, if I was a better housewife and if I had taken the time out to really check on things, I would have found out about it sooner. Anyway, this problem has been sold but then again it added to my stress.

4. My maid of almost 4 years is leaving and going back to the province. She will be helping out her sister's food stall that's why she wants to go back there. So here I am again on the look out for another maid. Hmmm, I wonder sometimes if my life will be simpler if I didn't have maids :(

5. Another thing that really pissed me off was when I started checking and seeing the quality of housework I'm getting from my maids. Since I am home most of the time, as a housewife I should be able to monitor how they are doing their duties. I saw the guest bathroom and it was so full of dust. So, I had to talk to my maid again and supervise her duties.

There goes my harassing week!!! Dealing with domestic problems is more difficult than dealing with work stress. Household problems will hound you 24 hours a day while stress in the office can be turned off and on once you get home.

As a housewife, its like your pressured to always have an orderly, pristine, smooth, and organized household. Much harder than I thought :(

Hmmm, do I want my old life back????

Planning a Trip to Xiamen China

I don't know what to really expect in this trip. We (hubby and my in-laws) will be visiting Xiamen to attend a wedding. We'll be leaving on January 27 and be back on the 31st.

Firstly, I don't know what to expect in a traditional Chinese wedding. Most importantly, I don't know what should I wear. Here in Manila (not sure about the other parts of the world), whenever we attend a Chinese wedding we would wear semi formal clothes. Not to the extent of just wearing jeans and a t-shirt (some just wear really casual clothes). I refuse to be that informal though, so I'd normally opt for slacks and a semi formal blouse. In Xiamen, I really don't have an idea.

Since hubby will be wearing a suit and my mother in law does not really have an idea on what one should wear, I decided to have a dress made by JC Buendia (my favorite designer). It will be a long dress with some sort of jacket to fight off the cold weather. Seems like the weather will be around 10-11 degrees Celsius. I'm a bit apprehensive that I might be over dressed so I'm planning to bring one more dress that would as semi-formal.

According to my mother-in-law, the wedding will be a whole day affair. After reading some articles, I got excited because I will be experiencing something new with this trip. It will a first for us to be attending a real Chinese wedding :)

Another part of the preparation is what clothes to bring. Good thing I invested on some thick sweaters when I went to the US a couple of years back. What I just need to buy is a thick jacket, not sure if I'd still buy thermal underwear.

Hmmm, need to start preparing for the trip :)

White Elephant and Mooncake Dice

My hubby and I hosted the Christmas Party with our closest friends. So being the host and all, I had to come with a game and a unique way on how we can do our regular exchange gifts.

Last year, a friend already introduced the white elephant idea. Instead of buying a special gift for our babies, each person should just bring an unused item (anything) that he/she doesn't like or will not use at all. This way we get the chance to get rid of some of our clutter and at the same time hleping friends to get stuff that they need. Last year, it was just one item per year. This time I requested everybody to bring 6 items per person.

Items were classified according to value ranging from P20 to P300 pesos. Then we proceeded with the mooncake dice game (famous game among the Chinese during the mooncake festival). Each person had a turn to roll the dice, then we just followed the rules of the game. We followed this rule:

It was definitely a fun game for everybody. Each one wanted to get the best price but then there were really some items which were not really useful for anybody.

We will definitely be doing this again next year :)

I Cooked, I Cooked....

Hubby was jumping for joy when I said I was going to cook for him. I decided to try out this recipe my Tita gave and it was just for a simple corn soup.

We have this what you call "white corn" and this is actually sweeter than Japanese corn if you use it for cooking. I decided to try out the corn soup, I forgot the exact name of the recipe.

So with the help of my maids, they did the preparation. Basically, they just had to grate the corn. My Tita gave me about 10 pieces of white corn. After that, I took over.

I sauteed onion and garlic. Then added water, waited for it to boil and then added the grated corn. After a few minutes I added the chili leaves, salt, pepper and Chicken Knorr Cubes.

Voila!!! We had instant soup. Unfortunately I didn't get to take any picture. Nevertheless, hubby really enjoyed it :)
He had several helpings of the soup.

Hmmm, what should I cook next????

New Year, New Goals....

It was a busy, tiring, and fun holiday for me thus the long silence in my blog. I'll share what has happened the past two weeks in my succeeding posts.

