TOPAZ HORIZON

Today is the first of December and if you're looking for a planner to use for next year, let me review for you the Kate Spade 2016 agenda.


I bought mine from an Instagram seller back in September. It's the 17-month 2016 medium agenda so the planners starts in August. Why? I seriously don't know why but I'm guessing it's because school in the U.S. of A. starts in August (September?) so their year starts that month. Someone else told me fiscal years also start in August, September.

So anyway! The review!

The Kate Spade agenda comes in two sizes and four designs. Large and medium, and black-and-white stripes, gold polka dots, one in pale blue and one in green with the words "She is quick and curious and playful and strong," and a fun print. I wanted to get the striped one (I love stripes!) but the IG seller only had the polka-dots so that's what I bought!

Let's start with the cover. I like that it's hard-bound and can withstand the abuse of being used daily. I don't like that it gets so dirty, though. I wipe it down every day and it still gets these weird stains. Maybe Kate Spade should laminate their covers. I mean, I don't want to cover it in plastic!!!

Inside, the polka-dot agenda has a pale pink IFC and IBC (that's inside front cover and inside back cover). On the IFC is the owner's information. Don't mind the washi tape—I made a mistake with my phone number so I had to cover it. The first "page" is a pocket folder. I put a small Moleskine notebook there for my extra notes, plus other stuff like stickers, receipts and raffle stubs. The IBC is empty so I wrote a reminder on it.

The first real page is just a blank space so I taped a passion card from Chasing Dreams. I love Rhiza Oyos's passion cards! Her shop is closed for now, though.

It's not just passion cards I post in my agenda, I also tape photos between each month! Hi, Vito!

There's the calendars and special dates for 2016 and 2017...

The months are separated by polka-dotted pages, which you can easily find because of the laminated tabs.

I use my month spread for scheduling blog posts. This one's for December 2016 because my current December spread is soooo messy!

There are 15 pages for notes, which I find generous. Since I got this agenda in late September, I'm using the August and September pages for notes, too. See those tabs with pink washi tape? I use those now for notes on my blog projects and for BABY Magazine.
The agenda is a weekly layout. I didn't think this horizontal layout would work for me, to be honest. But I like that I can see my week in one spread. I also put my appointments here instead of in the month's spread. This way, I can see if my day is full. If I have many appointments in one day, that day fills up and there's no space (on the page and in my day!) for more things to do!

I used to have a daily planner, you see, and I fill up the whole page with To Do's and I get so exhausted! But with the Kate Spade's super limited space for each day, I can actually stop and say, "Okay, day is full. Move the rest to the other days!" This has given me so much freedom to breathe!

I've had my agenda for more than two months and so far, I am loving it. In fact, I have another one! It was given to me by my Skechers family as a birthday gift. Thanks so much, Skechers!

If you also want a Kate Spade 2016 agenda, they are now available at National Book Store and Powerbooks. The large size is P2,399 and the medium one is P1,999. Funnily enough, the Kate Spade stores don't have them. I checked. Don't buy from eBay.ph (I looked) because the sellers charge double. Nyek.

How about you? What planner do you use and why?

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I'm obsessed with the Japanese patterns book!

Used my favorite colors—orange and pink—and then used gold and silver, too.

My son Vito helped me color these "rainbow umbrellas." That's what he calls them.

I'm still doing the sky page while Vito does the hills page. That's what he calls them, too!

For the animal lover.

For the fan of all things pretty.

For the woman who is intentional in everything she does.

For people who like repetition and symmetry.

• The promo runs from November 15 to December 15 at all Fully Booked Metro Manila branches. Participating branches include: Fully Booked Bonifacio High Street, Fully Booked Alabang Town Center, Fully Booked Rockwell, Fully Booked Katipunan, Fully Booked SM Mall of Asia, Fully Booked SM Megamall, Fully Booked SM North EDSA, Fully Booked Trinoma, Fully Booked Greenhills, Fully Booked Greenbelt 5, Fully Booked Century City Mall, Fully Booked Eastwood Mall, Fully Booked Taft and Fully Booked Glorietta 3. 
• Every P300 purchase on adult coloring books entitles the shopper one (1) raffle entry to join the My Colorful Christmas promo. Only single-receipt purchases are qualified to claim raffle entries. Receipts used for claiming raffle entries will be stamped in the back and any excess amount in the receipt will be considered void and cannot be used in the next redemption. 
• Just show your original receipt/s to the Fully Booked Customer Service counter to verify the purchase and fill up the raffle entry/s. Drop completed entries in the designated My Colorful Christmas raffle drop box at the branch you’re in. Keep your raffle stubs safe as you’ll need this for claiming prizes. 
• Fifty (50) winners will be drawn on Monday, December 21. Winners will be notified by registered email and other contact information provided in the entry. 
• Prizes include a 10-piece coloring book set, coloring materials, Fully Booked gift certificates, and a 2016 Planner. 

