merriment

this month has been good to me

(you know, if you ignore how ball-sticky hot it is every day)

i was so happy about getting my final grade that i didn't feel the need to have a birthday party.

DVD stickers and covers i made for the copies i gave for the library etc :3 i scanned the watercolor images i painted when i conceptualised the sets :3

this was how i celebrated my birthday-eve :) with a boy drink and a girl drink (i guess you could say it symbolizes my wholeness as a person or whatnot but really i just wanted to try these new tanduay ice's) and the cutest christmas tree bottle opener! i love how it goes with my thesis theme haha

i did a lot of catching up with my favorite shows after finishing my requirements. it's been good :) insanely hot, but good.

my "problems" arent over, i still need to know what to do with my life, but at least i'm more in the same stage as most of my friends.. it's one thing to feel lost, it's another to feel deliberately LATE.. if you see what i mean.

i feel like this year will be a great one for me. even though the rest of the world seems to be going crazy (really sad stuff in the USA and Iran and NoKor craziness)... I'm really looking forward to finding out what I'll be doing next.. Even though I'm really anxious too! SOMEONE HIRE ME haha

anyway yeah :) tomorrow i think i'm going somewhere with a nice water thingy (is it a pond?) to celebrate both my birthday and my cousin's move to Saudi. so yeah. the fun continues.

i sold out!

hihi :) my best friend had reserved the last box ^^

(warning: i will just be gushing about the whole experience in this post XD don't expect much)

i'm very pleased with this project. my goals were realistic and i reached them, and it makes my heart feel really good! it did a lot of good stuff for my self esteem. as someone who always starts stuff and never finishes them, this makes me feel like a changed person, even though i only earned a few pesos and it was a small project to begin with. the important thing is, i had a vision, i followed it, and i actually believe in my product! and i enjoy doing every step! from melting, tempering, buttering the molds, putting in the fillings, unmolding, to wrapping them all up with foil, crepe paper and stickers! i even enjoyed assembling the boxes!

when people receive them, they tell me "ang laki pala!" (i didn't know they were this big!) and it puts a smile on my face to know that they felt that they got more than they expected to get! and it makes me feel really nice when they tell me they like it after they've tried them!

sigh. that's all. :)

house on a hill

i want a house

on a hill

the hill will house a garage and a workshop inside

and outside it will be our own little world

grass will grow all over it, with a winding path: stairs that lead to the gate of our house.

as you walk up the stairs you will see crops, a bunny pen,

and an island to have tea

surrounded by moving water, with vine crawling up its pillars.

at the side, where the water falls, there will be windows looking into the room inside

and it will look like hobbits live inside.

up the stairs behind the house, there will be a nice view

of whatever place we choose to live in

there will be space for me to meditate or do yoga

and more space to have tea with people we love

soon i'll plan the house itself, but for now i like the idea of the little hill. i might change my mind one day, but i have years and years to decide what my house will look like. 

my eyes hurt, i've been playing too much Papa's Hotdoggeria, but I've also touched my thesis (FINALLY) and only have two-three boxes left to sell of my Vday chocolates. :)

they haven't been selling like pancakes or anything, it's just that i made the sane decision to stick to a very small stock and, as i just learned, people tend to like buying gifts in bulk.

I learned a lot during this project, and have a few more lined up for this year to make up for how I can't really take a real job right away.

       This month my resolutions are framed around the theme "Be Responsible":

1. do your to-do list for the day
2. drop worthless preoccupations
3. wake up in the morning

so far, i'm doing well than i did last month. number 2 is a bit hard, especially because the definition of "worthless" isn't specific. i decided to listen to my inner compass. i do stop enjoying procrastinating after a while, even when it's a very enjoyable activity. once it doesn't make me happy anymore, it's worthless.

are any of you following any "resolutions" this year? i personally decided i can afford to make something rigid because i don't dwell much on "failures" (i rarely even call anything a failure) and i'm a very unstructured person. I can imagine how people who can function normally can't be bothered with added pressures in their life.

Do you have any goals set this year? Or resolutions? Or a bucketlist? I'd love to know :)

this is it~ i created a facebook page for Pandaemonium!

my feet are literally cold!

but that's probably also because of the weather being actually cooler lately.

Click here to visit!:

facebook.com/pndmnm

my shop concept is pandemonium, chaos, randomness. it's like opening Pandora's box (or jar if you wish) but instead of the evils of the world, little cute thingies and goodies come out.

or just you know, settle nicely in the box. i don't plan to over-stock anything, i just want to create as i feel.

for janu/feb, my feature will be my line of Valentine's chocolates! Yeap I'm really doing it ^^ after a couple of days of shuffling names and lamenting the fact that someone already took "Billy Bonka" I realised that I should just call my chocolate line Psychodelish. It's one of the frequent aliases I use for my email addresses and usernames anyway! Psychadelic/psycho goes with the pandaemonium concept, and it has got "delish" in it..... I think it was its destiny all along.

my page is still very barren for now, but i will post pictures and prices as soon as i finish the first batch!

