Flower Garden

Sharing to you my lovely flower garden. Love spending time here relaxing my mind, meditating, praying, having coffee and just enjoying sun, wind and seeing butterflies and bees who visit from time to time.

These flowers are called Zinnia. They are so easy to grow and very low to maintain. You can easily look for these in Tagaytay flower vendors in the market or along the road. Flowers just make the world so, so beautiful!

Jesus, I Am Grateful of Your Love

 source : Internet

Jesus, I am grateful of my life
I am grateful of Your love
Your mercy
Your forgiveness

Jesus, I am grateful of my Freedom
I am grateful of my Mama
I am grateful of my Papa
Grateful of my husband
Grateful of my siblings
Grateful of my friends

Jesus, I am grateful of Your Greatness
I am grateful of all these wonderful things in my life

Sometimes I wonder
How You could ever love us
When so many of us are not worthy
So many of us are annoyingly not good
And all of us are sinners

But, Oh, I am so grateful
Because You are a God of mercy
A God of love
A God of greatness

I will forever be grateful of my life
Grateful of my family
Grateful that I have a loving God
Grateful that I have a forgiving God

Dear Lord Jesus,

My heart swells with so much gratefulness because I realize each day how much I am so blessed by You. I will  continue to be grateful each second of my life. I will continue to praise and serve and love you.  I will continue to teach Freedom of your greatness. I love you, Jesus.

Freedom Turns Four

Dearest Son,

Two days ago marked your fourth birthday! Your special day began with you waking up to Mommy and Tatay singing a "happy birthday" song. You were all smiles! You knew this day would be so great. We made sure your day would be something really special!

At your fantastic age of four, you get to help Mommy sprinkled some colored chocolate discs to your chocolate birthday cake for some added color!

Mommy drew the small robot, the car and the shark. Tatay took care of Ironman drawing, helicopter and three balloons. We all laughed when Tatay tried to draw that helicopter because it was at first a plane and you said, it doesn't even look like an airplane! So Tatay insisted he's better at drawing helicopter. Well, you said helicopter would do. LOL

That killer smile, Anak! 

  

Before we went to your school to celebrate a Jollibee party, we let you blow your birthday candle first.

Your schoolmates were so happy to sing you a birthday song after we played some games.

 

 

Tatay and I are so happy you enjoyed this day. Every single day, we pray that you grow as a God-loving person. I always pray that God sends His angels to protect you. I want more days and years with you, Anak. Mommy loves you to the moon and back.

 

Mommy



On Forgiveness

 source: Internet

The blessings in my life are overflowing. I've had my fair share of challenges in my workplace lately. It consumed me to the point I was so vulnerable I already garnered hatred and resentment which was not very healthy. I thank God He gave me a wonderful support system in my mother, husband, son, closest friends, and colleagues.

The end is in sight and I thanked everyone who helped me through -- you know who you are. This experience has taught me many things. First, I learned that during tough times, you'd know who your real friends are. Second, it is always worth the fight telling the truth. Third, you'd be surprised to meet new people who will affect your life forever. Fourth, it taught me to learn how to forgive. Lastly, God works in my favour, EVERY TIME if I commit everything to Him.

Below are words of God shared by my ops manager whom I look up to and consider a great blessing amidst all the trials I faced. I can't help but feel it is only righteous to spread these wonderful words.


Who forgives whom first?

“Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.” (Luke 11:4)

“As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.” (Colossians 3:13)

When Jesus teaches us to pray that God forgive us “for we ourselves forgive,” He is not saying that the first move in forgiveness was our move. Rather it goes like this: God forgave us when we believed in Christ (Acts 10:43). Then, from this broken, joyful, grateful, hopeful, experience of being forgiven, we offer forgiveness to others. This signifies that we have been savingly forgiven. That is, our forgiving others shows that we have faith; we are united to Christ; we are indwelt by the Spirit.

But we still sin (1 John 1:8, 10). So we still turn to God for fresh applications of the work of Christ on our behalf—fresh applications of forgiveness. We cannot do this with any confidence, if we are harboring an unforgiving spirit (Matthew 18:23–35). That’s why Jesus says we ask for forgiveness because we are forgiving. This is like saying: “Father, continue to extend to me the mercies purchased by Christ because by these mercies I forsake vengeance and extend to others what you have extended to me.”

