Princess-themed Class Party At Five

Dearest Maia,

You have been counting down the days since the beginning of October. It always amazes us how you remember the days and the dates. You wake up cheerful in the morning and announce how many days are left till your 5th birthday. One of my favorites was the morning of the 15th when you announced, "three days na lang birthday ko na!!! yes!!!"

You planned your 5th birthday immediately after you celebrated your 4th. You planned your 6th, 7th, 8th till the 10th. Oh, it was really fascinating to hear you make plans. This 5th birthday, I couldn't remember now if it turned out to be the way you planned it. I now have a fuzzy memory of that day but seeing you smile from ear to ear made me feel like it was exactly how you planned it to be.

Ate Inday and I did this handmade MAIA letters 2 days prior to the party.
It was one of the few brilliant ideas that my cramming mind managed to come up with.
Would have been nice if we made a tiara, no? I bought the banner at National Bookstore for P60.

We had fun interacting with your school friends today little girl. We can see how much all of you have grown up in a year. You now had voracious appetites and can now eat independently. Your dad found it amusing too that you all know how to throw your trash properly. That was really nice to see. 

It was an awesome party, little girl. All credit goes to you. You planned it well. And you were the most beautiful Princess party host I've ever met ;)

Your classmates sang happy birthday and greeted you with a loud, "we love you, Maia" and we caught you getting teary-eyed.
You mumbled a gentle THANK YOU and quickly joined your classmates to eat. I guess you didn't want to be caught crying but remember it's okay to show your emotions too sometimes my little girl.

This year is your last year in preschool. I'm bemused every time that realization hits me. I guess, it will always be bittersweet for me and daddy. But we're glad you seem to be growing up just the way we'd hoped it. Stay compassionate. Prayerful. Adventurous. Passionate. I pray you'd learn to speak your mind as well. But you're perfect just the way you are my little girl. Always remember we love you very, very much!

Maia Finds: Cute Pens From CDR-King

Doodling is one of the little miss's favorite pasttimes. In fact, she spends more time doodling than playing. She prefers to use pens rather than pencils. I don't know why. Maybe it's because pens are usually darker while pencils are usually on the grayish side and they tend to fade. Maybe it's because pens assures her that the drawings are not going to disappear. I don't really know why. I guess, she just really likes the way her doodles look when she uses pens.

She isn't high maintenance when it comes to art supplies. As long as it writes, she'll take it. I usually just keep a spare for her. I don't stock up a lot because she tends to use all of them at the same time. Those spares doesn't really serve the purpose because she eventually loses them all at the same time too. So yes, it's good that she doesn't have brand preferences. Easy on my pockets.

Recently, CDR-King has been a favorite hang out for the husband. While he waits for me to finish grocery shopping, he would sneak a few minutes to kill inside a CDR-King store. He always gets excited with the things he finds there. Last Friday, we spent a good few hours of our date day at one of the bigger locations in the metro.

Oh, can you just imagine my delight when I saw boxes and boxes of cute pens lined up on one of their shelves? I immediately grabbed a piece of each design. I wanted to collect all of them for the little miss. Then I realized, they will never ever end up as collections because she will eventually use all of them up. So from about 10 pieces, I trimmed them down to 5. I picked what I think suits the kid's personality.

The next day, I showed it to her and she showered me with "Thank Yous" and lots of hugs and kisses. Yes, that's how appreciative she is. And smitten by the sight of pens. I can very well tell you that she immediately tested all of the pens to see which ones can get her to make the best doodles.

If you are looking for lootbag fillers for your kid's upcoming birthday, this could be one of them. They're cheap, cute and very useful.

Arts-N-Crafts: Recycled Wraps

Inspired by Pepper's showcase of her very creative wrappers here and as a catch up on our Arts-N-Crafts activities as well, let me just share with you a few samples of the gifts we've recently given away (mostly to the kid's classmates) which we wrapped using recycled materials. I hope you have not jumped over Pepper's site yet as these are not in that caliber. But I wanted to publish this post, in the hopes that many would take inspiration and consider more creative ways of reusing household trash to help save the environment. It's a tiny step but at least YOU are making one. 

Most of these are recycled paper bags from National Bookstore (reversed). I keep a boxful of used japanese/tissue paper, ribbons from cakes and gifts (and some from our past runs too, low budget fun runs would usually just use ribbons as a mark that you already went past a turnaround point), used giftwrappers,  used yarns, fuzzy wires, boxes, cardboards, stickers and other what-nots that my husband would otherwise refer to as GARBAGE. 

