Thinking of Homemade Halo-Halo

There will be some changes on my workload soon. I will probably be starting to work on the new company before the summer is over. There are three offers that I received but recently, I turned down the consultancy job because I realized that working on a Saturday means we have to squeeze in all the activities like shopping, spending quality time together and visiting friends/family in one day. Working on a Saturday is not for me. 

I hope that it will be easier to choose between the two offers but choosing the higher position
is easier if only they keep you away from the guessing game for too long. I just want to have a more focus type of work. To earn, to show them what I have to help the company. Anything else aside from that, I would ditch because I am a very private person.

♥○♥○♥○♥○♥○♥

Now, on the food stuff. I love halo-halo.

image from here

It is a sweet concoction that is available year round on some local fast food and restaurant here in the country. Although it is available yea round, the best time to have them is during summer. And the best place to buy them is from the neighborhood temporary halo-halo stand. If you are familiar with lemonade stands, then this is the lemonade stand version here. You only get to see them in your neighborhood during summer and this is the venue to see old friends and new people living in the community because no one at least once in the summertime, can resist buying a glass of halo-halo. It usually cost around Php 20 (too expensive, actually for that price). If you prefer the quality controlled ones like ChowKing's halo-halo, you will shell out around 50pesos.

If you prefer less textured type of cold sweets and cheaper, you can opt for the ice candy. 

image from here

My favorite flavors are mango and chocolate. 

or 

the all time favorite of my age {and above}, the 

Ice Scrambles

 

you can buy them on the streets, usually on small makeshift stands near grade schools. The good thing about innovation is that there are business-minded people who finds the opportunity to sell them up-scaled. You can now buy them at the malls costing around 8-10 pesos for the plain one. 

What is your favorite summer food/sweets?

 

Planning How to Spend Weekend

Since I finished school {Masters}, it was obvious that my time management became so lousy. Because during the two year school stint made my weekdays and weekend so busy, facing a no-sideline-less-workload made my to do list not so effective anymore. There are days that I feel like I am missing something from my list. Like there are things that I am supposed to be doing but unable to remember them. Worst of all, my financial management is really a mess. I can't follow simple budgets and forgets to balance the check at night. It is a struggle.

Tomorrow, i will try to tackle that and recommend some online financial tracker if possible. For now, I need your help. Do you have any tool that you use to manage your financial?

For the meantime, here is a great craft/cooking for you from other bloggers:

found here and here

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}

Grill

It was a fun filled day.

Since finally I am not on the denial stage (re examination this August), things will be more busy around here. I am  not sure though if I will be able to squeeze everything in but my priority now is to cram in every lessons missed and finish at least half of my paper. I should not be discussing it here since I have a blog about school but just to let you know what have been keeping me from bento this day. 

Now that I have that posted, here is my Friday Fun activities:

Today is the last day of one of our staff so we had a lunchout instead of the usual crackers/ramen in the pantry. 

Sorry, no photos. my bad. 

We had a "scramble". That sweet pink colored crushed ice (and milk) with powdered milk on top that we used to buy when we were kids. We bought it at the mall and happy to be eating the street food with an assurance that it passed quality control. 

Then I had fun printing some Ta Da list. I will post below the links on this "to-do-list"and much more.

My classmates came and visited me since I have not been attending their review lately. I am happy to see them as well.

I started working on the data of my paper.

Cancel meeting next week (Agency Directors) and happy to plan of skipping work on Monday. Unfortunately I have to go to work since we will be transferring on the other office.

Found the tea that I have been looking for: Twinnings Four Red Fruit. 

In addition to that I also bought a jar of nutella and a bag of oatmeal (with raisin, banana and pineapple). 

I promised to blog more. even if I am busy.

No photos today. I will try tonight. 

Have a great weekend.

***

A DOZEN LINK FOR YOU

List of downloadables and organization link (+ some for home management)

1. Living Locurto
2. I am an Organizing Junkie
3. Get Creative with Pink
4. My Daily Randomness
5. The Blog Train Blog
6. Little Paper Dog
7. I am not sure what is the name of this flickr account but on blog referred this account and says the photos there are free (for wallpaper).
8. Daisy Jane
9. Creating Keepsakes
10. The Small Objects
11. June Pfaff Daley
12. Creature Comforts

and one more blog for Mom's out there:

IXL for online lessons for kiddos

Bento # 4 and 5: tunaloaf and kid bento

I am on bento #5 ( the official count for the bento we bring to work). 

But there are some backlogs of bento that did not make it to the office but somewhere else. 

Since I made them, although not specifically for the office lunch, 

So I am posting them as well.

Bento #4:

the tunaloaf (cut-out and inserted a car-shaped cheese. I used small cookie cutter). 

The tunaloaf tasted like the local meatloaf here but more fish-y... 

(can't really find a word on how to describe it).

 the hubby informed me that the pineapple balanced the taste. I think it washed off the fish-y taste of the tunaloaf.

The verdict:  I wont have them again.

pizza spread sandwich, pineapple slice, oreo cookies, cheese+loaf combi shaped liked a car, cheese shaped like a fish, vanilla flavored wafers.