I attended a lovely little lunch with the wonderful people of Burt's Bees recently. I hardly ever attend events because of the terrible traffic but I ventured out because I'm a longtime fan of Burt's Bees. I think I've been using their lip balms for more than a decade now!

Before I get to my story about the lunch, here are my favorite BB products:

Makeup remover wipes, cuticle cream and lip balm. I always have these!

Okay, now why did Burt's Bees throw an intimate lunch? Well, because their cute holiday gift sets are now available in stores and from Zalora! Here they are:

Here's a detailed look:
This is the Outdoor Adventures gift set, for your friend who likes to travel. Includes the Ultra Conditioning Lip Balm, Res-Q Ointment, Hand Salve and Intense Hydration Treatment Mask.

Set comes in a zippered red tin for only P495!

This is the Classic Feast from the Garden gift set. I love that all these goodies come in a zippered canvas pouch—so perfect for kikay kits or for traveling! This gift set has Soap Bark & Chamomile Facial Cleanser, Peach & Willow Bark Deep Pore Scrub, Milk & Honey Body Lotion, Lemon Butter Cuticle Cream, and Shea Butter Hand Cream.

Five products in a fab pouch for the shockingly low price of just P995!!!


These are lip balms in cute character packs. Each tube is only P225 so grab a bunch to distribute to your girlfriends, your kids' teachers, your officemates, etc!
If you want to see the rest of the Burt's Bees gift sets (oh yes, there are LOTS more!), check out Zalora here. 

Visit Burt's Bees website for more details. Like them on Facebook. Follow them on Instagram (@burtsbeesph). Remember: Burt's Bees is now sold online through Zalora!

Thanks, Burt's Bees, for the goodies! I'm giving all of these cute Burt's Bees gift sets to my fellow editors at BABY Magazine. Yey!

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L'Indochine is the baby of my mom pegs Char Carlos and Leona Panutat. I know Leona from her styling days in magazines and she introduced me to Char who knows my husband from college and then I find out her husband is the cousin of my husband's dear friend. Woah. Did ya get that? Nope? Well, all I meant to say is... small world!

And that world Leona and Char have definitely explored! I even featured them in BABY Magazine because they're just so darn jetsetting women! But don't mistake them for tourists. They travel the world for work. They're especially passionate about everything in Asia and they will cross rivers and climb mountains seeking artisanal finds in cultural villages and craft markets. Cross my heart this is the truth!

Add a strap to this Ikat fold-over envelope clutch—et voila!—you have a sling bag.

This Ikat-and-stripe tote bag is sooo cute! The silky tassels come in blue, pink, green and orange.

Ikat and stripe convertible sling bag.

 Block Print Collection

This Hmong block print sling tote is roomy enough to hold all your travel essentials       and lets you be hands free.

Hmong block print Weekender bag that’s perfect for using as carry on.

Travel case organizer with Hmong block print to keep your gadgets, tickets        and itinerary in place.

For Men (and for women who like leather)

Leather card envelopes in chic colors.

George Cable Roll are made of the softest leather.

Leather money clips

Roqui travel case in canvas and leather materials

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Sit tight. This is going to be a long read. I got a lot to say!

I turned 39 last weekend, on the 7th of November. Big day. Small celebration. Just me, Vince, our baby boys, and my sister who dropped by for a quick visit on her way home from work. Quiet day. Nothing happened much. That's a good day, mind. I LOVED IT! With all the NOISE in my life since having kids (don't have kids if you want peace and quiet!), the best birthday gift was a quiet day, just chilling at home, napping, relaxing.

The nap was the best.

Nap!? Yep. I am old. But I'm happy!

Anyway, it being a quiet day, I had time to reflect on what I want my last year in my 30s to be like. Well, I want to do something more meaningful. Aside from motherhood and marriage, of course, which really are the most meaningful aspects of my life now and forever. It's been a tough year or so, starting from my last pregnancy in 2014 to now, just juggling everything. I'm not good at juggling. What a startling thing to realize when you're almost 40. I mean, I'm supposed to be amazing at everything by now. But, surprise, surprise, I'm not!

