TOPAZ HORIZON

Do you have a condo unit, a townhouse or a house that's sitting empty and you'd like to rent it out to vacationers? Then you MUST watch Stay Here on Netflix!!!

Stay Here is a show hosted by real estate expert Peter Lorimer and interior designer Genevieve Gorder. Together, they traveled across the United States, picking properties from dilapidated historical homes to a house boat to transform and market as a short-term rental, a.k.a. an Airbnb gem.



My husband and I have watched all the episodes. We like home design shows a lot. Our recent favorite is The World's Most Extraordinary Homes and it's also on Netflix and it's also a must-watch! We like home makeover shows, too. I mean, nothing is better than watching decorating experts transform a terrible piece of property to an astounding house! We learn a lot of design advice and we picked up a few tips and tricks in all the years we watched shows like decorating-budget-is-from-selling-old-stuff Clean House to the insane sky's-the-limit-budget of Million Dollar Decorators.

What makes Stay Here the kind of makeover show that made me take out pen and paper is it's also a business plan for people who want to make money on Airbnb. Airbnb is the most popular and the biggest accommodation-sharing service in the world. Whether you have an extra room or an extra house, you can rent it out to travelers. Airbnb makes this possible for millions of property owners and tourists out for a unique experience. It's also made tons of money. So if you want a piece of that pie, here's where Stay Here comes in.

In every episode of Stay Here, Peter and Genevieve check out a property, assess its income-generating potential, renovate it to a wow-inducing piece, and help the owner market it online. The renovated properties make so much money after, it's crazy! So let me share with you my Top 10 helpful real estate tips I learned from Stay Here:

1. Research the competition. How much are the hotels and rentals in your area? What do they look like? What can you offer that they don't? This information can help you decide on how to decorate your place, how much to charge, and how to market it.

All Malibu beachfront properties have this view but only The Beach House on Malibu Road has this deck to soak it up!

2. You have to be better than the hotel in the area. Guests know they're staying at a home so they usually won't expect a hotel-like experience. But when you give them 5-star accommodation and service, that will make them leave you a glowing review, refer you to friends, and they will return. Peter always says, "Referrals are the lifeblood of short-term rentals!" So if people like you, they'll recommend you forever, which means free marketing for you.

Why choose a bland hotel room when you can sleep in this blissful blue bedroom in the Palm Springs Time Machine?

3. Target families. Most everyone who chooses Airbnb do so because they're a big group. Hotels infamously limit occupancy to 2 people per room, or 2 adults with 2 kids aged under 12. So people like me who have 3 kids, or families who like traveling with the grandparents, or those who bring along their pets are dismayed at hotel restrictions. So here's where you—dear property owner—come in. Target families! They are willing to pay more especially since hotels don't offer them space and a home-y feel. Look at your amenities with a mother's eye. Make it child-safe and child-friendly. Make them feel it's a true home away from home. Peter said, "Ninety percent of vacations are booked by moms." Moms are who you need to impress!

The loft in the second bedroom of DC Firehouse 4 can accommodate 2 kids while the wall of curtains can hide baby stuff like strollers and car seats.

The Palm Springs Time Machine offers a sexy bar, psychedelic rooms, a fabulous pool—all in their original 1969 glory.

Expect this cheerful living area to greet you when you book  a stay at the Yellow Block Bed & Breakfast.

The Yellow Block B&B has cereal, the local favorite rainbow bagels, and its own Yellow Block bagel for guests to enjoy.

7. Include a tourist guide. Places to go, transportation tips, shopping malls, unique shops, bars, banks with ATMs, landmarks. Guide them to a great local experience.

Families seated at that generous table can plan their itinerary using the Yellow Block B&B Wall of Attractions.

You can't miss DC Firehouse 4—on the stretch of colorful homes, it's the one with a firetruck!

9. Make your rental social media friendly. If it's Instragammable, you get free marketing when your guests take selfies and photos. Genevieve says it's not enough to make your place look nice, it has to have a feature that will make your guests take out their phone and snap a selfie. She calls it "a social media moment." That's a fabulous wall to pose against, a crazy pink bedroom, a historical piece. Peter says, "Create a hashtag!" In the time of Instagram, but of course!

