Stocking Stuffer, Homesickness, ETC

4 Days till Christmas, yay!  Stockings are  stuffed, gifts are wrapped, and hubby  took two more days for Christmas so yohooo.  I don't have anything to  ask for but wish that I can be with my family from back home.  I miss them especially my Mama.  It's been  7 years since I last saw them and during Christmas, I get homesick because it always remind me of the home I grew up in.  Even though I sent them Christmas gifts, it isn't the same without me  with them.  I was looking forward to talking to Mama  since I thought she is going to my sister in Manila but now my sister told me that Mama won't be able to come, sigh.  Our Mom lives in a remote place  cellphone signal is very hard to find so trying to call her there is like finding a needle in a haystack.  

 Anyway, this is our first Christmas at a new house  and we were excited to decorate it for Christmas.  Hubby and I were busy doing small projects to make the house  the way we want it.

 We have been living here for six months already and it feels like we have just moved in.  We love  living here now though.  Our son still misses our former house but I am sure that he will learn to love this too.  I like it because it accommodates all of us  unlike the first home that we had, it was  a bit small for  the growing family that's why we sold it and bought this one.

 Christmas time is always a jolly holiday for me.  I don't decorate for  other holidays but Christmas.  Growing up, Christmas is all about religious stuff.  It's all about celebrating  God.  We never  had any Santa Claus  experiences, just pure family togetherness and focusing on  remembering God.

 It's exciting to  raise our children with both practises.  We just reduce the  material aspect a little bit.  We make sure to  let them understand what Christmas is all about.

Some of ou0r decors are DIY projects  that my daughter and I made.  We had fun making these  magazine  trees, we made th4ese when we were still at our old home.

 We have a fireplace at this new home but we don't really use it.  My husband is  planning to buy another TV and put it by the fireplace, we will see.

 It's been eleven years since I came here in America and our stockings are still different from each other lol.  I have been planning to buy a set but I never really gotten a new set so these  will serve as our stockings  for now.  The important thing is that they are stuffed for the kids.

My daughter  have decorated the railing with the red garland.  I added the painted pine cones and  faux poinsettia flowers to it.

We also set up another tree  upstairs.  We had a white tree before and we gave it to my  father-in-law when we bought a bigger one.  Then when we bought this house, the former owner  left us a white tree so we used it.  

 Over the last  twp months, hubby and I have been rearranging furniture.  We bought  some new ones and relocated the old ones.  These furniture are heavy  so just  having my husband and the kids were tough especially when we moved the   couch from our living room to upstairs, it was  a back killer since  it was heavy.  I felt bad for my husband as he was battling from  neck injury by the time we were doing all the  moving and stuff.

 It is all settled now so I am relieved.  We don't have to move anything anymore unless we change our minds again lol.  We are happy of how it is set up right now.

 I decided to put a slip cover on the new couch and love seat set that we bought because I am not very fond of the color gray.  
I just wish that these Instant Swivel Wheels came  sooner, it would have helped us  a lot with our moves.  I am still glad to have it though because we are still doing some projects here at home and these would come in handy.  I got these from Shoplet.  The 360 swivel action allows smooth rolling in any direction. It has unique patented mounting options, angled, flat or u-shaped.  I love that each set of 4 wheels holds up to 250 lbs.  Most importantly, it attaches securely to most smooth surfaces, vinyl, plastic, wood, corrugated board, and masonite.

I also got this set of Cleaning Gloves for electronics.  My  computer screen  gets  dusty sometimes so this would be great to use when I clean it.  This is also great in cleaning the smudges  or fingerprints on your phone.  It makes cleaning fun and the microfiber cleaning and dusting gloves attract dust like a magnet.  I love that the deep cleaning microfibers instantly trap dirt, dust, allergens, pet hair and more.  Since it's a pair, two handed cleaning cuts cleaning time in half.

Have a Merry Christmas everyone, I hope that you enjoy every moment with your family as I do mine.

