Blessings

Just a short post because today I'm reminded to count my blessings and that I have much to be grateful for. Family, friends, and a kind and loving husband.

Though there are days that I'm homesick, bored, and lonely, days like these remind me we are very blessed.

It was a good day.

Not Another Moleskine

I'm taking a break from assembling Ikea furniture (yes, we get the standard newlywed Ikea furniture) cause I wanted to write about another awesome wedding gift we got from my good friend, Pia.

When the Moleskine Passions Journals came out, I had my eye on two of them: The Moleskine Passions Book Journal and the Moleskine Passions Recipe Journal. Being the avid reader that I am, I eventually bought the book journal for myself and Pia bought the Recipe Journal for us as a wedding gift! (FYI, Moleskines are a line of "legendary" notebooks and sketchbooks" that have Van Gogh as its most famous user. )

I thought it was perfect because Gerard is a chef and I love to bake. What better way to keep all our favorite recipes all in one place! So a few days ago, I finally got around to opening it and writing down our first recipe!

I got this recipe for yummy sweet chicken bacon wraps from our good friend Abby, when she made them for her daughter's birthday last year. They're so good but so easy to make!

Here's what a blank page looks like. It has all these different sections for difficulty, servings, ingredients, cooking times, cooking process, etc.

And here are the tabbed dividers for different categories of recipes.

I can't wait to fill it with all the special recipes from our life together, like our pumpkin soup, my chocolate chip cookies, and Gerard's mashed sweet potatoes!

Aside from the book and recipes journal, there are also journals for music, films, wellness, and wine. I think they'd make awesome gifts for people who love these things and writing about them, as I do! 

Thanks so much for the Journal, Pi! It was an awesome wedding gift. I look forward to someday cooking for you!

Our First Impression with The Write Impression

Due to the fact that I was so busy wedding planning at that time, I barely blogged about the wedding at all! But now that I've got more time on my hands, I aim to chronicle the wonderful wacky journey that lead up to April 9, 2010, for posterity's sake.

So I'm going to start where a lot of weddings start.

Invitations!

(Over and over I've read that the first impression of your wedding comes from your wedding invitations. I don't know how true that it is but I sure didn't need an excuse! I wanted beautiful, elegant wedding invites.)

Right from the start, I knew I wanted to go with The Write Impression, a Manila based company for our wedding invitations. I had seen so many wonderful invitations they had made for various people that I knew. Thing is, I just hadn't quite decided on the design yet. I had a few in mind, from their look book, but none had really given me that "this is it" bang of emotion.

Then a few months before the wedding, The Write Impression had a booth at a Bridal Fair at the Ayala mall in Cebu. I finally got to meet Jong, this wonderful lady who I'd been e-mailing with for months! And in their current look book, I found the "Elena" design. (Their wedding invitations designs are often named after the bride they make the design for.) One perusal of "Elena" and my heart fell in love.

Just so you know, I LOVE paper. I love paper, pens, and ink. I love fonts. I love stationery.  I was EXTREMELY picky about anything paper-related to our wedding. (FYI, it took over a year and a half to finalize my wedding invitations.)

So I fell in love with "Elena." I loved the horizontal chocolate pocket. The textured inserts made from Italian paper. And the beautiful font, Miss Le Gatees that made took my breath away.

20 working days after finalizing proofs, this is what we got:

A  horizontal, chocolate brown pocket with the main invitation card in the middle panel and two pretty inserts in the right pocket (entourage card and rsvp card) bound by a wine red satin ribbon complete with our monogram.

Too bad I don't have a photo of the complete invitation but I do have these photos from our wedding day itself.

All photos of course, by Joey Reyna and Nelson Petilla

This is what the outside looked like. 
But with a brown background. (And no rings of course!)

The Main Invitation Card

And all three cards

Clockwise from top left, Main Invitation Card, Envelope and Ribbon, RSVP Card, Entourage Card. 

Too bad I really don't have a photo of the chocolate pocket. 

I will get one cause the whole effect of everything together is what made it gorgeous.

So, I guess you could say that I was very, very happy with our wedding invitations. 

Thank you, The Write-Impression for giving me invites so beautiful that I didn't want to give them away! So happy you have offices in the USA!

Marking One Month

So how'd I end up in California anyway?

When Gerard and I got engaged, I wasn't sure where we'd live exactly. But I've always loved San Francisco! So a few months before our wedding, Gerard got promoted and relocated from New Jersey to work in... California! We don't exactly live in San Francisco, but we do live in Concord, a city about 40 minutes away from it, and we're still in the Bay Area. It's close enough that I could actually work there if I wanted to! Not to mention there's a Bay Area Rapid Transit or BART stop only two blocks from our apartment!

Yesterday marks my one month of living here and my emotions are mixed. Yes, I really love where we live. I love the weather. I love the convenience of everything. I love that we live in a small city with a big metropolitan nearby and that we have friends and family nearby. And I love that we're married.

