We will be coming home for a vacation

Two weeks ago, my husband and I had a quick decision for a vacation. Our company granted our 6-day leave at work making it a total of 10 days including two weekends. We will be having our flight going back to PH tomorrow night so we still have whole day tomorrow to finish all pending deadlines at work. We have not yet totally done packing our things so tonight we will finalize them.

Our last visit in the PH was last year (February). So it was almost a year of not seeing the kids in person. We can no longer sleep at night in too much excitement, so with the kids. There are four things which makes me more excited about this homecoming:

1. Will be able to see the kids and be with them even for couple of days only.
2. Our presence will be there as our eldest son celebrate his 10th birthday on April 4.
3. Finally, I can hug my iMAC.
4. At last, we can see and visit our newly constructed house.

For this very limited time of vacation, I will not go online for a while to spend all of our time with our kids. We want to maximize and spend the most quality time for them. This is the main reason why I have to extend the re-publishing of my Dress Up Your Blogs.

In connection with this, I want to inform my dear readers and followers that I will be out starting tomorrow night March 29th until April 10th. You can still send me email but I can’t promise to response in prompt. We will resume for work here in Taipei by April 10th. So today (a day before our flight), look how messy my office table is, showing how rushing I am just to finish everything before I leave:


But I will clean up my table tomorrow night to keep everything in place again. Please pray for us for safe flight because when we arrive in Manila, we still have eight hours to travel by bus just to reach our place in Bicol. We are expecting to reach home by afternoon of March 30. Of course, no matter how far we'd go, it always feels good to be home. Happy trip to us and catch you, guys later!

I am looking for verified seller of Victoria's Secret Lotions

I have been using Victoria's Secret lotions for years now and I will continue using them until I can afford to have them. Here in Taipei, I could easily get authentic Victoria's Secret products because there are lots of popular boutique here selling these items. I know that the lotions I am using are authentic because they are coming from reputable shops here and they claimed really as original. We all know that there are VS versions from Hongkong and Singapore and I find them cheaper than the ones made from USA.

I often visited Sulit.com.ph to look for sellers who offer these items for I want to try and compare the scent and lasting power from the authentic ones. And there are lots of advertising sellers for these items. Can anybody here recommend me a particular seller who are certified seller, easy to deal with, and living in the PH? Real experiences from actual buyers would be great. I am not planning to resell them, I just want to use them by myself and try the versions from Hongkong or Singapore if they are good enough to compare to the original ones to save more $$ from my pocket.

I would love to hear your recommendations and testimonials about a particular seller. And if you are a seller, please contact me about your quotes and other details. Thanks.

Goodbye, Elizabeth

I used not to blog about celebrities because I don’t have interest on them but when I heard the news last night that Elizabeth Taylor died for health reason, I could not control myself not to mention here about this fabulous and legendary Hollywood actress. Obviously she’s not about my age and her time was not my time and as a matter of fact I haven’t seen any of her movies but because of her popularity I became one of her avid fan. If you could remember I made a post last November 1, 2010 (oh my!) about her eyes which I really (really!) want to have. My post was about “I want that eyes, too!”.

I only known Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra, nothing more nothing less. I love her beauty so much and no matter how pretty our young actresses of today, hers is still my favorite..very aristocratic and elegant. She is a true of picture of beauty.

Elizabeth Taylor, goodbye.. It's just so sad that your life ended in that way but I still admire you. I was not surprise anymore when I heard that she married 7 times (she had 8 husbands in all).

She made this by hand

Cecille, one of our Filipino friends here in Taipei, handed us a gift last Christmas which she made barely by hands. This young and funny wife of an OFW engineer is such creative when she used the traditional way of sewing to create stuff like this:

She made this super cute mobile case and what drives me crazier is the little foamy girl. And the button is so cute…I am a button collector and love having one in any of my stuff. She’s very good in stitching. It looks professionally made that you could not see any misplaced thread or cranky stitches.

