BYE 2012

It was very nice knowin ya.

2013 looks really nice from here, I'm gonna make sure I'm right about that!

HAPPY NEW YEAR'S EVE EVERYONE! 

I LOVE YOU!!!

2012 is closing all nice and stuff

yesterday was a great day. i didn't get to blog after because it was too late at night and internet failed! but i made chocolates, and we went out to go shopping.

mama gave me some christmas money and i've been stretching it really nicely :D i really have to slow down, though. i've promised myself that i'm stopping at the chocolate i'm buying tomorrow for my holiday chocolates. i'm making the next batch with hershey's because i did the first one with cadbury and they melt so easily XD that's why they're all sweaty in these pictures. i put them in the fweezuw and took em out.

don't look at me like that, i took pictures of them fresh! the camera just lost them.

it's a lot of fun to make chocolates! i actually don't regret this batch, it was a nice test batch. few changes here and there for the next one. i don't know when i'll be able to give them though, probably after the new year! because tomorrow we're going grocery shopping in alabang, then it's NYE, then NYD, falalala~

im actually having so much fun during this holiday, there was nothing grand that had happened, i'd been very calm, but time goes slow because i do so many things in a day. very soon i'll have to balance everything with my thesis again, and my friend's thesis too~ but i guess i should be excited. maybe time will go slow because of this, but fast as well because i'm always doing something, so i won't be too impatient about having emmy here again. i would just be busy getting my life together so that we'd be a-ok when he comes, instead of me still harbouring guilt over not being very independent. i owe it to my relationship to be independent. and to my mom. and to myself.

ANYWAY speaking of emmy, i bought a really nice pictureframe yesterday in a really pretty color (it's like, my fave) and i used it to frame our old-timey picture together from Villa Tortuga in Taal. it's plastic so it's cheap but it looks like it's made of a heavier material to me :D

i love how it looks so.. old and new. :p

you can't really see, but i have a total of SEVEN insect corpses now. i found a green moth, was it yesterday morning? it was just lying there on a stair step on its back, offering itself to me. like many of these insect have. except for Snitch, the circular wasp thing. it was curled up into a ball, but well.. it made it look interesting anyway, like a snitch. hence it ending up as the only one of them that has a proper name.

here are some other stuff i bought:

i finally found some jars for my gifting idea :D it was a set of 3, i'm keeping the third one, which i had to clean up a bit.

i bought beardy a present! no it's not an actual case of beer, that's just the really cool paperbag. i showed it to him over skype since he'll have to wait till june to get it, and he loved it! it's a shirt with gandalf pointing ala uncle sam, captioned: "you shall not pass"

i also grabbed this from the book sale because i'm trying to educate myself about money stuff because i don't know as much as i have to! it's american but i know so little about money that i'm sure that i'll learn a lot. i always liked suze when i see her on oprah :p anyway, it was really cheap too. there's a note inside for some new graduate. haha. i wonder if she read it before she sold it.

i bought this shirt and im sorry about my disgusting mirror. HAHAH

there's 10 percent off on colored shirts from this brand, and it's a really cool brand they have a lot of funny shirts. it's where i got emmy's one too.

i also fiiinally found some felt to repair (re-"cushion") my headphones with!! i took a lot of pictures of the process, because i thought about making a DIY post about em.. the colorful felt sheets made for some really pretty pictures :p i was only meaning to repair the black one, i had previously decided to look for blue felt. but i only found felt in a 5-sheet set, so i had four other colors, and by the time i was done with the headphones i wanted to repair, i was unstoppable and had to make some for my other pair too! i think pink and green go well together, so i picked green instead of the more obvious choice of purple.

today, carmen dropped this off for me. we didn't get to say hi, but i found the gesture somehow romantic because of that? hhahahahah~

I found the wrapping SOOOO PRETTILY DONE omg. dat woman knows how to wrap a present! the simple white ribbon was so neat and just, pristine. i had to fawn over it for a moment before opening. 

the little note was really cute and sweet as well :3

and the gift itself does not disappoint: 

a recipe book completely dedicated to just pizza pizza pizza!!

what's funny is beardy got an all-burger recipe book from his sister as well :p it's nice to see the people in our lives get us. they just get it u no~

in the afternoon before going out to get groceries, i impulsively bought some questionably goth-ish items online, namely this headband from my friend Jaja's shop:

[jajachua.net]

and this lipstick!

