thank You, for all the blessings, especially the one inside me..

it has been a great week for me!

i was originally planning to write a post about my terrific tuesday, but my luck ran through the rest of the week!

first, i was so happy to go to bcc with maricel last tuesday, coz with a girl i can go to shops that bambi cannot, and test their products on another person without complaints!  when we were with irish before, we always pass by mac to put on eyeshadows and liners. 

even if we were there for only two hours we went home happy coz we both had what we came for.  

she bought a nipper (which made her very happy,  as in very happy, because of a nipper)... and i was able to buy too faced shadow insurance.  at last! they have it in stock!

i always check it in sephora but its always out of stock, so even if i am waiting for my primer potion, i still stocked up on it and maybe sell the potion to maricel or irish, if i find shadow insurance better than it.  or maybe keep them both :) *vain*

i also bought a purifying brush shampoo, but im gonna return it coz the sales lady demonstrated the spray one, but she placed the gel type on my bag.  i was so disappointed when i found out at home.  

in fairness, she gave me a lot of sephora mattifying primer samples.  and these can last me for almost a month!

i also bought a nice-looking violet shade of nail polish from claire's... i was so excited to use this!

but all of my nail art will be put on hold because of a surprise!

then wednesday morning, four parcels from ebay came!  

first was the nyx lipglosses from u.s.!

in three beautiful shades!!!

pinky natural is my best lip gloss color coz it matches with any eyeshadow, apricot is a little turn-down coz the color is diluted, and soap opera queen is the most glamorous!  although, since i have been satisfied with long-lasting lip products i find that they fade too quickly.  and i hated reapplying.

i also received my avon mirror shine silver nail polish (for subtle konad effects like this one i found online:)

and 2 bottles of cuticle oils (coz kristelle took mine away),

and the rhinestones for my nails:

1800 rhinestones, and two clippers

sample nga! :D

then, wednesday night, bambi gave me quite a shock when he gifted me with a blackberry curve!  what?!!&*@(*?  this is for me?!?

i cannot believe that he bought this.  i told him so many times that i don't need a new mobile.  actually, i was really hoping to buy the hello kitty one.  but this is so freaking amazing and did not hesitate to accept it!  haha!  now i have my n95 as my roaming mobile.  *evil laugh*

then thursday morning i received my nail art brushes.  they are so cute!  and soft, and stiff, and i was so excited to use them.  but, as i was saying, all nail art sessions are cancelled until further notice... 

for an explanation of their purposes, watch this long and boring video...

then, (i saved the best for last), thursday night was the night when we found out that jared is officially a big brother!

the biggest surprise of my week!  i am 6 weeks pregnant!!!  i think i am still in shock and in awe, i cannot feel that im pregnant, nothing has changed in me, and there were no signs except that i was delayed, but there it is (with jared's result last 2007), and it is confirmed - i will be a mom of two!!!

what a blessed blessed week for me!  that's why i was so engrossed in cleaning our room today, as in super cleaning, not just wiping and stuff, and doing the laundry.  and it is a two-week's worth of laundry!




this is where i say thank You, for all the blessings, especially the one inside me.  

when friends become too busy

last night, we invited irish to pass by the office to 'accompany' me and maricel at american mission hospital for my check-up.

but it really was a kidnapping scheme, to get irish to come to our office with urgency.  coz maricel and i were actually planning to go to the mall.  we knew irish would bail at something that shallow, since her job is a full-time thing now.

its just that it has been along time since the three of us bonded, so we made up a story and told irish that it was important for me to have her there.

unfortunately, work was still the winning team.  can i imagine irish being so dedicated to her job to leave me with maricel?  it would be funny!

or maybe that moral support theory was not that convincing after all.

but it would also be the truth.  she has been so busy these days, and not unlike our previous ex-colleagues, she moved on and forgot...

maybe it is really so immature of me to force her to come here when she has to work.  it's not really like she was just being lazy or she wanted to hang out with different people now.

