Banana Republic Wish List

It’s Memorial Day sale at Banana Republic.

I was not supposed to do an online window shopping today but then I got this email from Banana Republic regarding their Memorial Day sale. They offer 30% discount to selected items up to May 26.

So I said, a few peak won’t hurt and so I tried to visit their site and found some great finds:

(Photo Credit: Banana Republic Website)
What I like about Banana Republic is that they are a little cheaper compared to other brands so they are a little within my budget. But of course, I can’t do any shopping now. I still have to save for our Singapore trip and Hong Kong trip. Maybe, I can just do my shopping there.

So I just thought of sharing here my wish list for this week.

New furniture?

I was watching the latest season of America’s Next Top Model and I can’t help but be awed by the beautiful home furniture that they have on the America’s Next Top Model home.

Right after we got married, we immediately moved in to our own home after our honeymoon. Since most of our savings were used for the wedding expenses, we don’t have enough money left to buy furniture for our new home.

But of course every new home should at least have the basic furniture in it like a sofa, a dining table and a bed. So we have no choice but to make do with the budget that we have. Of course, we really can’t buy those chic and fab modern furniture that I like since we only have a limited budget that time.

But if only I have the budget when we shopped for our furniture before, this would be my choices:

I was telling my husband that this would be my next project – to buy new furniture to replace our old and not so chic furniture to give our home a fresh, new and modern look.

Lifelock Protection

All of the employees received a warning email today from our Management head about a certain email from a credit card company asking users to email back their credit card number together with the three digit verification code found at the back of the card. Our management head informed all the employees that this is a fake email and we should not reply to that email.

I remember I received a similar email before. At first you won’t find the email suspicious since the email address of the sender clearly states email@creditcardcompany.com. But then I know that we shouldn’t just give our credit card number together with the three digit verification code specially through email. And so I called the credit card company and found out that that email is a hoax.

More and more of these types of emails are circulating on the net. I was reading the site of life lock and more and more consumers are being victims of identity thieves and hackers. That’s one disadvantage of technology. Because of the high tech world that we live in, a lot of high tech tools can be used by hackers in stealing someone else identity.

I was reading the lifelock reviews by consumers and all of them enrolled at lifelock so they can be protected from identity theft. I guess living in a modern world really has it pros and cons. But at least there are tools available to protect us from identity theft.

Son – one of the things you should not forget when traveling

Do you think there will be a chance that you will forget about your kid in an airport when traveling?

Well that’s what happened with the Parreno family. The family (composed of the father and the mother together with their 18 month old son and his grandparents) were traveling to Vancouver from the Philippines as immigrants. Arriving at the Vancouver airport after their long flight from the Philippines, they have to unpack their luggage since they are overweight for their domestic flight to Winnipeg via Air Canada. And since they only have 10 minutes left before boarding for their Winnipeg flight they might have been disoriented and they panicked for having to unpack and pack their stuffs.

The mother, together with the grandparents, head to the boarding gate ahead of the father thinking that she left her son with the father. The father too was thinking that his son was with her wife. And luck was really not on their side since they were seated far away from each other so they did not realize that they left their son at the airport. They only found out that they left their son when the flight crew notified them after airport officials found the little boy wandering in the airport.

Since the boy does not speak English, airport officials have to look for a Tagalog speaking crew to talk to the boy.

Good thing is that Air Canada flew the father back to Vancouver from Winnipeg to pick up his son.

That must be one horrifying experience. I guess moving to a new country is one stressful experience and the poor Parreno family have to deal with an additional stress with the lost of their son.

But the Parreno family was very thankful as Air Canada really took good care of their son in their absence.

This is something I would have to remember if ever we decide to migrate so I won’t loose my daughter at the airport if we were faced with a stressful situation also. :-)

Try Life Lock

Today’s generation is continuously improving and changing, as fast as what we can expect. It has indeed a great impact in our society, country and even in our everyday lives. However, such predicaments are bound to happen because of the negative effects of our new generation.

The abyss widespread of crimes is very visible nowadays. Majority of them are murder, kidnapping, rape and identity theft. As what we can see, many people are engaged in such crimes and sometimes, even our higher officials are using their power to participate in such crimes and eventually abuse the rights of the people.

Furthermore, some surveys show that this so called identity theft is the most common crime that may imminent and will surely ruin the lives of the victims. The thieves may intrude the person’s identity and revel with the benefits that they can get. This illicit action is definitely despised by people because of the possible horrendous effects that it brings.

Nevertheless, we do have our prerogative to protect our rights and personal identity to such crimes like identity theft. Definitely, we have to be prudent to lessen the number of victims produced by the said crime and likewise, we can consider other preventions like what life lock offers.

Moreover, we now have different options to choose from which can help us to access our rights as a person. Needless to say, they even offer certain discounts just like in the lifelock promo code which can further assure us for the protection that we always need.

Let’s not waste our time and let’s start taking actions to prevent identity theft as well as the other crimes. With the help of lifelock.com, we can deeply fathom our knowledge about this and eventually, this can surely provide us some benefits that we can use in the near future.