 

[vampyvarnish.com]

i was just staring at snoe's "Bite Me", thinking long and hard about buying it, but spending another 400 just didn't feel right, and in a blogger's review, she mentioned what it looked like, and this was the most popular dupe of it. it's popular among colored women and people who are into the dark lip, which i just found out is very popular on the runway? or was that last season? i don't know, i know basically zilch about trends. but i find the idea of the dark lip very attractive.

I took this picture of me with the darkest shade i have and greyscaled it to imagine a black lip on myself and me gusta, me gusta.

to end this very long post i just want to leave this here:

I've always imitated disney voices, but this is the first time for me to find a character i actually resemble.

sexy.

PS: You know how much I love Pho Hoa noodles? A lot.

merry chocolates

finally rounded up my chocolate-making supplies!

very excited !

i'm making three variants (for each mold design): 

• salted caramel biscuit for the bells
• poprocks for the stars.. get it? cos stars sparkle. :p  (not entirely sure yet whether i'll add a gummybear in each or not)
• smores for the little presents!

so excited to unleash the chocolateir beast in me once more lels

i chose nice-tasting ingredients so i hope they will be of much higher quality than my valentines ones! it's nice when it's for gifting, because i dont need to bother myself with costing and makin em affordable and stuff and can just focus on making them nice. 

i actually don't mind so much that i'll be giving them late. as a recipient, the idea of getting something even after christmas is a pretty exciting thought haha. 

besides, christmas in the philippines lasts until february!

well again

my body is covered and trust me that it is better this way

i feel very un-sick! it's really nice. my gums have stopped hurting, my cough is gone, all is well~

let me tell you what happened first. about a week before christmas, i randomly got a fever before sleeping! it got worse and over the weekend i just slept and slept, and soon my eldest brother catches it somehow, and my mom does too T.T then my brother's seeck doesn't get better and we find out it's DENGUE and he gets confined for a few days and the house was just total chaos! mom kept running around to the hospital and back home and for work stuff etc! then when my fever left my body, i still felt really low then i noticed that my gums were hurting on their own pretty bad.. like the wisdom teeth decided ah she is weak right now let us rip through her gums hohohoho and i just didn't really feel well enough to keep working around the house, i can't even eat!
then on the 23rd my brother got out of hospital and we tried to get things back as they were... but then on christmas eve day my birdie died T.T (I know it's really my mom's but I'm the one who bonded with it! So it's really my fault and I deserved crying all day on christmas eve!) we think he starved cos our schedules got all mixed up and we were all stressed :( i felt so bad. but i cried and cried and felt a bit better in time for noche buena.
on christmas day, my gums were starting to get better and i could eat more. so my tummy grew really big. but that's also because i kept drinking sode. that's how i coped with feeling deprived of food. hahah. my teeth are still pushing through, and i still have what feels like a pus balloon beside my second molar, but it feels much smaller now and my mouth doesn't feel like hell. so i've been doing a lot more chores, and what's really great is that being sick adjusted my sleeps, so i sleep and wake earlier now so i get more things done and I don't have to spend all day doing chores! there's a big bulk of time between cleaning and cooking dinner! yaaaay~

ok that was my big update bye.

the day after christmas

we christmas night in pansol where we had our christmas party.

what i wore on christmas day. dirty mirror. don't worry i haven't developed a weird skin condition

christmas salu-salo! isn't it neat that we can have pool parties during christmas? tropical christmas ftw.

my cousins(and brother). they're all crazy.

some attempt at a family picture. my family is crazy what is happening. 

my mom woke me up realllly early (before 5am) so we could come home and she could go back to work today. can you believe how diligent she is??

admiring my new bracelets before falling right back to sleep after getting home.

 i tried to be diligent too, having been able to do a lot of chores after catching up on some sleep. i swept, did some laundry, rubbed a whole chicken with rosemary, thyme and lime, and made dinner. (spaghetti complete with garlic bread!) afterwards, we went out to buy some after-christmas gifts, and i made them leave me there and i met with my best friends. we had beers, then sushi, then coffee.

