Life, Day by Day

Kinship and bloodlines used to be so significant for me.  Ever since my college days, I was always interested in genealogy and how my family was related to who or whom. I used to spend hours looking over family trees and tracing my ascendants, even to the point of  reaching out to people who had the same last names as mine or any of my ascendants. I have created family trees on websites and shared this with relatives, near and far, old and new.  Then I found myself becoming a mother to two children, a boy who just turned 25 and a girl, now 7.  They may not be of my blood but they have all of my heart.  Suddenly, bloodlines became irrelevant when it concerned my relationship with my children. 

As time passes and the kids grown, gift giving during Christmas has taken on a new meaning.  Gone are the days of  frantic shopping and excited faces while unwrapping gifts. It is quite hard to look for gifts for my loved ones, because basically, they do not have a lack of things.  And so, with only 42 more days till Christmas, I still do not have the slightest idea on what gifts to give, that is until I read the SM Christmas Bears of Joy Campaign, where for just Php 200, I can keep one bear to give as a gift, and donate the other to children of various orphanages and charitable institutions through the SM Cares Program . What a great idea! It is taking gifting to the next level!  I can just imagine how happy a child will be getting this soft and cuddly bear to hug and to hold.  But lest we forget, Christmas is not just about the gift we get, but more so about the love that comes with it. Each Christmas bear I plan to give, will come with a message of love that tells the receiver,

I have always dreamed of owning the perfect pair of shoes for my imperfect feet. Little did I know that I would find it right under my nose. The Skechers brand has been around for quite sometime, and I have seen their display at the SM Department Store but being a person who preferred high heels, their design did not really appeal to me. Then, I found myself checking out the casual and sports shoes section during the SM great shoe sale a few months ago, and this is where I discovered Skechers GO Walk .  And so, when I was told that Skechers was opening a store in SM Bacolod I was excited to check out the different styles that they had to offer.

My relatives in Metro Manila are regulars and would rave about it, posting their enviable pictures on social media. And so, when we probinsyano s first saw this Vikings logo in SM City Bacolod, there was a lot of excitement and anticipation among us. It was something that everyone I knew was looking forward to and our conversations would often touch on the question of when it will open. Well, finally people of Bacolod and Negros, PREPARE TO FEAST! Our long wait is over. This October 2015, VIKINGS SM City Bacolod will officially open!

Since I was a little girl, I was fascinated with makeup.  During weekends in my grand-aunt's house, I would spend hours watching her daughters (my aunties) put on make-up and dressing up.  My mother who was a powder and lipstick type of girl tried to discourage this growing interest of mine and even though how much I nagged her about it, she refused to get me makeup. Of course I always managed to get some from my overindulgent aunties who would give me their leftover or soon to be discarded makeup products. You can imagine my Mom's look of resignation every time I came home with a little stash of cosmetics, but then again, she did not really prohibit me from practicing putting makeup on my face, which I often did in the confines of my room. I think she believed that everything for me at that age was fantasy and make believe...or was it?

Change comes in many forms. There are the big ones that can give me a lot of stress and anxiety and can take a lot of time...but mostly change happens without us realizing it until it becomes quite apparent. But whether big or small, change always brings out some kind of emotional reaction from people. I have been through enough life-changing experiences to know how hard it is to deal with change...there were times I did not even know that what I was feeling was due to some kind of change happening in my life! It's a good thing that I had adequate coping skills, a resilient nature and a great support system to face these events in life. Then in 2008, I bought this little book that talks about change...and subsequently wrote about it in one of my early posts although I did not really elaborate about how this book helped me better manage the continuing changes in my life. The book is " Who Moved My Cheese " by Dr. Spencer Johnson, and I want to share how the lessons has h

When I was in my 20's, the concept of change was something abstract in my mind and in a way it still is, because more often than not, it is something that does not always happen in one go.  More commonly, it often occurs in stages and is intangible and you only feel that something is changing but the impact of the change can only be seen much later. There are many people, things, standards or even concepts of the world , that are important to us and some of these, we feel like we cannot live without.  When something happens and we are forced to let go of what is important to us, we all go into crisis mode.  I have yet to meet someone who doesn't do that. So how do we avoid all the stress of life changing experiences?  I realized that the easiest way to let go of things is detachment ...but that is only as far as "things or objects"  are concerned, because when talking about detachment, I do not want to put people in the same category as thin