Wedding Bouquet Display

For some time now, I’ve been keeping my eye out for a glass cloche or dome at thrift stores. I wanted them for my wedding bouquet, which I had left sitting in a glass vase (without any water) so it had dried out nicely. I wanted to further protect it from elements like water and moving people. I had checked online too and the size that I had needed cost upward of $45 which was a little too pricy for a piece of glass in my opinion. (The ones below start from $89! They are pretty though.)

photo from www.wisteria.com

So here’s my shabby chic inspired version for displaying my wedding bouquet:

 The Lanstalle lantern for candles purchased from… Ikea. Though it may not be as airtight as the cloche, I’m still pretty happy with how it turned out. And since dust mostly settles from on top, I covered the air duct at the very top of the lantern with a round piece of contact paper.

Now my wedding flowers are happily sitting in their new home, protected from the elements. (Well mostly at least.) And the price of this glass lantern? $14.99. Wanting to save does make you think out of the box! Or in this case, in it.

New Favorite Stuff!

I've been really busy here in our new home and in my studio. I have so much more room to do projects... which makes me super busy... which leads to little blogging time. 

But I wanted to write a quick post of some things that I'm totally loving now.

1.) Loreal Everpure Sulfate Free Shampoo and Conditioner.

photo from Frugal-Freebies.com

My mom told me that she had started using sulfate free shampoo and conditioner and it had done wonders for her hair. It also had a wonderful price at maybe P1200.00. a bottle. That's pretty pricy shampoo! 

So she sent me on a mission to find affordable sulfate free shampoo and conditioner here and I found one manufactured by Loreal.

I bought some, tried it out and I am now a sulfate free shampoo convert! My hair has never been this soft and healthy! My hair is naturally on the frizzy side but it now dries silky soft and slightly wavy with no help from a hair dryer! I've gotten quite a few compliments on it too! Plus the bottle lasts really long because you only have to use so little of it at a time.

And the best part? Less than $7 a bottle (tube?) from your local Target. (I love Target!)

2.) So remember a few weeks it was my birthday? Well Gerard took me to Ruth's Chris Steak House where we had a wonderful, intimate meal. The veal was delicious. But my no doubt ultimate favorite part of that meal... was the Sweet Potato Casserole. It was like a mashed sweet potato  dish with a kind of candied pecan topping and it was like having dessert. With your main course. Matter of fact, that was one of the reasons Gerard wanted to take me there. For their Sweet Potato Casserole.

I loved it so much that a friend gave me the recipe she uses to replicate it. And I made some for my belated birthday dinner too!

 I know it may not look like much in the photo. But it's SO GOOD that I made it TWICE in March alone. (And I wonder where these few extra pounds came from!) I'll post the recipe on here soon.

3.) Spicy SPAM

photo from spam.com

 I've never been a huge fan of spam, until my friend Nicole served some for breakfast at her place one day. It was spicy, crispy, and perfect with steaming hot white rice.

Fast forward several months later and I found spicy spam on sale at our local Seafood City for $2.50 a can. And what does Maita do? Buy 4 cans.

Not only do we love eating it with white rice, it's A-MAZ-ING with the sweet potato casserole above. The contrast of the spicy, crispy, meat with the sweet potato is addictive. Super addictive. So addictive that I cooked up another casserole last week and have been slowly eating it with spicy spam.

Sounds weird, I know. But don't knock it til you try it.


3. Since I've been cooking more now that we have a separate kitchen/dining room, well, I've also got to clean up more to. I'd seen this product around and read a review in my favorite magazine, Real Simple.

It's the SLIPPER GENIE, basically slippers with microfiber fingers underneath that clean as you walk. Plus the soles can be detached and thrown in the washing machine. I wear them so that while I'm cooking, I'm cleaning the kitchen floor too!

Unfortunately, at our local Ross, all they had was the kids version.

photo from amazon.com

And I bought them anyway :). They actually fit me just right! And they were only $5.00 compared to the $13.00 price tag on amazon.