Necessity as they say is the mother of invention. And this reusing thing was really borne out of necessity at first. And mainly because since the kid started preschool we had to prepare gifts once or twice a month and there were times that I'd really forgot to buy giftwrappers. I already saved myself some time by stocking up on Adarna/Tahanan/Lampara books (and lately some workbooks that were also printed using recycled paper) so I thought why not save me some money and help out too by reusing the brown paper bags. And that started our recycled gift wrapping adventures and my primary mission here is to expose the kid to the idea of reduce, reuse and recycle (and somehow she understands now that paper comes from trees so we should make good use of them).

This was a gift for a classmate who had a Hello Kitty-themed class party.
I told the kid this was patterned after Hello Kitty's ribbon and she giggled (apparently she agrees).
The flower cut out from an old glass coaster that I had left over from the flash card reviewers that I made for her when she was still learning to write numbers.

Since the daughter likes to scribble and doodle, I thought it would be fun to let her draw on the wrappers. The one at the bottom was my silly attempt to make girly designs. Which of these two look better to you?

blue balls for a boy birthday celebrant

I first posted these here

Lastly, this was from last Christmas. I did this without the kid's help and turned out to  be my very first venture into gift wrappers from recycled materials.

old manila paper and used cartolina from our previous art activities

How about you? Care to share what your upcycling/reusing projects are? Would love to see them!

Birthday Invitation Wrap Up

Occasionally (or rather literally when an occasion at home comes up), I would daydream of being a DIY Goddess. Think Martha Stewart. Really. But in reality, I do not even have 1% of her incredible skills. I struggle hard at every arts and crafts project that I embark on with my overeager little miss. But of course, since I have an enthusiastic student I always try my hardest to deliver my best. Although I tended to be very unlucky with raffles and lotteries, the kid and I often (as luck would have it) ended  with surprisingly nice looking projects. The Fates probably thought it wiser to gift me with the luck in this kind of things since they know how difficult it is to console disappointed kids.

So anyways, with the class birthday party in mind I thought of the great amount of joy I could bring to the kid if I DIY her birthday invites taking to mind all things enchanted and fairy-like. But as I brainstormed for hours, I just ended up mentally-drained and tired. And yet with nary an idea to start with. So I embraced defeat yet again. And decided it's time I called for back up. I am eternally grateful for cousins who are gifted with real (and not fake ones like mine) artistic talents who are also ever ready to take over from where I failed. 

So I say again, "Hello there, Ninong Jepoy!" and browse the internet for some generic fairy-themed invites and send the first thing that I see to my cousin to personalize for the kid. Here's what he came up with.

i had to blur out the party details. i wanted to link up the source of this photo but i cannot remember where i got it from. so my advance apologies. i really have no intention of claiming ownership over this design.

I wanted a very simple birthday invite BECAUSE I was very watchful of my budget and I didn't want to overspend as well. But I also didn't want to totally disregard the kid's wishes of seeing fairies and castles in it. So this is the best I can come up with. I swear, little miss, best effort na 'to ni Mommy (and mostly Ninong hehe). 

I had that printed as a 3R photo. Picture City over at ATC (I'm sure they have branches in other malls around the metro) has a 5+1 promo so we got about 6 pcs for free since we also had some of the kid's recent photos printed for our birthday card exchange project. So that costed me about P4.50/pc. Not bad at all. And I still have P5.50 left to spend for the envelope since I budgeted each invite at P10/pc.

I was thinking of something generic to get for the invite. I thought we'll just seal them with stickers for added color but when I was browsing through the available envelopes at National Bookstore, I couldn't find anything that would fit the invite. So I was looking around almost ready to just go with the next best thing when my eyes fell on this rack that houses coin envelopes. I grabbed a pack and measured it against the size of the invite and TA-DAHHHHH, we found our winner! 

So yes, I went with a coin envelope and a photo paper printed invite. So boring looking. So unappealing. But who cares. It passed my little girl's standards and it fit my budget. That's all that mattered really. 

When we got home, the little miss was so excited to start working on them so I got the invites out and she starting pulling the envelopes out of the package one by one. Lining them up and counting them over and over. 

"Mommy, huwag mo kakalimutan si N, si A and si C ha?!"