O, how sweet is the word of God! I looked out my window into the bright morning and said: I love you, God. I love you, Lord Jesus. I love your word. O what a privilege to know you and to have your word. Please keep me faithful to it. In Jesus’ name. Amen

source: Internet

Growing Backyard Vegetables

When I have nothing to do in my downtime at work, I love back reading my blog posts. One afternoon, I read my post about how we successfully became homeowners from renters. I mentioned in that post that in order for us to survive the new financial task we took of buying our own home, we will make everything work out and one of the tips I joked about was planting kamote tops to get by.

Two years on and I am literally planting kamote tops in my backyard, lol!

I'm sure many organic and urban gardeners have blogged about all the benefits of growing your own food and I just wanted to add more benefits that it gave to my family. For me, the convenience of having vegetables in your own backyard is the best! Nowadays, when I crave for tinolang manok or ilonggo's famous laswa, all I need is the main ingredient of the menu! My household is taking advantage of having to just pick all the vegetables we need. I'm also thankful we have amazing neighbours who offer us some of their homegrown vegetables and herbs that we don't grow or ours are still too young for harvest. We also share seeds and seedlings. How lucky we are!

More so, I get to spend less in my grocery budget because I don't need to include these veges in my list and I get them fresh! The only vegetables I buy now include pumpkin, carrots and mung beans. My weekly menu in the house would usually include ilonggo laswa, mongo with alugbati, tinolang manok, tinolang isda with kamote tops or kangkong or mustasa and so on. It really is a wonderful life!

I never knew I got green thumb! All I did was throwing seeds here and there and started replanting them. The best tip I could give I guess was to maintain soil moisture so your veges won't dry out.

Sharing you snaps of my homegrown vegetables.

Mustasa babies!

Okra

Ampalaya (bitter melon)

 

Alugbati

 

 

Onion springs

 

 

Calamansi babies

 

 

Papaya

 

 

Malunggay shoots

 

Freedom busy in the garden!

 

 

I am actually waiting for the flower garden to reach its full bloom and I'm gonna share it to you right away. I suggest you try growing your own vegetables too. It's a major stress reliever for me and you literally get your greens straight from your garden to your dining table! Awesome.

My 18th Letter To Freedom

 Dear Son,

Lately I've been asking, what did I do to deserve a blessing like you? You definitely changed our lives upside down. It's not that I didn't have purpose before you were born. It's just that, now that Tatay and I have you in our lives, it is more meaningful and purposeful.

In a few weeks' time, you'll turn four. How time really flies! These days, all you love doing is the total need of you wanting to spend time with us. You often ask if Mommy doesn't need to go to work anymore or if Tatay has a gig or something.

You are still crazy about robots. And mad about The Last Airbender series, The Lion King and Tangled. You are more independent at this age. You can get water or other things from the fridge already. How you love opening the fridge to see if there's something to eat or Tatay might have hidden a surprise candy he forgot to give you. Clever kid.

You  love helping Mommy and Tatay cook! Yes, at the age of 3, you love to cook! And knead some dough, water the plants, sweeping the floor and jumping and wrestling and being a normal kid. I just don't get why you don't like swimming in the village pool unless you have another kid with you :(

 Kneading some dough

Lounging in the village pool.

I guess all I want to say to you, Anak, is that I am super happy that God blessed us with a wonderful son. The thing that you do when you lose patience easily and always forget to say "please" and "thank you" are just some of the rough edges that I think will slowly shape who you really are. But I can't complain. You are cute and sweet and loving and kind. I wouldn't want to change a thing. I only pray that Tatay and I get to spend more days with you for the rest of our lives.

Love,
Mommy xxx

My Home At Christmas

Happy New Year, readers! I just wanna share you some snaps of how my home looked last Christmas. Last December was really a busy month for me and these are the only DIY decors I came up to. Happy 2016 to all!



My table centerpiece.

The dining table that witnessed a lot of love for food.

Christmas chalkboard wall.

Real pines! 

Valenciana on New Year's eve.

Bilog bilog for luck! And health, of course!

The always pasabog home made vinaigrette for fresh greens.

Lasagna making.

And Tatay serenaded us on the first day of the year while enjoying the windy, cool breeze in our garden. (The kid who hates picture taking)