what i wore because bloggers do these things

 they were pretty confused by how well the barista knew me, he kept calling me by my whole name -,-' (even wrote it on my cup)..the story is that we went to choir together when i was about 11 years old and i guess he never forgot about me! he kept calling me by my name when he started working at starbucks. i asked a common friend what his name was and we just started acting like friends ever since. it's funny what church does to people.

 he was like,, "instagram it" which was hilarious because A just made a joke about people instagramming their coffee at starbucks.

anyway, we closed up the japanese restaurant. it was pretty awkward, everyone was waiting for us to stop eating hahaha.

aizel's beautiful plate

i LOVEEEEEEEEE these guys.

sobalova

my dragon ryuma maki

i'm kinda crazy for sushi.

anyway it was a nice, eventful day. days pass by so quickly now. i've stopped trying to make it go slower.it just seemed impossible, especially when i got sick! i'm just gunna roll with it. meh meh meh :)

christmas wishlist

"dream big" section:

1. A new laptop with 4-8gb RAM, a great processor and lotsss of memory. I need this to edit films, which is my next step after graduation, and my current laptop is on "life-support". (It relies solely on a fan underneath AND an actual electric fan beside it at all times, and the speakers are busted so I always use headphones.) Sadly there is very little choice locally, they're usually so overpriced. My plan is to save enough money to buy it from overseas and to cover shipping costs or just the posting costs to have a good friend or family ship it over! But if I find a good local deal, then that's that :D

laptop featured: "Acer Aspire V3-771-6833 17.3"

2. A Mini-fridge for my room. I somehow thought all kids wanted this when I was younger. I've always wanted one since staying over at my cousin's and having her offer me some chocolate from a mini-fridge in their second living room. I thought it was freakin cool and cute.

 It would be useful for when I have bedroom birthday parties. My last birthday became a bit of a chore because I kept having to refill the ice. >.< the fridge featured in the photo doesn't really have one, but I want the one I get to have a freezer drawer :3 maybe that way I can serve some ice cream too! Also, cold water helps me wake up in the morning. If i have to go downstairs to do that, I'd always choose just sleeping more.

"maybe if you had friends" section:

1. An 'ukulele (or i guess "a ukulele" if pronounced  as "yookalaylee" or "yukalele" )

I've wanted one for sooooooooooooo looooooooooooooong! I just feel that it suits the sound of my voice, and i can carry it anywhere so it's a good way to make sure I start writing songs again asap.

2. A box of chocolates ~~~ I don't even really need to explain this one do I. I know this is more of a Valentine's day thing, but chocolate is all about festivities for me. I celebrate it. Christmas is the best time for that, because on Valentine's you have to be sexy.

[pic of Godiva Ltd. Edition Holiday Truffles from Chocablog]

"get real" section:

1. Dove Go Fresh Cucumber line, body wash and lotion. My mom has these. They're awesome. Smells great and makes your skin actually feel fresh.

2. A foot care set! I'm running out of foot soak and lotion :3 Preferably Peppermint of course. :)

the body shop has a really nice smelling one ugh i want it

This one ^ probably belongs in the previous section though. A more realistic example is the ones you can buy for less than 500php.

DECEMBERAMA

I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S ALREADY DECEMBER


A full week into December actually. Woah.

Anyway, life update: initially, we (beardy and self) wanted me to come to France in 2013. Seemed fair. For us. But unfortunately, the world is not fair, and being someone from a developing country, I will have more obstacles to face to get there than he would have to face to get here. Obstacles which we (mostly he because he does like, all the research) realized are insurmountable at this point. So Beardy gets to stay another two months here next year!

It's a bit sad that I won't be able to meet his family and home and country yet, and that it will be a long time before I do, and that I won't get to meet his now-house anymore because they are moving,  but I really thought we weren't going to be able to meet at all next year, so this is FREAKIN AWESOME NEWS to me. See, he has school stuff to handle, and a wedding to go to in August. In LA, no less. So just thinking about how I will get to show him my newly acquired domestic prowess, and the stuff I didn't get to, and that he'd be able to spend more time with my folks, PLUS knowing that he's willing to fly in and out and home and away again after two days, and to move all of his stuff around to accommodate a healthy relationship with me, it just makes a lot of the disappointment melt away.