I failed to shout that time this wonderful gift I received from her but I did not failed to give my big thanks with a matching hug to her for this gift. I received two of this which means that I have a reserved one in the future if in case my present one is already overused.

Thanks again, Cecille. It means a lot to me and you make my world more creative. By the way, can you sew dresses for my barbie dolls? They need new outfits. For sure my barbie dolls will be so happy to wear your creations. I tried several times sewing for them but I am not satisfied with my own hand stitch....I am only for cross-stitching**LOL.

What's in my bag?

I want to show you what’s in my bag when going to office daily. I know this could make no sense but I just want to “bagnap” myself and let it reveal to you what’s inside. I took this picture one typical Monday of our ordinary working days. While waiting for my husband, I was encouraged to have a capture on my things inside my bag.

So what are exactly those things inside my bag? To have a closer look, here they are:

My wallet. I always change my wallet to carry but that time this was the wallet I was using.

My keychain. This is the most important stuff that I must not forget to bring otherwise I will be lost. It includes the keys to our apartment (main door and room), key for the chain in my bicycle, key for my office drawer, and importantly this is where I put my daily time-in card in the office.

My mobile phones. I have two cell phones (pretty old models), one for my international roaming and one for my Taiwan number.

My transparent pencil case. This is where my pens, flash drives, camera cable, etc are kept.


My notebook pad. This is where I write my important personal drafts.

My organizer/planner. This is where all my important accounts are listed so I keep it very privately.

My Transcend external drive.

My Sony Cybershot camera

No more, no less. I don’t bring perfumes, I don’t bring cosmetics even hair comb. In the office I just have a hand cream because sometimes my hands have the tendency to feel dry. Those pictures above were taken during the same day at lunch break in my office table.

What about you? What are the things inside your bag?

How to create an embossed banner

Few weeks ago in our Pinay Mommy Community FB group, one of our dear mommies asked about how to make those embossed banners/badges. So in response to her, I decided to make a tutorial on sample settings on how make such in Photoshop.

1. Let us start by opening your banner in Photoshop (assuming you have an existing flat banner). I will use my own 125x125 banner for this tutorial.

2. Then duplicate it (press CTRL+J).

3. Click the Add a layer style button at the bottom of the Layer palette and choose Bevel and Emboss.

4. In Bevel and Emboss option window, do the following settings and click OK when you are done.

5. After hitting OK, here is now my badge with an emboss effect.

So simple, right. My flat banner becomes an embossed one in just few steps. To make it easier for you, here is another simple trick if you want to apply the same settings to all your badges.

Point the mouse on the layer name of the embossed badge, right click and choose Copy Layer Style from the options.

Then, open your other badge. Point the mouse on the layer name, right click and choose Paste Layer Style from the options.

Do the same thing to the rest of your badges. It could save your time if you have 3 or more banners.


The settings I gave are just sample for 125x125 badges. You are free to adjust and modify these settings according to your desire. For example, if you want more embossed badge, increase the Depth to 120% or more, or the slider options for the size and soften in the Bevel and Emboss settings. So it depends on your needs. What I have shown you is just basic steps to get you started.

By the way if you want to make a round badge, I have a separate posted tutorial on my other site. You can also download a psd file of that round badge templates for high quality printing projects and for web display.

Hope this piece of information could help you. Just get back to me anytime if you find any difficulty in following the steps. Happy badge embossing!

Nokia Mobile Holder

I just want to share to you my mobile holder. This is not new. I got this one last year from a garage sale in the hospital, near the church where we used to attend mass. I got this unused and still in a box.

Obviously, this is from Nokia. I brought it in the office and perfect to my table with my Nokia phone on it. Look how it grabs my phone .

I find it so cute. And the price is cute, too**LOL. I got it for only NT$10 (Php14). I was looking for more then but luckily I got the last one. By the way, it is made of rubber.

