The Return of Halloween!!!

Halloween is back this year! We received notice that trick-or-treating was planned again this year which was great for us as we love Halloween. Last year the trick-or-treating was canceled due to the typhoon so we just had a party at home. What I failed to mention was during the party, which was held in our garage, there was a small group of maybe 10 kids who were peaking over the wall which were from outside the village (and hence had no idea that the holiday was canceled). We felt bad because what sucks worse than being a kid and having to watch a party from the outside. Plus they had made an effort and had their faces painted a bit! Since the party was in the garage anyways, we had them come in and join the games. They did and fun was had by all. Until we realized the little boogers had taken a bunch of our Halloween decorations (these little rubber characters that hang from a string). Actually, fun was had by all still. I guess those kids just got extra party favors. So, we had to go and buy a bunch of decorations.


Halloween is gaining popularity here and so decorations are becoming easier to find with the major department stores and toy stores stocking many items. We have been going to UNTC every year because we love the selection of items they have. They have a REALLY good selection of Halloween items. If you go there, the building looks just like a house or factory--there is no signage. I remember the first time we went, we were unsure if we were even at the right place. They also have a slew of Christmas items but we just hit Divisoria for that. The head above we got a couple of years ago at SM and is hung above a body we make.

This is what we bought there for about $40. Worth noting that despite the fact that they are a "wholesaler" some of the prices compared to Toys r Us are the same or higher. Some were definitely way cheaper--you just have to know your prices. Also we are able to find weird items there like the skull in the first picture. The little pile of dolls in the top right of this picture is what we are replacing from last year that were liberated by the outside kids.

We will start decorating our house this week!!

Did I Mention it is Hot???

It is summer. Morning to night, it is hot. Constant sweating. Two showers a day is no longer enough. I cannot wait for rainy season. We had fiesta last weekend in my in-laws neighborhood. Just remember when looking at the pictures that it is a million degrees.

There are always random fire dancers every fiesta.

The kids had a dance contest. This was the winning team.


This chicken just amused me because the head was held up with a mini flag.

Why yes, I am Martha Stewart

I have noticed that since moving here, I tend to be more "crafty". This is not to say I have any skill at it, it just comes as a surprise since I really did not do ANYTHING craft related before moving out here. Here, life seems to be opposite of the states in some regards. I feel like in the states, I was of the mindset of why do something if I can pay for it to already be done. Why make coffee in the morning when I can just grab a cup on the way to work? Why iron when the dry cleaner will do it for me, better and faster? Here, there is the mindset of why pay to have it done, when I can do it myself. And this thinking led me to try and become Martha.

Despite what you may think, it is the Christmas season. The evening news has a countdown which is why I know there are 37 days left until Christmas. No Thanksgiving to break it up or get in the way (since I am going to SF this year for Christmas, I was overruled and Thanksgiving will not happen at my house this year). Thus, the start of the Christmas shopping. We have 18 village security guards, ~30 clients or professional associates, countless god-kids, and billions of people in my in-laws neighborhood. These are our somewhat obligatory gifts and do not count close friend or family. Our security guards get grocery baskets (rice, ham, sardines, tuna, cookies, tube of potato chip things that look like french fries), clients get wine (some get fruit as well), god-kids get age appropriate books or educational toys, and the billions in Tondo get toothbrushes (we gave out 500 last year). Needless to say, we start early.

Wine was selected at S&R and we went to Divisoria to buy the wrapping (as well as a fake Christmas tree). The pre-decorated bags were P25 each (~$.50) but we could buy plain craft paper bags for P13 (~$.25). Guess which way we went?

Started with a plain bag

Bought red and green ribbon for P17 (~$.35 per 50 yard roll), little holly leaves, and red berries ($.30 for 10 sticks with two pieces each), Christmas labels for P10 (100 labels ~$.20), and a glue gun for P60 (~$1.25).

While watching a downloaded episode of Top Chef, we made the above bag.

Halloween!!!!

Our village is one of the villages in the Philippines that usually participates in Halloween. While it is not a country-wide holiday (like All Saints Day the following day), some areas do have events. This year, Halloween was canceled in our village due to Ondoy. Besides the fact that many houses in the village sustained damage, a squatter area right outside the walls was almost completely decimated. Thus, it was decided that the money usually spent on the Halloween should be spent (and rightly so) on grocery donations for the people who lost their homes.

The kids (who live in Tondo which is one of the areas that does not have Halloween celebrations) had been asking about Halloween for the past few months (since perhaps July) since they had been here last year for the village party and trick-or-treating. There was no way we could just tell them Halloween had been canceled so we instead decided to throw a Halloween party at home.

