Arts-N-Crafts: Looms and Colored Bands

I just recently found a new, effortless, no-sweat (well, except nowadays when the daytime summer temp never goes lower than 37) and very cheap way to relax myself.

And what is that?

I was down to just this few bits after spending about an hour sorting nearly a thousand bands. Haha.
Ibang level lang ang addiction.

Sorting rubber bands according to color. Last week, I went to Divisoria with my friend Scarlet and we kind of spent 1/3 of our time checking out loom bands. I finally bought a loom kit and burned a couple of hundreds on different colored bands.

I know. It's kind of riding on the latest craze. And so not me at all.

Early this year when I first heard of rainbow looms, I actually was a bit intimidated by it. I wanted to encourage the little miss to try the activity but I couldn't find cheap kits then. But I did find it very creative and I think also quite a nice exercise to test her skills on following instructions since you will have to check out tutorials before you can develop your own designs (well, that is my opinion).

But yes, sooooo expensive for my taste. (I know, I've always been a cheap-o. Not ashamed of it)

Enter friends in facebook announcing Divisoria's latest "hot" product. I just have to find an excuse to finally go and check out what is there to check out. There were plenty (too bad was too scared to take out my phone and steal a few photos)! What's even great, pasok sa budget (which was a mere 500 pesoses if I recall it right).

I just love seeing the colorful mix of the bands. And well, browsing through tutorials kind of revived my dormant crafty [albeit self-confessed] self. I wanted the little girl to get hooked on it thinking this would at least help in getting half of her attention away from her latest favorite (Thank you Lolo Boy for this priceless gift!) toy but sadly, it was me who got hooked and I have yet to find the best way to curve her gadget use.

A few minutes or sometimes [if I'm lucky] an hour during the day though, I am still able to convince her to sit with me. And sort the bands. Hmmm come to think of it, we still bond at least.

A few of my creations just this week. (clockwise: triple single, railroad, inverted fishtail, single loop, single squared loop, Maia's favorite design - the fishtail, and the diamond)

But yes, sorting is such a relaxing activity. I burn at least an hour a weekend doing this. And I'm a better person because of it! [seriously haha]





p.s. I usually view tutorials from this site: Loom Love. But pinterest has plenty of tutorials as well.

Maximizing Summer Vacation With Family Without Breaking The Bank

How have you been spending your hot summer days of late?

My health has suffered the wrath of this uber hot weather. Extremely hot, humid weather outside and winter like temp in the office is a recipe for disaster, healthwise. Yesterday I finally went to see a doctor. Now, I have to take plenty of medicines to hasten my recovery.

Anyways, as much as I wanted to make this summer a fruitful, learning filled experience for the little miss, coming home exhausted from trying days at work just makes me look forward to lazy, home-confined weekends divided into bonding times with the husband and the little miss and an hour or two of me-time. Me-time mostly spent window shopping.

I've been looking to update my office wardrobe and that of the little miss’s as well as she seemed to have undergone a growth spurt lately and I found just the perfect online shop to search for fashionable women’s (and little girls’ too) clothes at Zalora. This online shop is just the perfect place to burn my free time on since it caters not only to women but to the entire family as well (I couldn't resist looking at the men's section as well and making mental lists of several things that I can score for the husband). While I build up my shopping funds, I content myself with ogling and listing pretty things that I come across online.

my baby girl, all grown up

 Apart from online window shopping, I'm equally ecstatic to get my cooking mojo back so I also spend some of my weekend time at the kitchen experimenting on some recipes. I tried baking blueberry muffins today and made some cookie dough in advance for the little miss's afternoon snacks this week. She's about to start her summer classes (got her free passes to an 8-session ballet class) as well and she's bringing some homemade cookies to share with her classmates.

can you spot her from this crowd of pink?

We've had chances to raid the village facilities too lately - the pool and the playground - particularly and this is one activity that I've sort of missed doing too. When the kid was still a toddler, we used to spend plenty of time strolling and playing at the playground. Now, we're making the excuse to visit the playground so we can limit her TV and computer time.