Hubby’s New Project

Yehey, finally Manila Water Works is now doing some water supply improvement in our area. The problem is right now, we need a motorized pump to supply water to our bathroom and faucet in the kitchen since the supply of water is very low. Without the motorized pump, it is difficult to get water continuously running in our faucet and in the bathroom. Because of this we can’t use our shower since it can’t sip any water from the main water supply.

But since last week, they have been doing some improvements so supply of water won’t be a problem anymore. This means that we won’t need to use our motorized pump to supply water to the faucet and our bathroom and we can now use our shower.

My husband is very excited since he has long been wanting to change our plumbing fixtures but always ends us being lazy to do it since we won’t be able to use it anyway since we have water supply problem in our area.

The engineers say that the water supply improvement project will be done before the month ends so my husband can start doing his project of installing a custom shower system and change our bathroom faucet before he leaves for Majuro come first week of June.

Eyeore Nappy Cake: Finished Product

I picked up our nappy cake order from Nice yesterday. We ordered a three layer Eyeore nappy cake. After meeting up with Nice and Debbie yesterday to pick it up, I went back to the office as I don’t want to bring it home anymore as I will just be commuting. Some of my colleagues was still in the office and all of them asked where did I buy the nappy cake as the nappy cake was really so cute.

Here is the three layer nappy cake that I ordered from Nice and Debbie.

We already gave the nappy cake to my colleague yesterday and he was really happy with our gift. He even said that he doesn’t want to disassemble it to get the contents of the cake since it was so cute to be disassembled. LOL.

Thanks again Nice and Debbie. As always, I’m one satisfied and happy customer again.

Beware of YM Hackers, Get lifelock protection

I received a weird instant message today from my friend asking me if I can supply her 50 pieces of P500 worth of call cards. Since I have a cell phone store, I initially thought that the person I’m talking to really knows me since he or she knows that we sell call cards on our cell phone store. But then I have this gut instinct that the person I’m talking to really sounds different from how I know my friend. And I get really suspicious when the person I’m talking to told me to send via email the code for the 50 pieces call cards since she really need it right away.

So I contacted my friend and as it turns out, her identity has been stolen and the person I’m talking to is impersonating her and is using her yahoo id to get money from all the people under my friends contact list.

I never thought that identity theft is also rampant here in the Philippines. I read from lifelock.com that Identity theft is one of the most rampant cases in the US and so people from the US are enrolling in lifelock to get help on prevention and protection from identify theft.

I have a friend from the US who just used a lifelock promotion code to enroll to their system and according to her this really gave her peace of mind knowing that she is protected from the threat of identity theft.

SATC Movie on May 30

Sex and the City movie is due to come out this May 30. I’m so excited already (*wink). I can’t wait to see Mr. Big , Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte again. There will be a preview of the movie this coming May 23 on HBO at 9:30 PM so watch out for it.

I’ve seen the trailer and the more I became excited. Carrie will be getting married to Mr. Big (finally). I think that is where the story will revolve. Charlotte’s daughter and Miranda’s son is so big already but the girls all still look and act the same. I can’t really wait to see them on big screen. So it’s a date for me and hubby. Yup, he promised to take me to the movies to watch my all time favourite TV series, Sex and the City.

And if you want to catch up and have a flashback of Sex and the City’s Season 6, you can catch them on HBO on Demand.

Refresh

I intend to work late again last night but I figure, I need to get some sleep. I have been always sleeping late these past few weeks (I sleep around 2-3 AM everyday) because I wanted to finish a lot of things but then I can already feel that my body is already giving up.

I was so sleepy already last night but I tried to fight it back by drinking a strong cup of coffee. I was able to control my sleepiness but I was just staring blankly at my laptop. Nothing is getting in to my brain. I feel that my brain is paralyzed and it doesn’t want to process anything. So I decided, there is nothing that I can do but to give up, sleep and just deal with everything the next day.

And that’s just what I did. I shut down my laptop and went to bed. And when I woke up this morning, I feel refreshed. I feel I have a brand new energy. Oh well, sleep deprivation is really not a good thing and sometimes, I really have to admit that I am only human, I get tired too and I need to take a rest and sleep. :-)

A woman that exudes confidence

My husband we’re doing our groceries last night when I chanced upon a former classmate from High School. I was not able to recognize her at first because she really changed a lot. She used to be the aloof and quiet type of student when we’re in high school. But now she exudes confidence and grace.

I was able to chat with her and while we were chatting she revealed to me how she transformed from the shy girl to the confident and successful career woman that she is now.

She said that she develop inferiority complex when we’re in high school because she has an acne problem and that made her loose her confidence because she can’t see herself as beautiful. So that is the first area that she worked on. She looked for the best acne treatment that she can find to cure her acne problem. And then she started working on how she dressed up. According to her, it really affects how she feels about herself. Then she finds time each day to list everything that she has to be grateful for. This gave her a happy and good disposition in life.

