since i'm pretending i'm on a diet, i'll just get the candle version instead

they're supposed to melt in your mouth, not in your hands.

but what happens when they're all melted up in a bottle? ...

eeep! screeching halt!!! that just sounds like really bad copy for an ad. i am so glad i don't have to do advertising work for a living!

in any case, i want to talk about this yummy find from last friday's cupcake run ...

{yum yum yum!}

m&m scented candle!!! 

in the same breath that KBB told us about vanilla cupcake bakery, she also told us about the pepperidge farm candles that were on 50% off at true value. now, since i'm waging a war against the critters at home, i will admit that i need all the help in the scent department i could get. so after finishing off a whole lotta work (kunyari busy-busy-han, hahaha!), i trooped over to the newly-opened true value at glorietta.

there were a number of pepperidge farm options, but the moment i opened the jar, i knew that i was going to come home with the m&m candle.

i mean, come on! aren't those the cutest things????

{now, aren't these cute?}

however, this is a candle and it is meant to be lighted. sooner or later, these lovely babies would melt.

and melt they did. what i didn't expect was that they'd leave these:

{look! the m's are left when the "candy" is all melted up!}

purrrrrttttyyyyyy!!!!

KBB guaranteed that the pepperidge farm candles would leave your house smelling wonderful, so i was a bit afraid that this may or may not perform the same way. but, after fifteen or so minutes, my home (note na hindi na house, home na bigla. yihee!) started smelling of crisp vanilla. it works!!!

i brought it with me to the bedroom (dangerous to leave a lighted candle when you're not in the area, and what use it is perfuming the living/dining areas when i'm in my room already?) and once more, the sweet aroma - not too strong but not too light either - made the room a bit cozier, a bit happier, a bit better. so can i just say that this works?!?!

and you know what's even better? the candle is on sale! it's 50% off from P495 so i ended up paying only P247.50 for this bottle of goodness.

i used to swear by betty crocker candles (the cherry pie was my favorite!) but this one is waaaay better. and since i know i had grabbed the last stock at true value glorietta, guess who's going to ATC later to stock up on these? 

yep, me. hello world, this is rosa the hoarder signing off ... and driving to ATC to look for more m&m candles!

you can never have too many cupcake options, IMHO!

one of the lawyers from work came back from lunch today with an amazing discovery. the old kamiseta is now this uber-cutie patootie place known as the vanilla cupcake bakery. i wish i had my camera with me cause that place was serious eye candy ... especially for someone like me who's in love with pastels, frou-frou, and all things sweet.

{diet notwithstanding, this came home with me today}

it was a bit difficult to pick - my default is usually a peppermint chocolate cupcake or something with marshmallow icing in it - but in the end i ended up picking two: 

classic mocha and,

and this salted caramel variety. now, they have several salted caramel varieties, and this is but one of them. unfortunately, i couldn't find the receipt, so i don't really know which one this is.

and since i am not a food blogger, i can't really tell you (1) the other cupcake options and (2) how much each cupcake costs. i do remember though that these two set me back P148.00. not bad, but not very cheap either.

i think vanilla cupcake bakery is owned by the same people who run kamiseta because some of the servers are wearing old kamiseta uniforms. uh-oh mr. gunn roque -- the lawyer in me is screaming "be careful with possible labor issues of intermingling businesses and using the same staff!"

my initial thoughts? the place was mighty lovely. hopefully, my friends and i will be trying it out soon, so that means i'll be able to take pictures of vanilla cupcake bakery. but if you can't wait, then imagine this: the uber-soft couches from kamiseta, with a colorful sprinkling of daphne chairs, then imagine cath kidston cuteness and there you have it: vanilla cupcake bakery.

for me, the cupcakes were okay. not bad, but not amazing either. so even if the entire trip home my mind was focused on devouring these as soon as i get home, all i tasted was a small slice of each before i returned them to the box and thrown into the ref to be eaten some other time. maybe it was cause i drove thru mcdonald's on the way home, or maybe it was cause i wasn't feeling well. but if you really knew me, neither of these should've prevented my matakaw self from gobbling these two up like there was no tomorrow.

between the two, i liked the mocha better. i didn't really taste the "salt" part in the salted caramel, and the cake felt a bit dry. still, there's a whole lot more options at the store, and food (i heard there's pasta and coffee as well!) to boot, so maybe the proper review should wait another time.

for now, consider this as an exercise in getting to know the macro setting of my new camera. hahaha!

flying seair

you know how they previously had jokes about the tiny airplanes of the low cost carriers? like how you'd fly out an asian and arrive a spirit? well, they never really scared me. i'd like to think i'm the fearless kind.

but, i guess it was also cause i never flew using these airlines either. so when my turn came to fly seair, there was a teeny tiny part of me that was slightly afraid. but just teeny tiny, after all, the flight came as part of a great deal, and a great deal is always big in my book.

we were originally set to fly out at 8:30 thereabouts, but a week earlier, we were informed that we will be flying at 9:30 am instead. no worries. but apparently if (1) everyone's already there and (2) the plane's already there, they fly out ASAP.



