Pinay WAHM

 ...is that still even a thing today? I stopped blogging actively several years ago...so now I'm like starting all over again.  I don't even know what to post anymore. A lot has changed since I started this blog in 2008. Yep, that's how long ago it's been. Back then I just wanted to write whatever. I was already a WAHM - Work at Home Mom when I started this blog and that's how my blog title came about. I started doing work-at-home jobs as early as 2002. I had a handful of different jobs I was juggling at that time so blogging was just really something I did during my free time. After a while I did paid blogging. I did that for a few years. I tried to do it as much as I could but my 'real' jobs had to be my priority so my blogging had to take a back seat. In retrospect, that may be the reason why I slowly lost interest in doing it. I tried going back to it every now and then, but the 'mojo' is just not there so I stopped altogether but opted to keep m...

Indeed it is... We were at Crosswinds Tagaytay last year. It's an ideal place if you want to have a quick get-away from the hustle and bustle of the city. The whole place has the Swiss vibe in it. The tranquility it offers is something that soothes the soul. We stayed at Grand Quartier Tower 3 which is a low-rise luxury condominium that has its own gym and pool. It was a very relaxing stay and we can't wait to go back as soon as possible.

What a "rude awakening"....well, a rude way to wake up to I should say. A huge house fire...right across the street of our house.😲😲 I was awaken by some popping sounds at around 2:30 in the morning. My first thought was there was some kind of a fight going on. I stayed in bed waiting if it will go away but it continued so I got up only to be told by the husband that our neighbor's house is on fire. Our first question of course is if the neighbor's able to get out. He did with the help of the next door neighbor. It's very scary to watch his house fully engulfed in fire. The firemen did a good job containing the fire so the neighbors' house/s were not damaged as far as we know. We stayed up until around 5 AM. I just laid there thinking how fast things can happen. We really can't tell what tomorrow can bring. I'm sure that neighbor didn't go to bed last night thinking he may not have a house the next day. That is what he's faced now. His house i...

 Where to start. It's been a minute. I guess first things first. A post... I thought I won't be able to post anymore because my blog would not load so I emailed my domain host back in October last year. They wanted some things from my provider and I honestly didn't want to go through the hassle so I just took my time.😄 Fast forward to last week. I decided to post on the Blogger help desk and lo and behold, someone replied. Thank goodness. I sent the information to my domain host and voila...my blog's up and running again. If only I knew it's that simple to get a fix....hmmm...oh well. Anyway, there is a lot of work this blog needs. I let it sit idle for years. I really don't know how to start but I'll try. I have to relearn a lot of things like putting a header on it. I used to have a very pretty header made by another blogger but the host of the image either closed/shut down. The header just disappeared...and so did a lot of images imbedded in a lot of the...

L-O-S-T. I guess that about sums up how I'm feeling right now...with blogging anyway. I don't even know how to start this post. 😕 It's been almost 2 years since I last posted. It's not that I have nothing to write about. I have plenty but I seem to have lost interest in blogging. I thought  at first that it was just a phase. I thought it would only last for a few days but days turned into weeks then months then years and I still haven't blogged. Nothing sparked my interest to blog so I just didn't. Not even paid posts lured me back. I even considered deleting it altogether. I felt like I'm wasting my money paying for the domain name. But I can't do it so I just keep on paying. I can't seem to let go of the domain 'Pinay Wahm' because I got it when not many Moms were able to make a living or earn in the comforts of home. I also have a lot of personal posts here that when I want to get details about something that happened in my life I can...

That's what happened with this blog. It seems the host for the personalized blog template I used to have expired. I checked one day and voila...I couldn't read anything on it because it was plastered with this: Since I am not very active with my blogging anymore I just let it stay that way for a few weeks. I was hoping that it will go back to normal when the new month starts. Well, it didn't. I asked a blogger friend who is very knowledgeable with blogging and is still actively blogging what to do and she advised that I could just change the template and use the free ones so I did. I chose one of the free ones here and that's it. The little I know about templates, HTML, etc is almost non-existent but I'm glad I was able to navigate through the settings and changed the template. Another blogger friend posted something about this as well and it's only there that I found out that this 3rd party hosting is now charging a lot to use their service. It used to b...

Browsing is probably more like it. My blogging has been so sporadic in the past 2, maybe 3, 4...5...years and digging through my old posts here makes me wish I blog more. I used to have multiple entries in a day. At the peak of it my blogging frenzy I had as many as 129 posts in a month. That's an average of about 4 posts a day. Ha? So what happened? Life happened I guess...and laziness got in the way as well. But just like anything, blogging somehow lost its appeal to me. I still blog but not nearly as much as I used to. But that's okay since I still come back here every now and then. Anyway, life has been going okay around here. Nothing that exciting. I actually feel like we're due for a vacation. The little one and I were just talking about it a couple of weeks ago. I mentioned to her that I really want to go somewhere but have no idea where. Part of me wants to visit home but part of me only wants to stay here. I'm always torn like that. The excitement of seeing...