We still have a couple of activities lined up this summer. But I will have to reserve them for the later part of this month and maybe early May. I hope to recover completely this week so I can finally spend more time outdoors with my loves (if only to kill time at the playground and the pool). I'm also thinking of coming up with a summer income generating project (inspired by what my friend Maqui and her adorable little Aki's summer project) for the little miss since there's an ongoing basketball tournament in our village. I'm thinking of letting her sell ice pops and homemade cookies to the tournament participants.

Plenty of ideas, eh? I hope before summer ends, I get to actually do half of them.

Weekend Love: Bake Date with Mommy Maggie Musings

If you follow me in Instagram, you probably know what days of the week are my favorite. Yes, like (if not by ALL) most working parents, it is always the weekend - FRIDAY NIGHT, SATURDAYS AND SUNDAYS.

I love the weekends not only because I get to forget about work temporarily. I love the weekends because I value my family the most. And these are the days of the week I can find the perfect reason to just devote my full time to them (well, that isn't always true but I would like to believe only they own my weekends).

I also love the weekends because those are the days I can reconnect with my passions. I can make time for this blog. And arrange playdates not only for the little kid's enjoyment but for my own as well. Just like two Saturdays ago when we went on an impromptu bake date with one of the bloggers I used to stalk now turned mommy friend, Maggie, and her little cutiepie Lucas.

Maggie and I have been talking about this bake date since the husband gifted me with a gas oven last Christmas. She is one of the experienced bakers that I personally know so I usually turn to her instant baking advice when I need them. As this was an impromptu bake date though, we did not have a baking plan. But it still turned out to be super fun. Not only for me, but to the little girl who surprised me that day.

My normally shy (especially to people new to her) little miss was extra cooperative and chatty that day. She asked Maggie if she can take a look at her making the royal icing (all by herself) and pulled a chair on her own (I think she temporarily forgot that she wasn't at home) when Tita Maggie gave her permission to.

Another good thing about playdates like this is while waiting for our end product to bake and set, Mags and I had the chance to chat about parenting ups and downs, exchange work dilemmas, talk about our the series that we are currently addicted too (thanks for the Suits reco Mags and Mike, we are now hooked!). It's always great to touch base with somebody who can relate to my daily wows and woes as a working parent.

Thanks Mags and Mike for letting us make a mess at your place. We are definitely looking forward to more weekends like this. And I hope this time with more of our baking blogger friends as well (Erl? Maqui? Sha? Mars? Pepper).

Family day is always the BEST day!

Earlier today. 

Several things happening these past few weeks that reminded me how important my family is.

Plenty of things here on earth could be temporal. But there are some - no matter how intangible -that transcends time. 

Relationships. Values. Memories. [on a good day, I could probably go on and on...but for now this is what comes to mind]

We spent a good deal of our day time today walking around this beautiful place in Manila called Intramuros. This place is so rich - of stories that our kids could benefit from. My kid had a lot of questions for me today. I wasn't able to give quick answers to most. I will have to brush up on Philippine history and get back to her soon. Or I might just refer her to her lolo who was my most favorite history teacher (yes, I probably will just do that).

But apart from the historical value of today's trip, we also took home a lot of reflective insights. We took a jeepney from Lawton to Intramuros and along the way, we were once again reminded of how lucky we are. I took that opportunity to point out to the kid what privileges she enjoys and reminded her as well not to take those privileges for granted because as how privileges are -- not everyone is afforded with those.

Today was a good day. Today was a day filled with gratefulness and appreciation to the brim.

Weekend Love: Another Rainbow Sighting

I don't know if my memory is right but I think this weekend was the first weekend this month where we finally got to experience bits of sun. It was also the first weekend of this month that we stayed home, or close to home (discounting the quick trip to the nearest mall yesterday to run a few errands).