Gerard thinks they're cute. And I've got clean floors so I'm not complaining. Mine are blue hehe. We don't know it its supposed to be a puppy on it or a donkey. Any guesses?

So there, I just had to share these things which I'm totally loving and they bright up my day. Do you have a list of your current favorite things? I'd love to see them!

Mini Dinner Party

Two things I love:

1) Extended Birthday Celebrations

2) Sharing a good meal with great friends

After three weeks of moving, unpacking, buying furniture plus a washer and dryer, we finally felt our home was organized enough to host a mini dinner with friends. Or we scrambled like crazy to at least get it half presentable the day of. (Which is it? I'll never tell.)

I always tell myself it takes at least 6 months to get settled in somewhere, and I'm just so grateful that we have friends and family nearby. We may not get to see them very often but I've always felt that one of the things that makes a house feel more like a home is having friends and family over. I love having people over! More so than going out, I think. Well that's fun too but I guess I'm low-key like that.

Plus we love to cook! So a post birthday celebration/housewarming was the perfect excuse to cook up a mean meal. And I do mean, a daze-inducing, stuffed-to-the-brim, I'm-so-full-I'm-not-eating-for-the-next-week, mean meal.

 Menu: Steak, Butter Lemon Garlic Crab, 

Sweet Potato Casserole, Roasted Bone Marrow, 

and White Jasmin Rice.

Oh, plus brownies and vanilla bean ice cream for dessert :D.

We had an awesome time, talking about the most random things like Evian face spray bottles and the fact that you can buy crab fat in a jar in the Philippines. And the food was wiped out!

Thank you, H, D, and J, for joining us to celebrate lots of things, our new home, my birthday, and love, laughter and friendship.

Looking forward to many more yummy dinners :D Already thinking of more occasions to celebrate! Anniversaries, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, hmmm...

Updates + Spring Bazaar

I've been one busy bee huh. Yep, that's me. Moving, celebrating, waiting for the cable guy, waiting for the internet guy, selling on etsy, unpacking, buying furniture, studying, I could go on!

Our place isn't quite photo ready yet (I admit, that photo of the bedroom took ten minutes of tidying up.) But I'm hoping to make headway in the dining room soon as we just bought a new buffet table! (Well, not really new as it came from Craigslist, but new to us anyhow. Don't you just love Craigslist?) 

As for the bedroom, the husband has to build his Pax wardrobe closet from Ikea before we can put away most of his clothes. AND we still need a dryer. We bought a washer from the Sears Outlet the other week but no dryer. So I've got a huge amount of laundry waiting to be done and the pile is growing every day!

Oh the every day nuances of married life :D. So with all this going on, I realizes it's a little over a month until the SPRING BAZAAR that I'm joining! I'd better get a move on it, designing products to sell. I hope my new box of printer ink arrives soon!

In the meantime, if you're in the bay area on April 16, please do check out the Spring Bazaar which is going to be held at the Winery, on Treasure Island, San Francisco. I do sure hope to see you there!

P. S. I've also been studying blog designing. "Chocolate" (as I fondly called this blog) is due for some design tweaks. I've made the switch to Wordpress on "Studio" as I like to call my "professional" blog, Studio Alcantara. Please do stop by!

On Internet Connections

We've been internet-less for a week since we moved, aside from sporadic bouts of wifi and mobile use.

When Comcast finally gave us the green light, and I literally mean the green light on our modem, I cannot begin to express the joy I felt at being connected. Then it took a good hour to get our wifi up and running for some reason. Mind you, this is with a techie-geek couple both working on it and arguing about what we weren't doing right hahaha. Oh the stress of no connection.

When did I become this person? I can't help but chuckle and shake my head in wonder.

Now that we're finally back online, I can't seem to remember what I used to spend hours doing. 

It'll come back to me.

Let's start with a birthday weekend post!

The Birthday Wishlist

In the midst of unpacking and arranging our new place, I'm taking a break to celebrate my birthday! Or even better, my birth month! Hey, nothing wrong with milking it for what it's worth. Any excuse for a mini vacation with the husband, a shopping spree, or to indulge in all my favorite food. Plus dinner parties! Looking forward to hosting small dinners with close friends in our new home, just a few at a time to keep it cozy and intimate.