At the Palm Springs Time Machine, a #selfie in this fantastic pink bathroom featuring a crazy sunken bathtub is a must!

You have to watch the show, mamas! If you're thinking of a business that allows you stay at home, then Stay Here will help you make your dreams a reality with concrete business advice. Truly a must-watch show in the time of businesses at home, room-sharing, and social media!

Stay Here is exclusively showing on Netflix. All photos here were grabbed from the websites or Airbnb listings of Yellow Block B&B in Brooklyn, Palm Springs Time Machine in Palm Springs, The Beach House on Malibu Road in Malibu, and DC Firehouse 4 in Washington DC.


Check back on Monday for a new post! Have a great weekend!

At one of my blogging workshops (the super successful one held at the beautiful corporate offices of Flawless Face & Body Clinic), I was so happy to see moms bringing their babies. While I was speaking, sometimes a kid cried or talked loudly or had to breastfeed. I didn't mind at all. I brought all my babies to work so I totally understand how life is with kiddos. And that makes me constantly dream of a work environment that allows mothers to be mothers.

I wish more work places allowed kids to be with their mommies and daddies. Yes, I should change my title to "Working PARENT dream: A career that lets moms and dads be with their kids." Kids may be a distraction when you're working—as a work-at-home mom, I know this so well—but worry over them and guilt at spending too much time away from them can be a distraction, too.

At Summit Media, I brought my kids to events, radio tours, and to my office. I don't know if that was allowed because I was OK! magazine's editor-in-chief, though! Of course in Baby Magazine, my kids always tagged along to my shoots. Now, in L'Oréal, I sometimes bring my kids along and my co-workers get so excited to see little people in the office. In fact, the past 8 years that I've been a mom, I've always had my kids around when I work (for better or for worse!). I'm truly grateful for this privilege.

At an interview and a shoot for my Manila Bulletin column, I shot my OOTD... and my Iñigo!

Vito (in yellow) at a photo shoot for Baby Magazine. He wasn't a model, just a bored kid at mama's office!

Piero enjoying a photo shoot for Halo Sleepsacks

I'm grateful that my work now as a blogger allows me to earn money while I'm home. But this career is like a freelance job - sometimes the checks don't come in for months. I may be working on so many campaigns, which impress the heck out of everyone, but our bank account is screaming, "Show me the money!!!" The bills come with frightening regularity and with three kids now in school, the expenses have shot up. That's why my husband went back to an office job and I got a regular editorial gig at L'Oréal just to match the schedule of the bills with a reassuring monthly pay check. But we're already missing what we had just last year - 24/7 with our boys! Our life was so amazing. But we had to give it up.

It's not so bad, okay. Our kids spend a lot of time in school anyway, plus our jobs now allow us a lot of flexibility. We're not complaining. In fact, we're grateful we're allowed so much time for ourselves and our family while also earning a living. Many parents don't enjoy what we have.

Parents are such hard workers. And we'll work better if we knew our kids are safe and happy. For many of us who have wonderful yayas and relatives to care for our babies, that's great! But some of us, like me, who have no help at all from either kasambahay and family, work is almost impossible if we can't bring the kids along.

I wish companies can have daycare centers. Or a family room. Or offer flexible working hours or work-at-home options to all its employees, parent or not. It's a changing world anyway. Moms and dads are great employees because they need the job more, ya know? Employers can take advantage of that by taking care of the little kids, too. Parents spend a good chunk of their day at the office so it would be lovely if it would be a home away from home!

Kids also benefit from seeing their parents at work. I will never forget walking into my mother's office and observing the respect and good will towards her. I mean, to me, she was just Mama. So to see that she's more than that, that she's actually important to other people, was eye-opening. So bringing kids to work can be a good idea!

Dream dream dream away! I don't know how this can be done but I have an unshakable feeling it will be the future. And we'll be the generation of moms who will make it happen, if not for us but for our kids.  I'm so excited for my sons and future daughters-in-law!


