TOPAZ HORIZON

This past weekend was just lovely. Vince and I celebrated our third wedding anniversary and the 11th anniversary of when we fell in love! I'll update soonest with a proper post, but for now here's a look back on that very special day:

Tessa Prieto-Valdes a.k.a. The Sea Princess wrote about our wedding in her column. I totally forgot where I put the news clipping of that! But here's another from the Inquirer (click photos to enlarge):

I'll have the Wedding Essentials magazine feature and Cosmopolitan mention scanned so you can take a look, too. I wish I'd also recorded the bridal feature on Kate Torralba's wedding gowns of some TV show. I heard that we had really nice photos from our wedding shown there. Oh well! Have a nice week!

Suuuuuper busy! Here's what I've been up to:

1. Just came from a Sony Ericsson event to check out the new Experia phone, which will be featured in Vince's fabulous blog Third World Nerd. I love this blog!

2. Just sent the May issue of OK! magazine to the printers and it should be hitting the newsstands by next week. Meanwhile, we're simultaneously doing the first batch of pages of the June issue. Ack, it never ends!

3. Blogged about beauty stuff in Beauty For A Living. There's a Paul & Joe event this weekend you might want to check out.

4. Got royally pissed off at HPPI, the worst HMO in the world. I'll talk about it more in another post. Right now, I'm feeling murderous.

5. At the same time, I'm also feeling very happy! Finally won a blog giveaway! I won hair accessories from Evita Peroni. I'm so happy!

6. Had a surprise visit from my dear friend Mariel yesterday! She's back from the US of A! And we had a lovely long chat over coffee and cheesecake and chocolate cake. So so so happy she's back.

7. And I have to pay the bills. Will get to that!

Oh, and the baby boy I'm carrying is kicking like he has plans to be the next great football player. He will not stop! I'm like, "Settle down in there!" Of course we're so excited. At the same time, he has such powerful kicks, it hurts!

So I'll blog again soonest with more details. Meanwhile, I hope y'all are having a nice week!

I still haven't bought maternity clothes. I just went to my usual dress haunts and got a medium (I'm usually a small) or a size 6 (I'm usually a 4). From the front, I don't even look pregnant. From the side, well, there you go—the big baby belly bump!

The secret to looking slim while pregnant is black, black, black! Y'all know that black can make you look like a model for weight loss pills, and pregnant Hollywood stars often turn to black to avoid looking too big.

If you don't like black, stick to one color since it fools the eye into thinking there's one long length of you. I like dark green, navy blue, gray and white! I am especially fond of this Karimadon with a big red bow on the chest--makes my new chest look even bigger, but in a sweet way!

Busy patterns, which pregnant women seem to be fond of, just widen you. So avoid them. If you do like patterns (like me!), get the small kind—you know, tiny flowers, little paisley swirls. Do not get clothes with huge circles, big teddy bears, big flowers. Also, remember that you're carrying a baby; you're not the baby. So choose sophisticated touches, not prints that toddlers will wear.

Choose clothes that are tailored—yes, it's possible to wear tailored clothes even while pregnant. Just look at this black dress again.
This is again a Karimadon (which I wore with Vita Fede bangles and Schu flats) and it came with a big belt. No need to wear the belt but after I give birth, I can still use this dress and wrap the belt around my waist, which will hopefully reappear by Christmas!

You don't really need a lot of maternity wear anyway. I think I rotate about 10 dresses. Silk jersey dresses, soft knitwear, comfy cotton—clothes that flow over the body or those that show off just the boobs or the tummy celebrate your new shape without making you look dumpy and fat—even if we are! The trick is to look slim, not be thin. A lot of women just buy maxi dresses—they look so romantic. Some women I know wear jeans and short shorts--they look so damn hot! I'm not that kind, though (wish I were!). If I want to look sexy, I just bring out my mini dresses.