My family and I have really simple ways to bond and spend quality time together. We don't have to go out of town or go to expensive amusements parks to amuse us or have fun. We're happy biking either around the neighborhood or in a park near here. Another thing we like to do is hiking. We've only gone hiking a few times and the first time we did it, we weren't quite prepared. We were not wearing the correct clothes and we didn't do the necessary precautions like putting on insect repellant and such. As a result, we got bitten by a few insects while we were on what we thought was a harmless hike. Anyway, we learned our lesson after that experience. We now have all the repellants we need and we make sure to use them everytime we go somewhere we know have a lot of trees/plants and/or wild animals. While looking for the repellants, we also looked for poison ivy treatment at www.buyrhustox.com  because we never know if there are poison ivy lurking in those parks we...

Simple joys. This gardenia is a gift from a dear friend a couple of years ago. It had flowers last year but not this many. I didn't expect it to last for as long as it has because I have a black thumb...I think anyway. It came in a smaller pot so I had to transplant it. I was debating whether I should transplant it directly on to the ground or to a bigger pot. I chose the latter, obviously. I was scared to transplant it on the ground because our last gardenia perished after a couple of years after we moved it to the ground. I don't know why but plants on some part of our yard just don't survive. Anyway, the gardenia is thriving in its pot so I'm not moving it anywhere. It had a bunch of flowers that started to bloom at the end of April.  It's been a pleasure watching it have so many blooms in a span of 1 week. My little one and I took turns in taking pictures everyday. We get so excited everytime a new bud turns into a flower. The last picture was tak...

The place where our little is taking her piano lesson is also a music store. They have almost all of the musical instruments except for a piano. I think most of their instruments are also used because a lot of them look vintage. They're in good condition though. Last weekend I went around the store to see the different instruments and how much they cost. The first things I checked were the guitars. I saw a lot of different makers like Yamaha and Fender. I must say the prices are not very appealing to me because they're still a bit expensive considering they're used instruments. When I got home I decided to check online and saw that a brand new  squier at musiciansfriend.com is cheaper than the used ones in that music store. I'm not sure if the store has a squier but I will definitely look when we got there this weekend.

Our little one just celebrated a birthday. True to our nature we didn't have any big celebration. She just wanted to eat at her favorite restaurant and we did but on a different date because her birthday itself was on a weekday. We went the weekend before. Aside from that dinner there's only one other thing she wanted. Instead of a cake she wanted to bake brownies...so we did. We had fun baking her birthday brownie but we had a lot more fun when she decided that she wanted to form a pyramid using squares of brownies. The brownie was gooey inside so we had a hard time cutting it in perfect squares. We were cracking up as we were trying to form the pyramid using the uneven brownie squares. She really had a ball while we were trying to figure out how to go about building her pyramid but we did it. We put one candle on top of it so she had something to blow after her happy birthday song. One of the things we did a couple of weeks before her birthday was ...

I've been racking my brain as to what to give our little one for her upcoming birthday. She's not much help because she really doesn't one anything but a brownie cake for her birthday....and to eat in her favorite restaurant. But I still feel like I want to get her something. Then I learned that Guitar Center has, zoom h2n at a great price!  It's a recorder that she can use making her little movies in her little gadget. As it is right now she's only using the recorder on her gadget and the quality is really poor. With this little recorder I'm pretty sure her 'movies' will have better quality audio. I can't wait for her to get it and use it. She'll definitely love it.

The only time I'm reminded that it's Spring already is because of the so-called 'spring forward'. For those not familiar with 'spring forward', it's when we adjust our clocks an hour ahead thus resulting in a lost hour so to speak. It's part of the daylight savings time that I really don't understand, well I do, I just don't get why it has to be done. Anyway, that happened about a month ago. I'm now adjusted to it but where did Spring go? It's still spring technically but the temps we have are very much summer like temps now. It seems Spring sprung too much that it skipped us altogether. Oh well. Since Spring skipped us, we may not be able to bike around the neighborhood because it's too hot to do that now. We can still do that but we may have to do it in the park instead. We have no summer plans in place but it doesn't mean anything. We like to do spur of the moment trips/stuff. One time we just decided to drive for 8 hours to ...