We did everything fairly traditional with the exception of costumes because we knew the kids would want to swim and it seemed like a waste to have everyone all dressed up just to jump in the pool 20 minutes later. We had swimming, spaghetti for lunch, and a bunch of games. A slew of the kids slept over and they stayed up late into the night watching horror movies. It was a very successful holiday all around and everyone woke up early enough to go to the cemetery for All Saints Day the following day.

Bobbing for apples....

Doughnut on a string game

Our Halloween giveaways were little paper mache pumpkins (which look like eggs due to the fact that I used water balloons instead of normal balloons). We filled them with candy.

Christmas Tree!!!

The Philippines has the longest Christmas season of anywhere in the world. One can start to see decorations and hear the music as early as August although the official kickoff is the "ber" months (i.e., SeptemBER). This year it started later or I am just getting better about ADDing it.

We started decorating for Christmas late (again, relative to where we live). Perfect example: when we were hanging spiderwebs and positioning a headless man in our window for Halloween (our village participates in Trick or Treating woo hoo!!), our neighbor up the street was hanging up his Christmas lights. We started our decorating the day after Thanksgiving because that was the day we picked up our tree from S&R.

S&R ships in Douglas firs from Oregon for the Christmas season which rocks my world because I hate plastic trees. They are just not my thing. I have to have the nice pine smell for Christmas. For P3799 (about $75) I bought a real tree. It smells fantastic!! Admittedly, I am not 100% positive it will stay green until new years but I am optimistic. I went with a friend of mine and we picked out the best tree (read greenest) we could find and I think it looks great. Please note I am not one of those people that decorates trees beautifully. In fact, I have a friend coming over this week to redo the tree because she says it looks cruddy with my hastily bought decorations. In my defense, I impulse bought sale balls, random candy canes, and was assisted in my decorating by my creative team (a 5-year-old and a 4-year-old).


We bought a plain wreath and had a niece decorate it with berries and pine cones for the front door.

The staircase garland looks way cooler in real life because the little presents are lights that light up. Each 9' garland costs P150 (about $3) so life is good there!

Ah, this is my Santa Claus that we have dangling from the lights. It is paper-mache and we got him for the bargain price of P200 (about $4) in Paete, Laguna.

For some reason, people kept warning me against putting lights on my tree. I am not sure why. I am feeding it lots of sugar water and bought the overpriced lights that do not heat up too much. Although everyone told me that if I do not put lights on it, the tree will last longer, I find that akin to the people who put plastic on their couches. Sure, your couch will last forever, but who the fuck wants to sit on it????

**Side note--Mike at S&R Congressional is the coolest guy ever!! Not only did he not let us steal a tree that someone had reserved, he tolerated us picking a tree all the way in the back. Best employee ever!!!**

Agno, Pangasinan

We spent a few days around Valentine's Day in Agno which was about five hours away from Manila. The last hour consisted of a very rocky dirt road so the distance actually is not that great. We probably could have done the final hour in 15-20 minutes had the road been paved. We have a friend whose family owns 60 hectares, some of it right along the coast.

We had never been up there before but it is really, really beautiful. Clean WARM water in the ocean and fantastic sand (albeit yellow and not the white sand you find in the islands to the south). It is also kinda cool to be in a place with no cell phone service and an hour drive away from any sort of civilization (unless you count the neighboring farms).

Our friend's cottage was well appointed and no air conditioning was needed since it was right on the water and the ocean provided a great breeze. Unfortunately the water was too rough for any snorkeling but we were still able to wade into the water a little.

This is a Carabo. Agno is mostly farmland and the carabo are very cute to me. They are cute in an ugly way.

Crazy Month

This has been a crazy busy month. We just got back from a two week family vacation in Hawaii (which was awesome--Hawaii is one of my favorite places in the world). It was great to be back in the states and to see all of my sisters and father. Hawaii is a lot like the Philippines.....it is just cleaner and has a much, much, much better infrastructure. Otherwise, the two places are quite similar: great beaches and jungle and really nice people (although I think people from Hawaii have to be some of the sweetest in the world). We did some shopping for our new house there including buying ceiling fans. The fans are 110V so this may turn out to be a mistake depending on how difficult the conversion is but we were able to buy 16 Hunter brand fans for the price of eight fans here. I also received an amazing red Kitchen Aid from my mother (again 110V but the price was $300 there versus the $585 it sells for here) as well as a fantastic set of Henckels knives from my father.Our new house is progressing. It is not completed and is behind my dream schedule (although right on time via the contract). The day before we left, we bought our oven and range. The range will be put in the bricked area above and we are having a chimney type hood (I do not know how to describe it. Once completed, I will post a picture). A really psycho blue was used for the kitchen which I adore. Buying the ovens was a little bit of a pain because I am unfamiliar with the brands so we were kinda shopping blindly. Total for one oven and a range (both cast iron) was just under P100,000 (about $2,250) which is insane. I miss the inexpensive appliances of the states.
One thing I love is the little vent outside for the oven hood (pictured above). How cute is that! These little details are a lot of the reason we went with the design company we did; they take the smallest details into consideration and make them beautiful.
Our foyer ceiling is complete and just needs the chandelier installed. My computer monitor is showing the picture as a wonky red, but in reality, it is a very true red and the wood is very dark brown, almost black.