Since its the start of the year and its my first post for 2008, what better way to start it is by setting my goals for the year.

1. Quit Smoking
2. Cook more often (started it right by cooking for hubby yesterday :))
3. Exercise at least 3 times a week
4. Fix the House
5. Set-up a new business
6. Eat sweets at most twice a week - major good luck to me :(
   
7. Eat more veggies
8. Stop drinking coffee and soft drinks
9. Supervise my household helpers regularly
10. Shop only twice a month - hmmm, why did I include this????

On hindsight, I think I've set up a tall order for me. Well, I have this blog to keep me in check.

I do hope that I'll be able to achieve my 10 goals for the year. Its a rough start but I think I'll be able to achieve it :)

Greetings!!!

Merry Christmas to you all!!!!

Have a pleasant time with your love ones this Christmas :)

I Hate Traffic

I know, traffic really worsens during the Holidays but it really becomes more unbearable every year. Trying to analyze what's causing it is a futile effort.

Coming from the house, I decided to drop by my store at Shaw before proceeding to Rockwell to meet up with my friend. Lo and behold or I was just unusually unlucky, it took me almost 2 hours to reach my store. Imagine that!!!! Normally, it would only take me 15 minutes or at most 30 minutes to reach my store not 2 hours!!!

I am just thankful that I have a driver and I didn't have to endure that. Nevertheless, I was in a bad mood and I didn't want to go to Rockwell anymore because it might take me another 2 hours to get there.

So my friend and I decided to meet up at Serendra instead. Due to the horrible traffic I encountered, I was no longer in the mood to shop. I was actually dreading my travel time from Serendra to my house.

I was right, my normal travel time of 20 minutes was prolonged to an hour. Imagine, I spent more time in the car than making chika with my friend!!!!

Attention MMDA, will we ever resolve our traffic problems????

Oh So Yummy......

I have a new friend who I met through my other blog. She dropped by the house early this morning to give me the cupcakes that she baked herself.

My diet for today went berserk because it was just so yummy.

Even if its straight from the ref would you believe that it's still moist!!!! Unlike the regular cupcakes that you buy around wherein you need to thaw it a bit to make sure that its a bit moist when you bite into it. And the chocolate is so heavenly, its not too sweet at all even if its double chocolate (icing and cake). She gave me 8 cupcakes and as of 11 pm, only 3 cupcakes are left. Yes, I consumed 5 of it starting at 2 pm.

Thanks a lot Emily :)

I'm just crazy over anything chocolate.

Diet, diet, diet its just impossible during the holidays....

Running Out of Ideas....

Its practically Christmas and I still don't have a gift for the "Love of My Life" (ha-ha, so cheezy). Why is it so hard to buy men their gifts, waaahhhh.......

Hubby is only into 2 things, video consoles and fishing. When it comes to video consoles, he practically has all the nice stuff. From Playstation 1 to 3, Wii, PSP and Xbox. I don't see him playing with his video consoles so I'm a bit apprehensive in buying him an Xbox 3. So, no ideas from here.

Fishing, I don't know anything about fishing. The way I look at it, he doesn't need anything here either. He has so much stuff that I am already going crazy where to store them.

What else?? Think, think.....

Worst case scenario is to cook for him if I really don't find anything for him. The reason why I didn't want to cook for him is because I wanted to surprise him on his birthday next month. I'm planning to throw him a surprise party and I will be the one preparing everything (with the help of my maids, of course).

Hmm, stressful....

If The Shoe Fits....

Finally, I was able to buy some shoes after more than a month of looking for something that would fit me.

I think I was whining a whole ago that its so hard for me to find shoes that would fit because I have such small feet. Normally I need a shoe size 4 or 4 1/2 or 5 and most of the time the size 5's are still too big.

So I focussed on looking for some shoes last weekend. I went to Bonifacio High Street last Saturday. I went Back to Mia Bella despite the bad experience the first time.

Anyway, since it was the only store wherein I found some nice designs and most importantly, shoes that would fit me. I bought 2 from Mia Bella, a Melissa Night + Lorenzo Merlino (black with white design) and Cole Vintage bronze ballet flats. Last pair was a white flats from Charles and Keith.

I also bought a dress from Peppered Cherry but I didn't get to take a picture. It was similar to the dress a bought before but this time in black with white hand painted design.

