Crazy Hats

It was a very busy month. Since the housing project was already settled: house chosen, deals closed, interior and exterior plans making on progress {read: internet search and items on sale hunting}, and down payment source almost settled, we are now on the roll for the work related activities. 

And yes, no Christmas shopping was ever done yet and it is still on the least of my priorities. We might hit the malls few days before Christmas, and I think like last year, there will be midnight shopping on some major malls where we usually shops.

My {former} classmates on masters had a get-together party and it was themed Crazy Hat! Will be posting photos on weekend. 

Together with my colleague, I conducted talks for universities and will be flying to Cebu tomorrow for another talk and will be back on Thursday morning! These things happening amid migraines that I am suffering from lately. 

Here are some photos from the net that I found on my files:

small space kitchen

photos from www.myhomeideas.com

Have a great week, people. I will try to post photos from Cebu once I get the chance.

Link it up

Here are for the homeowners who are leaning towards green living:

I wanted a home with minimum risk of sickness due to toxic materials. Glasses will be used instead of plastic containers (for the kitchen) and we will probably plant our own vegetables and fruits. {we are already doing that here}.

lady palm

Plants inside the home will be another thing we are planning to include and you can find the list of plants here together with the compounds that they absorb for you. Just to give you an idea, inks and detergents release Benzene. Benzene causes skin and eye irritation {and much more} and carcinogenic. Chinese evergreen is excellent on absorbing both benzene and toluene. And aloe vera {we happen to have a plant that needs replanting because it is already too big for its current pot} will soon have a new place indoors because it absorbs formaldehyde from wax papers and facial tissues.

chinese evergreen

photo credits: indoor tropics

We are not computing our carbon footprints yet, but if you know me well, expect that we will be doing that soon.

Busy Bees

We are far from moving to our new house. One reason is financial. Second is building materials. So far, the homeownership thing is still an alien topic to me. I am still guided by my instinct and the internet. One big hurdle though is that there is very limited information about buying a house here in the Philippines. But since I am not buying from home developers like Avida and we have lived in the area for a long time, we trust our agents.

We converted our 660k lot purchase to a 1.7M house and lot. We have few losses here:

1. the 18k plan will probably collect dust on our paper piles.
2. Time spent on building permit and some documentations

But we are happy to see an actual house and getting away from the heartaches and headaches from building the house. Although I am an engineer and good in math including physics and mechanics, civil engineering seems to be a different language to me.

The house that we chose will cost us around 500k for equity to move in. We are negotiating now for a 12months payment without interest  to cut off additional expenses for borrowing rates. It means, we will be paying around 100k (we already paid 130k for the lot) and will pay off the rest next year. I am coming up with a proposal to pay the equity until October 2011, so it is technically not 12months but 10 months. If this doesn't work out,we can actually delay signing papers to give us at least another  2 months of lag time{that,being bad and low of me, but things like that worked here}.

As i surf and study our steps towards this financial dilemma ( i do not want to wipe out our savings), i also keep tabs of what i should know about the house before turnover such as electrical load and the plumbing. Although not that equipped with knowledge, I can read drafts and understand computations since i had a subject on electrical engineering back in college.

I will be updating this blog every now and then so that if there will be others who have the same issues, they can get some ideas that might help them.

****

It is really a big investment for us. I already conducted search on malls and hardwares for the things that we need for the house so that i can slowly buy things next year, on sale, while paying equity. I have to document it yet but have already some excels to work out with.

I had few forums to attend to and scheduled to fly to Cebu next week. I am not that happy to be moving around at this time of the year but sometimes we do not have that much choice. I hope to get positive news on the job prospect although I am giving it some disappointment space. :D

Daydreaming

I was staring at the photos of our "new home" this weekend. I am so inlove with it that I created a new account on my SIMS 3 game using the house model. 

With the SIMS 3, the hubby was able to get a visual on how the place will look like and it is very wonderful to see the big difference after the curtains are hanged. It gave the place the coziness that we want. 

(the SIMS 3 model of the house was a perfect duplicate except for the roof on the front porch. I can not find the same model that have an arch on the entryway. I used same color, same shelves, and floor plan)

The floorplan is great, the materials are not substandard however there is an issue on the kitchen. 

