Quote for the Week: Our Home

While stuck in traffic, I noticed that EDSA was cleaner than usual: new barriers and newly painted road stripes. It dawned on me that all these revamping of streets and streetscaping were for the upcoming APEC, of which we are the host and foreign dignitaries will come in. I told my husband that if we can clean up the streets during international events where we are hosts, I think we are capable of maintain them regularly. But why don't we? Why do we only tidy up our "house" to be at its best only when there are guests coming? Is this another "pakitang tao" attitude of ours?

Then I remembered one of our Filipino customs wherein we make our guests welcome by always preparing our home, bringing out new plates, utensils, and what have you... then keep them all and stored once guests are gone, never to be used until the next guests are expected.

This is one thing I do not understand, for I believe that keeping our homes clean, maintaining it regularly, and prettifying it with things that are meaningful and that we love, are activities that do not need an audience. Our home, in a way, reflects us, how we currently live, and how we want to live in the future. I do not bring out the best china and utensils when there are guests. In fact, I want my dinnerware, flatware, glassware, and cutlery that I use daily to be the best that I can afford. Of course there will still be those that are for special occasions, but I still use them once in a while - guests or no guests.

I'm not saying that we all be strict and leave no room for messiness here in there. There is, after all, a situation called "creative mess." The quote reminded me that just like crafting our life to have purpose and meaning, we need to make more effort in making sure that our home is kept and filled with all the things that we love and evoke memories of happiness.

After all, it is a place where truly love grows.

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Home Decor: Our Own Home Project

I am so excited to have finally found the contractor who will update our home decor! It's not a total overhaul, but the priorities of this home renovation project are two things: updating the wall's colours and streamlining our shelving and cabinetry.

Here are the inspirations (read: must copy!) for our project.

Master Bedroom
We are in terrible need of organising and updating our master's bedroom. Aside from adding my own table, there was not much that changed for the last 10 years.

Our room used to have a pale lovely lavender color with white accents (open shelves and cabinets). Now I'm opting to have a wonderful French-y pale blue, still with white accents.

The walls will be painted in Benjamin Moore "White Satin"

Definitely we will replace our bed with this new design. Space permitting, maybe this is the year when I will finally have my forever-in-my-wish list mirrored bedside table. LOVE.

For our bathroom, currently it has a Spring Green wall with off-white tiles. There's a B&W frame with a photo of a B&W calla lily, plus a hug he black-bordered mirror. We will retain the tiles (too expensive to change), but change the color to something softer: Benjamin Moore "Ballet White."

A small vanity cabinet will be installed for our personal care products. I would still retain our ivory towels but probably add powder blue ones for color.


Living Room / Dining Room
Our current walls have sage green color, and much as I love it, I would like to try to my first love... white, or off white at least. I have found the perfect white in Benjamin Moore's "Simply White." Don't you just love the name?

We will maintain our foyer wall's color, Ace paint's "Daydream," which is a dupe for Benjamin Moore's "Danube Blue" below. 

I totally love this color as it is a nice contrast to the painting hanging on our wall. Just imagine gilded picture frames of various shapes and designs!

Until now I'm still in love with our foyer, so definitely we will not change it. In this pic, it's a little turquoise-y but really, above color is more accurate.

This home design has been my crush since I saw it last year, as it compliments nicely to the blue wall we have.

I would love to have that cerulean color for our sofa! We will have ours reupholstered, plus new foam will be used. Together with our blue wall, this would be such a contrast to our white walls and white kitchen!

Dining Room

Our dining room will have the same wall color as our living area, since our condo is an open space type of layout. Below are the inspirations for our little dining nook. I would still want to have those Louis chairs, likely in cream wood and champagne upholstery.

Our second bathroom needs a facelift too, but I guess it's more on updating the red walls into a softer hue, just like this BJ's "Hush."

Goodness, I can't wait till our home's facelift is done. I just hope that the result will be as lovely as our ideas and inspirations.

Speaking of inspirations, I'm also glad that 2016's Color of the year for Benjamin Moore is "Simply White." It is indeed a happy coincidence, but hey, I'm not complaining! I have loved white second to green... well I use a lot of white really! Such a treat to know too that most of the colours I have chosen are in the 2016 color trends. Check it out.

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Kitch!

Sorry it's still messy but when I have the time to shop around, I'll be working on the aesthetics. But thank goodness my kitchen is now fully operational. Yay! Now I can't wait till I cook our first meal using our induction stovetop!