So just because you're going to be a mom doesn't mean you cease to be a woman. After all, you got pregnant because someone thought you were sexy enough to sleep with! Don't forget that sexy creature!

I mentioned in this blog before that some bloggers earn a ton of money from their blogs. Their secret is an understanding of search engine optimization. I have no idea what that means. Well, I do know that it means using words and phrases that makes your blog appear high on the list of search engines. And for me, that's just cheating. I've been to some blogs that have manipulated the SEO and, gee, their blogs are boring.  Why would anyone want to read a blog like that? But because they're clever, they've learned how to cheat the system so that their blogs go up, up, up on the search.

Well, they may be boring but those blogs earn cold hard cash! Well, mine does, too, but not so much so I'm glad I have a job that makes me really really happy, both monetarily and in everything else! 

SEO also means having a lot of links to your blog, which is time consuming to say the least! That's going to dozens, even hundreds, of other blogs and making friends with them so that they'll visit your blog, maybe like it and then link your blog to theirs. You see, the more links your blog has, the more popular it is, and obviously that would make it climb up the search engines. There are some people who bypass this process by using a directory submission service, but I personally prefer making friends, however time consuming that may be!

Of course, since I'm a very busy woman, I really don't have the time to do this! I usually spend my weekends browsing blogs and leaving comments. I've made friends this way (ladies, you know who you are!). But since getting pregnant, I'm sleepy all the time! So thank you for still visiting my blogs and linking up and leaving your darling comments here. You are appreciated! I may not earn a lot of money from my blogs but I've earned friends. And that is priceless.


*image from the web. can't say which website really since several sites used it!

Yesterday, April 5, was the 11th anniversary of the day Vince and I met. Yes, just the meeting. Normally, people don't celebrate that kind of anniversary but we do because, well, it changed our lives!

We met at the U.P. National Writers Workshop. When I got in the fellowship, I was so thrilled. It's every Filipino writer's dream to become a fellow in this prestigious workshop! And I got in! I knew those two weeks in Baguio, with the country's best writers, will change my life. Little did I know how--I was going to meet the man who would become my husband!

Those two weeks were just magical. I was soooo happy to be with writers and, at the same time, I was falling in love fast with the long-haired quiet guy with the big grin, who wrote heartbreaking stories and played the guitar, and can engage me in the longest, deepest conversations. Yup, we fell fast and hard. In fact, by the end of those two weeks, April 18, Vince and I were inseparable.

So yesterday was our 11th meeting anniversary. We didn't want to celebrate it actually because there's a big anniversary coming up--the wedding one on April 18. But after we visited my OBG and got a private tour of St. Luke's Global City, we figured we'd go have dinner out anyway!

But first, we had to check out the furniture stores. Of course! Vince is such a home decor geek and he really wanted to inspect the leather sofas in Natuzzi and the shelves at Jesse.

After deciding that Italian leather sofas are way beyond our budget now (big sad sigh there), we figured we'd have Italian food instead!


We just ate at Italianni's. Nice big place and we haven't eaten there recently so in we went! I like the old photos on the walls, the murals and the big iron chandeliers reminiscent of Murray Feiss lighting.

We first had a nice basket of warm bread dipped in olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Then we had a big crisp salad. See? We're eating healthy now!


Then I had a minestrone soup. I liked it--filled with chunky veggies swimming in tomato goodness. Very hearty!

Then we had this salmon dish that wasn't so good. It was tired and tasteless. Salmon should be firm and fresh and have that hint of saltiness.So I just had a bite since I didn't like it. Vince didn;t either but he ate all of it.
Then Vince finished things off with a big lasagne. These are huge servings, by the way, so I'm mighty impressed with my husband's appetite. I didn't even have the pasta dish anymore since I was happily eating the bread (I love carbs!).

So there! That's how we celebrated our mini-anniversary! Oh, then we went home and had a Big Bang Theory marathon with mugs of Selecta's Hazelnut Brownie ice cream. Burp!