baby product review.

don't have much advice about parenting because of my "new mom theory" but i do have a lot to say about baby products. having your first baby is probably the only reasonable excuse in buying overpriced item after all you do want the best for your baby. yeah we said that a lot. our frst time at babies r us was for our registry. man, it was overwhelming. i didn't know they made wipes warmer. like seriously? yeah there were items that made things easier, well at least for us. the best things we ever got was sterilizer and the video monitor. i can seriously say that i wouldn't know what i'd do without them and i don't really say that a lot about material things.

anyway, until now, one thing i hate doing is cleaning baby bottles. like i hate it with a passion, and it's not because i am staring at our neighbor's wall (kitchen window view). well that didn't help either. j hates it too. that is a real house chore. like it made my day everytime it's j's turn to do them.

so for my first baby product review, i'd like to share with the whole world the best bottle cleaner ever. it's called the "glass and bottle brush" by mainstays home. only available at walmart (but not online) and it retails for $2.43. the only con is that it looks like a toilet bowl cleaner.

one of our backyard friends.

so lately we've been so into bird watching. it started with the birdfeeder. then a birdhouse and i made a really funny hanging bird bath. it's so cool how many different types of birds that's been coming to our backyard on a regular basis. baltimore oreole, mourning dove, house sparrow, house finch, robin, song sparrow. (btw, this is a good website for bird watchers) we also have three squirrels that come and eat the fallen seeds. and this one squirrel is probably the cutest and laziest squirrel i have ever seen. he's lying down on his tummy with eating. i'm so happy i finally got a photo of this cardinal. yey! so pretty. i wonder how birds know where there's food? if they're all the way up in the air and unless they have bionic vision, how are they able to see where there's bird seeds?

pic of the day.

pinoyinamerica twits, "cubao? no west covina, cali".

my new project book.

so this morning j gave me a new project book. i am such a sucker for any kind of notebooks, planners and and organizers. i was so excited. immediately i started writing and all of a sudden i had 5 ongoing lists: r+r wedding, california 10-day trip, house chores, things to buy and san diego itenerary. anyone who knew me back when i was single knows that i am/was a compulsive list maker. one of my friends nicknamed me "the listmaker" (using a deep voice that you would hear in a nicholas cage action movie trailer, lol) when i met j, i had lots of lists taped up on my wall. pretty creepy actually, so glad he saw right through that.

anyway, there's something about having a list that makes me want to just do things. like my house chores. i cleaned the whole kitchen today, our china cabinet and our dresser. these are the chores that i know i have to do but never get to it because it's not that bad. i get satisfaction from checking off and finishing a list.

when i started on my california 10-day trip list, o.m.g. i just went nuts. i started thinking of scrapbook ideas, went overboard on the itenerary, had a lot of opened windows on my computer, my things to buy list just kept adding up. i seriously had to stop and tell myself to like calm down. and the funny thing was it bothered me because i should've written those list on my journal instead of this new book because it feels temporary. so i decided to transfer the lists to my journal and i had to write the feeling why i was doing it. and stopped at the first line. because i actually have a blog now. so yeah. weird sh*t.

lost on lost sunday.

i feel like i've too much in my head. today's pretty much a continuation of yesterday's ostrich day. aaaaah.

ostrich kind of day.

yeah like i just want to bury my head in the sand. enough said.

on being a new mom.

that's sophie 2 years ago. sophie's almost 3. wow. i still feel like a "new mom". i don't think there's such a thing as a "new mom". being a mom doesn't get old. like i'm always going to be a new mom. because each of sophie's age is new to me. if i have another baby (hopefully a boy) he's going to be different from sophie. different personality and character. obviously i have to take care of him in a "new" way and obviously my life is going to be in a different situation like at that time i will have 2 kids to take care of as to sophie being an only child. like i've never had 2 kids before so it's all "new" to me.

villa roma.

just got back from an 8-day vaca. catskills. (woohoo for upstate new york, lol) but there are actually some pretty interesting places to see near the callicoon area. there's the woodstock, apparently the biggest kaleidoscope is somewhere in that area, a lot of second hand and antique stores and umm i guess that's it. there's really not much to do there. i had 2 goals: take a pic of the yasgur farm and take sophie to a petting farm (i was really looking forward to this one). unfortunately, i didn't get to do both due to weather conditions. (grrr, don't you just hate that) damn it's cold upstate. nevertheless, i had so much fun!! took a lot of pix and spent $600 at walmart! yes, half of that went to food. i finally bought rain boots to replace my old one (yes, they're so comfy and i can use them for gardening which i plan to do soon and yes for rain which is why i made it a point to head out to blockbuster yesterday in the "pouring rain"). bought 2 of the hardest puzzle we could find, jengga (finally), and yey for granimal and miley cyrus clothes. yeah, so what? that's sophie and my pangbahay. anyway, i am back.