When the little one was about 8 she asked 'Santa' for a keyboard for Christmas. It was one of the many items in her list and she knew that not all in her list will be fulfilled. Still, we, I mean Santa brought her a keyboard. Since I'm usually the one in-charge of looking for the items in her list, I started by checking out http://www.musiciansfriend.com/ since they have anything and everything music related. I'm not sure where we got the keyboard from but she was ecstatic and was excited to play it for a good couple of days. Fast forward to present time, the keyboard is still practically brand new. It's stashed in the corner of her closet for the last 6 years. But it seems it's not forgotten yet because she just brought it up in one of our conversations over the weekend. So who knows? Maybe she's dust it off and start learning on how to play it. I hope....

It feels like it anyway. Our weather down here is so bipolar. Last week we were in the 80s, this week it's going to be in the lower 60s most days then we'll have 70s by the weekend. I think it's confused, eh? I'm used to it already...I think. Although this year it's been quite mild. Our polonia tree in front hasn't lost all its leaves yet. If I remember it correctly it should have been bald by now but I may be mistaken since my memory is no longer that reliable. Anyway I'm hoping that when March rolls in, it should look like this... I really like this sight since everything else around here will be brown right around that time. Right now all I can see are the seed pods and some leaves that are still hanging on to dear life. As far as the our other plants/trees, they're hideous at the moment. Our flower beds are so unkempt that I barely look at them these days. Oh well. I'm hoping I'll be able to work on them in the coming weeks, at least r...

Yep, it's that time of the year again when we tend to give more than usual. Majority of the gifts have been given away already but there are still some that are still waiting to be handed out. I still have a couple of gifts to send to my family back home but there's no rush because it's a 2 in 1 gift for my brother and also for my sister. For my musically inclined brother, I might just send him a gift card for an online store so he can get all the hot licks products he wants and needs for his band gigs. Originally, I wanted to get him some hot licks guitar DVDs but I'm not sure which ones he wants so I decided to just send him some 'funds' so he can buy the ones he actually needs. For my sister, I still haven't made up my mind if I'll get her a gift or just give her the money so she can get whatever she wants as well. I have about a month still to make a decision so there's still time....I think.

...and guess what? I'm wearing a sweater! HA! I'm sure my husband would be laughing his head off if he sees me wearing a sweater now...but I care not. Anyhoo...it's been a pleasant couple of days around here. I think Fall received the memo already that it should be here by now and to stop procrastinating. Per our weather people on TV, highest this week will be in the mid-80s while lowest is in the low 60s. I know somebody will be the happiest because of this...his name starts with 'hus' and ends with 'band'. Incidentally, today is also Columbus Day on this side of the world. It's considered a national holiday which means federal offices are closed. With that being said, we don't normally observe regular holidays here in our household. We usually do our normal stuff on days like today. I work from home, husband has his own small business while the little one is homeschooled. We schedule our own holidays. That means we can take off anytime we want ...

I think my husband has a fascination with lights. He keeps replacing the ones we have here at home. Well, he actually wants to replace every single one of them with LED. He said it will save us money in the long run so I just let him do his thing. It seems that he's not only doing it at home because I just saw him checking www.warehouselighting.com this morning. It seems he's also planning in replacing the lights in their shop. I've been to their shop several times and I know they have a lot of lights there so changing all of those regular lights into LEDs will save them a lot of dough I'm sure. Hopefully he'll find the ones he's looking for.

The last time I posted about a weather disturbance here was a few months ago when TS Colin swung by. What can I say...but the coverage for Colin's 'arrival' at that time was over the top. I don't know if that's the norm now when it comes to these kinds of things but I know it is...haha. It seems that when some kind of a weather disturbance is in the horizon the weather people just overdo it. Now comes Matthew. Well, he already came a couple of days ago. It seems Matthew made worldwide news because even my friends I haven't heard from in months emailed asking how we are doing. Well appreciated of course but I just wish they didn't have to worry about nothing. I even read in the news that a well known TV anchor went as far as saying that people will die if they don't evacuate. What? I know that a hurricane can be devastating but to go on TV saying that can just create unnecessary stress and panic...and panic they did unfortunately. Some hotels raised the...

My friend's son is into playing different instruments at the moment. I remember my friend kind of forcing him to learn to play the piano when he was still very young, That's her instrument of choice but that didn't go very far because he's more interested in other instruments like the drums and electric guitar. My friend already got him a set of drum when he was younger and he now plays it with his band. He's now asking for a custom prs s2 electric guitar for his upcoming birthday. His birthday is still a few months away so my friend is doing her research as to what kind of an electric guitar she should get him. I'm trying to help her by sending her the links of different electric guitar I find online as well as some recommendations from my musician brother who knows a thing or two when it comes to electric guitar because that his instrument of choice. I just wish that one day, I'll be able to actually hear her son play both the drums and guitar in person. ...