Check back on Friday for a new post! Have a great day!

In 2012, the magazine I edited closed down. Being a mom of a toddler and an infant, I decided it was time for me to take a break from my intense career schedule and focus on my babies. I did, I loved it, I learned a LOT from being a mom, and I started a new career as a blogger and as a work-at-home editor. Losing my job was truly one of the best things that happened to me!

I just finished this lovely little book, An Open Book: Thursdays with Nanay Coring. It's a short biography of National Book Store founder, Socorro Ramos. And when I said it's a little book, I meant it's a short and fast read, written in simple language that both kids and grown-ups will appreciate.

I think if you're a mom looking for books to inspire your kids, this is a good pick. If you're a working mom looking for inspiration, then this is definitely something that can encourage you. I read it in an hour and I found myself highlighting passages and writing my thoughts on the margins—Yes, I write on my books. For me, when I do that, that's always a sign it's a good book!


Every chapter in this book tells the story of Mrs Ramos, lovingly called Nanay Coring—from her impoverished childhood, her whirlwind and enduring romance with her husband, and how she lived through the great war to how she built her business again and again and still remains to this day the massive force behind the country's biggest book store and stationery supplies chain.

Each title of the 14 chapters highlights what the Ramos matriarch wants us to learn from her life. Here are Nanay Coring's advice and life lessons:

1. Live simply.
2. Never surrender Corregidor. (You'll have to read the book to understand this advice.)
3. Remain humble.
4. Knowledge is power.
5. The more time you spend at the store, the more you know.
6. If you work hard, nothing is impossible.
7. Always be on time, if not early.
8. Never show signs of weakness.
9. Be known as a good person, not a rich person.
10. It takes time to build something.
11. Happiness is helping people.
12. Rely on your own gut feel.
13. Always pray.
14. Read more. Know more. Earn more.

Aside from those life lessons, I picked up 7 other tips from Nanay Coring. Here they are:


1. Remember what's important.
Nanay Coring was from her father's second family. She lived through the war. She saw her business fail several times. So even when she became massively successful, her values remained the same: Don't forget where you came from, and take care of your family. That's it.

Throughout the book, she constantly reminds her children and the reader to work hard but to not forget your husband and children. Eat meals with your family. Talk with your family. Go out and spend time with them. Being busy with work, Nanay Coring and her husband Jose only had Sundays free. So they used that time to reconnect with each other and their kids by going to church, eating lugaw and siopao at Ongpin, snacking on fruits, candy and tsampoy.

Unlike what we working mamas are told, it doesn't really take a lot of time or money to make an impact on our kids. We don't have to be with them 24/7, we don't have to be their sole caregiver, we don't have to take them on out-of-town trips every weekend, we don't have to give them "the best" a.k.a. expensive shit. I see this so often these days! Moms who over-schedule their kids or spend every single minute with them, or demand their husbands to jet off the whole family somewhere exotic every weekend or so "to make memories." How exhausting. How frantic. How mom-guilty.

Relax! Remember what's important! They need us to love them. That is all. We don't have to prove it so much. We just need to eat a meal with them every day, give them hugs and kisses, and make simple memories. My husband was lucky enough to come from a well-off family, but it's their dinner-time stories he tells me often about, or how their garden overlooked their school and their mom waited there, or their trips to the grocery. I hardly ever hear about their annual shopping jaunts to Hong Kong, even though as a girl from a poor family, that was what impressed me most. So keep it simple.


2. Don't call for trouble.
See my note there? Haha. How indeed! Also, since I'm very confrontational, I'm noisy and argumentative. In the time of social media, how do you keep quiet about your food, your trips, your shopping, your kids, your career, your political views???

So my takeaway here is don't ask for trouble unless you're ready for it.


3. Have integrity in everything you do. 
This isn't easy. Sometimes we really mean we'll do the job, attend the meeting, be at the event, pay the bills. But life happens. Traffic happens. The kids happen. But it should be our guiding principle in work, in parenting, in marriage, in politics, in EVERYTHING. Have integrity. Be true to who you are and what you value. Say what you mean and mean what you say.