So this afternoon, we let the little girl drag us down to the pool. We didn't join her to swim but it gave me and the hubby an hour to bond (i.e. talk nonsense and laugh our hearts out) while watching the kid have her own moment of fun.

What a nice bonus as well. Just when we were about to head home, this twin rainbows as the little miss called it earlier appeared.

Ah, just the perfect ending to a weekend well spent.

despite how crazy the past week was, it seemed to be telling
me - Joy is everywhere. You just gotta open your heart more and let it in.

Weekend Love: Kiddie Fun At Star City

I never developed a fondness for theme parks. When I visit a place I would rather raid the local palengke, bakery, museum or zoo. But of course, when you become a mother, your preferences take the back seat when you plan something with your kid.

When the company I work for announced that they are sponsoring an Employee Fun Day at Star City my instant reaction was to delete that email. Good thing the announcement came in installments and on the 3rd email, I realized that although this is not something I would personally define as fun it actually could be something that might be fun to the kid. So I asked the husband's opinion and he decided we will go for the little miss's sake.

Friday morning, the kid could hardly contain her excitement for our trip. We're going to "ROCK" City! Yehey!!! Before we could react to say she might be referring to a different place she immediately corrected herself -- "ay Star City pala".

Being the clueless parents that we are, we only paid admission for the kid and decided to just pay per ride inside when the kid has finally chosen the rides that she'll take. But when we got in, she wanted to immediately try the Pirate Adventure with my cousin and her Ate Inday. I inquired at the nearby booth and was told a "per ride" option is not available in Star City. If you want to try the rides you will have to purchase a Ride-All-You-Can pass. We had to walk all the way back to the main entrance so we can avail of the corporate discount. We were able to get her RAYC ticket for only P270 (normally P400/person). Had we inquired before we got in, it would have saved us the hassle of the long walk back and the relentless whining from the kid. But...these things just happens. Moving on...

Weekend Love: Sunshine Kitchen

Weekends are sacred to our family. The best weekend for us would be one spent entirely at home doing just about any "lazy" activity there is (movie marathons, trying out simple recipes with the little miss, siestas that would extend through the entire afternoon).

But we also value friendships. So connecting regularly with friends is also important to us. And for that, we also make a conscious effort to allot one of our weekend days at least once or twice in a month to spend outside of the house. 

Last Saturday, we left home early to meet up with my college girl friends and also long time roommates/housemates (Half of the time I lived away from home, I played house with these girls). I picked Sunshine Kitchen at the Fort Strip in Bonifacio Global City as our meeting place because I still had an unused Groupon voucher which was about to expire. I was saving that voucher up for a special occasion and I thought this was just the perfect time for it.

Although I did read a couple of good reviews of this restaurant I preferred to set my expectations at low. After all, I really am just after spending lunch with my favorite people. I called the restaurant 2 days before to reserve a table since we are a party of 5 and I really wouldn't want to wait long when I'm with the little miss. She borders on tantrum attack everytime we're made to wait for a table to free up. 

We arrived in Sunshine Kitchen about 15 minutes before my reserved time and the table was already ready. I guess, when they asked me to confirm our reservation around 11 am that morning they were just about to prepare our table. I say, they already won me over just by doing that (yes, I'm shallow I won't deny it hehe). I rarely get a callback for confirmation every time I make dining reservations.

The room is very airy. I immediately loved the ambiance. I also like their rustic the interiors. Both my husband and I have a common attraction to wooden furniture so yes, we were smitten by the place. We were handed over a menu. It was just a list of what they had. I did wish they had a better one, maybe something that had photos of their best sellers at least so people like my husband (who didn't get to browse their menu online beforehand) would not have a hard time choosing what to order.