But the day before my birthday, I'm thinking of my gift wish list. These are my big three:

1) Plane Ticket to Visit the Family and attend Rhoda's Wedding (Check! Thank you Mom and Dad!)

2) New, Bigger Place to live in, complete with home office/studio for me (Check! Thank you Husband!)

3) I really really miss having a DSLR. Not that I don't love my Canon G11 but I'm seriously contemplating going into freelance photography. Plus I've got to photograph all these new products for Studio Alcantara right? So third on my birthday wish list and what I'm trying to save up for:

Photo from 60dcanon.net

A Canon 60D.

And there you have it. Would love a few more odds and ends like:

Red Round Placemats like these from Crate & Barrel.
(I see a trip to the Crate & Barrel outlet in my future.)

Becky Higgin's Project Life Scrapbooking Kit.

I'm not really a scrapbooker per say but it's an all included kit wherein all you do is place photos in pockets and write on "journal" cards. I thought it would be a great way to document, well, life!

And later on, when we have time and the weather's better, I'd like a mini vacation like these from Living Social Escapes.

Ok time go get back to unpacking. I'll never be able to have people over to celebrate with me if I don't start cleaning this place up!

2011, Here we come!

I know I've been a bit remiss in writing. I was so busy launching my etsy store, filling Christmas orders for my chocolate bark, and preparing for winter in Virginia!

As my first year here in the US comes to a close, I'm amazed at everything that has transpired this year.

Of course the first thing that comes to mind is that this is the year we got married! And I moved to the US!

It's been an exciting time full of new things, new places, new people, and I learned so much as well. I've come to love living in California and I am super excited about the New Year ahead, with all it's possibilities.

But yet, the hardest thing of all, was leaving home and moving away from family. I sorely miss them and I think about them every day but I know that it's part of life and I have more than one place to call home now. I once read somewhere that home is where your family is and I am blessed to have had my family grow exponentially.

We do have so much planned for next year though, including not just one, but two trips back to the Philippines! Hooray for that! And January already looks like it's going to be jam-packed and time is GOING TO FLY. Just thinking about it boggles the mind!

So here's to another year full of exciting possibilities, wonderful moments, and beautiful memories. Here's to a Happy 2011 and beyond!

Happy New Year, Everyone!

Dreaming of Dumaguete

Growing up, we would always travel during vacations and special family occasions. When I was a kid, I would wonder how come we had to go away and leave my friends (it seemed to be always when we had something especially fun planned.) But these trips also had awesome perks. I got to spend time with relatives especially cousins, and I got to see the beautiful places where my parents grew up.

Photo from Explore Dumaguete!

One of these places near and dear to my heart, is Dumaguete city. It was only a 45 minute plane ride, five hour boat ride, or six hour drive away and it was always a wonderful adventure. This city, smaller than my hometown of Cebu often offered a welcome respite to the big city. My cousins and I were free to explore by bicycle, buy lip-staining bubble gum from the neighborhood sari-sari store, and play as much as we wanted.

My family would go to the beach, experience dolphin watching on a pumpboat, and eat wonderful seafood.

The Dumaguete I remember from my childhood is of  course, different from the Dumaguete I know now, but not in a bad way. We still go to the beach, go swimming in Forest Camp, and eat. Now Dumaguete has even more wonderful restaurants and eateries, such as Sans Rival (yes, they do serve amazing melt in your mouth sans rival and melt in your mouth goodies, the wonderful Cafe Antonio situated in a Spanish ancestral home, and my favorite, Pastaaang Lami-ah where my aunt serves scrumptious home cooked barbecue with java rice and the most amazing cassava cake to die for. Just thinking about all this food makes my mouth water.

If you asked me what makes Dumaguete special, I would say it was it's the historic, home town, yet near nature feel. Dumaguete is a university town, with lots of schools and Silliman Unviversity being it's main one. There are lots of students, lots of open spaces, and lots of history. But Dumaguete is also near nature, such as the Forest Camp Mountain resort and Apo Island.