The kitchen sink and counters are located at the far right corner of the room, near the door. The adjacent room is the masters bedroom. Since the counters were installed near the door in L-shape, the only space for the refrigerator and oven is the wall (adjacent room is masters bedroom). We were thinking about renovating the area, demolished the counter near the door and install there the oven but assuming that we have to pay for the down payment, there will be no budget on that for the mean time. Sigh. That's my dilemma. 

To come up with other ideas i went surfing! Mostly on Young House Love and Apartment Therapy. I realized that the house is 66 sq.m. only but it is big enough for us since we are not planning to have lots of kids. the three bedrooms are big enough for us because privacy and immediate moving is our number one concern. We hope to start paying for the mortgage because we want to finish it early on (we did our math).

Inspirations From Young House Love:

perfect for halfbath

I have seen this pantry at Katie's blog and have been obsessing about this for a long time. It appeared again on one of Young House's House crashing :

another half bath:

and the lawn, i think we can have one like this:

I also found some great ideas from Apartment Therapy and BHG wasn't able to bookmark them. So here is all I have for now. Have a happy Monday.

Project Prospects

I had a crazy week. The workload is heavy but somehow it still made me feel like I have never done them before. Two months away from the job (commitment-wise, if you catch my drift) makes same job exhausting once you go full time again. I can not blog that much so I am posting prospects for projects at home.

On the good news, we were able to get the house and lot. We are now on the process of looking for funds to add for the initial down payment (we do not want to wipe out our savings and our loan will not cover the down payment). I will be posting photos of the house this weekend.

Here are the new links:

1. easy to do tutorials (for beginners):

{via Mr&Mrs.Phillips}

2. More on for little kid (boys) craft and nesting

{via CookCleanCraft}

3. Inspiration and tutorials

{via MadeByJenn}

4. MadebyJenn made a camera strap that I want to do and she got the tutorial from {PriddyCreations}

{photo via PriddyCreations}

There you have it. Hope you will enjoy your weekend. Have a great Friday.

Wings on December

Sometimes I wish magic is real. I am referring to wands, beaded bag with undetectable extension charm (pictured below) and other magic that will make life easier. Whining is what I do when things get so busy around here and my mind seems to freeze and would just stop working.

Hermione and her beaded purse/bag

My point is, December is a busy month because of the holiday season: gifts, shopping, menu, reunions and different parties.

But aside from the holiday, work like a clockwork, will always be busiest during this month. 

People are asking for accomplishment reports, meetings that were never done the entire year but only just now, and new activities that seems to have waited an entire eleven months before they decided to make their appearance.

That's why I am asking for a magical December. Where everyone can get what they want and be happy. 

Now, for the more serious stuff, I have to make few updates on our home-ownership status. I am crossing my fingers and hoping that we will be allowed to convert our lot purchase agreement into a house and lot agreement because we realized that although we are paid to process and make plans as our careers, it does not apply to us on personal life. We, despite our experience in our jobs on organizing and negotiating and coming up with solutions that requires a lot of paper processing, can not even get a building permit without losing our temper because of red tape. Last Saturday, I gave up to the idea that the house plan that I have paid for (around $360) will probably get dust and shelved forever. 

I have seen the chosen house, took photos and hope to post them here. Now, with the hope that it will be given to us, here are the new ideas that I think will help us make it cozy and less-mass produced:

1. will keep this on my stash for the smaller rooms

     

 

photo via {letteredcottage}

2. Decorchicks's Molding ideas that turned into a fake wainscot. I really love this idea because the new house look too plain with just paint on them but we will probably unable to afford a real molding and wainscot once we started paying for the mortgage.

the Molding

the beautiful "wainscot"after some paint job

she got the idea here where Joy used laminates for their "fake"  board-and-batten like this one:

image from Joy's blog, you can see tutorial there.
 

there are other inspirations out there but I might have to limit my entry for now. I will be posting some other DIY soon so that bloggers like me who are on a tight budget can still make their home presentable.

Weekend Fun +Work Week's Activities

I had the most relaxing weekend and although my mind is still on its slumber stage from too much work last semester, it is more than ready to function on its current state of capacity.