sadly i wasn't able to take a photo of the braised beef and the friend chicken

I ordered 3 items for our party of 5 - Four-cheese pizza, Braised Beef and Fried Chicken. We were initially set on ordering their best seller - the 6 hour slow cooked Porchetta - but at 12:30 they were already out of stock. It must be that good, no? I was also planning to order a pasta dish when my college friends arrived but when the food came (we had to wait for about 15-20 minutes for our food to be ready), they were just enough for light eaters like us. My little girl, who is a cheese monster, had 3 slices of pizza. The chicken servings were just big enough, were cooked well and very crisp. The braised beef that we ordered was good enough to share. It was very tender and the sauce complimented the mashed potato that came with it on the side. Each of the items we ordered had a real home-cooked feel. Being somebody who loves to cook at home, that is another plus.

Will our family come back again to dine here? Definitely. The resto is kid-friendly and one of the waiters were even kind enough to ask my little girl if she wanted anything else. That made the kid feel like a real grown up. I also love that despite being at full capacity on lunch hour, my friends and I can hear each other very well. We were able to chat to our heart's content. It was just like were dining at home, only I didn't have to worry about food and all. Oh and my voucher was even good enough to let us try 2 of the desserts on the restaurant's menu - Key Lime Ice Cream and the Salted Caramel Cheesecake. Both were really good. I was transported to dessert heaven. I would come back to this place, even just for the dessert (but I will -- to try the Porchetta). In my opinion, this place is worth spending good food money in. Even without the group buy discount, I would pick this restaurant to eat in.

Good food, Great Company!

I will stop my blabbering here. If you want to find out more about the Sunshine Kitchen, check out their Facebook page. Or Google for more interesting food reviews like this one.

--------------------------------------------------

Sunshine Kitchen

2/F Fort Pointe Bldg 1,

The Fort Strip, Bonifacio Global City

(0928) 821 26 25

Store Hours: Sundays-Wednesdays from 11am-2pm; 6-10:30pm, Th-Sat 11am-2pm; 6pm-2am)

What Makes A Great Weekend

To me a swell weekend consists of  --

a good night's sleep. (read: a few minutes of a beautiful morning spent awake in bed but with a little girl still snoring beside you)

a perfectly brewed cup of coffee to start the day.

a hearty breakfast to pair that cup of coffee with.

a morning mostly spent organizing stuff, that will usually need an entire day to get organized. but still. it's very therapeutic, you see.

a power outage that would drive us out of the oven-like house, drop our mobile phones and laptops, and find something creative to do instead.

Ahhhh..I wish I have actual photos to show and be more visually descriptive of the phrases above. But I seem to find myself always busy enjoying BEING in the moment these days, I always forget to take a snap for documentation purposes. But to working moms like me (and working daddies like my husband) weekends are very sacred. So we just try our best to be in it, in every way we can.

Oh well. Memories are still better. I'm going to live with that. Have a great week ahead friends!

Weekend #9: Terra 28th and Mango Tree

I confessed in a couple of posts in the past to being a homebody. I stay true to that claim to this day. But once in a while, I do welcome spending our weekends outside of our home. I feel we need do that to instill some sense of "social life balance" (okay, i invented that) on our kid. 

Being out and experiencing "life" outside of our home is important to a school kid like my daughter (in my opinion, that is). Trying out new restaurants gives her palate some sense of adventure (the foodie kind of way) and interacting with kids other than classmates and our neighbors affords her the experience to socialize with kids that are not categorized as friends or acquaintances. Strangers, if you want to really label it. 

Despite being very outspoken and talkative, I grew up a very shy kid. I attribute that to my lack of 'experience'. I wasn't very sociable as kid. I chose to confine myself in the comforts of our home and devour books and watch TV then. The only kids I knew were the kids on my block and right across the street. I remain friends with them till now though. Yes, I can probably say wherever life took us, our childhood memories somehow stuck with us. And thank God for the rise of social media, we still get to correspond and update one another with what's going on in our lives every so often. BUT I digress yet again.