Family has really taught me a lot about humility. Strangely, being humbled by my failures makes me happier because I see myself pick myself up after each failure and face another day and say, "I'll do better today. I love them too much to give up trying." As long as I know I'm trying, I know I'm a good wife and mommy. Not the best, I'm afraid, but the fact that I never give up gives me hope, and hope makes me happy because as long as I have hope, I know I'm alive, and that God gave me another chance to make a difference in my family's life!

So I've been busy being—or trying to be!—a good wife and mother. That's enough for today, I always say. But I see a lot of other women around me changing the world, and while I have no grand plans for changing the world, I do want to use whatever influence I seem to have to make it a better place.

This influence I was made to realize this year when I appeared on lists like 15 Filipino Moms We Love, 7 Most Inspiring Pinay Mommy Bloggers, and 28 Engaging Filipino Mommy Blogs to Follow. My husband and I were invited to be part of The Asian Parent's parenting council. Brands like Bobbi Brown, Philosophy, Powerbooks and Enderun partnered with me to hold workshops. What an incredible year for me as a blogger!!!

Whether that influence is big or small, real or perceived, I don't know. I always said that I just blog because I want to share stories, that I'm not interested in being inspiring. Numbers and influence don't matter to me. If they did, I'd be more serious about blogging! I'd blog every day, I'd attend all the events, I'd make myself a brand! But no. I've often said here and to anyone who pushes me to build "my brand" that I'm a storyteller. I just want to tell stories. So if I don't feel like telling a story, I'm not going to blog. I'm just going to live my stories and maybe I'll share them one day and maybe I won't. My prerogative.

Thing is the past two years I haven't been wanting to tell stories. Mostly because the past two years have been crushing as they have been exhilarating. I'm living a glorious life as a work-at-home mommy to three healthy, beautiful kids. At the same time, I'm desperately trying to survive each day without failing as a wife and mother (and yet I fail, not every day but many days). And while I'd love to share all my triumphs, I realize I'd have to share my trials, too. Balance, you know! But I want to keep those ugly stuff to myself. So I retreated from blogging. Until I figured out what blogging should be for me—whether to tell my stories, to just become a lifestyle blog of fun finds, to earn money, to be a "brand"—I just kept blogging as an income-generating activity.

But I missed blogging. Real blogging. I still love it. Many of my friends now are because of my blogging. Many of the people who hate me now are also because of my blogging but who cares about the haters, right? Well, I do, sometimes, but am I really going to let them stop me from doing what I love?

LOVE. That's why I blog. I love it. I love it. I love it. I LOVE BLOGGING!

I hate that I have haters because of it. I hate that bloggers now are in it just for the fame and the freebies. I hate that bloggers have a bad reputation. I hate that I've had to stop myself from publishing posts because I worry about being bashed. I hate that there's so much competition and backbiting and gossiping when I've always believed that blogging is so beautiful because it's so personal. Everyone is unique and so every blog is unique. Why the need to compete and malign and besmirch?

For all the stress blogging has put me through the last couple of years, I realize now I still want to do it. I miss the old days when blogs were intimate and inspiring and relatable, when they electrified me with their thoughts and dazzled me with their pictures. I miss blogs where I found someone who thinks like me, who understands what I'm going through, even when they were from the other side of the world and spoke another language. I miss blogs where everyone bared their hearts and souls and didn't give a damn about what people (or brands) thought, blogs that made me stop and think and feel. I miss these disembodied voices that shouted out or whispered to the vast space of the Internet and spoke to me because they are astonishing in their authenticity and boldness to say what they think and share their story. They were relentless in saying, "This is me! Listen to me! I am proud to be me!" and they were never stylized, put on, pretentious. They were real.

I think there are a lot of those that still exist today. I just haven't been reading blogs lately. Big reason: Motherhood takes up all my time. Smaller reason but just as important: Many of the blogs I followed stopped being relevant, got boring, or they became avenues for press releases (and they don't even try to add their personalities to the press release or the sponsored post). Or perhaps, like mine, they simply stopped updating.

There are many reasons for the slowing down of blogging. I gave mine—I wanted to understand what I was going through before I blogged about it, and I was intimidated by the haters. I mean, really. Is a blog post worth the vitriol? Is there no such thing as respect these days? But I also have more reasons why my posts have lessened. These are Facebook and Instagram. I felt sharing my thoughts with my friends on Facebook was safer, and Instagram made daily updates fun and easy. Why go through the agonies of giving birth to a blog post when a cute photo and a funny caption will do the trick?

