Sweet World of Joan

We have been living here in our new house for two months now. It is a great milestone for us as we just celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary. A very precious gift from my husband. It took tremendous amount of blood, sweat and tears before we were able to move in but it's all worth it! The feeling of living in a house that is truly your own is overwhelming. The very first day I woke up in our home I felt very peaceful, that’s the only way I can describe it. Regardless of how chaotic the house is, we ended sleeping in the same room with boxes all around us, crowding the only electric fan, there was peace. Here are the various picture of the house, it is still under renovation to accommodate all our needs but hey its home.

I stop celebrating my birthday a few years ago, preferring a quite/private dinner with my husband. It helps me reflect, evaluate and think about what have I achieved so far in life and what more I want to achieve. But this year was different for I decided to celebrate with family and friends. I wanted to share my blessings and showcase my skills in the kitchen. Turning 35 years old is a big thing to a woman, wrinkles, biological clocks and grey hair are becoming a normal part of day to day life. And this year I want to celebrate it with a BANG! It was so good to be surrounded with friends and family that you rarely see these days because of the busy lives you all live. I am so thankful that they all came. Seeing all of my friends together from college and high school made me giddy with joy. It was also a time to discover shared interests and business ideas. Everybody was happy and well fed, even taking home delicious food made lovingly by me and my family. As for me, I have big decisio...

Our Christmas this year can be considered “uneventful” or simply quiet, meaning this year we got to spend the holiday with just the family, no relatives from the province visiting or cousins stopping by. It was the time where you can just relax and bond with each other. The usual Christmas season for us is one big family reunion where relatives from the province arrive before Christmas and stays with us till January and our relatives here in the metro drops by to see them at any given time. I consider this Christmas season very memorable, it is when I got to bond with every member of the family during the Noche Buena preparations, each one has prepared a dish and for the whole day we work side by side while cooking. I also gave in to my son’s request to bake goodies, we made chicken empanada and boy he got to really got his hands dirty but enjoyed every minute of it, my parents prepared our favorite asadong baka, while my husband prepared a prawn dish which he calls “shrimp ala cham” (...

Many say that Christmas should be spent with your family. In our case where many families are apart due to economic reasons, many of our countrymen are abroad to earn a living for their families, Christmas can be a sad event. I am very fortunate that my husband does not have to go abroad anymore to earn a living, but it can’t be said of many families in the country. Luckily there are different ways for families to be together and keep in touch, there are the mobile communications, online chat and or emails and IMs. Keeping touch with each other is not difficult anymore, love ones are just a text message or phone call away. Technology today is also keeping up with the needs to the people, OFWs abroad can now send a Christmas gift to the Philippines through online stores. You can make your families feel loved by using these stores where you can pick products for them and have them delivered at home even if you are not in the Philippines. This kind of innovations enhances the relationshi...

When I attended the Parent Orientation at my son’s school I learned a new word “ SUHAY ” it means sugo ng buhay or protector/guardian of life(my interpretation of sugo). The school director, Msgr. Alfonso Bugawan told the parents present how important is their role in their child’s life. He told us at as parents we are the “suhay” of our children. I would like to share the Acronym PARENTS that he had given. He says that it can guide us in bringing up our children. P – Presence As parents we should not say “we don’t have time” for our children. He said we should give our children the “gift of our presence” A – Accountability We must be a more transparent and accountable parents. When we make promises to our children we should not break them for they trust us fully as the first person they trusts we are also teaching them how to trust other people R – Reconciliation Give them understanding on the level as children. When we get angry they may not understan...

This mother’s day celebration was indeed memorable for my family(my parents, a younger brother and my own family) , we went to church in the morning and spent the day strolling around Araneta Center in Cubao. Window shopped for my son’s school shoes and bought him a new toy and a new blender for myself. Went to Shopwise for some items needed for the afternoon’s special snacks. We had a prepared it already before we left the house in the morning. The Tiramisu: My husband decided to surprise me with Red Ribbon’s Tiramisu Meltdown as a Mother’s Day Gift, that was the plan. He went to the Red Ribbon store early in the morning and said that he will meet us at the church. After an hour he went back home frustrated and told me that my gift is not yet available and said that he will go back again after the mass. That was when he told me about the tiramisu gift. Many of my friends know that I so loved chocolates and cakes and a few weeks before I have this late night cravings for chocolate m...