At least that's one concern down. Our next concern is the car, which for more than a month is having some problems (the aircon sometimes shuts down even if it's not turned down. The replacement part is expensive, compared I guess to original toyota parts. However, thank goodness that I wont be paying since this defect was tagged as a series defect. Yay right! :)

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Almost done!

Super loving my ivory kitchen! Just need the backsplash, cabinet lights, and new lighting and we're set!

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New Kitchen Soon!

Finally, my dream of having a new, white kitchen is becoming a reality! I had to make some changes because the cabinet looked cream instead of pure white, and that my mosaic tile backsplash was deemed to be too high maintenance for our own good.

But anyways, this is how our kitchen area looks like at the moment. Sorry about the mess and the equipment still visible (check out reidsupply.com for these!)

The induction stovetop plus the electric oven were already pre-installed. We changed our sink too and got a bigger and deeper one. We also changed our faucet. The only things missing are the countertop and the backsplash.

Speaking of backsplash, since I really wanted a French-y, Parisian feel, we opted to get these tiles from La Europa.

Then, would likely top the area with this...

Oooh. I really can't wait till this kitchen is done. Hopefully by mid-March!

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Jonathan Adler Happy Home Stuff

Guess what I got today?

Yup, it's the Jonathan Adler Happy Home 5-piece Vanity Set! This is what's inside...

Found it in one of the unlikeliest place to see it (well for me at least)... HMR along Pioneer! There's a lot of stock still, and the good thing is, it is on sale! From roughly Php 800 it became PhP 490 per set. That's a steal huh!

Love the aquamarine room scent too. Love love love. Get yourself one!

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Meet The Yayas

Let me introduce the two yayas of our household, whom Eanna loves very much:

Yaya A - the official yaya. Had a lot of complications when I hired her but I'm glad I stood up for her and defended her. Hehehehe. She simply adores the little girl.

Yaya N - same name as mine, good thing she has a different nickname! Though not her yaya, Eanna is very fond of her too.

Just earlier today before going to school, Eanna told her Yaya N: "Goodbye Yaya N, I love you." Then blew a kiss. Aww, isn't that sweet?

Yes, they did have this mini pictorial. Somehow they are fond of artificial christmas trees like ours, hahahaha!

Anyway, if "all goes well," I guess I have to have faith in them that they will take care of my little one. More about this once confeermed!

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Ceiling Fan vs. Aircon

I still cannot decide on whether I will install a ceiling fan or an aircon in our living area. The days are getting hotter, and it's still warm even when the BER months kicked in. I'm expecting this Christmas time will be the warmest we've experienced, and since we would love to invite friends and relatives over, we would have to address the "warm" issue in our home.

At first I wanted to get an inverter technology aircon but our condo's house rules forbid us from installing split-type aircons. Inverter technology aircons claim to have a high energy efficiency rate, thus lesser power consumption. This technology is not yet available for window-type aircons (or maybe I should check it out in the mall).

Then there is the option of a ceiling fan. My concern here is the aesthetic aspect. Though Hunter fans appeal to me, I don't know if it would suit well with our kinda-modern ceiling. This is kinda a good option though...

We'll see what the hubby will prefer, though I have a good idea what he'd want.

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Our Foyer: Before and After

I am really loving our foyer's new lovely deep blue-green color. We have painted it a week ago and yeah, it's just now that I had the time to take a picture of it. Hehehe.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

For some reason it's a bit turquoise-y in this picture.

But it really looks like this...

Nevertheless, I am loving the color!

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Painting our Walls

Just to relieve our stress (we finally let go of the helper in question and in that process my BP shot up to 200/100 haha) we decided to paint our foyer walls a nice shade of blue-green called "Daydream."

Here's the husband doing the dirty work...

As previously blogged, this was our inspiration:

I can't wait till we reupholster our sofa and also adorn our lovely painted walls with gold accessories.

PS: We bought a little too much paint. The store said our area will cover one gallon, but we ended up using just a fourth or a third of it. What to do with the excess paint? Hmmm. Sell it then buy a barcode scanner perhaps? Kidding.

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Happy As Ever

Our family is finally complete! The husband came home Thursday evening and we were all so very excited and happy to be together after almost 5 months of being apart.

Here's a candid picture of us the morning after.

Obviously I'm the one who only made funny faces here. Hehehe.

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Coco Cola world Cup Glasses in McDo

I remembered that i wanted those Cocoa World Cup glasses offered by McDo, and so my whole household went to McDo for lunch.