going provencal.

saw this in the latest issue of martha stewart mag and omg i am obsessing. yeah lately i have been so into vintage and provencal ceramics. i love so many things at the anthropologie home section. they also have really nice white cannisters but i am just in love with this sugarbowl. it would make a nice mothers day gift. perfect actually. wink wink. now i am in search for a matching one since we like using powdered cream for our coffee.

happy mothers day.

it's tomorrow already and i didn't even notice. just finished making these. happy mothers day. goodnight.

remember the cutest little hydrant i blogged about? well this is it. i would say it's about 2 feet small. so cute! i finally took a photo of it while driving to work last tuesday. yeah not very safe. i was able to upload all my vegas hydrants too!

i am relaxed!!! no seriously. i'm not kidding.

so this week's been a little crazy. just got back from vegas on sunday so that means laundry and grocery shopping. worked on tuesday. hand made 100 r&r invitations. and now i am packing for next week's trip - 7 days for me, j and sophie. i've been juggling everything from doing laundry (which means folding clothes also), doing the invitations, chores and errands. seriously like last wednesday my day went like this: made breakfast and grilled j's healthy lunch, took j to main st. at the same time pick my sister up, then stopped by the gas station, then went to cvs to get my dad and father in law's meds, went to the bank to deposit my paycheck from the day before (caching!), staples to get ink for the printer, grocery shopping, cooked pancit for lunch, ate and washed dishes and bottles, took sophie to the park, made her sleep as soon as we got home, figured out how to use this damn printer, printed the invitations, assembled the sinamay to the invitations by hand if i may say so, still printing, then sophie woke up and fed her, took inggay to the train station and picked j up, faithful mr. softie was waiting for us when we got home so we bought sophie ice cream, had a quick dinner, washed dishes, still printing, made sophie sleep, continued with the invitations and then j was like, "why don't you just relax already?". and i had to stop and think for a sec. i was actually not tired. in fact i was relaxed in a wierd way. seriously. i probably didn't look like it (because i had an allergy attack after the park and when i say attack i mean attack) but i was. i think everytime i am creating something i automatically turn my zen mode on. i did 50 invites that night and that took a lot of time but it's funny that i can't remember now what was going through my head during those time. i guess you we are capable of thinking about nothing. oh wait, i do remember something, or not. whatever. the invites looks good. so. good.

r&r update.

3 months to go before rb's big day. gave up half of my cork board for r&r. thanks to inggay i am only baby sitting my printer. i really like the champagne and magenta combination. so elegant especially with chocolate. which reminds me i still have to buy my shoes.

ruler.

anyone who knows me knows i love all kinds of "desktop" supplies (if there's such a thing - i made that up). lol. school supplies, office supplies, art supplies, scrapbooking, sewing, painting, cutting, home improvement, just about everything i can use to create something. and i'm pretty much the go to person is anyone needs something. shirley once asked me for an old school fastener (yeah the metal one) and i actually had one. but there is one item i don't have or i can't seem to find because it's so common that i must have one. i mean how can i not have one? a ruler. yes, a simple, dependable ruler. seriously, it's a long process for me to make a straight and exact line. i have a tape measure and i have a paper cutter with measurements. so yeah i've been using those to measure and an old folder to make a straight line. now that i think about it, it's ridiculous. i could have saved so much time if i had a ruler. and that's just a ruler. (uh oh here it comes) we probably waste so much time on using the wrong things. things are so easy if you have the right tool or should i say nothing is difficult if you use the right tool. yeah but tools now are so complicated. too much features like my blackberry. gosh don't get me started on that. in thoreau's walden, we have become the tools of our tools or something like that. and gosh ain't that the truth. our phone is pretty much like a leash. i'm happy and proud to say i am not tied to my phone. in fact i always forget my phone (my husband is not very happy about that) and i never read my texts on time. anyway, so yeah i need a ruler.

side note: if i didn't have this blog, i would have probably thought about this thought but no one would know or i would feel really bad for the person i am with at that time. right that's why i used to own ayanshead@yahoo.com to email myself and that didn't work out. yey for blogging.