"Yes, ma'am birthday girl. I got them all covered!" (she giggled at my response and at the sight of her class list)

i hand wrote the names of her classmates on each card and
she sealed them with letter stickers depending on the first letter of her classmate's names

After we've finished inserting into the envelopes and sealing all 22 pieces of her birthday invites, she asked me to help her sort the invites according to the gender of the recipient. It turned out to be her way of checking if we missed somebody out. She kept insisting we missed 3 but I thought maybe the other kids were using nicknames in school that's why they weren't on the list that Teacher J confirmed to me. But the daddy was telling me, he trusts his daughter's memory. So the following day, I sent Teacher J a note to re-confirm the list and guess what -- the kid was right all along. Teacher J did miss to add 3 more to my list. Good job kiddo for double checking!

So we've sent out the invites. The kid is soooo ready to party. But I have yet to finalize everything. I don't know yet where we'd get the food. Or if we'll have banners and balloons. I'll go by my instinct. We'll go by whatever would work best for us that day. I'm excited to see though the kid's reaction when they see Kraze Kitch's Rainbow Cake. (because the cake was a big hit from last year's party we're reordering again this year) I hope I can find nice garden/enchanted/fairy themed toppers for that.

By the way, I spent less than P150 for 25 invitations. Do I get a good job, Mommy cheers as well?

Penpals + Birthday Card Exchange Project

As a child, I loved writing letters and notes to friends and families. The letter exchanges especially grew when I stepped into high school. Most of my grade school friends have since moved to other schools and having entered the difficult age of puberty, the letter exchanges became venues for me and my friends to air out our crazy teen emotions. In college, when my dormmates left to stay in other dormitories or transfer to other cities to work we still kept in touch through letters. I still kept most of those although I would have to really dig deep into my childhood memorabilia in Antique find them. I used to re-read them when I come home for vacations. They always provided me with a doorway to revisit my teens and college years and well pretty much just send me down nostalgia lane (something that I am pretty addicted to). 

I enjoy opening up the mails and anticipating the stories those letters would bring. I love deciphering my friend's handwriting. Even the handwriting alone can convey what mood my friend's were in when they were writing the letters. I looked forward to those the most, I think. It was almost like I was there with my friends when the experiences that they were sharing actually happened.

Today however with all these techie (good stuff, I wouldn't argue with that) things surrounding us and our kids most especially, you'd wonder if they will ever get to know what an actual mail looks like. Or will they ever get to experience the excitement that comes with seeing the postman drop something on the mailbox or on your doorstep. Will they even know what real stamps look like? 

With that in mind, a fellow mommy blogger - Maqui - and I thought of reviving snail mails in our respective households. We thought of starting with a round of birthday card exchanges since both our kid's birthday fall on the same month anyway. Eventually we opened this idea up in N@W, a forum of moms that we are both members of and several  mommies showed interest in joining this activity. A few weeks ago, Maqui sent me and 2 other mommies a note telling us we can already start sending our cards. Last week, we received our first card and I don't have words to describe the delight on the kid's face when she saw her name on the envelope. "It's for me! See! It's my name!" 

She raved for days about getting this musical card from the mail. And it just made her look forward more to her birthday. Thank you Aki and Maqui! We look forward to exchanging more mails with you in the future! 

p.s. 

Maia had some sticker pals in the past. This reminds me that we are now way overdue on that. Time to collect them stickers again and send mail to our pals again! Shout out to Manilamommy's DW and Wifelysteps' Little Timmy!

Four After A Month

Dearest Maia,

It's exactly one month to go before we celebrate your birthday. You are turning 4 by then. Wow FOUR. Although it has been months already since you starting claiming to be four already. "Four na ako eh. Di na ako baby", I still feel light-headed when I think about it. Time flies by really, really, extra, super fast. By the way, you lifted that entire statement verbatim from the adults in the house of course. You are so good at doing that nowadays. Some days you would even mimic all our conversations, just to annoy us mostly. We would pretend to be annoyed of course. Then you'd get the last laugh, as always.

This year is going to be the first time that you will be celebrating your birthday in school. Of course, as early as June you already have been planning what your birthday celebration would be. You asked for a Tinkerbell theme. No, you have never seen a single Tinkerbell cartoon show. But you saw it in one of the Disney reviewers that Mommy Ninang gave you and you immediately declared yourself to be her biggest fan. So almost instantly, you scraped off the Mickey Mouse birthday cake that you have been asking me to get you since last year and replaced it with a Tinkerbell cake. I wanted to give in to your theme request. But of course, we needed the financier's approval and unfortunately, it was disapproved. But he agreed to meet with you halfway and gave us permission to do a Forest/Fairy themed one. 