A Total Quality Control Management training workshop was offered and I grabbed the opportunity to learn more about management. And I learned two things: 

1. I need to review my statistics (for my own career's sake); and

2. TQM is not for everybody. 

I will tell you about it on another post. 

Last Friday I attended a Round Table discussion on the progress of renewable energy in the country and it is one of those things that excites me. ( I will discuss this also on another blog)  It made me think of something about my future home-ownership wish list: 

I want a solar panel on my roof! Regardless of the investment! I am crossing my finger for a subsidy from the government on this one. 

Sometime this week, I had this snack. One of the many sweet things that I love:

 

You can drool if you want. I wont stop you. I am hungry myself. But I just finished my warm milk and it is impractical to start on sugar at this hour. 

By the way, I used basic ingredients. 

Local too. 

If you are from the PI and have no idea that there are big marsh mallows on supermarket, I am informing you now that there are "for bonfire" sizes. 

If your supermarket does not offer them, go to the nearest 7-11 convenient store.

They have the biggest marshmallows I ever found in the PI. 

Expect a higher price though, compared to the one from the supermarket.  

 

I also did some organizing. Found out that five minutes of your time can make a big difference. like this one:

Before:

  

five minutes later. 

 

 We had so any stuff on the table. Glad to put them back on their proper places. Nothing actually belongs on that table except the laptop. We are just too lazy to clean it up.

and for the weekend activity...I was able to convince someone to bake some cookies. teehee! 

But not after he melted the white chocolate the wrong way. 

We had a lumpy white chocolate that should be used for our own version of Reese's peanut cupcake.

 I was able to convince him to bake cookies so that we can use the lumpy white chocolate. 

He agreed and I think he is pretty proud that he did because we were able to push that old oven to work. And finally, it did cooperate.

I was able to fire it up to 350degrees! 

We had a chewy, tasty chocolate cookies. 

It was a drop cookies and I insisted on using my bento cutters on them to give it a little art.

They look huge on the photos (compared to those locally sold cookies). 

And they are really huge! 

About the size of the palm of my hand. 

Imagine how big does a 5'1" woman is. You can do the math.

And tonight, I found this kitchen. I fell in love with it and I know that this is the one that I will try to replicate on our home.

{image from here}

 I am not sure if its allowed to copy the photo from her header. 

But I did anyway. 

Hope linking back is good enough to give due credit. 

I can't lose this photo on my cluttered file again. That's why its on this blog. So that it is easier to look for it when I need it. 

don't you love those open shelves? I love them so much. and they are easy to reach as well.

Hope you had a great week too. 

I have lots of things to do like joining meme. Yes, will start with that one too. but for now, I need to sleep.

Boxing and Baking

Weekend passed by swiftly. I slept the rest of the afternoon yesterday and woke up around seven in the morning today. I never felt well rested for years. 

We took the opportunity to buy some stuff at the grocery as people settles on their seats (at their home) to watch Manny Pacquiao and Antonio Margarito's fight. Courtesy of our city government (every Pacquiao fight), people in this city with cable access was able to watch the fight live. Knowing that we will be having the street for ourselves (read: no traffic) and the grocery as well, we dash off to the store and get the grocery done. 

I was able to buy to flat containers for our clothes that no longer fit me and other things needed in the house. 

Hubby baked brownies but we realized that there is something wrong with the oven. I offered my sewing machine money to buy him a new oven but he refused, so let's see how long can he keep this oven. 

Here are the projects that I want to do in the future, when we have the new house:

1. mini scrapbook

scrapbook. mini-scrapbook.

{via a beautiful mess}

I made one before and can find time to do now, but being free from any reading materials and writing assignments make me a real bum. 

2. Little Birdie Plush

 

plushies! 

 

 

 

{via a beautiful mess}

3.Baking

 

{via dainty squid}

 4. Online Biz

 

alright, not exactly etsy, but more like etsy. (Note: I do not live in the US, so etsy-adventure is not for me)

 

There are lots of things to do,now that school is over. 

Hope you had the list of things to do as well.

Great Sunday!

Back to Blogging

I am done with school and probably off somewhere to start a new career.