But of course, I miss home (Cebu!) and I miss my family. And I miss the people at our house, I miss my friends, and I miss my dog, Akira.

I read somewhere that it takes about six months to fully adjust to living somewhere new. This first month was filled with a lot of firsts, learning experiences, adjustments, great memories and some goodbyes. I think I did pretty well though! One month down, five more to go!

Here are some great moments from my first month here.

Lining up for the San Francisco Cable Car

Reunited with the Rocky Mountain Bear

 Siblings at Pebble Beach

Disneyland with the Family

Meet the Panini Grill

Being a newly married couple who just moved into a new apartment, it takes us a while to open and use our wedding gifts. One of the things we registered for was a DeLonghi Panini Grill which my Uncle John and Aunt Nini kindly purchased for us off our Amazon registry.

One day, I had a hankering to eat a home made sandwich and a light bulb went off in my head. We hadn't opened the panini grill yet! I got some basil, sun dried tomatoes, and whole grain mustard to go with whatever we had in the fridge.

Of course being the internet geek I am, I googled panini recipes on the internet. But for now, I just used whatever we had in the fridge.

Thank you Uncle John and Auntie Nini!

Ingedients: Wheat Bread, Whole Grain Mustard, Chicken, Sun Dried Tomatoes, 

Basil Leaves and Mozarella Cheese

Apparently I didn't use enough cheese to give it that oozing over the sides cheese goodness.

So this was my dinner. A home made panini sandwich and Kettle Cooked Sea Salt and Pepper Lay's Potato Chips. Don't the simple things taste so wonderful?

I can't wait to start making more paninis, especially with proper panini bread like Ciabatta. This blog, Panini Happy has become one of my favorite blogs to read! There are so many recipes I want to try out! I love that I'm spending time in the kitchen.

Incidentally, my new favorite meal this week is pork adobo, rice, and a poached egg. But I'll save that for another entry. Adobo definitely deserves an entry all its own!

Woodsing About

A day after our wedding, we went with Gerard's family to the Muir Woods National Monument in Sausalito, which is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

We took an hour trail around the park, looking at all the different trees and wildlife. For more serious hikers, there were 2 hour trails and more too! Gerard was really curious about the Oceanside trail which we presumed had an awesome view. (We'll save that for next time.)

But the most amazing sights were the trees! I've never seen such huge, tall trees in my life!

I've been carrying my camera around more so hope you enjoy the photos!

Giant Redwoods

Streaming Sunlight

GM Signature Pic

GJ's tiny!

View from down below

Being outdoors with all that greenery was wonderful. We'll definitely be back for longer hikes!

For more information on Muir Woods, you can check out their website here.

Our "Sweet and Civil" Ceremony

We got married! (Again!)

This time we had a short "Sweet and Civil" ceremony to formally legalize our marriage.

We had a short ceremony followed by a fun, intimate party at this wonderful little place called the Bancroft Hotel in Berkeley. It was held at this lovely room called the Great Hall which had three tiers, albeit "floors" which was perfect for our set-up. We had the ceremony in one section, dinner at the middle, and the back section we used as an impromptu "stage".

We were truly expecting something simple but my cousin Grace surprised us all by providing wonderful decor and flowers! And my bouquet was lovely!

I'll let the photos tell the rest. They were all taken by my sister, who did a great job in capturing these even more precious memories.

Marriage is...

Do you...

With all our families and guests!

A lovely shot of my bouquet taken by my sister

Pretty Table Settings

Our yummy cakes from (drum roll please...) Safeway!

View of the Great Hall

Thank you to all our guests for coming and to the Bancroft Hotel for the wonderful service!

Our weddings are done! One more celebration to go! Then the next one will be our one year anniversary. I'd say married life has been pretty good so far.

Maggie the Magic Car!

Look what was waiting for me at our new home!

Isn't it awesome?! A Toyota Prius! My family named her MAGIC, short for Maita and Gerard's Intelligent Car. I just say Maggie for short.

Haha, no, it wasn't a surprise. We had already discussed it ahead of time that we were going to get a hybrid car because it has better gas mileage AND its better for the environment. But he did do the research and he found the car in great shape, at a second hand car dealer about two hours away. And you can actually get an air freshener with the new car smell so it smells brand new! 

So while Gerard is at work, I can actually go around doing errands and I'm not afraid of getting lost because... THE CAR HAS GPS! Honestly, if not for the GPS, I would probably be afraid to drive and go anywhere. Well, I'm honestly still a bit freaked out by the speed on the freeway but at least I'm not worried about getting lost. I now realize that GPS is such a wonderful invention! Because of it, I actually have the freedom to go around and do the things I need to do. (Like buy groceries, go to the bank, mail stuff, ah, the life of a housewife.)

Been super busy with more wedding stuff and unpacking. More about all of that later on. 

But I'm driving to San Francisco tomorrow to do some errands. I will get over my fear of freeways!