I'm super happy :)

Garlic Dip.....

I had some craving for chips so I decided to make my infamous garlic dip. Yup, I also have some tricks up my sleeves despite the fact that I am so undomesticated. So might as well share my recipe.

My friends super love this and I always prepare this whenever we have a get together at our house.

Here's the recipe:

1 cup mayonnaise
1 cup sour cream
add chopped garlic (diced); add as much as you want, I normally add one whole piece because I want it a bit spicy
add pepper and salt to taste

If one cup is too much, half cup will do as long as the sour cream and mayonnaise are of equal parts.

I guarantee that you'll love this :)

Long Hiatus

Yes, I got caught up with the Christmas rush and frequent get together with friends.

As the designated social coordinator of the group, I was scheduling our get together every week and sometime twice in a week. I am also busy preparing for our Christmas party. On top of that I was also doing my Christmas Shopping.

Still have a few more gifts to buy and hopefully I'll finish everything this week.

On the side, I still managed to squeeze in some shopping for myself. Here's what I bought for the past 2 weeks. I bought a bag from CMG, shoes from Crocs, eye glasses from Mango, a dress and a blouse from Kamiseta.



I also bought some other stuff that I feel are useful: toilet seat cover (this is a must especially here in Philippines wherein some public restrooms are really unbearable), travel john (was thinking to try this when I join hubby in his fishing trips but I'm thinking that it may also be useful in the car for emergency cases especially during the Christmas season wherein traffic is extremely bad), my stash of Bath and Bodyworks lotion (I know I'm suppose to go organic already but this one thing that I really couldn't resist) and a brush for the dogs.

Whew, its just shopping, shopping and more shopping for the Holiday's :)

How to Cook Tuna?

Hubby went fishing a couple of weeks back and he caught a tuna. I was asking him how are we suppose to cook it?

Being me, the only way I know how to eat tuna is the way Japanese restaurants prepare it - raw or as sashimi. Since it was not fresh anymore, it was stored in an ice cooler during their travel time, it can no longer be prepared as sashimi.

So, I told him I'll look for a recipe. I completely forgot all about it!!!! Then tonight, my cook prepared it by frying it. Hmmm, hubby was frowning when he saw it. He said, what a waste in frying the tuna. I didn't say anything and I just tried how it tasted. Good thing it was tasty and passable. Whew, what a major boboo for me. Of course that's why I'm an undomesticated housewife.

I should really take note of these things. After 6 months of being a housewife, I'm slowly trying to learn the ropes.

Christmas Shopping...DONE!!!! (Part 1)

Guess what Ricky and I ended up doing, well as stated in my title we decided to start our Christmas shopping. Originally, we were planning to watch a movie but this somehow was forgotten because we got so engrossed in our Christmas shopping.

We agreed that we should finish shopping for the kids first. Since we have countless nieces, nephews, godsons, goddaughters, etc. in different ages, we thought this would be tougher and would need more time. We dropped by Toy Kingdom and bought everything there. It came with free gift wrapping so it was a major plus, plus for me.

We also came up with an idea to give educational board games or any board games for siblings. Especially the children of our friends, we bought one game board for each family. This way it was cheaper for us and at the same time we were able to give a really nice gift. For our godchildren, we had to give individual gift and there were a lot to choose from. All in all we bought 13 items for 18 kids. Not bad.....

Next would be for the adults which I think is easier because there are a lot of stuff to choose from. We're planning to finish everything within this week because realized that its already December by next week.

Time really flies....

Lola Day

Today was another "lola" (grandma) day for me with my good friend Tracy. Ha-ha, we call it our "lola" day because ever Saturday we always meet up either to go the gym, go to the parlor, shop, eat out and of course the never ending chismisan (chit-chat)....This is normally my day away from hubby....

I fetched her at around 2 pm and then we went to Rockwell to watch a Tagalog film "One More Chance". While she was paying for our tickets, I was buying our popcorn and drinks. Butter popcorn for her and cheese for me. I just looove cheese popcorn .

We really wanted to see this movie not because we were fans of the actor and actress but we are really suckers for any good old romance movie.. Overall this movie was great except for the ending. It was very realistic and not too cheezy which is very rare for Tagalog Romance Movies. It just goes to show that in any relationship, giving each other space or time to be alone as very important for it to last long. Controlling your partner will never work and will only lead to the other party being suffocated.