All the interior and exterior doors have been installed and I am loving them. One of my favorite parts of the house. The doors were all handmade (which apparently can be less expensive than premade doors). They are solid wood and very heavy.

Yesterday was my first time seeing the driver/boy's room. I had not been up to the roof deck area as no stairs had been installed and the ladder the workers were using scared me. Above is the bathroom for the driver/boy which is fairly standard. I am posting this namely for my sister's who, like me, are a little creeped out by the idea of household staff. Although there is nothing luxurious about the bathroom, there is nothing wrong with it either. I could very comfortably shower there.

Above is one of our air conditioning compressors. We exclusives used split type air con which means the unit is out side. We have placed most on the side of the house in discreet areas (nothing bugs me more that a beautiful home with an ugly air conditioner sticking out of the wall) and this one is placed on the roof deck outside of the driver's room.


We opted to use terracotta tiles for the two lanais as well as the entrance. The center tiles are malaga tiles which are essentially painted cement tiles. These are the same tiles used above the range in the kitchen. This is the most recent picture I have of the front which is from November 07. For some reason I have not taken any newer pictures of the front. The most important item to acknowledge is the giant ugly prison wall has been removed and replaced with a lower, more friendly looking wall. I will have to remember to take a more recent picture of the front this week.

We also completed a lot of our furniture shopping (I think we spent too much time doing it....a salesman at a store saw us and said, "Hi! You usually shop at our Trinoma branch!" Once the sales people start to recognize you, I think it is time to start winding it down and making the purchase). I will later do a more detailed post about the shopping excursions.

Christmas in Tondo

Well, another Christmas has come and gone.

In the days leading up, we made Christmas cookies....

On Christmas Day, we had good food....

Yummy lechon....

The best mechado (a Philippine version of beef stew)...

The adults were drinking....

The kids were dressed up to greet and collect their holiday gifts.....

And a good time was had by all the visitors, friends and family alike...

Christmas-I Am My Mother's Daughter

Christmas season is well upon us and we just realized that we have little time to buy all the gifts we need to buy. Besides parents and my family in the states, we have some professional gifts (i.e., bank manager, village security guards), god children, and the neighborhood kids.

Christmas in this neighborhood is kinda like Halloween in the states. All the neighborhood kids come to a few houses here with their parents and they receive gifts. It is actually really cute, all the kids you see 364 days a year barefoot in their play clothes are all dressed up in their Christmas best. People here usually give away money (about P10-20) or candy. We give away toothbrushes and toothpaste. This is exactly like my mom who used to put toothbrushes in our Easter baskets as well as Christmas stockings. Lest you think the kids hate the toothbrushes, I actually had a couple of kids ask me when they get their toothpaste. Also, this is not as boring a gift as it sounds. We currently live in Tondo and the kids that come on Christmas have very, very little money. When a family has little money, dental hygiene does not usually rank high on the list of items to spend money for. Even if they cannot buy more toothpaste once they use up what we gave them, our thought is it is better to brush with just water or salt than nothing at all. Okay, so maybe the gift is boring but it helps them in the long run. Better than candy. Or money (the firecracker vendors show up starting Christmas so the second a kid gets money it goes straight to firecrackers). By the way, last year we bought (I think) around 120 pieces and we ran out.

The god kids do not fare much better in terms of "fun" gifts. I went to the St. James Bazaar this past weekend and bought most of the god kids age appropriate books (another of my mother's trademarks....I cannot tell you how many books we received as kids. It works through, as adults we are all ardent readers). We also bought a pair of sneakers for one of the god kids who is always running around but is either a) in a pair of slippers too big for him or b)barefoot. We bought sneakers that can be slipped on so hopefully he will put them on before going out to play.

And finally, some of the younger god kids (as well as some nieces/nephews/etc) are receiving play dough. Not the cute Play Doh that one buys at a toy store but nice bright homemade play dough just like my mom used to make us as kids.