After lots of weeks giving it much thought, I know that the need to start somewhere that is different from what my life has been for the past five years is the thing that my heart wants to do. So I will probably be starting anew somewhere and open a fresh leaf for my life.

I have plenty of projects to do and can not wait to start on them. The top list are the following:

1. Start a website (free or not, it doesn't matter)
2. Blog more
3. Sewing 
4. Scrapbooking
5. Driving lessons
6. baking lessons
7. gardening
8. painting/sketching

Sounds like a busy year for me. And I am all excited. Here are the projects that I hope to work on immediately:

via {v and co.}

I want to make a wreath but not sure if this is okay in the house (you know how difficult it is if you are living with the in-laws, you have to consider their opinion). 

By the way, I am almost done with the paperworks for the building permit. It took this long because we are too busy with other things in life life husband getting sick, exams, thesis. Now that things at school are finished, I can moved at a faster pace.

Finish Line

I had  the longest week and it is still stretching as weekend draws near. It was a busy week and I am hoping to finish everything today so that I can take a break this weekend.

via {web}

Three days of this week was spent cramming on writing my final paper and I am so sleep-deprived that I am currently nursing a migraine. Yesterday was spent on some meetings at work including an interview for a potential work. I am crossing my finger that this is the job that I have been looking for. 

Early today, I was so upset that it left me exhausted even before my day started. Family life is a never-ending struggle. Lately,I question my sanity when I took the vows. Life is giving me lemons and I am not in the right set of mind to make lemonade. I am tired of balancing the finances, urging him to move forward and motivating him from being stagnant and too content with what we have. Being happy with comfort zone is something that I allow him to indulge sometimes, but I can not rest that long. We have to move up a little bit, to accomplish something. After all, life is not just about us. We are a family and it means, a future with kids having a responsible parents who can provide their needs until they are all enough to earn for their needs. And I am not the type of individual who would find money only when you need it. I may not answer all our problems but at least, the financial part, the easiest and most predictable part should be addressed, then we can cross that out from the worries of family life, like emotions, relatives and growing up. It seems that our differences are starting to take its toll on me. 

Sorry about the whining part. I need to talk it with someone. Am I the only one experiencing this? My expectations too high? 

Enjoy Friday. I will try to salvage mine. There are still few hours to enjoy before I head home again.

New Resolutions, Two Months before 2011

..or sort of.

It's going to be 2011 two months from now and I am making revisions on my resolutions.

Here they are:

1. Weight Loss
2. Scrapbooking

These things will be added on my schedule. And I still have no idea how to go about it. They are the kind of activities that I know by heart, five years ago. And now that I am trying to gather pieces of myself together (yes, there are some drama on this blog most of the time), it is appropriate to pick up the most important thing that I do five years ago. I exercise (or yoga) daily and spend scrapbook (not digital one) time on lazy days. And I meant to include them on my to-do list. But there will be limitations. Following the lead of blogger Brenda, I will start on my scrapbooking activities and have it scheduled on Friday. I am not sure though if there will be a title. Here is the inspiration that caught my lazy heart:

this is the planner, not the scrapbook. {via It's a New Day}

Now here is the real scrapbook of Ms. Brenda:

52 Blessings by brenda arnall

She keeps on referring to Cathy Z's blog. And I agree. Ms. Cathy got the most pretty and inspirational scrapbooking ideas. I will probably start visiting her and jumpstart my scrapbook as soon as I turn my papers in (to my adviser, which is next week).  Want to know why? Oh, here's why:

scrapbook, baby. Homemade.

She made it, D-I-Y. And I want my DIY memory books as well.

and for the Weight Loss, it's from Cathy also. She uses the My Food Diary.

It is free but I am yet to check it out.

That's what has been going on,planning phase for me. For now, I have two things on my goal list: art and losing weight. For the art's sake, I will start getting used to Photoshop. I avoid it like the plague since picnik site is more convenient for me. But this time, I have to renew ties with the Photoshop software.

I am having a great day, are you?

Sleepy On Tuesday

I was busy yesterday with school stuff and did not noticed it was Monday. Now I thought its Monday when it is already Tuesday. What happened to my Monday? and why am I sleepy? 

