TOPAZ HORIZON

Vince surprised me with a love letter. He's good at giving gifts but this one, this is going to be a hard one to beat because it's one of the very best. The best ever? Well, our sons, of course!

The article appeared in The Asian Parent Singapore. Click here to read it there, complete with cutie photos of our babies. But I'm putting screencaps here anyway so I can always have it on my blog. And cry happy tears always.





Thank you, Vincent. Thank you for everything.

I know I've disappeared. I started this year with my L'Oréal contract ending and me with no other plans for anything else really. I wasn't worried. The past 7 years have been like that anyway—start with nothing and end with everything. But by mid-January, I had a chat with an old friend who has a boutique PR and events agency and before I knew it, I'm the new PR Manager of Paint It Red.

I have a very good feeling about this year and so I can't help but be excited for the new adventure I'm about to take. I'm back in the corporate world but with a very flexible schedule. How lucky am I? I'm very grateful.


And yet, in the last week before I started work, I picked up my kids from school as usual and cried. I was at the fetcher's waiting area, booking a Grab, fanning myself in the heat of the afternoon sun. As usual. From there, I can see the students walking down the long path from their classrooms to the gate. As always. I was watching out for my own in that long and unruly line of boys when I saw my kids and they saw me and their eyes lit up and in that moment, I felt it. The grief. It smashed into me and I was out of breath.


Because I'm employed now, I won't be able to fetch them from school anymore. I've never really liked that chore so I had always taken this for granted but at that moment, I knew with terrible clarity that I'm going to fucking miss this shit. And I cried with longing for the days that will be no more.

How many of us have the painful privilege of seeing a chapter closing?

So the last three weeks have been me and the boys going through sudden changes. I found a school bus. At first, we were all anxious. They've never been on a school bus. I rode it a few times with them to check the routes, the other passengers, how the driver drove. I gave them extra baon because now our daily after-school merienda won't happen anymore. I gave them so many instructions on being safe, being kind, and watching out for each other.

And then finally, it was time to let them go. The night before they had to go on their own, Iñigo stayed up late. "Iñigo, you have an early day tomorrow," I said. "Go to sleep na."

"I'll help you fix our baon and breakfast, Mama," he stalled.

So I let him help me. And then softly he said, "I'm going to miss you, Mama."

And I couldn't say anything because my throat had closed up. So I just hugged him and let his love wash through my breaking heart, grateful for the comfort my little boy gave me.

One of the places my family and I love to visit is the All Home complex along Libis in Quezon City. We don't go there often since it is out of our way, but when we do, it's always such a happy place. Just look at these kids!


The Libis complex is a taste of the CoHo lifestyle. That's what Camella calls their new real estate phase of building Camella Condo Homes all over the country, with each development having its own commercial complex with lifestyle amenities its residents will love.

I know this because I got a big brochure (more like a magazine) and I got interested in investing in maybe a small condo unit in Tagaytay, a place we love. Actually, Vince and I were thinking of a house in Tagaytay but when I looked through the CoHo Lifestyle magazine, I remembered why I'm a city girl. I love living in a condo and having everything I want and need steps away from my door! Just read this:

"What is the CoHo Lifestyle? It means living just a few steps away from a luxury mall that offers global retail selections. It means having world-class cinemas as your home theater. It means having a beautiful coffee shop as an extension of your living and working space. It means having an innovative, fun and fresh supermarket as your pantry."

Sounds like the life I love!


The CoHo lifestyle means having a complete and affordable home store and a modern and convenient supermarket right outside my residence. Just look at the boys testing out chairs. We gave away our old chairs and now I'm thinking I need a new one for my work desk. (I can feel Vince rolling his eyes once he reads that sentence hehe.)


The CoHo lifestyle means having a wonderful café and pastry shop a few feet away from work-at-home me so I can always run down and out if I need a java jolt or just a change of scenery but without dealing with traffic.

Plus check out how gorgeous Coffee Project is!

Their cakes are a bit too rich, though. But that makes them go well with the coffee, I guess, so it's okay.


At Libis, the boys and I discovered that there's actually a showroom hidden way at the back of the second floor.


The boys were delighted at this new "playhouse" (and here's me yelling, "Don't run around! Don't break anything!").


I checked the Camella CoHo website and, depending on the property, meron naman daw units na 1-BR, 2-BR and 3-BR. Yun nga lang, the place I want — The Pine Suites at Tagaytay — only has 2 bedrooms in 48sqm. That's very cozy, but okay na for when we visit on weekends, diba?

What do you think? Have you seen any of the showrooms yet? Did any of you buy??? Vince and I are thinking of a home outside Manila but still in an urban setting since we like living in a city.

Anyway, something to think about this 2019! I have a good feeling about this year. May we all have a really great year!