Apo Island should deserve an entry in itself. It's a wonderful little island off the coat of Negros. Half of the island has a little cove with a beautiful beach and the other half is wonderful for snorkeling and diving as Apo Island is a marine sanctuary. It's one of the best diving spots in the Philippines, I've heard. My family has had some unforgettable vacations there. 

I could go on and on about Dumaguete but I think I'll leave that to the tourism pros. For more information on Dumaguete, please visit Explore Dumaguete. It's a wonderful website which gives off the awesome Dumaguete vibe. Simple yet still vibrant and rich.

I am however dreaming of going back to Antulang Beach resort and going horseback riding and snorkeling. My husband's all for it as his family is from Dumaguete too! Isn't that sweet?

The Ziploc Bag Obsession

I am obsessed with Ziploc bags. Obsessed, I tell you. Obsessed enough to buy 152 gallon Ziploc bags in one day.

Image from costco.com

Ok, so it was at Costco. And I'll tell you my reasons/uses justifying why I bought all those Ziploc bags.

1. Food Storage. Stated in my previous budgeting entry #1, we wrap meat in foil before placing it in Ziploc bags for storing in the freezer. We also label the bags with the item and date we placed it in. Also good for storing leftovers.

2. Making Crumbs. Sometimes a recipe calls for crushed wafers, crushed oreos or graham cracker crumbs. I place the wafers or cookies in a Ziploc bag and bash the hell out of them with a wine bottle. It's quite fun actually!

3. Marinating Meat. We marinate meat in Ziploc bags with a bowl underneath for catching leaks. Bowl and ziploc bag stay in the fridge. Enough said.

4. Keeping Cookie Dough. Scoop out the cookie dough in the amount that you need (i.e. 1 round tablespoons) and freeze in shape. Next time you want some fresh baked cookies, take the frozen scoops and pop them in the oven. (We always want fresh baked cookies.)

5. Electronic Accessories Storage. You know all those cables/manuals/whatever that came with your new laptop/camera/phone? I like to place all the accessories from one item in one bag and I label it Macbook/Canon G11/iPhone or whatever electronic item it came with. That way they don't end up a tangled, unknown mess in the bottom drawer.

6. Replacement Piping Bags. We never buy piping bags for the fancy frosting work my husband does on my cupcakes. He just places the frosting in a Ziploc bag and snips of a tip of one corner! Presto! Instant piping bag! (He also attaches the fancy frosting tips on the bag but I think you could probably do without them.)

7. Toiletry Kits. We all probably have two or three fancy toiletry kits stashed away in our closets but nothing beats the simplicity of a Ziploc bag (not to mention the protection from exploding shampoo bottles or leaking lotions.)

8. Cushioning Breakables. When I don't have any of those packing plastic bubbles or bubble wrap, I inflate these with a straw and use them as packing material. Would still use bubble wrap and packing peanuts for extra fragile stuff though.

9. Sorting Pantyhose. Mocha, brown, nude, black, knee length, calf length, etc. Stick the label on the Ziploc bag before stuffing the pantyhose in. That way you know what's inside. 

10. Kids Stuff. WHEN we have kids, I foresee many possible uses for these bags. Storing outfits, toys on the go, diapers, art materials, etc. I've even read these make great instant diaper changing pads. Just cut the bag open and voila!

11. Instant Ice Packs. Before we bought one of those ice packs mainly for cooler use, we'd fill a Ziploc bag with ice and and stick it in the cooler. Also good for injuries.

12. Screws and Odds and Ends. Store extra screws in labeled Ziploc bags. When taking apart furniture, keep all the screws for one piece (i.e. sofa) in one bag. We then like to tape the bag to the disassembled sofa. Or you can just mark the bags and keep them all together. This is great for moving.

And... that's all I've got. For now. With the 152 bags and at least 11 uses (I don't have kids yet,) I figure I won't have to buy any Ziploc bags for at least a year!