happy birthday AQUILA!

we decided to go with the pocoyo theme. here's the banner i made. i have to show all the pocoyo characters so i used many different images to complete them in one image. making this is not that easy. so please do not copy without my permission. for anyone who's interested, just tell me and i will send you a copy without the image of my son and the happy birthday text (1296x864 pixels or 18x12 inches at 72dpi) happy to share =)

sweet and spicy chicken wings

i got the recipe from the girltalk forum and is now my favorite! kudos to Frenzied for the recipe! i just modified it a little coz i want my chicken very crispy =)

▪ marinade chicken wings in calamansi and patis for 30 minutes
▪ dust chicken in cornstarch
▪ deep fry
▪ on a separate pan, put sweet chili sauce (jufran or del monte) and stir fry chicken until the sauce will caramelize.

this recipe is very yummy. i served this to my family and friends and they looooved it. and every time there's a pot luck, i always bring this =) so happy to share this to anyone who asks.

my birthday

i celebrated my birthday with the family at trinoma mall yesterday. hubby bought a bike for our son (as my gift, i don't need anything for myself). we ate and then aquila rode the carousel again at timezone. 

aquila is growing so fast! sigh!

at night time, friends came and brought a smores cake. i didn't want to take my picture with the cake blowing the candle. im too old for that =)

anyway, i enjoyed my day. though i told everyone that i will not celebrate my 30th birthday so i will be forever 29. but can't beat the time.

now my throat is sore coz of the cakes i ate since mother's day. all of them are chocolate cakes!!! also i haven't checked the weighing scale, too scared to face the truth. =)

still need to prepare for aquila's birthday celebration on the 22nd. i don't know where to start. boo!

boy's room

here is my little boy's room. though we also moved the master's bed in his room so we can all sleep together. my boy wakes up in the middle of the night because he wants to sleep by my side. i used to carry him to the master's bedroom but then his sleep is disturbed by the all the lights and noise. my hubby uses the computer until the wee hours. so now, we moved our bed next to his crib. whenever he wakes up, he stands and cry a little to wake me then i will just pick him up from the crib and lay him between me and hubby then he will sleep right away.the room has plain off white paint all over. when we were expecting a baby boy, i wanted to paint he whole room. but then decided not to. instead, i just searched for some stickers to modify the room. the elephant patterns are actually placemats. i bought them from trinoma, cut off the edges and unnecessary border and sticked them to the wall. i used a red duct tape to stick them and the horizontal stripes. nice eh? no sweat to put stripes on the walls coz painting stipes is a little laborious.

here's a wall clock that i made. it was actually a freebie from baby company. we spent about 15k for baby stuff last year so we got 6 or 8 clocks =) most of them i gave to my friends as gifts. they also made theirs like this. it has little circle frames for the pictures you can put. i painted the hands of the clock and put a heart shaped sticker on the seconds hand.

blue curtains coz it's a boy, right? i had to cut and sew this very thick blue curtains to give way to the air conditioner. i pinned the stuffed fishies we got from dads buffet =) another freebies, yey!

and i bought these little animals curtain hanger from sm department store. another cute find!

my first cupcake

here's my first ever attempt to decorate cupcakes. i am still deciding whether to serve a cake or cupcakes on my son's first birthday party. don't mind the pink and purple colors, it's just a test drive. i am actually thinking of having chocolate cupcakes with light or navy blue frosting and silver or gold sprinkles.

me and my hubby ate the cupcakes after i took these pictures. the cupcake is good but the icing is yucky. hubby didn't mind the taste but for me, ugh!

i used this recipe i got somewhere in the web:

450 g powdered sugar

1 3/4 cups of shortening

1 tsp vanilla

coloring

well it tasted like you're eating Crisco from a can... bad! next time i'll use all butter. will try again tomorrow.

see you later, alligator!

i want to decorate the cake of my son's first birthday. so i dedicated all my week to learn the basics of cake decorating. here's my first attempt to create a cake topper made of gumpaste. i made it from scratch. no shaped molds used whatsoever. it is actually a homemade marshmallow fondant i learned to make from you tube.

i used wiltons paste coloring but i was really not satisfied with the result. i wanted bright colors. too bad the only available colors was the garden tone 4-icing colors set

for the light blue part of the eyes, i used mc. cormick liquid dye. and i was really satisfied with the colors.

i will experiment more with the colors next time, liquid dyes are OK. i thought color pastes are better but for me liquid food colors is all right for a beginner like me.

'bout me

a short background about me:

born in pampanga but now having a difficulty conversing in kapampangan fluently coz since college when i went to school here in manila, i seldom see or meet a kapampangan. i remember my first few days of college, whenever i talk to my classmates, they find my accent funny. very true, i can tell a capampangan when he/she is talking in tagalog. we capampangan also have this loud voice ;P

me and my older brother was raised by my grandmother coz my parents chose to work abroad.

i am proud to be a kapampangan, it is VERY TRUE that pampanga people are good looking ;D and can COOK really well. but i was never taught how to cook, to be honest. i just grew up watching my lola cook. the first time i attempted to cook by myself, i was in first year college. i cooked nilagang baka. well it was a success but i can't be proud just by cooking nilaga, that's so freaking easy. anyway, later on i began cooking sinigang, kare-kare, lengua, paksiw na pata, etc. lengua is my specialty back then but it's been more that 5 years since the last time i cooked lengua. believe it or not, i can cook but i don't know how to make a perfect hard boiled egg. all my attempts always have the runny yellow part. i don't time my cooking thats why. i will include my recipes next time i cook and have time to jot things down.

i don't have a green thumb. i used to plant when i was little but now whatever plant i touch will die =(

i am a wife since... (i don't really know when exactly we got married, that was i think four years ago). i have this weakness, that i cannot remember exact dates of birthdays and anniversaries. i only remember months, and my birth date. i don't remember our wedding anniversary because it didn't matter to me. i only remember our anniversary of being together. this july we will be celebrating our 11th anniversary ♥♥♥

i am also a mother. this may my son is turning one. yay! what a difficult year! i planned to have a baby but i didn't expect the very tiring work that comes with the package of motherhood. well, almost a year has passed and i'm still standing! OH YES I CAN!

i am an artist. i took up fine arts in university of santo tomas. i am a person who will not buy things that i can do by myself. =) you will learn later on in my blog that being an artist is my way to be a practical person and a cheapskate too. coz i am all diy.