Better half tag

I've received this tag from Niko and I was intrigued if I'm able to answer all the questions. I've realized that I know most of the answers to them but some of them I was uncertain and had to ask honey while we were having breakfast. Turns out my guesses were correct. This was a fun tag to do.

1. He's sitting in front of the TV, what is on the screen?
~ Eurosport or CNN

2. You're out to eat, what kind of dressing does he get on his salad?
~ mango chili dressing

3. What's one food he doesn’t like?
~ New York cheesecake or any fish dish he doesn't recognize

4. You go out to eat and have a drink, what does he order?
~ orange juice or iced tea

5. What shirt size does he have?
~ medium to large, depends on the brand

6. What shoe size does he have?
~ 11

7. What is his favorite type of sandwich?
~ bacon and eggs

8. What would he eat everyday if he could?
~ mangoes and atis

9. What is his favorite cereal?
~ choco pops (does it count even if he really doesn't eat cereals he just buys them for the free toy hehe)

10. What would he never wear?
~ he’s very adventurous with what he wears, so he wears pretty much everything.

11. What is his favorite sports team?
~ real madrid, manchester united (football) & cavaliers (NBA), we both really liked Ginebra (PBA) before.

12. Who did he vote for?
~ I don't think he voted the last elections.

13. Who is his best friend?
~ Me, of course

14. What is something he does, but you wish he wouldn't do?
~ stay up really late. (he's a nocturnal creature hehe)

15. What is his heritage?
~ Filipino

16. You bake him a cake, what kind of cake?
~ he really likes the prunes-walnut cake and the mocha mammon cake that I make for him

17. Did he play sports in high school?
~ yes, basketball, table tennis

18. What could he spend hours doing?
~ surfing the internet, watching movies and organizing stuff!

19. What is the unique talent that he has?
~ organizing, and he’s very good with directions

20. What's his type of coffee?
~ he rarely drinks coffee but he would chose fraps if and when he would.

How about you, how well do you know your better half, give the tag a try and see how you do, oh and if you decided to do the tag, please link back here, i'd love to see your answers.

94th Mensiversary @ Ron Blaauw Restaurant

As I have mentioned time and time again, one of the things that I really love about honey is that he has this moments when he completely catches me off guard and surprises me with something that he knows I’ll really like. The way we celebrated this month’s mensiversary is a classic example.

We are one of those cheesy couples who always makes an excuse to celebrate our love for one another and mensiversaries are simply perfect for us, we always look forward to this day of the month. It can be as simple as a kiss and a hug or can be as elaborate and as fancy as the dinner we shared last week. The night before, honey already told me that he’s leaving work early, drop by the dentist and pick me up for our date. He was at the office at 5:30pm and we drove somewhere close to his office. The moment I saw this quaint shop in the middle of a charming neighbourhood, I asked him, “how on earth did you know of this place?” I even teased him and told him “maybe your taking on budget…” I cut myself midsentence when I saw the name of the restaurant. This well known place could never be a budget meal.

For this month’s mensiversary, he took me to Ron Blaauw restaurant. This renowned restaurant was awarded with two Michelin stars and serves French and International cuisine. It is located in the heart of Ouderkerk aan de Amstel. It was really a surprise for me coz honey remembered that during restaurant week here in Amsterdam, I tried to book us a reservation but they were not able to accommodate us.

The interior of the restaurant was very homey, the tamed lights were very romantic and the seats were very comfortable. But with a restaurant of this calibre, the highlight is definitely the food. We were seated at the couch to enjoy our aperitif, of course in my case it was orange juice and we were served with a wide array of appetizers that are so exquisite, the most memorable of which is the crusty bread which looked like charcoal black burnt pieces of thin bread but when I took a portion and dipped it to the butter-like accompaniment, I found it very nice, the bread was crunchy and the butter complimented it well. Honey favoured the shrimps in cone. Before we were seated on our table, we browsed through their menu and decided to have the 8 course meal, I was a bit hesitant to order that at first because it sounds a lot but the maitre’d assured us that the servings are small enough for us to enjoy all the courses. Once the dinner started, plated works of art begun parading on our table. All the courses were prepared exquisitely with the freshest ingredients one could ever imagine. The creativity of the chef and his staff was evident with each plate that arrives. The entire meal was like a well orchestrated concert where each course builds up and prepares your tongue for the crescendo of taste that is yet to come. The dessert parade was like the perfect punctuation to a well thought of dinner.

The price that we paid for the menu was definitely worth the fair that was served. This dinner definitely goes down as one of the best mensiversary dinners we’ve ever had.

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excess: the photos we have taken during our meal is trapped in my mobile phone :-( i can't seem to transfer it on my laptop.