After the movie, we had our manicure and pedicure at Beauty Bar. Highly recommended at a very affordable price. I love seeing my nails so clean and buffed. I just miss having nail polish since this is one of the things my doctor prohibited me from using until I find one that's organic as well .

My quest to find new shoes is still futile. Oh well, there's always tomorrow...

Dinner time, met up with a couple of our friends and had our chika time. Went home at around 10 pm because I was a bit tired after waking up at 8 am for my blood test.

Tomorrow, Ricky and I will be having our usual date. Hmmm, I wonder where we'll be going ?

Oh Christmas Tree...

O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree! How are thy leaves so verdant! O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, How are thy leaves so verdant!

Yup its Christmas once again and what better way to start off the holiday season but by setting up the Christmas Tree and Christmas decors.

That's our tree...Yup, I just decorated it so I know it may not really look perfect but I'm happy how it turned out. My theme this year is still red and gold. Next year, I'm planning to change my theme into white and orange .

I also bought one Christmas decor that I fell in love with while browsing some stuff at Gourdo's. Its a singing Snowman family, promise they are really cute ...They are singing We Wish you a Merry Christmas while dancing

Last Weekend....

Didn't get to blog that much since last weekend, mainly because I was too lazy to do so....

Last Saturday, I attended the baptism of my godson Ben. He's really cute and he was crying the whole time. We were laughing so hard because his parents couldn't make him stop crying, when his grandma held him that was the only time he stopped crying.

After the sumptuous lunch at Richmonde Hotel, we all decided to meet again at around 5 pm at Bonifacio High Street. I couldn't help but browse around the shops.

Of course, I bought some stuff for myself and hubby. Hubby and I bought one tempur pillow each. One our friends recommended this pillow, in her words its really "fabulous" because it follows the contour of your head, minimizes snoring and removes neck or back pain. We were actually able to try the pillows and the mattress in the shop. What a pillow.....here's their web site http://philippines.tempur.com/. In my opinion its worth it even if its expensive at P7,150 each.

I also love pottery. I've been to this shop by a famous ceramic artist and I started falling in love with pottery. Here's what I bought from Serendra, 6 coasters and 2 jars. They are also expensive as well but to me they are worth it.

Then I dropped by several shops and I unfortunately got turned off in one of the shops named Mia Bella. They had really nice stuff but very rude sales assistants or ladies. I tried on one style of shoe and unfortunately it didn't fit me but another style did. So I wanted to try another style but this very rude sales lady told me that I don't think it would fit you. Talk about a lazy sales person, she was just too lazy to get me the size that I wanted. I was not in the mood to stoop down to her level, so I just ignored it. I continued browsing in their shop and I found another shoe that I wanted. So I requested if she could get me a new stock. After a few minutes she came back and told me that the display was the last stock. I requested for a discount because the shoe on display was a bit worn out already. Then when they said they couldn't give me one I left and my parting words were "Sorry na lang kayo, wala kayong benta!!!". To all those planning to shop in the store, beware of these rude sales ladies.

Anyway, I moved on to another shop called Peppered Cherry. Oh, I love their stuff and they are reasonably priced. I was able to buy just one item because I was really in the mood to buy some shoes. So I ended up with the jumper dress...

Last stop was a newly opened shoe store called Aldo. After waiting for several months for the shop to open, to my dismay their smallest size is still too big for me. I wanted to cry, the sales assistant was nice enough to get me several stocks and I even tried it with a cork, but it was still too big for me :( So I ended up buying a bag....
That was my adventure last weekend...

Shopaholic Pinay is Back

Yup, after a two week hiatus from shopping I came back with a vengeance today....

First we went to Toys R' Us because I had to buy a gift for my godson who will be christened tomorrow.

After my doctor's appointment, my husband and I went to Podium. While he was having coffee, I went to three of my favorite shops Warehouse, Dorothy Perkins and Gingersnaps. By the way Gingersnaps sells maternity clothes but I really like the designs of their clothes so I just buy from their shop...

All in all I bought 2 dresses, 2 capri pants and 1 top. Hmmm, it satisfied my craving for the moment. Next stop will probably be or bags.