Category: Celebrations

Our Engagement Teaser Video

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Mahal and I have been best friends since 2012, have been life partners since 2014, and have been formally engaged since April 24, 2022. Our lives have changed since then and with the hustle and bustle of running our businesses, homeschooling Tuz, and enjoying our lives to the fullest, it’s just now that I’ve had the time to share this beautiful engagement teaser video with you. Between the two of us, I am the more open one… like my life has always been an open book to the public. But because I want to also respect Mahal’s more introverted and private nature, I’ve slowly adopted this demeanor of his. I don’t immediately share now some stuff going on in our lives. But eventually, I do find a way to make them come out to the public… lol!

We’ve already watched this video a gazillion times and now we’re ready to share it with you guys. After all, our beach wedding is in 5 months and we really need to get things going.

By the way, this is just our post engagement video. It is not a pre-nup shoot yet so to speak. We just wanted to have a remembrance of how we got engaged at Shangri-la Mactan and how lucky we are that two of the best photographers and videographers in Cebu City (in my opinion + they were featured at Sugbo.ph) were the ones who did this for us. They will also be the ones to do our Pre-Nup shoot this coming summer and we are so excited about it!

For now, enjoy our engagement teaser video.

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Holiday Musings [and a Recap of Halloween]

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Our 2022 is about to end. I’ve been reviewing my previous blog posts here and my life has really been “more of the same” kind of thing. Just like last 2019, when I wasn’t even able to blog about our Halloween celebration because of my jam-packed schedule at work, with motherhood, and family! And it’s happening again this time of the year!

Don’t get me wrong though — I DO LOVE OUR LIFE AND THE LIFESTYLE WE’VE BEEN LIVING — it’s been the best year so far — so many celebrations, so many happenings, so many blessings despite the sleepless nights from my VA work, being a homemaker, and homeschooling our now 7-year old kid! So, I’m gonna give myself a little pat on the back here…

Jen 1: “You’re such a superwoman, Mommy Jennie!”

Jen 2: “I know… I know…” 😉

Anyway, I am not going to let 2022 pass by without documenting here my most favorite holiday. For those who have just started to follow me here, Halloween is my most favorite and Christmas comes second. Though I like Christmas, Halloween is just more fun for me with all the trick or treating, candies, and costumes. Don’t you think? So though it’s already December and we’ve started decorating our little home resort for Christmas (you can check my FB page for updates), sharing my favorite holiday here with you this late is better than never, isn’t it?

But before that, let me just give you a rundown of our Halloween activities since Tuz was born. Re-reading my blog entries here… Oh what a roller coaster ride it has been! So many trials, joys, financial troubles, and tribulations. From being in a long distance relationship with Mahal, to finally living together in my first dream home, to giving that up in exchange for living the hard kind of life at the farm, then back to city life and experiencing tiny home living and finally, living the beach kind of life which has always been my dream. It makes me all the more grateful for the life we have now because we are living our best life so far and we can’t wait for things to keep getting better and better…

(2014, 2015, 2016) Nuvali Night Sky Cinema

(2016) Thoughts This Halloween

(2016) Nuvali Night Sky Cinema 2016 Family Event

(2017) Halloween 2017: How to Let Go of Attachments

(2018) Halloween 2018 – Transformative Lessons and Realizations

(2020) How to Celebrate Major Holidays During a Pandemic: Halloween Feature + a Guide

(2021) The Root of Happiness (And How I Found It Around Halloween)

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Romantic Engagement and Fine-Dining By the Sea at Shangri-la Mactan

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I’ve just been engaged! And it’s a different kind of engagement, way, way better that how I thought it would be… In case you’re interested to find out, you can check my 2 previous posts. This is about our unique engagement and this one’s about our bespoke engagement rings… 

For this blog post, I just want to make a special shoutout to Shangri-la Mactan for creating a one-of-a-kind engagement / romantic fine-dining experience for us. And in case you want a similar one, I’ll share with you the inclusions and how much a set-up like this can cost. Read on…

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OUR BESPOKE ENGAGEMENT RINGS

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When it comes to jewelry, especially rings, I don’t like surprises. I want jewelry that I consider one-of-a-kind, truly beautiful, symbolic, and something that I will never get tired of looking at for the rest of my life. I think this is one of the reasons why Mahal doesn’t like surprising me. He wants to please me as much as he can and wants only what’s best for me and what can make me happy.

And so, we chose to have our engagement rings customized. Normally, it’s just the girl who gets an engagement ring, right? But as you may know, if you’ve been following me for a long time now, you know that I don’t follow the trends or what’s considered normal (lol!) I personally wanted us all to have one ring each to symbolize our promise to each other that we will soon become one legal family.

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A DIFFERENT KIND OF ENGAGEMENT

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As J. Lo wrote in her inner circle newsletter “On the JLO: “Life is an art… and we are the artists… make it as beautiful as you want and create it exactly as you want it to be…” ❤ ❤ ❤ 

Growing up, I never really had a clear vision of what getting engaged and getting married should be like for me. I remember attending very few weddings during my childhood and teens and it always left me with feelings of lack and sadness coz I felt like I can never have that kind of wedding. My automatic negative thoughts were: “I’m too poor to be able to afford that.” “That will never happen for me”… etc. True enough, you attract what you think. Despite the amount of money I’ve had in my early adult years, I never had that kind of engagement nor wedding. 