Yep, it's CHEERFUL. My word for the year is cheerful. It came to me on my birthday last November when I was thinking about my new year. "Lord," I prayed. "What do you want me to be this year? What should I do for You and my family and the people around me?" And this verse blossomed in my head:

If you grew up in the 90s like me, you're most likely a fan of the Backstreet Boys. If not, that's okay. You'll like this new song of theirs anyway, if you're a mommy like me, or if you want to have a family, or if you just want a home. Yes, dearest readers, Backstreet's back with "No Place" and it's bringing up all these warm and fuzzy feelings in my wife-and-mama heart.

Now, I haven't followed the BSB for a long while now. Like them, the past decade of my life has been focused on making a family, too. So it was a huge delight for me to see them all together, singing... and with their families! I can relate so much! The "No Place" single is from their new studio album, DNA, out on January 25. I already know this is my favorite song because of this video!



I love all the sneak peeks at their homes and family lives! I love going behind the scenes and tours of celebrity homes. It was sooo nice seeing their kitchens, for example haha

If I loved them before for being so hot, I love them even more now for being so much hotter! Devoted husbands and fathers are the sexiest men in the world, am I right???

Their kids are sooo adorable! And they're mini me's of their daddies, too! Especially the kids of Nick and AJ. I love looking at families. I'm one of those annoying people who go, "Wow, you look so alike!"


More than looking alike, it was also nice seeing the kids reflect their daddies, too. For example, Kevin's son who was singing and dancing to the song. That kid looks like a future entertainer! Or Brian's son who was playing the guitar with his dad. That boy looks like he'll be a teen heartthrob soon (if not already).

Don't you just love seeing the wives and kids being so alive and present? How they interact with each other—that's real. It almost feels like a home video. It feels so intimate. I love how Howie looks deep into his wife's eyes, or how AJ and his wife sing together, or how Kevin sings to his wife while they slow dance, or how Brian gives his wife a quick peck (such a married kiss haha).

You know what I love best about their song and video? It celebrates family. Family isn't something they left behind because they had to work. Family isn't holding them back. You know how people go, "I'd rather travel the world than have kids because kids will prevent me from doing what I want/seeing the world/go places/achieve greatness/etc"? I just want to say that traveling is so much better with your spouse because love makes the world more beautiful (no kidding!). And traveling with kids is so much more fun because you see the world through their eyes! And kids make every endeavour more meaningful! Making money and building dreams have a resonance it never had before when you're doing it for the loves of your life. At the end of the day, at the end of a trip, at the end of your life, there's still no place like home. You got that right, Backstreet Boys. Thank you for making what's so real and practical and ordinary so romantic and special.

Aaaaaaagh I'm such a fan! Please watch!!!

Hi mamas and welcome to the first weekend of 2019! I'm still on vacation mode and cherishing this last weekend before the year really starts. This year, I plan to make Fridays on the blog Career Fridays. We'll talk about anything and everything about being a working mom. Today, I wanted to share why I'm considering to make my laundry room also my home office.

I've been working from home since 2013 and I know one thing for sure: I can't work from home! Of course I do but through the years I've been moving my desk here and there, looking for the perfect place to work. I haven't found it yet... Or maybe I have. I just haven't worked in that particular room yet—the laundry room.

But the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that's my home office waiting for me. Here's why:


1. It has a door. 
It is SO HARD to work when there are so many children, er, distractions everywhere. When I'm in the living room, the TV distracts me. When I'm in the bedroom, I just want to sleep. When I'm in the dining room, I want to eat. And then there's the endless noise and mess that distract me from focusing on work. But a door will shut out all visual and aural distractions!

2. It's near where I need to be all the time.
I'm a mom so I'm always in or near the kitchen. I'm not saying the kitchen is where women belong. I'm saying when kids live with you, they're almost always asking for something to eat, hence me always in the kitchen. My laundry room is right beside the kitchen. If ever the kids do need me, they know where to find me. Plus, my favorite chore is doing the laundry. I can work and do the laundry at the same time!

3. It's bright and sunny with a fantastic view.
I'm lucky my laundry room is big. It also has a huge window that lets in so much light and air. My view also happens to be Forbes Park so when I look out the laundry room window, I see lots of green. Lots of gray, too, okay, but there's green! Look at the bright side, folks! I just know that if I put my desk by that big sunny window will inspire me as I write.

Just look at all the lovely photos in this post. Isn't a laundry room/home office a fantabulous idea??


When Vince and I talk about a house-house, we talk about having our own rooms to create. An office/garage/shed for him where he can put all his books and music and things he tinkers with. An office for me that has the me I don't need to share with anyone, too. But our life is here in the city so a house-house isn't anywhere on the horizon. So I'll just look for a space here at home where I can work in peace. That place, I'm convinced, is my laundry room.