I’m glad that my friend was able to find ways on how she can transform herself and I’m so happy for what she has accomplished. I know ever since, that once she gets out of her shell, she can really make it big and be successful.

Hongkong for Bela’s 3rd birthday

Yes, I did it again. I was not able to control my urge to travel and so I availed of Cebu Pacific’s zero fare promo and booked our tickets to Hong Kong.

I was not in my room almost the whole afternoon since I attended a seminar on Conflict Resolution. We were allowed to have a break around 3:00 PM and so I decided to spend the break in my room. And that’s when I read my friend’s IM to me and informing me of Cebu Pacific’s Zero fare. So I quickly reacted to his news and I browse Cebu Pacific's website right then and there.

But we were only allowed for a fifteen minutes break and so by the time I reached Cebu Pacific’s website, I have to go back to the seminar. I excitedly gave my other friends the good news and they too got all excited.

So as soon as I arrived home, I quickly browse the Cebu Pacific site to check if there are still zero fares for my preferred dates and luck was on my side (or should I say it was really tempting me) as there are still available zero fare rates for my preferred date. And after consulting my husband and contacting my cousins and siblings, I booked our flight for Hong Kong on November 20-23.

This will be Bela’s 3rd birthday celebration. We are really planning to just have a vacation instead of throwing another party for Bela on her third birthday but we are choosing between Hongkong and Tokyo. We have miles to claim a free ticket to Tokyo but we figured, Tokyo is an expensive city and even though our airfare is free, going to Hongkong would be more affordable than going to Tokyo.

And so we are booked and my sister and cousins, Joseph and Tessa, are coming with us too. I’m sure this trip will be as fun as our last family vacation.

Party Planning: Baby Shower

I love parties and most of all I love preparing for one. It might be quite obvious from the number of parties that I planned and prepared for my family. And now that my best friend is pregnant, I thought of throwing a baby shower for her.

I remember when I was pregnant a couple of years ago, she organized a baby shower for me too. It was a surprise and they were really good in hiding it from me since I really have no idea that they were up to something up to the party day itself. So for the baby shower that I thought of planning for my best friend, I want it to be as fun and special as the baby shower that they threw for me.

First off, I have to find a venue for the party. I would just be inviting her close friends here in the office so I don’t need a big venue for the party. Maybe, we can do it in the club house of my friend’s condo. Then I have to order baby shower invitations to give out to the guests. I already found cute designs online and I just have to ask my other friends opinions before I finally order it. What do you think of my selections?

Then, we have to plan for the food too plus the party games.

Planning a party really keeps my adrenalin going. I still have a few months before the party and as early as now, you can really tell that I’m all excited for it.

Eyeore Nappy Cake for Lemon

I told you I’m really addicted to Nice and Debbie’s Nappy cakes and so when I found an opportunity to order one again, I immediately contacted Nice and Debbie.

This coming Sunday will be the Christening of my colleague’s son, Lemon. So I immediately thought of giving his son a nappy cake. I asked my office buddies here if they want to share with my gift so we can order a 3 layer cake. After they saw the nappy cake, they all agree that it was a perfect gift for Lemon since we are sure that he will definitely use it plus it is one unique and cute gift. So they all got excited too with the Nappy Cake.

Nice showed me the picture of the Eyeore Nappy Cake and we all agreed that it is perfect. The ingredients of the Eyeore Nappy Cake are:

1 Carter’s receiving Blanket
1 Carter’s Bib
3 Carter’s Mini Face Towels
24 Large Drypers Diaper
1 8Oz Feeding Bottle
1 Nivea Shampoo
1 Nivea Lotion
1 Nivea Caring Oil
1 Nivea Head to Toe Wash
1 Nivea Powder
2 Pieces variable Avent Nipple

The Nappy cake will look something like this but it will just be a three layer cake.


I will pick it up on Thursday and for sure, it will be one cute creation again of Nice and Debbie.

Pregnancy Talk

We always schedule Thursday to be the time when me and my office buddies will go out for lunch. Since all of us are saving for other things, we always have packed lunch and it is only every Thursday that we go out for lunch.

So it was only last week when I saw my friend who is pregnant right now. I was teasing her that she is already starting to gain weight and she got a bit worried on how she can go back to her pre-pregnancy weight after she give birth.

I remember I gained 30 pounds when I was pregnant and after giving birth, I have to loose 20 pounds to go back to my pre-pregnancy weight. I was really frustrated that time since I was really having a hard time loosing weight. Imagine, I’m still using my maternity dress even after giving birth as I still can’t use my regular clothes. I’ve been thinking of a fast and easy way to loose weight and I even thought of drinking diet pills. I wanted to resort to diet pills since I want to loose weight fast and I’m lazy to go to the gym. I would rather spend my time at home with my daughter, than spend an hour everyday at the gym.

If only I’m not breastfeeding that time I would have resorted to diet pills to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight. But I told my friend, she shouldn’t worry on her weight gain since she will definitely loose some weight once the baby is out as she will definitely have sleepless nights taking care of her newborn.