And now I'm scouring my tiny brain for ideas and finding none at all. We'll probably go for the rainbow cake again this year. I love the homey-feel that it brought to your party last year. (It actually made me feel like I was the one who baked your cake when in fact I really have no inkling how to make one) Then I'll just look for fairy figurines to top it. 

What I worry more about is your class giveaway. I wanted that to be a treat for everyone. But I'm not fond of giving kids sweets and the usual art kit. I wanted your giveaway to be meaningful. Initially I thought to give your class potted plants (just like the plants you brought home after your gardening class at St Michael last summer). But Daddy doesn't think that's logistically possible since 1) how do we transport all 22 pots from our house to your school via public transportation? 2) where can we source those potted plants in the first place? I think his concerns were valid and that made me sadder. It somehow pressured me to think of something even more unique. And that's really hard. I wish we could both sit down and plan about it already. But of course I wouldn't want to enslave you with petty adult problems like this.

Mommy has always been a crammer anyway. So I'm putting all my cards in my cramming magic once again. Wish me luck, baby. As I really wouldn't want to disappoint you.

Love you forever,
Mommy

Re/Upcycling Brown Paper Bags

I confessed a few posts ago that I am a certified TRASH LOVER. I keep toilet paper rolls, old newspapers,   shoe boxes, grocery cartons, paper bags, and all sorts of retaso aside thinking I will find a great use for them in the future. So far, they have been quite useful in most of our arts and crafts activities. Although my husband is not very fond of this, it seems to be growing in him already. Some days, I'd find him absentmindedly folding an empty Pan De Manila paper bag and hand them over to me to keep. Funny hubby.

Of late, the little miss's classmates have had back to back birthday party celebrations in school and at first I worried most about the presents (as I was never the planning kind and more of the cramming kind). To save my face from more wrinkles (I'm all for simple, useful stuff anyways), I decided to just stick to books to giveaway as presents. Adarna, Tahanan and Lampara has a lot of published books already I don't think we will ever run out of gifts to give (there's only 23 in class anyways). When I buy the gifts however, I always try to bring her with me because I prefer that she picks the presents herself rather than me choosing for her. Luckily, the birthday celebrations always fall after a weekend or a holiday so we have plenty of time to scour the bookstores. I limit the choices to 2 though so we won't spend the entire day looking.

We live in an area where plastic bags are not allowed in stores anymore. I always bring reusable bags with me but for small books and stationary supplies, I prefer to have them in brown paper bags. Coming home with one of the books in a paper bag one day, I realized the bags themselves can serve as gift wrappers already. What I did was have the little miss decorate them first by finger painting on them, putting glitter glue or stamping decos on them before putting the final touches of recycled ribbons and the like. It turned out to be one fun activity that the little miss is now always looking forward to doing everytime we come home with a present to give to a classmate. (don't you just love accidental discoveries?)

I wasn't able to take photos of the first 2 we did but here is the most recent brown paper bag wrapper we made:

had to take a photo of this because this was the first time she wrote on the gift tags neatly and correctly.
i just had to spell out the letters but this was written with no assistance from me :) 

It doesn't look fancy. Nothing Martha Stewart-ish. But these days, the only standards I'm really aiming to pass is those set by my little girl. This one passed with a big wide grin to boot. So when the little miss is happy, I am happy (100x more if you ask me).

Happy Birthday to our Daddy Prince!

Yes Maia calls her dad her Prince. And of course, the daddy couldn't be any happier. His wish is actually to remain as her prince till she's 35. Is that strict or is that strict??? 

Well, before the two of them reach that stage where arguments already revolved around curfews and boys I'd like for both of them to enjoy each other's company to its fullest. So I try to make it a point to keep one day of the weekend sacred for family time and celebrate events like birthdays in a big way. Well big doesn't really have to mean spending so much in my vocabulary. I think it's more of the effort that was put into it that makes a celebration BIG. 

we labored on this birthday card Friday morning
we couldn't find time to do it without arousing suspicion from the bday boy

So for our daddy's birthday yesterday, we woke up extra early to sing happy birthday to him. Maia was still groggy but I managed to get her to help me set up the cake and the candles. I'm happy that despite having woken her up from a really good, snore-worthy sleep, she was so cheery. Her excitement over surprising her dad with a cake and her handmade card truly erased her sleepiness away. So we lighted the candles and went to wake the birthday boy up to make a wish and blow his birthday candles. I tried to create two 3's using the leftover candles from Maia's 3rd birthday but I didn't think I succeeded in doing that. I left it anyways afraid I'd just ruin the cake even more.

candles were supposed to be two 3's but i didn't have the skills for that. lolz

Too bad I wasn't able to take anymore pictures but I was able to capture that on video. This is the 2nd year that we've done this since Maia learned to sing happy birthday. I'm hoping we could keep doing this till she gets tired of it. (and yes, till I am able to sneak in and hide the cake from the birthday boy). 

here's a big kiss for my Daddy Prince!