Dove Fanatic

I am a Dove user, extremely a dove lover...shampoo, conditioner, body wash, lotion, soap, deodorant, hair cream..name it and I will definitely look for it to have one for myself. If there is one word that I can describe Dove, it would be "mild". Aside from baby products, Dove is really on top for being the most mild among beauty products. It has its own brand smell..truly unbeatable.

When on sale, I keep buying more of them for future use. So far these are the ones which left on my store cabinet. Definitely one of these days I will keep watching again for Dove sale.

If I would be asked if what is my most favorite among Dove products, I would pick the bar soap. I love it on my skin specially when it is melting. It is like a lotion that is so creamy and soft. While the one on the box is my recent purchase. It is a hair cream overnight therapy. I bought it last month I guess for it was new to my eyes and couldn't wait to have a try. It's awesome.

I don't have to say much about these products because for sure you have tried them already. Next time when I have my next panic buying of Dove I will share again with you. If I have one thing which I am not interested with Dove products, it is the oil/cream makeup remover for I am not wearing makeup (just powder and lipstick) in my daily get up.

I want to eat these!

Who likes burger? French fries, or cakes? One weekend we had a walk on a night market here to trip some street foods (yes, I love them). I want to share to you what we have got before we finally reached the place.

The burger...we bought two. One for me and one for my husband. At first I thought they were beef burger but I was wrong.

The yummy cakes....again, must be two (because half is not enough for me).

The french fries...we got only one because it was the best-seller then and almost nothing left but only one.

The hotdog in a bun...we bought only one since the hotdog was jumbo.

The sandwiches...nothing so much to say but I love them although I was looking then for a clubhouse sandwich. We bought two kinds of sandwiches.

We spent half an hour to that peddler on the street before we head up to our final destination. While we were walking, I kept on looking to these foods we bought. And then suddenly I told my husband that I want to keep these foods forever for collection.

So here they are again and I will indeed keep them in my closet:

For sure you have the idea what are those foods. They are one truly cute and amazing food miniatures. If you could only see them in actual, you would feel the desire to own one for yourself, too. For you see how small they are, here is a capture with my mobile phone:

They are so cute, aren't they? My friend said there is a store just across where we live which sells these kind of stuff so definitely one of these days we will be going there and check for more in addition to this collection and I will post them, too when I got new ones..

By the way, they are made of rubber. Thanks for looking!

I scan, I design, I share

Designing and giving freebies are part of my digital life. One of my favorite way of designing particularly in my digital scrapbooking is by scanning. That is why I love my Lexmark X2650 3-in-1 very much. This is one of my digital stuff which I can't live without.

I use my scanner in most of my designs particularly in my digital scrapbooking projects. I am a person who loves bling-bling and other elements. I have lots of them in my collection. I am always looking for ribbons and buttons whenever I go and keep on buying them even without target use. I just love to keep them in my collection for future use. But how can these physical elements become part of my digital scrapping? I scan them. Yes, I scan them. I extract if needed. I design to meet my target size...and then I share. Let me give you some samples on how I made it to be possible.

Check out this orange ribbon:


Recently I shared to you my projects about popsicle frames. And one of those frames used this ribbon.

And if you could remember, this was also the ribbon I used when I designed my Christmas card entry in Sulit where I made a printed version of that entry during the campaign period. I just used the plain back side of the ribbon.

I love making hybrid projects but I also love doing digital projects out of my physical items. So I scanned and extracted this ribbon and offer them as free download last December 21, 2010 in my digital scrapbooking blog:

I scanned the real paper, designed for the size needed, and just added some texture for additional effect. I also scanned the buttons and just recolored to blend with the whole kit. I named this kit as Grace Minikit #1. If you want to download it for yourself, you can visit my blog here.

This is just one sample on how I work with physical elements and share as digital items. This could be a hard work sometimes especially when I am handling with extraction but I'm still glad that at the end of the day I have something to share.