One of my friends invited me to a joint venture on pizza franchise. I am drowning with the paperworks that she was ignored this weekend. Today she informed me that she already had a discussion with the franchising group and asked me to visit the site so that we can assess how the business is going. I can not go today but I am hoping to drop by tomorrow or on Friday during my research sessions. I hope she understands. Maybe she does. I am on the last month of my Masters. 

It is final. I will be applying for an online drawing course. It requires 4 hours a week of drawing activities and I told hubby how badly I wanted to join but do not know where to squeeze in that 4 hours of no-disturbance work. He told me I can work on my drawings during Saturday. I can also opt for 2 hours on Saturday and another 2 hours on Sunday. The latter seems to be more enticing, right? I am glad for having a wonderful man in my life.

So now that the drawing course was settled, I need to purchase a scanner. But since I have been planning to buy a printer as well, we agreed to buy those multifunctional printer that comes with a bed scanner and copier. I had my eye on the HP brand since I have been using it for many years in the office but I do not have any idea in how do HP printers (low end, cheaper version) work. I have been scouting for inks and printers on sale and find them expensive. Do you think a 2 cartridge-printer (ink worth P1,500.00 = approx $35) is a good investment? The Epson printer have 4 cartridges with P298 per cartridge. I will only buy the color that rans out. Your comments on this one will be very very helpful. We will be printing lots of stuff soon. 

I am working on the projects and it is difficult for me to keep up with all the research works and write up hanging on my head. The timing of resignation of my former staff is starting to piss me off.

Now, back to work. Having a great day despite the sleepy mood.

Today is Tuesday challenge. :D

photos taken from the {web}

Blank

I am a bad blogger. I skip blogging every now and then because there are things that comes into my life unexpectedly. And sometimes, I occupy other  blog space that remains anonymous for years.

source {flickr}

It is almost morning and I have not written anything for my overdue report. My brain seems to stop functioning for awhile. Maybe tomorrow there will be something to write. Something worth reading.

Hope everything is fine on you guys out there (for those who read this blog). I wish there will be an opportunity for me to blog and stay at home and be a wife in the near future. Maybe that is all I need to recharge.

Halloween is almost near. Then come Christmas. And soon it will be New Year. Let's check if we were able to keep some of those yearly list that we have. Mine is missing. Will update you when I find it. Will post bento photos this week. Before Friday I guess. Till then.

Whisper of the Heart

I was recently busy going down the list of movies of Hayao Miyazaki and watched half of the "Whisper of the Heart". It was a sort of sad-happy-inspiring movie. And it reminds me of the things that I want to do after all the paper pushing, endless reading chapter of my life. What have I learned while being on school at this age?

Well, for one I learned to make new friends. I learned about myself and how different person am I from what I have been before. I was surprised to find that out myself. I have to admit that it sometimes leave me disoriented. Realizing that I ran out of items on the checklist. And there are moments that I was looking back and wondering why did I not try to enjoy my life before. I was too busy following rules if not making them.

Anyway, I have lots of things on my mind lately and there are new list that I came up with that I have to accomplish as soon as I can. But what surprised me most is that being with a husband made me slightly dependent on him. Which I think is bad. It stops me from moving forward sometimes. I love my husband, if you want to know. But there are things that we sometimes do not agree with. Or maybe it was not a really difference but more on, I move on a faster pace than him.

photo via {flicker}

I have few things on my list waiting for. They are easy to reach goal but can take a backseat once procrastination kicks in. So in case I forget, I will post it here so that I might be reminded.

Here are the things I want to do:

1. For the forgetful me, I want to start a blog about my life. Anonymous blog. It will discuss the things I went through. What I remember of highschool, my life with grandparents, life with Mom and her kids (half-siblings) and my biological father.
2. I want to learn Japanese.
3. Have to look for a new business. There are stalls available at the public market that I can rent, so it's about time to start looking for business opportunity.

Life is not that happy lately. I have some issues that husband and I cannot resolve. Things that might push me to do things that would put some gap in our life. But then, things are not always perfect. So these are the things that we should accept and try to live with.

It's a beautiful day, and I am excited to go to the library. Did I mention how I love books? I am planning to have a mini-library in the house and currently working on hunting for vintage books. If you have any idea where I can get it, kindly give me a heads up.