 Shoplet is a one-stop shop  for all your need in your home office or business.  They have  Office Supplies,   Medical Supplies, Cleaning Supplies and many more.

Disclosure: The owner of this blog was NOT financially compensated to write this review.  I was provided with the product/s mentioned  to help me  facilitate this review but  opinions are my own.

Gifts Are Wrapped, Just Counting the Days!

I decided to transfer our optic fiber Christmas tree from the dining room to  the living room to finish the look of  our  gift pile.  The small ornaments are great to hang in this little tree.

I am officially done with gift wrapping  for the holidays.  We have delivered some of the gifts for friends and family and  kids can't wait to open up their gifts.  My daughter wanted a bean bag so that's one of the gifts she's getting for Christmas.  That's also the big box you see below.  I think my son would want one when he sees it so I might get him  one for his birthday next month.  

 I find it funny that my kids keeps inventory of how many gifts they have under the tree.  They keep checking everyday lol.  I don't wrap gifts in one  day because  it gets them excited to add one gift every other day or so.

Their stockings are also stuffed so I am all set for Christmas unless of course the husband decides to get more, which he always does every year.  He feels like  what we are giving them is not enough.  I told  him how lucky our kids are because they get to open not just one gift but many during Christmas.  We never had that as a kid.  My fondest memory of Christmas was our caroling tradition in our neighborhood. Caroling is a big  part of every kids life over there during Christmas especially for those who doesn't really have  money to buy  anything.  That was a lot of fun for me, my Mom even came with us  on multiple occasions.

My parents taught us  early on that Christmas is about family.  As long as we have food in the table and we are all gather to celebrate the true essence of the holiday, we are  set.  When I came here, I saw a different way of celebrating Christmas.

But anyway, I wish you all a merry Christmas!

HomeGrown Pumpkin

My son has a tendency to collect things including different kinds of seeds.  One of the many seeds that he saved from last year is a pumpkin.  He planted the  pumpkin seed in our backyard and  had some fruits but only one have matured.

We were all very impatient for  the pumpkin to turn  orange but it just got bigger and bigger.  

I wasn't able to turn this pumpkin because I was afraid that it would rot again ju0st like the first one that we turned.

So when we picked it, the  side that was laying on the ground was orange but the rest of it are green.  It weighed 64.2 pounds,  I tried to lift it but couldn't lol.

I found this Cheshire Cat design online and we tried to  carve our pumpkin  using this design.

I was very surprised that the inside of the pumpkin don't really have a lot of  string (not sure what the inside part is called lol).

 I love the inside part, iot looks  a little spooky.

 Using our paring knife, we carved it.

 Carving a huge pumpkin is hard especially that we did not have proper utensils to carve it.

 

 It did not really tuned out like the Cheshire Cat that we are trying to do but close enough.

 I don't really decorate for Halloween but the kids want something so this is the only thing we have in our front porch.

Have a safe and fun Halloween everyone!

Shadow Shots

Happy New Year!

Just wishing you all a happy and prosperous 2011. May we live in accordance with what God wants us to be. Wishing you all good health and prosperity!

Getting Homesick because of Father's Day

Father's Day is coming up and I am getting homesick. Wish we could spend it with Dad, I really want to spend more time with my father now that he is able to enjoy our company. This occasion didn't really bother me that much before but now that I am a father myself, I see how it feels to be with your kids all the time.

Jennings Senior and Jennings Jr.

We are missing you so much Dad. Six more months and we'll be there soon. Hang in there for us.. We love you!

The beautiful Lotte Hotel

This is the continuation of my post about our mini getaway during the memorial day celebration. The first photo was the front view of the hotel. It's an enormous hotel built in an island. This is just the front area, it has left and right wing building and the land scape is spectacular.

You can rent a paddle boat in this area.
This is the outdoor swimming pool.
The oranges fruit that Rose took a snapshot of.
This is the left wing of the hotel.
I'll post some more of the photos next time. Thanks for viewing guys and commenting as well..