Friday, June 28, 2013

Mommy Mundo SoMoms


Last June 15, I was formally welcomed into the Mommy Mundo SoMoms family. Here I am with the gorgeous Michelle of My Mom-Friday. She is the one who nominated me to the group; and you can see my excitement as I hold up my ID and smile widely up to my ears.
 


Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Dumaguete: Where to Stay & How To Get Around

To real ALL posts about Dumaguete, click here. 

DUMAGUETE, called the City of Gentle People, is the capital of Negros Oriental and lies on the southeast coast of Negros, very near the southern tip of Cebu. It is not usually on the list of anyone's top summer destination, unlike Boracay, Bohol or Palawan. We, ourselves, were just forced to take on Dumaguete as this was the host of this year's Palarong Pambansa. Like our Iloilo trip for the Batang Pinoy Nationals, sightseeing was done only after the day's meet. Nevertheless, we made restaurant -hopping a priority, which I will share with you in my next post.

Our group, consisting of some of my daughter's NCR team mates and their parents, booked our rooms at Hotel Essencia for the entire duration of our stay. Hotel Essencia is the city’s biggest hotel with 150 fully air-conditioned rooms, all fully equipped with cable TV, safety deposit box, coffee/ tea counter, refrigerator, hair dryer and direct-dial telephone for both national and international calls. The hotel also offers free wifi for all it's guests, and the signal and speed of the wireless network was strong and consistent that updating my family back in Manila was a breeze.

The hotel is very reasonably priced and features a wide range of on-site facilities including a restaurant, coffee shop, spa, souvenir shop, travel agency, and function rooms. We got the cheapest room, the standard economy, at the promo rate of P1,200.00, but I was pleasantly surprised to see how big our room was, with two double beds at that.

Friday, June 21, 2013

Anvaya Revisited

We had the chance to revisit Anvaya during the tail-end of summer; the first week of June, the week before school started for my girls..  Not much has changed since our last visit so I will not write so much about the facilities anymore.  You can read detailed review of Anvaya during our first visit here.

Although we spend a lot of time together as a family, out-of-town trips are still treasured.  There's something about a shared experience with loved ones that draws the family closer. 


Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Create & Celebrate Colors with Crayola

I remember when swimming did not rule my kids' world, our summers and weekends were full of arts and crafts. We did painting, tie-dyed shirts, origami, etc. Our go to brand for almost all our art materials is Crayola. My girls love their glitter crayons and their colored pencils in metallic colors.
Just recently, my kids and I were invited by AMSPEC, the makers of T-Pencils and also the licensed manufacturer of Crayola in Asia, to an afternoon of creating and celebrating colors.  The kids had a wonderful time at Gymboree in Shangri-la Mall.

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Wishful Thinking: A Mom's Errand Bag

School started this week for the girls.  I've always had mixed reactions to it; while I am happy to have some quiet around the house, I also dread the toxic after-school schedule of swim training and tutoring.

Which is why, I think ALL moms deserve to indulge themselves in a little treat BEFORE school actually starts.  After all, don't we buy our kids new sets of everything (school shoes, rubber shoes, uniforms, socks, pens, pencil cases, colored markers, bags, binders, folders... ang dami!) in the days leading up to school opening.

For myself, I'd like to REWARD myself in advance by getting a new everyday bag, to run errands in.

Friday, June 7, 2013

Novuhair: Healthy Maintainance for the Hair

I've long ranted about the effects of aging on our facial skin, but I havent's shared with you that aging also affects the quality of the strands of our hair.  The most common hair issues that affect aging women are hair loss and gray hair.  

I do not have issues with graying hair, yet, but I am suffering from a mild case of hair fall, especially when I shower.  I have read somewhere that the typical adult shed about 100 to 150 strands of hair a day, so the hair we shed off is not really a cause for concern.  But as we age, our scalps ability to stimulate new hair growth slows down.  That's when thinning hair starts to become a problem for most.

Luckily, Novuhair gave some products to try.  Novuhair does not only help remedy hair loss, but it can be used for hair maintenance as well.  Novuhair works by improving blood circulation to the scalp and increasing nutrition to hair follicles. The scalp is then detoxified; scaling is improved, and ultimately, hair growth is stimulated, dandruff eliminated, and excessive hair fall is remedied.




Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Saturdate Agenda {Baking, Nail Spa, Truffle Pizza}

Last Saturday, the boys took off for the day to do their own thing, leaving just us girls in the house.  We started our day early by hying off to the kitchen to bake apple pie.  This is a long-time recipe which I tweaked to add flaxseed in the streusel.

In the afternoon, I decided to take them to a nail spa since I did promise them at the start of summer that we would take time out to do that.  So we drove off to Chic Nails at Scout Tuazon for some pampering.  My older one and I got the foot spa with pedicure package (P470), while B just settled Yummy Gummy pedicure (P150).  We are all obviously in denial that the rainy season is now upon us; as we all chose summery colors, still!

Monday, June 3, 2013

Welcome To My New Home!


There are new things coming up for this blog. And in preparation for the exciting times ahead, the blog will be moving to a new home and a new name!  While I will still be writing about our phenomenal life, the posts will now be done at the phenomenal mama


I hope you could all bookmark this new site and follow me here!  It is still the same blog, and to make sure you won't miss a thing, this new blog has all of the old posts, as well.