Printing Frenzy

Now that the comprehensive exam for the my grad studies is over and all that keeps me busy now is the thesis, I am so excited to get a good look on my printable list for Mr. GM. 

and of course for Moms out there and working wife.

Here are the list of the blogs that provides free stuff. 

Get them now before they are gone. 

Sometimes, the free downloads are so pretty that they have to be sold on etsy, so if you get to them a little bit late they will never be available again for download. 

it would have been okay if I am in the US but living far from the source of the list means missing having those pretty papers you can write with.

by the way, to make this more accessible I am adding a new label and the label cloud will be available as well on the sidebar. 

You no longer have to scroll on the list that I have on the sidebar. 

just click the label printable and you are all set.

1.   Disney downloads for kids
2. Martha Stickers - you can also browse the site for more printables
3. Living  Locurto - the link here provides a list of wonderful printable for back to school.
4. Tweedle Design - Scribd link for printable.
5. Erin Vale Design - great website. great printable (organization and kids)
6. Fresh Picked Whimsy - as it says, fresh picked whimsy for the offer
7. Eat Drink Chic - one of my favorite blogs. go, find those free printable and have fun.
8. The Crafting Chicks - another great blogger.
9. HP Print Center - hp, the reliable printer gives you inspiration to use their technology.
10. Blog Train - as the title says, it is a train of wonderful blogs with free printable and downloads.

My Day Just Started

I was up until 4 in the morning today because of some database that was opened to the public unaware. Although it is not any of my concern but there is one document there that contains my personal contact information that was published by some daft editors. 

Unthinkable. 

 

 

i walked on this road for almost two years. now that school is almost over, i think this will be missed.

 

I was swearing the whole time. 

I sent him an email informing him that when I sign  up for the conference, I am not expecting them to reveal less print on the published proceedings the contact numbers written on the forms. It was a real negligence on their part. 

 

Some people sucks big time. Really. 

Now that I had my deprived sleep because of their lack of prudence, it is time to deal with more pressing affairs like reviewing. 

this inspire me. it was the only time I got a perfect score for my entire two years stint at earning my degree.

 

the hubby gave me some chocolate for being good at school. can you sense his father's instinct on that?

With a hungry stomach, I leave you these wonderful foods that we had when we shopped at the biggest, yet, grocery store in the area. 

squid balls and some dumplings

fruit salad! yum.

and for the things that I missed since:

home made oatmeal cookies. we bake during weekends.

spicy candied mango strips. tasty!

I have so many things to read and only six days to go before the big day. I have to hurry and leave you with those good things above. hope you enjoyed the post. comment on the post if you have questions.

off to reading land. 

Little Sunshine

I warned you about my two weeks absence. Probable absence from blogging. But I can not just ignore this space. 

Here is an update about my going ons:

This is not new but just so you know, here in our rural home of a place (South of Metro), stores from the Metro are now coming us much to our joy...well my joy since I am basically a city-born gal. 

And the not so newest but one of those who opened their doors first (and I got some photos as well) is Red Ribbon:

my new favorite from their menu, grilled ensaymada with farmer's ham and egg. Perfect with coffee. real coffee, not instant.

our contrasting cakes: black forest cake and white forest cake. yum. 

and here are the things that the hubby bought from his work related trip on one of the provinces in the North:

a local version of macaron:

they call it here meringue:

and macaroons (we love sweets, remember?)

a closer look:

here is the photo of the whole loot (i think there is a photo of other things that are not sweets like dried shrimp and fish but i cannot find it)

another goods from another out of town trip (by hubby), this time its Davao City.

.this is mine. the other one will be given to a family member.

Sunday celebration for my birthday is lunch out and the traditional cake (bought from favorite local cakeshop, not Red Ribbon). sorry no photos.

I remember asking Hubby ages ago to bake me a pizzookie but did not get any. This is the closest thing I got (from Shakey's) and it is not a huge cookie but more of a brownie (according to the menu) but when I tried it it taste like some cheap muffins from local bakery. but the ice cream is good. 

 I would love the real pizzookie though. like this one:

pizzookie from a-froggirl

and finally

this is my working table:

look pretty busy huh?

Life is great. Have a great day ahead.