Readers have also migrated from blogs to other social media platforms. My readers (yes, you!) prefer to leave comments on my Facebook page rather than fill out all the blanks in the comments form that Blogger requires. I do that with the blogs I follow, too! It's just easier. Even I prefer chatting with my readers on Facebook. People are also on their mobile gadgets more and because of those small screens, they don't want to scroll through paragraphs and paragraphs of words. (If you've gotten to this point, thanks for sticking around!). Everyone wants fast content and blogs are not fast content. At least, the content that matters, the content that draws people in, the content that invites you to "Come sit with me a while and let's talk about our life," that asks you to think and feel and dream, that demands a response. Readers now don't like content like that. It just takes up too much of their time.

So why did I want to return to blogging then?


I believe strongly that some things need to be said and they need to be explained. It doesn't matter if only one person reads it but if it changes that person's life, then that is everything. I don't need to change the world but I need to tell my stories and if those stories made someone laugh or cry or think or make a change (whether to a recipe or in their relationships), then sitting down in front of my computer in the dead of night to write my story and share it was less of a lonely activity. It was an act of community, friendship, fellowship, love.

And if love is the motivation, then why stop doing it? The numbers won't matter anymore. The haters, the sponsors, the number of followers and likes—they won't matter! They will affect content now and then but if love affects everything, then content—whether it's a personal post, a funny post, a sponsored post, a silly post—content remains fresh, relevant, real.

Blogs are real when you see that the person behind it is passionate and unafraid, and I want that back, if not for every blog then for mine at least. Rest assured I've been very real all these years. I've said no to brands (and to lots of money) because I don't believe in the brand. I've been vilified for being "picky." I've gotten into arguments because I insisted that I'm going to give an honest review of the product or service, no matter if it's a paid review—"You bought the space, not my opinion," never goes down well with anyone.

But while I've been unafraid when it comes to the business side of blogging, I've paused with my personal stories because I was concerned about being judged or hated by readers. Why haters will want to loiter here, I do not know, but the hate has affected me. It's not fear of them I feel (I've faced worse); it's more of I just don't want the negativity in my life. So I watched my blogs' content become increasingly sponsored as I retreated from personal blogging. I've thought a few times of letting the blogs die a slow, natural death, but something stops me. "Ten years of blogging," I think. "My sponsors!" Now I know it's really because of love. I love blogging and if I love something, I shouldn't give up on it.

And I'm glad you haven't given up on me either, dear Loyal Reader.

For you, I'm going to make some changes here:

• I'll be merging my two blogs, Topaz Horizon and Topaz Mommy. Easier for me to update, easier for you to follow! 
• I will blog regularly. I can't promise an update every day (a lovingly made blog post takes time!) but definitely I won't allow weeks to pass anymore before I publish a story. 
• I'll balance the sponsored content with personal content. 
• I will talk more about topics that mean a lot to me but I was shy to share—my faith in God, feminism, women empowerment, raising my sons to be feminists, the joys outside of motherhood that moms are always feeling guilty about (for example, a fulfilling career), awareness of sexual and domestic abuse, and women writers.

Topaz Horizon will have more meaningful content. It will be the meaningful act that I will start to do before I hit 40. This isn't a little blog anymore so I'm going to use this blog for the better. I love blogging too much to give up trying. As long as I know I'm trying, I know I'm a good blogger and from now on, I'm going to make sure this blog makes a difference in someone's life!


Thanks for reading, Loyal Reader. Thanks for the birthday wishes, too, and for telling me how my stories have inspired you, helped you, changed you, entertained you. You inspired me to make this change! Thank you for your love all these years. God bless you all!


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My haul from the shopping buffet!

Heehee that cake wasn't for me but let's pretend!!!

Daryl Ong from The Voice

The kids from Steps Dance Project

Peppa and George!

Goodies for everyone!

(L-R) Ayala Land President Bobby Dy, Ayala Corporation Chairman Emeritus Jaime Zobel De Ayala,  Steps Dance Studio director and Steps Dance Project founder Sofia Zobel- Elizalde, Lizzie Zobel,  Ayala Land VP and Head of Operations and Support Services, Commercial Business Group Rowena Tomeldan,  and Ayala Land Senior Vice President and Commercial Business Head Junie Jalandoni

(L-R) Ayala Land executive’s Junie Jalandoni, Joseph Reyes, Bing Jose, Ruby Chiong,  and Myrna Fernandez, Manila Symphony executive director Jeffery Solares,  The Sound of Christmas director Raymond Lauchengco, Piolo Pascual, Daryl Ong,  Sam Milby, Ayala Land’s Javi Hernandez, AC Legarda and Mark Sablan