yeah, maybe i was being unfair.  but i also think that friends should make an effort to meet with old friends, especially those funny ones, because they're such good people to hang out with :P *selfish*

and speaking of prenatal check-ups, bambi is still not convinced that baby number 2 is on the way.  he has a lot of theories, like it's just cold, or maybe you drank a lot of coffee last month... and since i blew up my chance of knowing the results because of stupidly dropping the wiwi on the wrong place (where the results will show), i just have to wait until the 15th, exactly two weeks of delayed period before i decide to really go to the hospital, and not the mall.

for people who thought marriage was easy...

you are all in for a rude awakening.

ok, given that there would be moments when you wish time would stop, that life was so sweet and you can live forever in just one place with your better-half, that's because your just beginning.

im not saying that marriage isn't bliss, its just that i have come to realize that it takes a lot of work, and i mean it when i say that it will take a lot of effort to make your relationship work.

there were times when talking isn't the solution, because it leads to more fighting.  you don't understand each other even if you try to.  you will be asking yourself what's the point of staying, when everyday you just make each other mad.  and time will come when you would just want to take the easy way out, coz it seems so hard to continue.

but why do we stay?  why do we put ourselves at stake?  why are we willing to humiliate ourselves, why would we lay down everything for the one person who basically is just another person in this planet?

then you realize what problems our parents or our grandparents must have suffered in their own, just to get to the point where they are and still stay together.  what did they sacrifice?  what did they do to make it last?

i did not know that it would be so complicated to intertwine your life with another person.

in the 'hood

this is my favorite day of the week.  and there it goes...

before the sun set i went outside for a walk and saw our nearby cosmetics shop.  i went inside and checked what they were selling.

apart from inexpensive makeups, they also have avon, but the brands that i would not choose if i am staring at their catalog, bath salts, at-home hair treatments and makeup brushes.  ooh, makeup brushes!

i have been searching for an inexpensive blush brush since my body shop blush brush is now disfigured.     its just 3 years old and barely used.  oh well...

when buying makeup brushes i always choose the ones at the back, coz the front ones were probably touched and rubbed a lot of times by a lot of people to check if its soft or the bristles are rough.  especially in packages that can be opened.  even if i do wash it before use, i still don't want to think that my brush has been contaminated.

this one's soft and cheap.  what a deal!

one more brush i bought is a face brush, which i saw on youtube is a great exfoliating brush.  just apply cleanser on your face and brush gently in circular motion.  its supposed to get rid of whitehead and blackheads.

good luck to me!

next is an eyelid protector when applying your mascara without smudging it on your eyelids.  i was so happy!  i was searching in ebay for something like this and turns out i have it in my neighborhood!?!

the hole in the middle is for your upper lashes, to allow you to put mascara on every single lash without smudging on your eyelids.  the top part is for your lower lashes.  and the bottom is for combing out your lashes afterwards.  

kudos to the one who invented this!

i also bought a nice smelling nail polish remover.  ok first, when my sister bought a nice-smelling nail polish remover before,  it was not so easy to take off your nail polish and it takes a long time for you to finish.  so i went back to acetone-based nail polish remover, which removes np as fast as melting them and keeps the np in the cotton ball and not on your fingers.  this one, however doesn't smell as strong as my normal acetone bottle, just a little.  it also rubs off your np with ease, but with black np i've found out that it drips the np on your fingers and so making your fingers look like a farmer's finger at the end of a long day.

and when i passed by a cold store guess what i found!?!?!?!

wheeee!!!  curly tops! you found me at last!  

i wasn't able to buy much coz i ran out of money but tomorrow for sure i'll buy more!

happiness!

anyways, i did not do anything today, apart from cleaning the room.  it has been decided that laundry and grocery will be done tomorrow coz its bambi's off, so today i just lazed off in the afternoon sun.

in the morning i talked to bambi's mom and she was ok, i saw jared and he was concentrating on staring at another monitor.  he is kind of darker than when i last saw him.  and he was oblibivious to our faces on the screen.