My point is, yes you build solid friendships even if you don't go out often. But it also relegates you to thinking it's okay to choose mediocrity just because you're too scared to take risks. My mommy friend Maggie has this wonderful post on spontaneity and in my case, I was admittedly a late bloomer in that department. Honestly, I love this new version of me more (the spontaneous one). I would wish for my daughter to nurture the same spirit as I have now. Life is for the living as they say. And to me, part of living is being out there experiencing LIFE. 

i made this thinking it's a week's worth of words but by Sunday she'll learned to read all of it. atat. kanino pa kaya nagmana?

So anyways, before I blabber some more, let me just share with you how we spent last weekend. Again it was a good mix of lazy and busy. We spent the entire Saturday at home. We painted new words to learn in the morning and napped mostly in the afternoon. Sunday was the busy one. But it was the good kind because I finally got to connect with my college buddy M who is also my daughter's ninang (well, we both are godparents to our kids as we're not really superstitious like that). 

life sized playmobil figures at one of our fave stops in BHS - Hobbes and Landes

M and I decided to meet up at Bonifacio Global City since we both have not been there for quite a long time (like several months) now. I used to work in the Fort area and admittedly, I love spending time there. It's just the perfect place to spend family day outs. Plenty of space for the kids to run around and restos all over for the adults to do catch up chatter. 

This weekend, the hubs and I decided to bring the kid to Terra 28th. It's pretty rundown now. The seesaw in particular was already broken but it was still a nice place to hang out with your hyperactive kid. We taught Maia how to play piko and patintero and she had fun learning it. She also invented her own game and christened it: ZIGZAG STONES because yes the mechanics is to run in ZIGZAG without stepping on any of the stones that were scattered on the grass.

Let's play ZIGZAG STONES, Mommy! LEZGOW!

It was a very humid day last Sunday but we still managed to spend a good one hour in that playground. After that it started drizzling so we headed to nearby BHS for cover just in time as well to meet M. We unanimously agreed it was a good day to feast on Thai food so we headed to the recently opened BHS Central where a cluster of new restaurants (well at least for me) are located (this is where Slice is located too, we wanted to dine there but the place was packed and we all have a common allergic to crowds hahaha). We shared a sumptuous lunch of red chicken curry, sauteed crabs, veggies and tom yum at Mango Tree. Everything we ordered was a winner. Sorry no photos to show as we were all so hungry, we didn't bother to take photos anymore but Maia really enjoyed the Tom Yum soup (but she got full instantly because she would sip at her Mango shake every time she takes a bit of the fish from the soup. should remember to order the milder version next time). If you are a fan of Thai food, I would suggest you try this resto. The ambiance is just perfect for family gatherings. No loud music. And the dining area is very cozy. We were tempted to take power naps after our filling lunch. 

PHOTO SOURCE. I would come back for this every weekend, if I can.

After lunch, the daddy and the baby little miss headed to Fully Booked to bond while M and I window shopped. When we got tired we decided to grab coffee and dessert at The Cake Club (also in BHS Central). We shared a slice of Guia (which was just so heavenly, if you are a cheesecake person I highly recommend you try it). We called it a day at around 5pm because the kid looked pretty wiped out. True enough, she was snoring on our commute home. Tired to the nth level.

I can do this maybe at least once a month. Since I'm making lists of things to do already I'm sure there's bound to be several repeats of weekends like this. It was just the perfect kid kind. Not rushed. Just well-spent one.

How's your week been so far? If you're the kind who likes to join blog contests, please hop on over to my mommy friend Aimee's blog and join her blog anniversary giveaway. Amazing prizes, I'm tellin' ya.

And if you like handmade stuff, I encourage you to visit Pepper's The Wagon Shop as well. Or if you're a dessert monster like me, you would love Sha's cupcakes and Maggie's cakepops. 

I hope what's left of the work week is going to be kind to you because I wish the same for me. :)

Weekend Recap # 7 - Unplanned Trip and New Discoveries

Pathetic that the most I can post is about weekend updates. But better than none for now, I guess. I have yet to saddle back into getting my mother groove back. Nasty flu also had to victimize our entire household this past week. And Saturday saw us making a unplanned call to the little miss's pedia since she started running fever early morning.