In other news, this Christmas I have two gift-giving ideas. One involves chocolate. And I'm really excited about that. I want to use the Christmas chocolate mold my mama gave me about a year ago and make nice chocolates for my friends. That's right I'm making em myself! I'm just going to buy already nice tasting store chocolate for the coating instead of baking chocolate or those huge blocks because those aren't always so great. Sometimes they're waxy. I want the chocolate to taste nice. Then I'll plop some exciting treats and combinations inside heehee then I'll tell em what's inside with a handwritten card, because I personally enjoy food more when it's backed up with an explanation. heh. I think this is a thing in chocolate anyway, it's not like I'm making this up. I don't know how to package them yet. I want to use small boxes but i dont know where to find boxes! But I'll keep an eye out :D

The other gift-giving idea is just something I read off of pinterest or tumblr. It said have an empty jar at the start of the year and when something happy goes down, write it and drop it in and at the end of the year you get to read all of the happy stuff that happened during the year. Nice idea, I thought. I'm going to do it, but I'll share the experience to my closest pals too. If they decide that they can't be fucked with the idea, then at least they have a pretty jar. Jars are nice okay.

Maybe I should just put the chocolate IN the jar? hmmmmmmm. Nah

Lastly, I am going to burn a Christmas CD!!!! I had a really nice playlist goin on last year, but of course I didn't burn it and when my harddrive died, so did my playlist. :( So this year I am going to burn it so I can use it again and again and add songs because it's a rw+-

I wonder what I will cook for Christmas. This will be my first Christmas as a house cook! So I am looking to get inspired and might watch a lot of cooking shows from now on. Our household had finally graduated from hiring stay-in maids because we're adults and honestly it's so hard to deal with a stranger anymore. It's either our former ninja maid comes back (I love ate Sally) or nevermind.

Oh, and on Tuesday it's library day! I can feel it. I will finish my revision and like making it, too. :) It's nice to have motivation even when time isn't too limited. Oh how housework has changed me.

sketchin witch in the kitchin

Just a simple photo blog of food and sketches I made this week.

It's nice to be alive :D

Afritada: a tomato-based filipino dish <3

chinese japanese and korean food all in one dinner because i dont plan things

pasta dish i created on my own (creambased sauce with spicy, tuna, green bellpepper and mushroom) and donuts mama brought home

forever mastering the art of tonkatsu ~~ (it's beardy's FAVORITEEEE food)

another reference exercise featuring flick from a bug's life

random face i came up with while watching pushing daisies (kind of inspired by kristin chenoweth's hair and gina torres' lips)

DIY jewelry holder/displayer thingy (i do not have the vocabulary for this shit)

This isn't really a how-to. I just wanted to show you how I made mine. haha! But if you take ideas from it then great.

After putting my bug collection on display, I felt motivated to do some more bedroom-scale home improvement. I've had two more of these things hanging around for a while now, and have always wanted to maybe hook them up on my walls to serve as jewelry holders because the space on this one is limited:

i'm referring to the wooden thingy with the necklaces and all hanging on it

As luck would have it, the hanger I thought last night about finally putting the dress Emmy bought me in Boracay inside my closet, because displaying it now feels like I'm holding on too tightly to the past, as if I was afraid that it won't happen again.

 I want to look forward, to our planned meeting in the summer, instead of backward, which makes me a bit sad. 

So the hanger was then free, and the little holes at the bottom fit the knobs of my holder thingies perfectly.

I  pulled the retractable wooden holders almost the farthest they can go, then used sticky-tack to secure the bottom knobs:

Then I just hung stuff on the hanger and the knobs, picking the easiest match when it comes to taking them out and putting them back on. The hanger gave me a lotttt of options. If you look at the previous image of the hanger, I also clipped a piece of cloth that I use to hold my stud-type earrings. Then I just arranged my rings, necklaces, bracelets etc wherever they would fit;

I especially like how it's perfect for showcasing why these two crazy bands are my favorite. haha:

Apart from the nice combination of colors of course.