in the afternoon after talking to my brothers and mother in ym i have found out that my mother in law talked to two of my aunties, who lives near their house and she was still saying that i can't go to their house when i go home.  i can't believe that she still hasn't moved on!  my mother and i agreed to let her do what she wants, we'll just let her be.  as far as i know, she has forgiven me already.  if she is still telling people about what happened then that's her deal.  i am shutting my mouth on the subject.

on another subject, my half-sister, rj, is going to celebrate her birthday on the 11th and today my mother and her father had a fight.  he left them, which he usually does for a while to cool off so im sure he'll be back.  that's why i promised rj i'll send something to let them celebrate her birthday.  

my two brothers are still undecided on what to do with their lives.  i told them to stop their illusion that im gonna bring them here because i wont, not without a college degree or a decent job experience.

kristelle, on the other hand, is suffering from migraine for 4 days now.  i am also going to ask the office about her uniform's encashment coz she said she would like to have a CT scan to check if there is something wrong.  i sure hope not, but im really hoping she will realize that excessive fatigue and excessive eating, along with turning on the ac after a long walk, is bad for her health.  she keeps ignoring her body's warning that she is not living healthily.  wake up sis!

tgif, lame PCs and apologies

yes!  finally.  although it did come so fast.  i hope every week in bahrain is like this!

this week was so stressful, unlike before where i had to tend only for the office stuff, now i also have to manage my boss' international correspondence for his two new shops.  supplies and materials and quotations, even shipping...

and today, i have to walk a kilometer to get back to the office coz i went to the german embassy to take his daughter's visa.

apart from that, earlier this week my lame pc at work proved how deficient it is by pretending to have a virus and then totally crashed my system.  for 4 days i had to contend with using the internet for our mail server.

when it finally came to itself it tried to install my printer's driver for one whole morning.  imagine installing for one whole morning.  what a dingbat.

i thought i could go to the mall this afternoon but irish bailed on me at 4pm saying she's still at work.

so i just slept the whole afternoon.

and when i woke up i realized that my period is delayed for 4 days.  it's not unusual.  it usually is delayed for 4 days, problem is i have a weird feeling in my lower stomach, like ive been doing situps or something.

if jared is indeed going to be a kuya, then for sure ill go home for good on december.   i have no plans yet, but i know by that time i'll have enough to start our apartment even for just the first two floors.  then ill come back to work and try to finish the third floor when they are at least two years old.

i get kind of excited thinking about this!

anyways im gonna see jared tomorrow in ym.  his grandmother started getting dramatic again last week, and i apologized again for hurting them, especially to my father in law, because in all fairness to them, they do take care of jared the best way they can.

and my father in law really made my stay as comfortable as possible.  it is his feelings that i was concerned that most.

but i am so thankful that my biological mother is the most understanding mother of all time.  she doesn't shout back, she doesn't walk out.  she will take everything for my son.  what an unconditional love that i rarely see these days.

i also apologized to her.

my activist sister, however, tried playing games with my mind again, torturing me with her manipulative chuvaness.  i sometimes think that my son is so lucky, coz so many people are concerned for his well-being.

im slightly optimistic about the situation but to be realistic, i kind of tipped the balance between the two families and yeah, i think i am a little catastrophic.

if i am indeed pregnant, then maybe it is a sign.  anyways im still a little confused about my situation.  my crossroad never leaves, really.  it appears in every street, in every situation, in every decision.

hello kitty plush & pink makeup holder

is it tuesday night already?  i was just wondering why last friday came so fast and tomorrow is our last full-day at work again...

*no complaints here*

yes! one month with X!

since last week i have planned to blog but decided to sleep instead.  ok, real reason is that downloading images halts my plan.  but i really wanted to blog about a lot of things.  one, because i have begun changing my nail polish every two days again, and two, because bambi bought me the cutest, softest, most amazing hello kitty stuffed toy last friday!