Bento # 5

two-cheese sandwich (italian cheese+cheddar), mango cubes, grapes

I tried to be creative here, thus the cut-out car shaped on the bread. haha. that's all I can say. It's a great lunch though. Lots of fruits. We love mango so much. I do.

same with the one above

and other bento delish!

 

(here is the cover of the bento box. cute? it's from one of those shows at Cartoon Network. He is Mac from "Imaginary Friends". )

 

 PB, chocolate cupcake (store bought) and cubed mango.

 We are having a good week so far. 

Non-bento speaking, we were able to pay off the rest of the 20% of our downpayment for the lot. It means we will be able to get the agreement for lot title transfer. The agreement is one of the documents that we will be submit to the financing agency for our lot +house construction loan. I can not be more excited. Even if the lady from the realty office informed me that we will wait for another month for the approval of our loan. At least it will be on the financing firm by then. I am happy that it did not wiped out our lifetime savings. I can not wait to have my own home. 

Thank you, God. For the Blessings.

Next blog will be about home interiors found in the net.

something like this:

image via apartment therapy

Errand

I am going out early to pay bills due this week. I wish there is an easier way to pay my bill without going to the mall. Sigh. The atm machine downstairs is so unrealiable. Always down when you need it. 

The tutorial I promised is still waiting to be edited. I have been sleeping a lot lately. Too tired to do something else once I got home. I am hoping to improve on that area.

Happy to find time to blog here.

Fun and Finds

Here are the wonderful things about my week:

Sunday morning, I woke up with the smell of coffee and my favorite breakfast prepared by the husband

I could not resist a frugal find: 50% the price of this bag (cost: P650) and this one:

cost: P400

 

cute/recycled to-do-list pad from papemelroti (cost: P 15)

 lotions and clear mascara from Avon 

Cost: Lotions- P145 and P 179

Clear Mascara -P 129

 

 free print download from erinvaledesign

I had a wonderful week. My blog button will be posted sometime tomorrow. 

Have a good night sleep.

Goal Number Two

Aside from the list that intended to be accomplished this year (which I call GOAL 1), I have another goal (GOAL 2) that I have to do before the year ends. It is a saving for the things that I want to buy for our new home, which needs special fund raising since most of our money are being focused on the house purchase.

I have around 2000 on my account right now since my rule is to follow the 10% savings from what I earn every payday. So I am on the right track.

Another good news, we finally able to get a deal from housemates to split the bills in half. The load is lesser on our part and it will give us more space to allocate some of the funds to our new nest. So there. Let's hope things will work out well.

I will soon start hunting thrift stores where I can get some of the things that we will be needing for our home. For the meantime, we already have our final layout for the house. I have some revisions in mind but will have to wait for few days to meet up with our architect guy.

MidWeek

Yes people, I woke up from a zombie stance and got online immediately. What happened to my Monday and Tuesday? It seems that I was barely out of my midterm exam zombie mode and now it is Wednesday?

Will be heading to the University to drop by the library and get some fresh ideas on my paper then attend symposium for about Science and Technology. Not much laugh but enriching to the brain. ;)

Bought tons of post-its and prepared some guidelines for my one-month-two/three-books-strategy for my upcoming compre exam. The two books (one is twice as big as the other one or bigger) are bookmarked (with my colorful post-its) while the new shelves were replenished with new books awaiting for their turn.

So far, I was able to get myself on two pages per book. :D

I was able to save few bucks from my salary this payday. It's P 1100 (10% of what I received, remember?). Not bad, right?

***
My dear friend A is waiting at Tech U of the PI right now and told me he is waiting. :D It's time to sign off, I think. We were off to the library (which is in UPD, so far...)

Will catch up on blogging later.

***

Midweek inspire: Everything we have and everything we enjoy, including our very life, is due to the kindness of others. In fact, every happiness there is in the world arises as a result of others' kindness.

Online Photo Lessons

With blogging in mind, I can not drop from my list of "to buy" the point and shoot digital camera. Although a phone camera is okay for unexpected photo opportunity, a digital camera is way better than my phone camera. And I am a sucker for online lessons to. Just imagine how glad I was when I found this compilation of Photo lessons here.

I am back to blogging. ;) Still working on my craft projects. By the way, we were able to install new shelves on our room. I find it more organized than before and my books are probably happy to be sitting on a more organized place than being stacked on foldable crates, sitting on my floor. Will post picture tonight, hopefully. :D

Another Goal

I am trying to come up with a big goal by doing small goals at a time. And since finishing goals bring laughter to our hearts, I will include this activity on this blog as well: savings. The terms that I have is to keep at least 10% of my salary (I receive mine every two weeks). So starting today, I will keep an update on how much I have been spending and saving. I checked my account today and found that the 10% of what I received is 600, so I will stash it now for the record. sigh.

Hope I can save more. :) I will try to come up with some moneymaking activities so that I can add more to our savings. There are lots of things that I have in mind lately, some material things that definitely needs money. So I am starting to raise funds for those too (things that I need for the new house) since I want to be debt-free while paying the home building expenses/loan. tonight, I will come up with a list of the things for the house and a scheme on how to raise the money to buy them. ;)