Happy Mother's Day to all Mums! :P

We had a pre-Mother's Day Tea party last week at TWG in Resorts World.

My cousins Ate Ria, Rizza, and Noelle arrived carrying bags loaded with fresh flower centerpieces and paper flowers for each setting. I calligraphied everyone's names for the placecards. (Craftiness runs in the family, hehe.)

The Saluds: Amelia Salud and Winter Salud, named after our Lola.

Some photo op chaos courtesy of my nephews and nieces: Kai, Amelia, Winter and Hoops

Amelia likes Tito PJ! Cos he has a flower in his ear. Haha :P

Happy Mother's Day to my Mom!! :) I love you!

Tea Party Time!!

It was a late lunch for me, so I had this wonderful vegetarian lasagna and some cold Morrocan mint tea.

The Moms and the kids.

And here's the plate of macarons that we were able to salvage from the boys and babies!

Happy Mother's Day to all Moms, especially to my mama-in-law who's in LA right now! :)

Over a week ago, PJ and I flew to Batanes for Euge & Em's wedding. It was a foggy morning, but we were blessed with perfect weather all throughout the weekend.

Monogram and doodles that I made for the couple

The day before the wedding, the whole group had dinner during sunset at the lighthouse. Afterwards, we headed back to Fundacion Pacita for a craft marathon to prepare as much as we could before the wedding day.

The couple's favorite quote served as wall art in Fundacion's dining hall. PJ hand-wrote the A3 sized posters using letraset markers, and we made borders around them using HeyKessy washi tape! (Thanks to the crew: Dar, Jean, Jaz, Ann and Meg for working on the washi!)

The wedding venue/dining hall on a regular day:And ta-dah! Here it is after we pimped it up with craftiness! :P

(We removed all the chairs in the dining hall and had them replaced with colorful chairs that matched the sunset theme of the wedding.)

The wedding cake was brought in all the way from Manila and had the doodled monogram in sunset hues. We picked fresh flowers from the garden and used them to decorate the table.

On the morning of the wedding day, I put my game/craft-face on and assembled 9 boutonnieres and 9 fan corsages. Flowers are so abundant in Batanes, and we had these picked off the roadside.

The woven fans are made locally in Batanes. Instead of wrist or pin corsages, I made these for the ladies on the entourage.

Em had their monogram embroidered on all the table napkins. In the center of the plate is a bottle of M&M's. Jean did the watercolor & calligraphy on all the bottle stickers! Team effort! ;)

Chef Edward of Pino prepared a delicious and gorgeous wedding lunch. On the left is salad with flowers (my special veg serving, because all other salads had chicharon, haha), and the cheese platter which was served after the meal. Yup, those are cranberries over cookie butter! Yum!

For the giveaways, I made a Souvenir Stamp Station, which Dar helped set up. 

Guests could choose their blank notecard sets and make their own prints using the stamps I made. Here are some of the cards I made:

Congrats and best wishes to the lovely couple: E&E! :)

It's been a whirlwind of a week! I'm finally back (and staying put for a while!) from Boracay, Zambales, and Batanes! And as soon as I arrived, I drove off with the women in the family for lunch in Tagaytay. All the traveling + absence of internet connection made this blog a bit sad with the same post displayed for over a week. Waah! Sorry to everyone who kept coming back for the sign up form for the May Crafternoons. Please read on for more workshop details.

May is going to be theeeee craftiest month yet; we've got craft events not just on weekends, but on weekdays as well!

There's Craft Camp on May 18 & 19, which is an overnight camp in Zambales. I posted about this before, but can no longer accept participants because all slots have been filled up already. We've got 15 new crafts to make, plus as DIY skateboard workshop! Camp will be held at Crystal Beach in Zambales. Sooo excited to make crafts by the beach! :)

We've got another run of watercolor workshops for kids.

It'll be held in iAcademy which is right on Ayala Ave.

WATERCOLOR 1 & 2 * CALLIGRAPHY * CREATIVE JOURNALINGCheck out the awesome work of my last watercolor level ONE class! I am so amazed with their work and creativity! If you've been wanting to join a crafternoon, but are shy, please don't worry! Almost all of the participants are really beginners and have very little experience with the crafts. The modules are really tailor made for beginners. When I first announced that they were going to be painting birds for the final activity, everyone whined and complained, thinking that it was going to be too hard. But look at what they all accomplished! :)

CREATIVE JOURNALINGTogether with Teacher Isa Silva, we'll be doing a leather bookbinding + creative journaling workshop. Wherever I go, I have at least a notebook and pen in my bag. If I can't watercolor, then I'll doodle! :P At this workshop, we'll be teaching journal making (perfect binding + diy leather book case) and we'll all be making our own visual diaries.