"she sleeps most of the time" :)

weeeeee!!! so cute!

i have decided that my character now will be hello kitty, jared has long been kero kero keroppi (because he smiles like him), and bambi, well, maybe bad badtz maru XD

also, since i have been feeling artsy early this week i have decided that instead of buying a brush holder from ebay (below), i'll just make one.  seriously.

ok, apart from the ridiculous price of brush holders and the limitations in design, i have also tons of foam boards in the office, so i just visualized the design and cut the foam boards in different heights.  it took me three hours just to have these:

pretty decent yeah?

hold on...

after much double taping (a little help from bambi, coz im no genius in measurements :)) and stickers and painting, tada!  my own makeup brush holder is done!

it now owns the front area of my drawer because of its cuteness:

im pretty proud of myself! haha...

apart from that, i also had some art on my nails... 

first it was this one, manually made.  good thing i didn't use red or it will look like marlboro... its supposed to have rhinestones in the middle v like i saw on the internet but my order from hong kong hasn't arrived yet.

after the blue is the pink!  i was trying to make it like a double french manicure with pink at the end but i made the white area so wide that it looks like a normal stripe design.  bummer.

and last but not the least is the summer color of orange and green!  although its just starting to get cold here i cannot help but like the brightness and happy color feeling on my nails :)

and in one week i have already used up my my acetone bottle. 

that's pretty much it.  i have used up all my bragging powers, too... 

curly tops

curls in 20 minutes. dare to believe?

i have been enjoying playing curls with my hair with my new hair straightener and i even wake up 10 minutes earlier to give me enough time to curl my hair in the morning, which is not my usual habit.  i even bring it to the office in the afternoon to curl maricel's hair :D and she loves jml wet straight pro, too!

i will start my salon soon!  support me!  XD

well, yesterday, my usual boring routine was disturbed when i have to go to my boss' chocolate shop again to take pictures.  and i have to pass by the mall to ask for free calendars for his daughter, hear me say 'pity me, i don't know what date is today... do you have a free calendar? :)' haha, no, not really...

i know the time, do you know the date?

im slightly patriotic.  do you have a calendar with philippine holidays?

i got home late and my consolation was that bambi already cooked and i got free chocolates from my boss' high-end shop... yipee, choco goodness! i wonder when i'll be back!

i have reinforcement!  i totaly finished my flat tops chocolate ;(

then, and my boss' daughter noticed that my face was glowing, and she asked me what foundation i use, so i instinctively said benefit and she was already saying 'i love benefit!!!' when i remembered i woke up late that afternoon and just used pond's powder... well, nevermind, it was probably the honey and orange that changed my face this week anyway, coz maricel noticed my face last saturday, too.

but confusion came today, coz my new bare escentuals foundation came in medium tan, i was using medium beige before and some days i think it makes my face lighter than it is. so i checked the swatch on my hand, and it is slightly nearer to my skintone... although looking at it from the sifter's cover, it looks really dark.

i will start using them tomorrow and see if benefit can make me buy a new foundation faker (coz i am finishing my first buy) or ill go back to bare escentuals...

and this is my new nailpolish!  i totally love this!  i can't show you how to make it coz i am way too lazy to take photos of step-by-step instructions but basically i painted my nail pink, then painted a litttle half of them red, and on the line separating the two colors i painted z-like blue.  i then used konad for the white dots on the pink.  it is so rocker cool!

irish will totally love this when she sees it!

oily crap...

last week maricel has been complaining about the oiliness of my face.  even irish said (brutally) that i was looking weird when she visited us last week.  she said it was below my usual standard of sparkling cheeks and she was not used to it.