Heavenly Scents

While cooking dinner last week, I heard honey opening the door coming home from work so I dropped the ladle and went out of the kitchen. The moment I stepped out of the kitchen door, there he was standing in the dining area with a red box in his hand. He told me, “I have something for you.” It was a perfume, so I asked him why he got me this. He said, “Oh, nothing, I just remembered this perfume from Tita Z and she loved it and I thought you’d like the scent. And besides your other perfume is half empty now so might as well get a new one.”

Sheesh, I didn’t even noticed that the other perfume I was using is already half empty. How blessed am I to have a husband who looks after me like this. He does a lot of tiny gestures that make my heart flutter and of course he is also Mr. Grand Gesture who makes my tummy somersault.

I couldn’t believe how heavenly the scent of the perfume is the moment I opened it. I’m not sure though if my giddy heart had any influence on that.

Getting Hitched

One of the most memorable events in my life would definitely have to be the day when honey proposed to me. It has been almost 4 years ago and yet, every time I remember it, I still get giddy and I get butterflies in my stomach. Oh it was so romantic and to have experienced a proposal twice, I think, is rare. It’s a priceless memory that I hold very close to my heart and would relate to my kids and my kids’ kids tirelessly.

The reason for this sudden trip down the memory lane is because of Maria’s tag. She candidly shares the day she agreed to spend the rest of her life with her hubby and she invited me to share my memories of the day when I decided to spend the rest of my life with my one true love. As I have said, I’ve reminisced about it quite often and have blogged about the entire story before. Since that faithful day, I have never looked back. It has been pure marital bliss and I couldn’t be more thankful.

Vday breakfast

Although I asked honey not to buy me flowers and not to take me out on a date for Valentines Day (which he completely worked around), I am not the type to pass out on any opportunity to celebrate love day, in my own way. That is why the moment I woke up last Saturday, I busied myself in the kitchen to prepare a breakfast for honey suitable for the occasion. I made him heart shaped pancakes!



Honey absolutely loved them.

I loved how we celebrated Valentines day this year, fuss and stress free on both honey and me. Just the way we liked it.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

In my mind, I have believed that two of the most important things in a relationship are fidelity and respect, maybe not as high on my list as love and devotion but would definitely be in my top five. I firmly believe that you cannot say that you love someone without being faithful or respectful of him.

Over the weekend, a friend of my invited me for lunch, she said that she needs to vent out her frustrations with his hubby. Being the dutiful friend, I obliged. From what I heard from all her stories, her main issue with her hubby is respect. It’s nothing major really, simple stuff that sometimes, when we get overly familiar with someone, we tend to ignore. I believe when it comes to respect, not just the grand gesture counts, actually I think with respect, the littlest of things add up to more.

Ok, I know she is a friend so I have a tendency to take her side but I just have to agree with her when she asked me if it’s too much to ask not to be ignored when she talks no matter how angry his husband is. I just feel that its common decency, when someone asks you a question, the most civilized thing to do is respond. No matter how angry you are, you simply don’t let go of your respect for the one you love.

I know that being with someone, no matter how much you love that person, is sometimes tough. When I got married, I knew that it will not be always a bed of roses. But no matter how tough it gets, both of you simply must make an effort, no matter how big of an effort it is, to not loose your love and respect, at the peak of a heated argument, for that person because in the end, when everything has calmed down, the regret of having disrespected the one you love will linger. I have a rule, when I fight with someone I love, I try to keep it clean, no matter how hard it is, I try to stick with the issue at hand and be level headed. Then again that’s just me.

Birthday Flowers

Last Thursday, I have celebrated another year of my life and, as all the other years before, for me it was special. The one great thing I love about my birthdays is that it triggers my mind to look back and as I have said, I can’t help but be thankful simply because the past year has been filled not only with so much blessings but more so of love.

Niko came to me with another tag and as always, her tag couldn’t have had a better timing, her tag is about enumerating the things that you love about your husband.
I have been itching to write about this instance last Thursday which is a typical example of why I’m so thankful that my life is filled with love and explains some of the things that I love about honey.

Last Thursday, since it’s customary in our office for people celebrating their birthdays to invite the team for cakes, instead of buying the normal cakes that we order, I made some cheesecakes and brought it to the office. As everyone from our department was having cakes in my office, I was stunned to see honey standing on the door with a huge bouquet of flowers in his hand. I was so surprised for two reasons, first because just thirty minutes before that, he called me from his office to tell me that he was stuck in a meeting the entire morning, second, you cannot get past our lobby without an employee of the building picking you up from the reception. I blushed profusely as all the girls in our team went “aaawww, that is so sweet!” Everyone was so impressed that he drove all the way from his office, dropped a bouquet of flowers on my table and head back to his work again. One of my colleagues even said “he’s setting the bar too high for the rest of the guys!”