It was a bad rhinitis attack that was worsened by a sneaky trip with Ate Inday to the frozen yogurt booth last Friday after the little miss's mini-intrams in school. I think she pretty well has learned her lesson now. I don't think she's ever going to ask for anything cold, iced or frozen when she's coughing. 

So while waiting for our turn at the doctor's clinic, the daddy kept saying -- "NINAKAW NA NAMAN ANG SABADO NATIN. GANUN GANUN NA LANG!" (so our entire Saturday was stolen from us again. Just like that) I shot him a killer glare and he zipped it after that. I'm sure if we didn't make the trip to the doctor's he would have been worried sick about his unica hija the entire weekend. I'll take one wasted day (if you ever consider it that way, I honestly don't Mr.) over an entire wasted weekend due to worrying. Then you will have to call work for an Emergency leave come Monday because you just couldn't bear seeing your daughter suffer anymore.

But mommies and daddies just really seemed to be wired differently. And there's a reason for that most probably. I think by having that, household decisions are balanced (doesn't happen all the time for us, but at least we often get to see the pros and cons first before we plunge into something). 

Sadly, we went home with an antibiotic prescription and 2 more additional medicines to take for a week. What seemed to have been a viral thing last week resulted to swollen tonsils (thanks to that sneaky frozen yogurt trip). Good thing, we're almost halfway through the medication and I can't help but look forward to Friday. We used to have no problems giving medicines to the little miss but since she got accustomed to just taking homeo meds, she started hating commercial meds already. So every time we need her to take her dose for the day, we had to constrain her else we end up playing chase the entire day. Somebody's gotta take the kicks and punches for now (and that's actually me) till this little miss is declared healthy again. 

Photo dumping in here again to recap the weekend that just passed:

bored. and getting a bit impatient.
had to wait for more than an hour for our turn at the doctor's clinic.

Grew tired of doodling on her notebook
so she grabbed the phone from me and starting taking pics of her feet,
her dad's phone, the walls, the door. Haha

passed by this dainty cupcake store on our way home.
i'm writing a separate post on these because I wanted to document
all the pics that I took of the store. And the little girl just loved it so much
i didn't have to force her to pose for photos.

We took these home:

Nice package eh? The girl was thrilled to hold the box since it's in her fave color!

Sunday was a lot better. Kiddo was more energetic.
We even got to sneak out for an easy 30-minute run before breakfast.
Then we hit the playground before Mr. Sun made his presence felt.
No pictures to show for that. But it was a happy morning.

I made cabbage rolls for lunch! My first time.
Wasn't bad. But wasn't great either. Plenty of room to improve.
Please check out my personal blog : tibsandfaye.blogspot.com for the recipe.

During naptime, she fashioned an imaginary TV out of her school folder.
The pic didn't show the pile of books below that was supposed to be an imaginary DVD player.
At this particular scene when I took the photo, 'KUNG FU PANDA' was showing.
She was laughing and giggling as if she was really watching a real movie.
She entertained us with her funny dialogue!
But I had to cut that short (yes, KJ mom) because she really needed that nap to recuperate fast.

I sneaked out of the house while she's napping to accompany my Mom and sis to the salon.
I grabbed the opportunity to get my hair trimmed too (it's been a year since I had a haircut. Yikes, I know)
The hairstylist was trying to convinced me to get a digi-perm but I was hesitating because I never had my hair 'curled' ever. So when he was blow drying, he decided to make temporary curls.
When I got home, kid was so thrilled to see my wavy hair. She was pushing for me to get it permed so we can both be curly. As of this writing however, I'm still about a thousand likes away from the husband's approval. Haha. 

Whew! That was quite a lengthy one. How's your week going so far? I hope you're having a great one!