i took this coz i wanted to experiment with my uneven brows using photoshop.  (unfortunately i got each one from each parent)  i will post the hilarious photos next time :)

so this weekend while i was squeezing some orange to make myself some fresh juice, i remembered some DIY home-made beauty stuff i saw on the internet.  i just did not remember them all so maybe i got the orange and honey was originally from two different recipes! haha

so here's what i did, i saved up the skin and scrubbed them one by one on my face.  all six of them.  if somebody from the next building saw me, they'd probably wonder why i was polishing my face with orange peel in the kitchen, hehe.  then i left it for 10-15 minutes, when i felt it kind of dried up my skin i washed it off.  and then, while i was having a bubble bath i generously rubbed honey on my face, like 1 spoonful... and left it there for 10 minutes.

it was super sticky, but at least i have something to lick on while waiting at the bathtub... mmm! (haha, pg talaga kahit saan!)

and then, after that i loaded my face with my new moisturizer, which i did not buy on purpose.  i just ran out of moisturizer when i gave mine to my mother (olay 7x total effects) so my sister bought this one for me since it was the only olay moisturizer in SM.  i took 3x of my usual dose and kind of used it like a mask and left it on my face overnight.

olay white radiance whitening cream review: at first i did not like it coz coming from a tub, my impression was that it would be too greasy to use in the morning as a moisturizer.  especially in smogged up manila.  but after using it for three weeks i have noticed that some spots i had since my early 20s have lightened up, and my face looks even.  and that was without proper skin care coz since i came back i lost interest in that whole 'self-care' routines.

then tada!  i got compliments this morning when maricel said i looked different.  and i did not even go to any salon!  what an amazing kitchen i have (*evil laugh*)...

goodbye olive oyl!

(here with just ponds powder and olay moisturizer)

review time

ok, as promised, no more wallowing.  so im gonna do the second thing i most usually do in my blog which is to make a review of things i own so that you don't have to buy them and make the same mistakes i did.

(...there is laughing in my head)

anyways, nothing bad to say about the first thing on my list which is JML's wet straight pro.  its the hair iron that can be used on dry or damp hair.  because irish' very happy recommended it to me i never thought twice in buying it even though i already have:

philips 8-in-1 hair styer.  very helpful but it takes a lifetime to heat up and forever to finish styling your whole head, especially for curling.  even the simple straightener pisses me off.

conair plimatic trix stix hair straightener.  it heats up decently but my hair gets tangled all the time.  apart from the fact that it only has 3 inches of heating plate.

now we happily go to wet straight pro...

if irish is happy with this product, i am happier!  i can actually straighten my hair even if it is still damp!  (damp, ok? you'll electrocute yourself if you use it on wet hair... then you'd be back at one in straightening your hair :D)  and not only that, i also tried curling my hair and it took only 20 minutes without hurrying.  (for a tutorial on how to curl your hair using a flat iron, click here)  what's more, i did not notice any drying or stiffening in  my hair, which usually happens when your hair dries up from all the heat of the iron.  one morning when i did not have time to style my hair and just went to the office just brushing it, it was still straight and soft.  you can also select your preferred temperature.  i am so impressed...

the only disadvantage is that if you look at it, the buttons for the temperature and power is on the side, and i always accidentally push this every time i use it.  i have learned to avoid it, though the first times were a pain.

quick trivia:  i have read that the peace sign in photographs have been in fashion because the japanese started using them to promote world peace, then the rest of asia followed (that is why most teenagers in asia have photos with the peace sign in friendster and facebook) then the rest of the world.  so, let's promote world peace, everyone!

next review is for a hong kong-made MAC Hello Kitty eyeshadow that i purchased from ebay for just $10 and revlon 12-hour colorstay quad which is a gift from ariane.

yes, it's not really MAC, but who cares?  as long as that mouthless cat with a ribbon is on the label, id be happy to bid for it (lol), but seriously i was suprised to see that it was of good quality, the shadows are so creamy and the bright colors are so lovable!

even the applicator is so smooth and soft!

