The Color of Happiness

We were late.

We were going to beautiful Victoria in Vancouver Island and we overslept.  There was a forecast of sun and I peeked to the window, apprehensive, because we have not seen the sun in days.  It was out!  And the world was beautiful! At once, I was filled with panic.  It might disappear all too soon, as it is wont to do during these cold and dreary winter months (as we found out).  Slivers of sunshine are all we get, and I was determined to get my sliver.  I woke up everyone and hustled and bustled.

» Read more of "The Journey is the Message"

Twilight of the Years

Cross-post from Steve of GetOutofDebt.org.

To make it through tough times more Americans have borrowed, stolen or raided their small retirement funds to make ends meet.

Loans from retirement funds jumped 20 percent last year. This really can’t be a big surprise to many. Faced with difficult financial decisions people will tend to gravitate towards the oath that seems easiest and less painful immediately.

» Read more of "Most People Preparing to Eat Dog Food in Retirement"

Clouds Almost Touching Clouds

In October 2011, Bo Sanchez launched another initiative aimed at helping those financially motivated to become wealthier, and he called it Wealth Circle.

Of course I could not resist being part of it.  Turned out, not everyone could get in because there was an application process that consisted of about a 10-page questionnaire (or something that seemed that long) that quizzed one’s financial health, motivation, problems, overall outlook in life.  It was a tedious process, one that made me re-assess my life, and reflect on it, making me laugh and cry a little (it was gut-wrenching and soul-satisfying).

» Read more of "Within the Wealth Circle"

Looking Out Into the Great Beyond

How could we accumulate so much in just a few years? I asked myself this as I was surrounded by boxes, and choices.

What should I give up?  I wore this during our anniversary, and this during that party, and this was given to me by a favorite friend, and that by a favorite boss.  And the baby?  What does baby need?  Hubby… I wonder how many shoes he will bring (my Imelda man)…? And C’s violin, C must absolutely have her violin.  And her lyre! I must not forget her lyre.

But what does one do when she has to pack her family’s life in just 6 boxes?

» Read more of "Life Summed Up in Boxes"

Giddy for Antiques

You love them.

You love the history of the thing, or the imagined history.  Which could be what you make of it, since history is written by the victorious anyway (those who lived to tell the tale), and it might be that the actual truth could be less rosy, or rosier, or be in the in-between (yeah, maybe not much there).

(fact could be fiction and fiction could be fact – but what is reality anyway?)

Well, I love them.

I have been fascinated by antiques since, well, I don’t really know.  I have not been exposed to them since houses in our family were demolished with abandon and new ones constructed and the old stuff (furniture, clothes, bric-a-brac, pictures, vinyl records) were stashed away some place or thrown or burned even before I had the consciousness for antiques.

» Read more of "Of Antiques and Thrift Shops"

Enjoying winter

Literally.  Because we took it a notch.  Er, notches.

Family and I – we just moved to Canada.  A country an ocean away, separated from us by 13 hours of flight time. A country of rugged beauty, incessant rains, warm winters (8 degrees is warm for them), trees with breadth longer than an arm span, quaint waterfalls and villages, deer that crosses roads at its peril, snow-capped mountains and seas in one sweep of the eye.  A country we have only begun to know.

But before I move on, please allow me to look back.

Because there are some things that I will be missing in my home country, the Philippines.

» Read more of "New Year, New Life"

New Shores

I love my job. Of course I love my job.

But we are doing the “big move” (more on that in the next articles) and so I have to take another look at a job market somewhere and of course, that means stress and interviews and begging (but trying not to look it) to get hired.

(hubby is doing the business route, that is, setting up a business of his own – in the niche of emergency preparedness, or manufacture of outdoor products, or knife making, oh my genius husband – and I will be doing the employment route – but that has always been our deal – dang)

» Read more of "If You Are Looking for a Job"

Beauty

Nothing can compensate for failure in the home.

This thought was going through my head while I was listening to motivational speaker Francis Kong talk.  He talked about family, the importance of family and children, of mealtimes with children, of learning to communicate with love, of Dr. Chapman’s five love languages - a primary way of expressing and interpreting love: words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, physical love.

» Read more of "5 Love Languages: What’s Yours?"