Natural Toys From Vigan

I've always dreamed for Maia to own a plastic-free, all-natural set of toys. I was never generously endowed with a lot of toys during my childhood (no Barbies, Legos, and nor popular stuffed toys) but I had the abundance of natural toys. Balls made of coconut leaves, plates made of weaved Banana leaves. I think that's mainly where my love for nature is rooted from. I wanted my little girl to experience that. But of course, I know that will somehow remain a dream. With Maia, at least.

When we first came to visit St. Michael Playhouse for a trial, I fell in love at first sight with their collection of natural toys. I wanted to get Maia the set of dining toys and mini-furnitures that they have but I never got around to asking the nurturers there where the toys were sourced. Later on, I would come across several natural toy resellers in Multiply but would balk at the steep prices of the toys. I know my husband would never approve. 

So I settled for wood scraps and a bag of Ecobloks and shells and stones and mahogany shells that we would collect during our vacation to Antique. Seeing how the kid enjoy playing with those already gave me some sort of contentment. I stopped ogling and drooling over wooden toys in Etsy and Multiply. I stopped daydreaming on when we'd ever be able to afford a fully furnished wooden kitchen set for the little miss. I thought the scraps we had were already enough to fuel her imagination. (And they really were I'd like to think so) 

Not till I came across these cute mini-furniture toys in Vigan while walking around yesterday. Like a kid who just saw a candy store, my eyes just brightened at the sight of the tiny furniture lined up. My husband knew he only has one option, to say yes. Haha. I wanted to buy all of the items there. They had mini-rocking chairs (complete with the detailed rattan weaving on the backrest), living room set, and several types of dining sets for kids.

This was priced at P300/set. It came with a table and 4 chairs. I was able to
haggle for P250 but I think they can go down to P200 if you're buying more.

I got the little miss this round table dining set and she immediately showered me with kisses when she opened the package this morning. 

The other night I also got her this mini-kitchen cooking set made of clay. She already owned something similar to this but the ones we found in Vigan were even smaller than the ones she currently owned and I just thought I ougta buy it too. Who knows, maybe she will be more careful this time and we can pass it on to her kids (maybe) in the future. 

Bought the little set at the bottom for P100/set. Initially priced at P130.

And...here I go, daydreaming again. 

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!

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).