That is one of the greatest things I love about honey, he always thinks of grand gestures to express his love for me and he stops at nothing to pull it off. I couldn’t believe that he called one of my friends from the office to pick him up from the reception so that he can give me the flowers personally and surprise me.

Later that evening, honey planned a dinner for the two of us and made reservations at a fancy restaurant in Amsterdam Central, but since it’s an utter nightmare to get a parking space in that area, we would have to take the train and since it was raining so hard, I didn’t want to commute to the restaurant. Honey surprised me by saying “Don’t worry I have a back up plan, I’ve made reservations in another restaurant near our place where we can take the car.”

I love it that honey always anticipates the things that I like and he’s always willing to alter any plans or decisions that he makes to accommodate me. Some of my friends even tell me that he spoils me a lot that way but he’s just like that, he wants to make me happy.

There is just too much about honey that I love, like when he makes me his omelets for breakfast over the weekend, when he records my favorite shows on TV so that I could watch it later, the way he makes me laugh, the way he is so passionate about his faith, when he tirelessly and neatly rearranges my closet each time I’ve completely made a mess out of it, the way he is with my family and friends and most of all the way he is with me. He does have his own flaws but for me they are quirkiness that I find cute and in the end utterly lovable. I know that there is no one perfect person but in my heart and mind, I know I’m married to one.

The ring that binds us

One of the happiest days of my life was when Honey popped the magical question “will you marry me?” I knew it would be the start of my very own fairy tale coming true. As momentous as the wedding is for both of us, we considered the symbols which stood witness to our big day vital and so have given them a lot of thought and attention, the chord, the veil, the array and most importantly our wedding bands. Seven months before the wedding, I remember we were on our way home from our Valentine’s date, we passed by one of the shops of one of the biggest jewelers in Dubai. Being the sale fanatic that I am, I immediately noticed their promotional banners saying that all diamonds are on sale. It was a woman’s instinct (after all diamonds are our best friend), I asked Honey if we could check out the jewelries on sale.

Upon entering, the very nice sales man approached us and asked if we wanted anything in particular. My mom already promised that she would give me a pair of earrings that I should use for the wedding so I thought this might be the best opportunity to look for a bracelet or necklace to go with it, after all the diamonds were on sale, what better excuse to have than that. While browsing through the very beautiful collection, the sales man noticed the engagement ring that I was wearing, he said that it was very beautiful and remembers it as part of the store’s limited collection design and at that point were no longer for sale. That was the time when I remembered that indeed the box of the second engagement ring that Honey has given me bears the name of this store. Then it hit me, maybe we could also check out their collection of wedding bands.

He gave us the first tray of wedding bands which contains normal, nothing to fancy, plain, old style, traditional wedding rings in gold and white gold. I asked if there were more and he presented another tray of fancier wedding rings, some has etched design, others were two-toned still others were three-toned but still nothing that struck my fancy. Perhaps, noticing that we still hadn’t found what we were looking for, the sales man offered us another tray of wedding bands while saying “these bands are not traditional, maybe this is what you are looking for.” And indeed it was, the moment he laid the tray in front of us, this magnificent pair of white gold rings adorned with diamonds just stood out and caught my attention. Honey and I looked at each other and we both knew that this was it, we found our wedding ring.
(our first wedding rings... simply beautiful)

Finally, on that faithful day of September, my prince charming slipped that very same ring onto my finger where the engagement ring has been patiently waiting the entire year. It was pure magic.

Two years of marital bliss, our love has strengthened more than ever and married life proved to be more than I could ever hope for. However, on our way to our second wedding anniversary, due to unforeseen circumstances, one of our wedding rings got loss somehow and as much as it pains Honey and me to let go for it was the symbol of our love and has stood witness to our first years as man and wife, we had to move on and find the perfect ring to replace it, a ring that symbolizes our covenant of eternal love.

As if faith was on our side, we were showing a visiting friend around a touristy village in Amsterdam a couple of weeks before we celebrate our 2nd anniversary, without even the slightest of intentions to buy another pair of wedding rings for we already eyed a pair we saw online but we couldn’t find a pair sold locally, we chanced upon this quaint jewelry shop. The very same thing happened as when we were looking for our first wedding bands, there was something about the shop that invited me to come in so I asked Honey if we could go in and from then on, we never looked back. We found this simple, elegant yet unique pair of white gold wedding band adorned with several small diamonds and one bigger one. It was just perfect!



After engraving our name, the owner of the shop himself gave us the rings and said: “This will be the ring that will bind you for the next 20 years to come.” Hopefully, the jeweler is wrong on that, I do hope and pray that this will be the ring that binds us till forever.



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Excess: our ever reliable community priest, Father Yacou to blessed the wedding bands in time for us to wear them on our 2nd anniversary.

- this post has been delayed for soooo long due to lack of a good picture. Finally i managed to take a shot that i like.