Too bad there's no Blue. We each grabbed our own sets of glasses. I got 6, and my two helpers got 4 each. I would have gotten more but I think it's overkill already. Maybe next time again. Hehehe.

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Autumn Tableware from Hermes

I would love to have Hermes dinnerware for really special occasions. Check this out...

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New Article: Ways to Organize Household Tasks

Here's my first article published this July. Hope you read and learn a few tips!

In a Fix? Use these Ideas to Organize your Household Tasks

Good housekeeping may not be easy, but it should not be a pain either. Find out ways to organize household tasks to suit your schedule and lifestyle.

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Utility Area Jungle

Our utility area looks like a dangerous jungle, yet again.

So many boxes and items that I dont even know if we still use. There's no organization for the linens, clothes, and small appliances, and I am starting to lose hope on ever clearing this messy place. I want to spring clean this area badly and store things in separate shipping boxes and mark them for recycling, reusing, or plain throwing. However, I just cannot do this without having another allergic reaction that eventually leads to an asthma attack. The husby is requesting to be home by July, and maybe I should wait for him so he could do the job, but I really get irritated and depressed every single time I enter it. Ack.

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Thoughts on Reorganizing the Home

I couldn't sleep last night because my daughter was sick and I had to keep an eye on her. Aside from watching videos I also read some stuff over the net. I came across this nice article from Unclutterer on how to get back into being organized after "falling off the wagon."

Keep Things in Perspective:

• Failure only happens if you never recover. If your system falls to pieces but you eventually get things back in order, you simply learned a lesson. You only fail when you give up entirely and abandon all uncluttering and organizing efforts for the rest of your life. You’re not failing; you’re learning.
• Being organized takes practice. You wouldn’t play a musical instrument or a sport like a professional if you hadn’t put in hundreds of thousands of hours practicing, so don’t expect professional organizing results without years of practice.
• Who cares?! Unless your health or welfare are at risk, being disorganized is not the worst thing in the world. Watch 30 minutes of the national news to help put things in perspective.
• Embrace the mess. Since you will eventually get off your bum and get back to an organized existence, take a day (or seven) and enjoy the chaos. At least temporarily, let go of the stress.

Find Motivation:

• Determine why you want to be organized. If you don’t know why you want to be organized and clutter free, you’re going to struggle with every attempt you make to be an unclutterer.
• Ask for help. Call a friend and ask him/her to help you get your project started again. If you don’t want your friends to see your place a mess, call in a professional organizer.
• Plan a party. Nothing gets me moving faster than knowing there will be people coming into my house. Plus, the reward is that when your space is orderly, you get to celebrate with a party!
• Acknowledge that you’re procrastinating. I don’t know why this works, but simply admitting to yourself that you’re avoiding a task can help get you motivated to change. 
• Plan your project. As you would a project at work, plan your entire uncluttering and organizing project to help you get back on track. Pull out your calendar, determine the scope of your project, create action items, and block off time each day to reach your goal. Being specific (and realistic) about what you will want to accomplish helps to alleviate the overwhelming Cloud of Doom and realize you can get things back to normal.

Get Started:

• No excuses. Follow your project plan and just do it. There isn’t an easy way. You will have to do the work. However, the end result is definitely worth it.

Maintain:

• Create household routines. If you don’t have a chart of daily routines and responsibilities, now is the time to establish one or evaluate your old one.
• Use a meal plan. The easiest way to eat healthy and keep from stressing out about what is for dinner is to create a weekly meal plan.
• Declutter. The less you own, the less you have to clean, organize, store, and maintain.
• Enjoy the calm. Take some time to reflect on how different you feel when things are uncluttered and organized instead of chaotic and disorganized. Remembering this feeling, and enjoying the remarkable life you desire, are great motivators to keeping you on course in the future.

See, one does not need a barcode scanner or whatever organizing gadget there is in order to keep things organized!

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Basic Cleaning Suppliers for a Small Space

Got this from Apartment Therapy, one of my favorite websites on home design and housekeeping...