I hope I can renovate it soonest!

*Photos from Jodi Fleming Design, Kriste Michelin Interiors, and Megan Winters 

Happy New Year, mamas! This 2019, I'm going to call every Wednesday my blog's Beauty Wednesday. I'll write about beauty products, beauty tips, fashion finds, style inspiration, health and fitness (whut!), and salon and spa reviews on this day. Anything and everything that will make us beautiful people! Today, let's start the year with the ProLon Diet System.

The ProLon Diet is a 5-day meal plan designed to mimic intermittent fasting (IF) without you starving. The photo below is a sample meal for one day. Yes, it's basically soups and protein bars and a whole lot of tea and glucose water. All your meals for the day come in a box so you get 5 boxes. I'll be honest: It can be alarming to see all you'll eat in 5 small boxes.


I'm planning to try IF this January. Fasting has so many benefits to the body, and I'll get to those in a bit, and if you're also going to try IF, I recommend easing your body into it with the ProLon Diet. You see, IF is you eating just 2 meals within an 8-hour window and going without food for 16 hours. Some people can even go beyond 18 hours. ProLon is you eating 3 solid meals a day, plus a snack, but you get the same benefits as a fast.

I can do 14 hours without food, easy. I eat my last meal at 8pm, sleep, eat breakfast at 10am. I eat lunch at around 2pm, have a small snack at 5pm, then dinner. But those 14 hours are sustained by the 4 (or more) meals I eat throughout the day. So to do real IF, I just skip breakfast and go straight to lunch at noon, then eat dinner at 8. Easy! Haha, cockiness goes before a fall, my friends. I honestly don't think I can do it because I know my body. My stomach starts screaming at 10:30am and I'm so active throughout the day that I need food to see me through. So we'll see how this IF goes.   


Anyway, I tried the ProLon Diet in October, during my kids' sem break. I wanted to see if I could live on drastically reduced calories for 5 days. As you can see from the above photos, breakfast is just a protein bar, tea, and oil. The oil is fat and that's where I'll get my energy. The bar of nuts and seeds with honey isn't so bad. It tastes like Christmas, like a fruit cake but without the cake and gooeyness. Not very satisfactory especially since I always start my day with a creamy latte. So this day was hard.

By the way, I specifically chose the sem break to do the diet because I was afraid I'd faint if I did it on my regular, chore-and-errands days. On hindsight and based on the reviews I found online, this was not a good idea. When you're just at home with your kids, you're (a) bored, and (b) you're constantly making food for the family—the perfect recipe for you to overeat! Try ProLon when you're busy so you get distracted, but not on days you have physical exertions planned. Yep, no exercise, no marathons, no thorough house-cleaning, no big party at home where you'll be cooking and entertaining all day long. You'll get dizzy.

Here's lunch.



The soups are really good! They're so good I wish I had a huge bowl of it haha. The kale crackers taste like cardboard but I found that if you toast them first, the kale and seeds develop a nutty flavor, making them taste so much better. The olives are nice and salty, and just what my body needs—salt!

As you can see, there's not a lot of food. And this is the first day, the day you eat the most food! As the diet progress, there's even less food to eat. The ProLon Diet is low in calories, protein, and sugar. Yes, you'll still get sugar and it's from the water you'll be drinking. It's high in good fats, too, because we need fat to survive! Fat isn't wholly bad, people!

The ProLon Diet is 100% plant-based. So if you're vegetarian or vegan, you can be assured that all the soups, protein bars, energy drinks, herbal teas, and supplements are okay for you. If you're a carnivore like me, don't worry—the soups are soooo good, you won't really miss meat (but you will haha). The quinoa soup below is especially delicious. You have to prepare the soups in a pot on a stove. Some you can microwave but I found they don't taste as good if you just microwave them so best to cook. You also get that satisfying "I cooked my food" feeling.


The proprietary formulation was created by Dr Valter Longo, who's devoted his research on how fasting affects our bodies and even how it makes us live longer. Yep, ProLon is not about making you lose weight really. It's about making us live longer through fasting! Fasting helps the body shed fat, yes, but it also lowers blood pressure, lowers cholesterol levels, reduces inflammation, and triggers cell regeneration.

Actually, the important thing for me there is it reduces inflammation. Inflammation causes a lot of problems in the body, like diabetes and cancer. Both diseases are in my family history.

Anyway, here's dinner!


That minestrone soup is my favorite soup! I can have that all day long. Preferably with buttered garlic toast and a stick of pork barbecue haha

You can tell I missed food when I was on the ProLon Diet! In fact, I failed on the 4th day. Like I said, being on vacation with the kids wasn't a good idea after all. I kept preparing food for them, which meant I was in the kitchen a lot and finally my resolve died. While I wasn't exactly hungry, being exposed to lots of food didn't help. Then on the 5th day, I decided to clean the house. I almost fainted so I ended up eating. I'm so disappointed in myself!

