The Continuing Saga of Cleaning

I spent a lot of time cleaning, cleaning, and cleaning last week. December has come and gone, yet I was only able to do a general cleaning just last week. The only year I didn't do a Pre-holiday cleaning. It's a never ending battle of juggling time and priorities. And I just can't be good at everything—I have been trying my best though, the reason I'm blogging now. lols

I find it so hard to clean and revive a neglected garden. Weeds are everywhere! Plus the wall crawlers I have planted more than a year has become so invasive that it even crawls to where it should not. Since I used to have a variety of beautiful pants around my small garden, we've found it so hard to paint the walls behind them, so I decided to just plant a wall crawler. I wasn't able to take photos, but I'm sure you are familiar with it. The crawler plant has tiny leaves that are meant to camouflage walls. I remember being so excited to see it growing and slowly crawling our walls, but after experiencing how difficult it is to manage, I almost completely regret having it. Imagine one would have to trim it at least once a week to prevent it from going crazy. And if you don't have a hired gardener, then good luck! So please wish me luck! =)

Anyway, to continue the saga of salvaging my garden, I purchased few plants I used to have.

A type of Malaysian Mums...

Candle flower...

And one of my favorite shady-loving plant: Impatiens. Its flowers may look so ordinary—similar to Periwinkle, but I like its pretty foliage. I've started propagating it through cuttings.

Yay! A happy gardener is a happy gardener. =)

Modified Planner and a Giveaway

Not mine, but if you have the time, please check out how my sister turns a boring planner...

into a unique vintage(y) cutie!

Brilliant no? The best thing about it is you can't find it elsewhere—and she's giving it away to one lucky person, of course for free! The giveaway is open world wide, so please follow this link for the mechanics. There are five days left 'til it ends, so join now!

Happy Blogging!

Anti-SOPA and PIPA

This blog is not in any way technology-related, but as an Internet user, I must help inform even a few people  what the future Internet looks like if SOPA passes.

SOPA stands for "Stop Online Piracy Act" - a proposed bill in the United States House of Representatives and PIPA (Protect IP Act) in the U.S Senate- They are two proposed bills that would allow Department of Justice and copyright owners to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling copyright infringements. - Actions could include taking down any website that would link to allegedly infringing website.

There is already an act that requires websites such as Youtube to take down any videos that contain infringing content. Say, you uploaded a video of yourself, singing or dancing, Youtube may pull it down because of the song you use. But they are not directly responsible for your action. Now if it passes, Youtube can be blocked any time or maybe put on the blacklist, you could as well, face legal action because of using a copyrighted material.

So you may think, No, they can't drag me into courts because I'm not from the U.S!  Yes, but think about this since SOPA allows to go after the ISPs (Internet Service Providers). Large websites, advertising networks, or payment processors from the United States such as Paypal. They could simply require any of those to block and ban you from doing business with them. That would truly hurt me since I am working online and rely on Paypal to receive my compensation.

Bloggers are sure easy targets since what we do is share information. Blogging is all about sharing and promoting. Since my blog is still hosted in blogger, which is owned by Google. They could easily take this blog down, as well as Google—even if I am just sharing an effective product I tried or just by simply linking an unknowingly infringing blog/website. And also, my domain name is registered in the US too. So no, they can't drag me to jail, but they can easily shut this blog down, block me from here and there. A single complaint is all it takes.

How it can affect most users? 

Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, Wikipedia and so many more giant websites we frequent are all in the United States. Since they would become responsible of what their users would share, how can they guarantee that none of their millions of users will upload or share any copyright infringing material? If SOPA passes, expect limited amount of information all over the Internet. Social Media would be dead.

Web Goes on Strike
Big names such as Google, Wikipedia, Reddit, Tumblr, Mozilla, Wordpress, ETSY, Vimeo, Flickr and many more participate in the protest against SOPA. Wikipedia even blacked out all of their English articles for 24 hours as a protest against SOPA.

It's not too late late to take part, you may sign your petition here:

SOPA STRIKE

Not in the US? Petition the State Department

Saying Hello to 2012

We celebrated the New Year's Eve at my MIL's house. Every year, we have to choose whether to spend the Christmas eve or the New Year's eve with my in-laws. For years, I have hated the idea. Don't get me wrong, I get along so well with my in-laws (more than you can imagine), but I believe, the eve should always be celebrated at home—where we live. Anyway, we could always spend the actual day with them. My husband always tells me that it's alright if I want to spend it at home. But of course, deep inside him, he wants to be with us, at the same time, be with his mother, brother, sister, nephews, and nieces. So to make things easier for him, we always spend either one of the two important evenings at his mom's house. Plus I love my mother-in-law, that's why. - Enough said.

Pristine and Julianna

Just in case you're wondering why there were gifts on New Year's Eve. My sister-in-law and her husband are from a different religion (not really an issue) where they don't celebrate Christmas, so they give away presents during New Year's Eve.

My daughters with their cousins from father's side

I didn't have the chance to take photos of our feast since almost everyone ate earlier—fact I was not so happy about. Salo-salo (eating together), more so Media Noche lost their meanings. No way can be done at home. Anyone could take snack prior to Media Noche, but at least save some tummy space for full meals during the salo-salo dinner. Well, it didn't happen at our home, so it almost became an ordinary dinner just with extra-ordinary amount of food.

Anyway, I baked Braso de Mercedes the day before. We had Palabok, Kare-Kare, Rellenong Bangus, Biko, and the good old bacon and ham. The table wasn't anymore pleasing to photograph even before 11 p.m. hehe

Lighting up their sparklers

I used to buy trumpets for kids during New Year's Eve, just so they could have their own way of contributing to noise. LOL But my oh my, after seeing vendors trying on every trumpets they were selling just to be able to convince buyers how powerful the trumpets are, I have changed my mind. hehe I was supposed to pick plastic ones, thinking I could disinfect them anyway, but we all know most of the toys are from China. And we were already informed about the amount of lead that most of made in China toys have. Why put lead into kids' mouths? Never mind.

Picking up their presents

Roca

The above picture was Roca earlier before the New Year's Eve, looking cute and active as ever. Picture below was during the time fire crackers are on everywhere. It broke my heart that I had to feed her under a short table because she was so scared hearing all the fire crackers.

And because someone didn't cook that night, she got the chance to iron curled her hair. haha 

My sister gave me prosperity candles to light before 12 midnight.

I had to queued them up starting from the shortest to tallest. Lighted them from the tallest to shortest at exactly 11:30 p.m. 

Color represents:

                                                                   Orange - long life

Green - money

Pink - health

Violet - material wealth

Blue - peace

Red- love

Yellow - harmony

I had to put their lights out at exactly 12 midnight. It says: "The candle that melts the quickest will signify the most bountiful blessing you will have."

While I carry a Chinese birth name, I'm not a big believer of  *lucky stuff or rituals*, but hey I had so much fun waiting for the candles to melt! And almost a fool for anxiously waiting which candle would melt the quickest. Now, I'm giving you the right to call me foolish for being somehow disappointed as obviously, the green candle was still standing proud by 12 midnight. hahaha

Entertaining good vibes and thoughts are always the best way to start off a year. It was a tough 2011 for our family—financially. The toughest year by far. But still grateful to God that everyone in the family was in good condition—health wise, and the fact that we survived is enough to be thankful for.

I thank God for the year that was. Just hoping for a better 2012! I hope we will all have a better one.