To join the May workshops, please fill up this form and reserve your slots.

And of course, here's the May 2013 calendar to map out all these crafty events! :P Being surrounded by nature for the past two weeks, I was inspired by all the summer foliage in the places I went to.

Download the May 2013 Printable Calendar here.

I spent the past week in Boracay with our Hilario clan (31 in our party!), but in spite of our huge number,  it was a pretty relaxing trip.

Aloha! :)

We were there for my Tita Florian's 60th birthday celebration, and we dressed up the beachfront in neon, with glowsticks and pompoms, sparklers and sweets. The birthday cupcake tower was made of the famous calamansi muffins from Real Coffee, each one topped with washi flags.Rizza's neon bracelet stack + buko juice valet

I had a rubber stamping session with Flow as well! (Photo credit: Noelle Hilario)

On Sunday morning, we all hopped on a boat that took us to Puka Beach.

The last time I was on Puka beach, it was so windy and the sand was so harsh against my skin. This time, the waters were calm, so we lay down our lagus and hung out there for a while.I searched the sand for the colors of the rainbow! This is what my nephew Hoops and I found, and I arranged the shells in r-o-y-g-i-b-v order (with the neutrals in one corner! haha)

Just before we left the beach, the bats gave us a sky show and flew over us to get to the top of the mountain.

:)

Lifestyle Network's Summer Soul, Havaianas and Aura Athletica present

Flow:SurfYogaSamba Summer Retreat!

Join use as we celebrate summer in full FLOW

at Philippine's most famous tropical island...Boracay!

Save the date and book your tickets to the island

for April 18-21 for 4 days and 3 nights of summer bliss at Boracay Terraces Resort.

For the first time, Flow:SurfYogaSamba will be teaming up with Paolo Soler of Philippine Surfing Academy for surf lessons at the wave pool of Crown Regency and Bri Manglapus, a certified yoga teacher to teach Yoga for Surfers.

Relax your body in a restorative and therapeutic Yin Yoga session with Flow's resident yogi, Monica Eleazar-Manzano.

Dance and drum to Brazilian beats with Samba School Imperatriz Filipinense led by with Denise Gonzales-Bernardo and batucada drum director, Toni Bernardo.

Bring out your inner artist at the Rubberstamp Crafternoon Workshop with Alessandra Lanot or spin and move with the flow at the Poi Workshop led by Paolo Soler.

 The Flow:SurfYogaSamba founders are advocates for health and wellness. Denise Gonzales-Bernardo, Monica Manzano and Noelle Hilario will conduct a green smoothie, juicing and live foods workshop.

Plus all participants will get VIP access to Lifestyle Network's Summer Soul's sunset cocktail party on the beach!

FLOW SurfYogaSamba Summer Retreat is presented by the Lifestyle Network, Summer Soul, Havaianas, Aura Athletica and our friends from Boracay Terraces Resort, Panda Sunglasses, Belo Essentials SunExpert, Breville, Lagu, Nyogi, Rawlicious Green Smoothies, Strip, Browhaus, Philippine Surfing Academy, Imperatriz Filipinense, Life After Breakfast and our media sponsors, Travel Leisure Magazine and My Life On Board.

Register at  www.flowsurfyogasamba.com.

I never imagined summertime to be this crazy, but here I am holding workshops and crafternoons at least four times a week, leaving me with only three days for a working weekend (which falls oddly on a Tuesday-Wednesday). Hello, blog, I've missed you! Here's a random list of some of my summer-in-the-city favorites.

Brown Brogues. I purchased this wonderful pair online and find myself living in them everyday.

Pipino's vegan chocolate cake. Is this too narcissistic? Haha. It's my current fave dessert, and learned over our family lunch yesterday that kids love it, too!

Nuts for nuts. I was running some mall errands and chanced upon a kiosk that sells all sorts of nuts. I love the idea of making your own mix, and went for almonds, pistachios, walnuts, hazelnuts and dried cranberries. Perfect snack!

Olive-scented oil and perfume...among other things. From Oryspa and My Goodie Bag.

Teaching kids. I'm having so much fun giving them art activities to learn from and play with, and I'm always amazed with the things that they create!

Doodling orbs. When everything gets to busy inside my head, I like getting lost in the motion of drawing these flowers. 

Pinching clay. I learned pottery for the first time about a month ago, and got my first pieces yesterday! In the middle is a paint palette, and the band-aid looking thing is a calligraphy pen stand. I think I like pinching and slabbing more than going on the wheel! :P

Have a great Monday, everyone!