compared to the applicators i bought from lifestyle which looks spongy, i actually love using mac hello kitty's applicator.  it earned its space in my cosmetic case (i leave my big 120-eyeshadow pack at home and bring mac hello kitty for touch ups or for late mornings :)

meanwhile, ariane sent me this eyeshadow in hope that i might evolve without her knowing that i already did in less than a year when she left.  i guess san diego made her miss me so much that she even sent me a watch from style&co... thanks pokie!

anyways, the revlon eyeshadow's color is very helpful if i want smokey eyes, which is rare.  i tested it for a few days and the colors do have staying power.  and it did not crease or fade.  the only downside is that it came with this applicator that looks worse than my lifestyle sponges.

apart from that, she also sent me 2 nail polishes which i really felt bad about because maricel's pack only has a watch while mine has a lot, so i told her that i only had one nail polish.  ooops...

i love sally hansen nail polishes!

of all the blue nail polishes that i own, i love this the most!  it looks royal blue and my konad plates were happy too!  i began using them again this week..

i was so happy staring at my nails so i gave myself the same pedicure:

that's what i call happy feet! :)

unhappy days

well, im not exactly sad, but my enthusiasm in life wasn't the same as before i left for manila.  i was high all the time back then, and now... i don't know...

maybe i need to go malling.


anyways, it's our girl's night out later, since it has been a crazy week for irish.  so load up the alcohol girl... good thing it's the weekend, for i had enough sitting in the office with nothing to do.  and i hate it because it makes time pass slowwwer...

i did not elaborate on my time in manila because basically, i did not venture out into more than the 5 kilometer radius of bambi's house.  i thought i would be free, but it turns out that having a little kid makes it way different than planning a vacation when you were single.  i did not regret it, however, coz every day i spent with jared was pure sunshine.

although i did get tired most of the time, and i slept a lot.  i wasn't able to eat any street food than isaw, i wasn't able to go to mall of asia or ocean park, not even to filinvest.  most days we walked to my mother's house where we spent the afternoon.

when i came back, even the bright orange curtains and the flower-ridden sky blue bedsheet i bought was not able to get me out of my funk.  even my face is not glowing anymore.  cute makeup doesn't help.

i need to buy something pink in ebay.


ok, i promise next week i will have more comical posts.  enough wallowing.

00001 post in 02010

so... two weeks after i return to bahrain and im still zoning like a zombie...

just going with the flow, waiting for each day to pass so i can go back to sleep.

nothing interesting to say in the office.  and i also went back to snoozing my alarm, maybe because i lost interest in cosmetics after my '10-days of no makeup' drama in manila. or maybe because i don't have new stuff... haha, whatever... i have bought my most delayed and most hindered nyx lip gloss in ebay. and bare escentuals medium tan.  im going to try a darker shade just for a change.

also, the most glorious moment in mommy-jared relationship happened when i left.  jared was brought to my sister's house and as my mother let him knock on the door, he shouted 'mom'.

i miss him, but not in the same way that i missed him before my vacation.

in a way, before i left, i was missing the baby that i took care of.  the one i knew and the one who thought i was his world.  when i saw last december that he survived without me, that he will run to anybody but me, that he calls to them and not me, i was rejected inside.  and the whole time i was there i was seeing a baby who is someone i don't know.  with different likes and dislikes, different moods, who walks and talks (actually, he babbles) and i did not have plans to make him like me.  coz what will happen when i leave?

so i just let the days pass by and i was content to watch him in his daily joys of swimming in the floor (or the plaza's stage), sleeping with dirty feet and drinking milk that i tried to change to a better one and ended throwing his stomach up.  i was like an outsider.  and i accepted that.

when i walk to the office or back to my house i avoid the humans with strollers.  i was half-crazy even in my own standard of craziness.

and until now, i still don't know how to make time pass quicker.  or what to do to make me interested in my surroundings.  when i go back home i spend 90% of my time sleeping.  and my husband doesn't complain, it was our inside joke that his wife is his computer and i'm just the mistress...

10 minutes before i leave the office... now what am i going to do with my night...?