1. Broom, Dustpan, and Mop: These are the basic tools of floor cleaning.
2. Vacuum: Depending on the amount of carpet in your home, you may not need a big vacuum. 
3. Bucket: A mop bucket can double as a catch-all for cleaning supplies. Any modestly sized bucket with a handle will do.
4. One Bottle of All-Purpose Cleaner: Rather than keep a bunch of different cleaners on hand, use one green all-purpose cleaner for counters and non-wood surfaces.
5. A Box of Baking Soda: This natural ingredient is the basis for a whole range of homemade cleaners, from bathroom scrubs to drain cleaners.
6. White Vinegar: Diluted with water, white vinegar is a great window cleaner and stain remover.
7. Wood Cleaner: Many people recommend cleaning wood floors or furniture with white vinegar or just a dry cloth, but we've always preferred to use a cleaner made specifically for wood.
8. A Couple of Sponges: Keep separate sponges on hand: one for dishes and one for surface cleaning.
9. Scrub Brush: These are useful for scouring pots and pans in the kitchen. We usually only go through one at a time.
10. Dish Soap: If you really want to make your sink area feel clean and organized, try using squeeze bottles to store your dish soap. As you refill the squeeze bottle, you can dilute the dish soap with water, making it last longer.
11. Microfiber Cloths, Rags, or Paper Towels: We hang a rag bag near the pantry and keep it full of old cloths for cleaning. Others recommend microfiber cloths, while wall-mounted paper towels can be a convenient space saver.
12. Dish Towels: Keep a couple of clean towels near the sink for drying dishes. They're also handy for absorbing surface spills.
13. Laundry Detergent: In a small space, it helps to choose a small bottle laundry detergent that won't eat up too much room.

Simple right? Unless of course you have outdoor fireplaces, then maybe you'd need more cleaning tools!

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Re-designing our Condo

The other night I wasn't able to sleep at all, and the morning after I realized that it was because of the Bread Talk Hot Chocolate laced with Espresso. I rarely drink coffee so drinking espresso has killed my hopes in getting good sleep that night.

My mind in those grueling moments went overdrive. I couldn't think of anything except design ideas for our home. I wanted a new layout for our bedroom. Wanted new modern furniture for our dining area. Wanted new lights as well. Wallpaper for all or if not, most of our walls. Wanted a major overhaul.

The next day, as soon as I realized the sun was up and that the husband was half-awake, I suddenly bombarded him with my design ideas. I also told him that I will pursue my interior design formal studies and set up a design firm (Atelier Pineda? hehehe). I love designing and I wouldn't mind working if this will be my work.

I think there was some kind of osmosis because surprisingly, he agreed with me in all aspects. We stood up, went to our living room and he just kept spring cleaning the area. Then we talked about major renovations. The floors, the walls, lighting, and yes, the cabinets in both rooms. Plus cabinets in the bathrooms as well. Oh and yes, the utility room too. Major overhaul, hahaha.

I told him we cannot do it in one go (though this is ideal) but we have to plan ahead. He said we can stay somewhere in a week while the place is being renovated. We'll see. In the meantime, he told me to just make a master plan and design layout. This is probably going to be my first ultimate design endeavor!

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Eanna's New Bed

After scouting for quite some time, we have found the right bed for Eanna!

We got it from Forty Winks, a shop where I know beds sold last a long time. I got my bed too here more than a decade ago, and until now is very much sturdy and all.

Eanna's bed is white, and it has a pullout bed plus two pullout cabinets for more storage.

What's more exciting though is scouting for the bed linens. I am a bit disappointed with the selections here in Manila, very limited! But I settled for the Kid's Home collection - tea party design. I didn't get the comforter yet because I wanted to buy a separate duvet and a duvet cover. You know, more use (can change duvet covers) rather than buy a comforter with print. Of course, thread count is important and I am please with it, though I was hoping it would be higher. Since it's the kids' line, the sheets are sanitized and anti-dust mites. and it's 100% cotton.

Now here is the bed in its messy glorious state...

 

Eanna loves her bed, hahahah!

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Oh, Christmas Tree!

When hubby and I got married, we had this idea of getting small Christmas trees for the holidays, and whenever we feel that we have "progressed" we will buy a bigger one. This year, we felt that so many blessings where given to us, including the blessing that I can be a full-time home maker / stay-at-home mom, so we got the Christmas tree I have wanted to get for the longest time. all of us were very excited to go home after buying the tree and some adornments. we couldn't wait to set up our first "big" Christmas tree!

Our tree is still incomplete in terms of adornments and lights, but here it is after our initial set-up...

 

Although it kind of looks big for our tiny place, we still got this because I really really love the goldish color of the tree, but there are no more smaller sizes.

I am now looking forward to installing the lights and some more adornments, though it looks ok na rin for me.

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