4. Give people what they need.
Many moms ask me what business can they start so they can work from home. Many mompreneurs I know started their business because they needed something no one was providing or a product no one was selling, and they decided to just fill that space. I like how Nanay Coring also figured out that people sometimes don't know what they need and you have to tell them. Create your customers!

I love that advice because sometimes I have a great idea and then I think, "Maybe I'm the only one who needs this." But Nanay Coring is proof that marketing can be as simple as telling people, "This is my need, and this solved it. Do you want to try it out, too?"


5. Care for people.
Smile. Be considerate. Be thoughtful. Open doors for clients and assistants. Give your customers and messengers a cool drink. Say thanks.


6. Be proud of your work.
Whenever I feel guilty about being away from my kids, I tell myself to shut up. As a work-at-home mom, I'm not even away from them often. Once a week maybe, for 4-6 hours. That's not a lot so I shouldn't feel guilty for the time spent away from them, especially since that time was used for one or both of these reasons: (1) I earned money, (2) I refreshed my mind and spirit doing something I'm good at.

Many times in the past, when my kids see me tired from meeting a deadline, they say, "Mama, I'm going to work one day so you won't have to." And I always say, "That's nice, but I like my work. I like using my brain. I like making my own money. I like work a lot!" So now my kids don't equate work with bad things. They see that it's not easy but it's something I'm proud of, that provides for our needs, and that makes our comfortable life possible.

Except for when I worked at the Senate, I'm always proud of what I do, even when people sneered at it. And when you're a blogger like me, people are always sneering at you. It's so funny that when I tell people I'm also an editor and a beauty writer, they kinda relax into a strange relief: "Oh, you have a real job." Then when they find out my blog still makes more money than any other "real job" I hold, they protest again.

I refuse to be ashamed of my blogging. It puts food in my children's tummies, it's not corrupt, it's not stealing. So as long as you have a job that helps people and your family—whether you're a janitress or a CEO, be proud of it! Your children are proud of you! 


7. Do what you're best at.
Throughout the book, author Cecilia Ramos Licauco who is also Nanay Coring's only daughter, says that her mother wanted to be other things. Nanay Coring wanted to be a doctor. She also wanted to be a singer. Instead she became an entrepreneur and succeeded in it so massively.

The lesson I got there is we all have dreams and sometimes we can pour our whole lives into making those dreams come true, and sometimes we can allow life to tell us where to go. As a young girl, I was determined to make my dreams of becoming a magazine editor-in-chief come true. And it did! But as a mother, the latter is what's true for me. I had a job with crazy hours that demanded I wear stylish clothes and sky-high heels, I had babies who only wanted to breastfeed, and yayas who kept resigning. I couldn't juggle my dream job and my kids! So I let life take over. I became a stay-at-home mommy, I blogged about my boring/crazy mom life in the most raw and honest ways, which people seemed to like a lot. Blogging was so successful that—tada!—I registered it as a business.

I never dreamed of becoming a mom and a blogger, but those are what I am now. And guess what—these roles fulfill me more (and blogging pays more, too) than anything I've ever done before. So maybe when we as moms feel life is passing us by and our dreams aren't coming true, maybe it's time to look at our life, dream new dreams, and see how we can make this mom life work for us instead.

If you want to get a copy of An Open Book: Thursdays with Nanay Coring, it's available at all National Book Store branches. You can't miss it. It's always by the cashier! You can also leave a comment on this post and first one gets my copy! When I'm done with a book, I sometimes give it away. I wrote on this one, though, so if that doesn't bother you, then it's yours!

While everybody wants a steady source of income for their daily bread, not everybody wants to work in an office every day. Many people thrive in a social and supportive environment an office provides while others need a space to properly focus on their work. When I was still a magazine editor, I went to the office to manage the operations, consult with staff, and meet with publishers and advertisers. But I went home to write and edit because I needed absolute quiet for those tasks.