Happy, happy birthday Daddy Prince! Thank you for trying to be patient with me. Thank you for your guidance. Thank you for taking time to make me toys from scratch (I'm still waiting for the replacement of that doll house you made before). Thank you for teaching me to be brave. Thank you for always saying I love you to me because that taught me say I love you back. Thank you for everything. Mommy and I love you very, very much!

Birthday boy hates being photographed

Almost Three, Barely Three

You are almost three today. And the past year was definitely far different from the past two years that we've experienced together. You now speak your mind. You know what you want and say it. You can now tell what's right or wrong. You devour more food than I do. You are now officially a kid indeed.

You're barely three but you speak in complete sentences already. You never fail to keep us entertained by your witty remarks. I know most people would say, it's not that amazing because I am such a talker so you probably took after me but at almost 3 you just deliver the most unexpected monologues, you always leave us dumbfounded. I could only pray that God blesses you with the wisdom to someday put that gift to good use. Who knows you might grow up to be a great storyteller!

You're barely three but your imagination just blows me away. There is no need for fancy, expensive toys for you. Because in your world, every thing is just perfect as it is. There are no boundaries, you just simply let your imagination fly. You can transform scratch papers to flying carpets and wings; bottle caps to fancy cups; sticks to electric guitars! I don't even have to do anything with them. You give them life on your own!

Stick House (with some help from Daddy)

You're barely three but you already come up with such beautiful drawings sometimes they're so intricate we have to step back to see what they really are. You can create a full story out of your drawings as well. Amazing, little girl.

Left: Car (was probably remembering her Manong Gogol's drawing)
Right: Self-portrait (wearing sunglasses)

You're barely three but you can already write a few letters of the alphabet. You first wrote H and your dad thought it was just something you did by accident. But no, you had to disprove your dad and you did another one. I feel so proud. Now you can easily do your E's, F's, O's, T's, I's, L's (and a few more I cannot remember them now). Letters like P, B, M or A you can also do but you always want Mommy to guide you (but honestly baby, you're the one doing them. I never controlled your hands). 

You're barely three but you now understand why rules at home exist. And you try your best to follow them because you know you're breaking Mommy's and Daddy's heart if you're not obeying us. You do not hesitate to say sorry when you know you did something wrong (and you say it is such a sweet way, you make us feel it's a big sin not to forgive you). 

You're barely three but you can fix your meals already. If we even let you, you can make your own warm milk. When we're too pre-occupied you'd grab your little mug and put milk on it and attempt to put warm water on it just to test if we are paying attention to you (but remember we said the red button on the water dispenser is not for kids your age yet so thank you for listening to us).

You're barely three but you have such a big heart. You are never short of hugs and kisses. You say I love you more often that we do. You say I love you not just to us but to every one you care about. Keep spreading the love, little girl. You always make people smile when you do that :)

You're barely three but you've taught me so much already. And I'm still learning so much from you day in and day out. You brought out something in me that I never expected I had...one of them is PATIENCE. I never thought I can be this patient but you showed me how to be. Thank you for that. 

I thank God everyday that you came into our life, Maia. We love you to bits.

Birthday Musings...

I was trying to write down my 31 wishes and thanksgiving but could not find time to finish it due to quarterly closing activities. <Hmpf> I'd probably get to finish it tomorrow. Good luck.

I still do not want to miss posting something on this wonderful day.

Yesterday, my office friends threw a party for me and my co-celebrant (well technically it was his party since his bday falls on the 2nd), and it felt good knowing I had friends who cared enough to prepare something for us despite our busy quarter end schedule. One of them had to waste 3 freakin' hours at the mall just to find me a gift. These people have played my instant counselors on times I needed somebody to vent out my frustrations and disappointments. On top of the material trappings this world offers, I am always thankful I am surrounded by people and family who never fail to cheer me up, push me to my limit (for the better ha), and cry with me if the need arises.

Having this in mind, I chose to put this on my facebook status this morning:  Thank you God for ALL the blessings. I thank you for surrounding me with so much LOVE. I pray for more wisdom and healthier years to come. :)

After I found out that I had malignant PT, my idea of blessings has totally taken a different perspective. Today,