Why? Because I saw a lot of good changes in my body:

1. I lost 5 lbs. in 3 days! Maybe I'd have lost more if I stuck to the diet!

2. I was burping and farting a lot on the first day (sorry TMI) but by the second day, my stomach had deflated. I wasn't bloated anymore!

3. I felt so light and clean!

4. My poop didn't smell bad. Sorry TMI again but this really convinced me to eat more plants. Maybe even become a vegetarian one day. I mean my poop didn't smell bad at all! It was like cow poop or rabbit poop. It smelled like grass! I was so amazed!!!

5. After the diet, my stomach (and by stomach, I meant the organ) had shrunk so much that I didn't eat a lot anymore. I quickly felt full. In fact, I only started eating like a pig again this Christmas. But for a good few weeks, I didn't.

And that's why I think it's good to start on intermittent fasting with the ProLon Diet! You condition your body to consume less without starving. I want to do this again. I was miserable the whole 5 days, I admit, but that's because it was my first time to go on a diet ever. Seeing the results made me resolve to do better next time!

If you're interested in doing the ProLon Diet, too, you can learn more about it here: Just 5 days a month to weight loss and better health.

The ProLon Diet is available at the BioBalance Institute at Shangri-la Plaza (Unit 1014, Lower Ground Level, East Wing, Shangri-La Plaza, Ortigas Center, Mandaluyong City). It's around P15,000 last year but with the rising peso-dollar exchange rate, it may have changed. Call (02) 650-4858, (63917) 521-4860, or e-mail info@biobalanceinstitute.com for a consultation.

Very important: Please consult with your own doctor if you can go on a fasting diet!

Happy New Year, mamas! My goal is to blog 3 times a week this 2019 and Mondays is when I plan to share my mom life - mom finds, mom thoughts, home tips, motherhood madness, family trips, mga ganyan. For today, I wanted to quickly share that I finally got to shop at Shopwise because of honestbee!
Download the honestbee app for free on Apple App Store or Google Play Store and sign up for an account now. For more information, visit www.honestbee.ph.

Hello, mamas! I am halfway through my gift list this Christmas and I'm giving every family I love a bottle of Welch's Sparkling Grape Juice! Why? Well, three reasons: one fun yet wholesome, one just practical, and the other almost embarrassingly religious haha.

First, I'm a mommy and I like to have fun, too, when my family celebrates happy occasions like birthdays, good grades, and the holidays. So what better time to break out a bottle of bubbly? It's the best time for bubbles! But alcohol is not an option for my three little kiddos. So we were delighted when a few years ago, we discovered Welch's Sparkling Grape Juice. It's basically juice with bubbles. No alcohol!

My second reason Welch's Sparkling Grape Juice is a great gift to give to families other than so the kids can drink, too? Well, not everyone likes wine. Pinoys especially are not a wine-drinking country. According to my husband who researched this for an ad campaign when he was still an ad man, we Pinoys drink gin and brandy. We don't drink wine. Soooo why do we keep giving bottles of wine on Christmas??? Now, since I'm not a fan of any kind of alcohol myself, I shouldn't give gifts that might encourage any kind of fondness for the bottle. So Welch's Sparkling Grape Juice to the rescue! It looks like a bottle of champagne, it's fun like a bottle of bubbles, but it has no alcohol!


Last and basically the biggest reason I'm giving my family bottles of Welch's Sparkling Grape Juice is, well, we're Born Again Christians. And not just any Born Again denomination—we're Baptists, the most fundamentalist of them all. We've been told over and over again that wine is the drink of the devil so my family's pretty much spiritually allergic to any kind of alcohol. It's so crazy, this avoidance of spirits, that my husband was incredulous when I said we can't have any alcohol at our wedding because the Born Agains might walk out hahaha! Vince protested, "Even Jesus had wine at the Last Supper!" So at our wedding, Vince had to whisper to our other guests that they can secretly order at the bar so as not to offend my deeply religious family. But this Christmas, I'm going to prank my family by giving them Welch's Sparkling Grape Juice because it looks like wine but it isn't! It's just wholesome fun in a bottle!

So, dearest mamas who want to have more fun in your parties but don't want anyone to get drunk and make a mess out of your beautiful homes, here's my advice: Get bottles of Welch's Sparkling Grape Juices. Made of the freshest Concord and Niagara grapes, they're available in effervescent white and grape flavors. I love them! Even my husband, who used to adore alcohol, is now a convert (to Welch's non-alcoholic drinks, not to Born Again Christianity ahahaha).