wish me luck as i roll myself recklessly into this !

i hope i snowball in a good way

i'm trying to blog everyday.

that's what 's happening here.

why?

i find it therapeutic, and it just feels better than keeping a notebook that i will eventually just tuck away and probably would have filled with embarassing things because when i ramble in private, a lot of shit goes down and i overthink things and none of it matters anyway.

today i jotted some goals in my planner,

in pencil

because nothing seems to be so important as to abandon my state of emotional well-being (read: toiling with regret over promises to self unkept)

i made awesome fruit shakes with pear, banana, apple, soymilk and added some psyllium husk because it makes some pretty poos.

packaged the chocolates i made..

s'more, twinkle and carabell. that's what i named the different flavours.

cleaned the kitchen cabinets.. the high ones. i used a floor mop to reach them. my mother was very happy to see them clean, which makes me very happy.

organized and labelled the contents of the back cabinet.. (it houses aprons, rags, floor mats, grocery bags etc)

cleaned the utensil tray and placed it inside one of the drawers instead of in the exposed shelf so as to keep it from ever gathering dust again.. and other things.. (i was shocked into doing it: one day a spoon i used smelled slightly like cockroach)

there was room for all of the big serving spoons, medium serving spoons, mini utensils, normal utensils, breadknives and chopsticks. 

I cooked our new year megaham (yes of course there's still a lot of it yet my brothers are not savages) in pineapple juice with slices and here it was:

and i prepared my presents for my friends..

i also did this weird thing for the fun of it but it gave me a high score so it ended up being a good thing to do for my self-esteem:

but it's one of my better pictures so iiiiiduno.

I'm now chilling in my room with some music. I can't take not having speakers anymore so I borrowed mom's for the meantime because her new laptop is pretty loud anyway :)

look at how cute!!!!!!!

i asked her if they had it in red, but she didn't know. heck, she's not even sure they still sell it.

anyway, it was a nice day and i felt very proud and productive and tired at the end of it. (i napped before dinner you know.)

is it really 2013 already?

because it definitely doesn't feel like it was FIVE years and four months ago when I made this after Abbie and I Wentz (see what i did there) to see Fall Out Boy for the first time in Araneta:

i copied the stage and their clothes and everything wot a geek amiright

so much time had passed! i was a freshman, and was at my lightest weight, and was SUUUPER boy crazy and SUUUPER crass and inappropriate. (facepalm)

this is not a very sad thought, because thinking back to my past self and looking at myself now makes me feel kind of nice about the kind of person i've become. i just feel more like myself right now and not like i'm trying to be anything, except better, which is i think always a good thing to aspire to become anyway :)

Today I finally made all the chocolates. I didn't have to buy new Hershey's bars after all because we had four leftover from fondue-ing :D yay free chocolate

myyyy preciouss

this year i really want to strive to become less ridden with anxiety and to just feel relaxed as an active person! does that make sense? i want to ease into being productive and feel normal about it and not tired and too stretched. i want to feel tired at the end of each day without feeling trapped, because i manage my time and assign myself times to just relax instead of waiting for relaxation to come to me.

i'm skipping resolutions and instead will work with action plans throughout the year. let's see if i can incorporate habits into my life or if i'm really just more a "keep a general outlook as a guide" kind of person and should stop pressuring myself so much. :)

i really want to blog more often though, and stop discouraging myself about not being like Naomi Davis enough to pollute the internet with updates of my life.

I think I'm always going to try and see if I can do something everyday. At the start of December it was a photo challenge. As with all my photo challenges, it failed. This time I want to try to blog almost everyday if not every day! I don't think it's such a big feat because I told myself I can just blog a sentence if i wanted.

Anyway here's to everyone having a nice 2013!

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!

Post-Holiday Gift-giving Recap! (copied from my tumblr)

CHRISTMAS CRAFTS PICTURES!!!

SO LATE , I know. but here they are.
My theme for the wrapping paper was peppermint and cocoa, as I had previously stated.
I designed this really nifty bookmark.. the idea came to me after buying those necklaces. (really pretty right?) I call them Polaris bookmarks. the pendant was realllllyyy prettyyy but I somehow didn’t see it as looking its best when worn around the neck, I felt like it would look best dangling.. And I thought “why not from a book??” It’s a really classy bookmark, I was really excited when I started thinking about how to make it into one. 

I ended up designing a way to twist a piece of wire (or paperclip) so that when you pin it at the middle of the book, there’s a ring from where the clasp will be swinging away from without being pulled in and out of the book. I also had to round the edges so that they won’t scratch precious paperbacks my best friend would be reading. :3 My prototype, pictured with The Golden Compass (ISNT IT PRETTY??? I mean, sure it makes it obvious how slowly I’m progressing with my reading, but still) was made with a plain silver paperclip with a plain rounded edge. Carmen’s one, the final product, was twisted in a heart design at the back for extra cuteness, with a brown paperclip cos earthy-elegant-sleek is her style. :3

Also, there’s the mixtape I made for Ma in the making :B