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How We Celebrated Valentine’s Day Throughout These Years

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I was planning to have a repeat of how we celebrated Valentine’s Day last year because I really liked it so much. But because we are in Cebu City today (we’ve been here since Feb. 11 doing a different kind of shopping spree and running some important errands), and we won’t be traveling back home until probably evening of Valentine’s Day itself, I just thought of sharing with you here some of the things we did to celebrate the love occasion throughout these years. 

This post is actually a long dedication to my Mahal, who stuck with me throughout all these many years (we’ll be celebrating the 10th anniversary of our best friendship this March and we are now on our 90th month of being together as life partners); who loved me and continue to love me through thick and thin; who, despite all my flaws and craziness, continue to show his patience, dedication, and commitment to me and our little family. I just want to declare to the whole world how much I appreciate everything he does for me and our son, and I thank God every day for him coming into my life…

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2021 Highlights: a Gratitude Post for the Year That Was

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I saw this image quote on my social media feeds and it struck a chord in me. It says:

“This January, start the year with an empty jar. Each week, add a note with a good thing that happened. 

On New Year’s Eve, empty the jar and read about the amazing year you had.” 

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Typhoon Rai (Odette): Nightmare Before Christmas 

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Just when you had everything planned out for the remainder of the year — your tasks, projects, finances, celebrations… the biggest typhoon of your life hit you — metaphorically and literally. 

We were minding our usual business… I was working and finishing my deadlines for the week and getting ready for client meetings. Mahal was busy with the resort. Everyone was working. Though we were getting news reports about an impending typhoon, upon checking, the eye of Typhoon Rai or locally known as Typhoon Odette won’t be hitting us but instead, it will head straight to Cebu City which is 3-4 hours away from where we are. We had plans of doing our Christmas shopping there that weekend so we figured that we just had to reschedule. Plus, we’ve already experienced so many kinds of weather conditions here that we became complacent. We felt confident that it’s just another one of those storms. There could possibly be a brownout (electricity getting cut off) that will last for an hour or two, or at the most overnight, but that was it. We didn’t do any kind of preparation at all — we didn’t save water; we didn’t charge our phones and electrical devices; we didn’t check if we still have enough gas; we didn’t buy supplies… nothing. It was as if it was just another day in our beach kind of life. 

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The Root of Happiness (And How I Found It Around Halloween)

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I’ve been listening to Rob Dial’s podcasts. He’s a mindset mentor and one of the things he discussed was about happiness and the root of it or the key to achieving it. He based it on what Will Smith said before that it’s not the material things nor money that will bring you happiness (I think many of us know this already), but it’s peace. Peace is actually what I have been experiencing just recently, around Halloween time. It’s not because Halloween is my most favorite time of the year and this year’s celebration has been the happiest Halloween I’ve had so far (I thought last year’s Halloween celebration was the bomb! Didn’t think we’d top that off this year!), but it’s more than that. 

I’m not sure if I mentioned it here before or in some other diary of mine, but living here in Oslob, for as long as I can remember, wasn’t really a good idea for me because I know and I feel that there are people here who don’t like me… they don’t like me because I’m with Mahal… because I used to be married to someone else… and maybe because I am just the kind of person they couldn’t believe achieved so much in life without much help from others. The way people think here is that you can either only be successful if you work abroad or if you’re married to a foreigner. I’m neither, so, maybe that boggles them. Honestly, I don’t really know why they don’t like me. The reasons I mentioned above are just my assumptions. 

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ON SURVIVING THE 7-YEAR ITCH ON OUR 7TH ANNIVERSARY AND STRIVING TO LIVE A BEACH KIND OF LIFE DESPITE THE PANDEMIC

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As our 7th anniversary was fast approaching, I was tapped by Mommy Ruby of CDO Bloggers Group to participate in a campaign by a certain insurance company. It was about being stronger now despite whatever it is that we are struggling with. What came to  mind was about being stronger than my demons because as I’ve mentioned before, my emotional and mental health haven’t been that well lately. 

Below, I am sharing with you the original draft of what I wrote in that campaign which in a way helped me recognize my power, my strength, and sense of resilience.  

And further down below, You can watch the entire video on how we spent our 7th anniversary despite the lockdown here in Oslob. ❤❤❤

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ENJOYING THE SARDINE RUN AT MOALBOAL, CEBU… A SCUBA DIVING ADVENTURE

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Yey! We’ve now come to the 3rd part of our scuba diving adventure. Whew! It really took me a while, huh? So sorry about that. Aside from being so busy the past several weeks (which I told you about on my previous blog post), my mental  and emotional health haven’t been so good the past couple of months. So whatever strength and joy I still have in me, I just divert them to my priorities which are my work, Tuz, and our family.  

Anyway, I’m so happy to be publishing another blog post today and I hope to do it more frequently (Daily perhaps? Before I start my day at work like now? Hihihi! ) Writing about anything and everything about my life continue to be cathartic for me especially during these uncertain times and I’m happy to share whatever I can with you, my dear readers. Thank you for always checking me out!

So again, let’s dive in!

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