our plane was a thirty-seater affair with two pilots and one flight attendant. it was no frills - you get it, you load your bags in the overhead compartment (which tita celia loved cause she could easily reach it), and you take a seat. the perpetual noise could get to you but the excitement of flying soooo low gets to me all the time -- i loved being able to view the terrain below and wonder in my mind exactly where we were at any given time.




don't be fooled by the seating arrangement which is basically a choice between a-d-f only. at first tita celia was like, "why are we seated apart?" only to realize that all "a" seats are on one side of the plane and is an aisle and window seat all rolled into one. perfect for those people who want the view and the ease of going to the bathroom.

i am totally in love with seair! superb service + quick flights + hassle-free check-in, boarding, and baggage claim. and since they now fly to macau (which is one of the destinations i plan to visit next), well, guess who's perusing their website for great deals right this minute.

food review: selecta's hershey's collection reese's

a long time ago, my friend introduced me to reese's. and while i wasn't a huge fan of peanut butter, i somehow fell in love with it. much later, reese's pieces came, and those i fell in love with ... a lot.

so imagine how i felt when i saw this in the grocery:

i thought, so what if we were having the biggest loser at work. and so what if it wasn't in my grocery budget. if something that cost less than P150 was going to make me extremely happy, then who am i to deprive myself, right?

right. i knew you'd agree.

so a tub came home with me and even before i could eat dinner (yes, that's one of the good things with being 30+ and alone at home -- you may eat dessert before dinner), i got started on this baby.

maybe i was expecting the ice cream to taste like reese's. or maybe i was expecting a bouquet of yumminess to just burst on my mouth. maybe i thought that aside from the reese's, there was going to be some peanut butter chunks, chocolate swirls, nuts, and marshmallows (well, i just love marshmallows so even if it didn't make sense in this case, i thought it would be a good idea to have them. ha. ha.). i can't pinpoint exactly what i was expecting, but whatever it was, this wasn't it.

in fairness, it had a LOT of broken up reese's peanut butter cups. remember how chip's ahoy advertised that you'd get a chip in every bite? well, here, you'd get a chunk of reese's peanut butter cup with each spoonful. they were generous with the chocolate, all right. but the loveliness known as reese's peanut butter cups were nestled in plain chocolate ice cream.

now, don't get me wrong, i love chocolate ice cream. but, somehow, in this case, it just seemed so wrong, so un-special. it felt like the person who came up with it didn't think much about it and just dumped chocolate onto ice cream. and to me, that's sad.

so i still have the tub of ice cream in my freezer. and while i'd grab a spoon or two every now and then, it hasn't sufficiently tickled my fancy to force me to sit down and just gobble everything up. maybe that's a good thing. but knowing me, that really isn't. sooner or later, when i clean up the freezer, i'd see it and knowing it's been there for ages, i'd throw it out. so much for happiness for below P150.

now, if it were puno's cheese casuy macapuno ice cream (imagine, only P205 for half a gallon) we're talking about ....

oh conti's, why are you so konti?

conti's -- that place made famous by mango bravo -- happens to be a comfort place for me and my friends. whenever we feel like eating something special and none of us want to drive very far, we hie off to conti's in bf and eat like there's no tomorrow.

last saturday, i sent out a text message to a friend and told her how i was craving for conti's. her reply: game!

after an hour or so, she picked me up and off to conti's we went. we couldn't figure out what to order (everything seemed to be so expensive all of a sudden) at first until i asked "paella?" and she said "yes!" (as it happened to be her favorite). so we asked the waiter "pang ilan yung paella?" and he said "kasya sa dalawa pag babae" so we were like "perfect!" and ordered that, as well as a side order of gambas.

we chatted but both of us had our minds on the food that was about to be served. first came the gambas ... a teeny-tiny serving of gambas. as it is, the serving platter was tiny ... and the contents could not even cover the bottom of the platter.

oh no, we both thought, this is most likely going to turn out to be a disappointing dinner.

needless to say, our fears were confirmed when the paella arrived.

maybe the waiter thought we had the appetite of birds. or maybe we didn't look hungry enough. maybe the women who generally eat at conti's shun carbs like the plague. but unless we recently had our stomachs stapled and our appetites curbed, there was no way that the tiny plate of paella was going to fill us up.

(incidentally, i must say i was disappointed with the fact that the paella was served on a ceramic plate and not a paellera.)

we ate what little we had. and, notwithstanding the mango bravo that we ordered after the meal (we needed something else real bad!), nothing could have stopped us from making a beeline for ruins and ordering our comfort food:

lumpia and chicken skin for me.

and lumpia and cheese sticks for my friend.

sigh ... finally food landed on our stomachs, and we were satiated.

that said, i think i shall log off now and hie off to ruins ... those chicken skins are calling out to me.

rage against the crazy hair

there are a lot of things about me that i wouldn't mind changing.

like my giant legs. or my armpits. or my prematurely gray hair. or my "parang-nakipagsabunutan-sa-malditang-kapitbahay" hair.

my giant legs i've learned to hide in pants, my armpits in sleeves, and my gray hair with monthly trips to the parlor.

but my hair's crazy texture, well, it still remains to be a problem. i thought once that rebonding it would be they key but apparently, after the first rebonding session, the succeeding ones aren't as pretty as the first. and, with the monthly trips to the colorist, i'm thinking, if my hair could talk, i wouldn't be hearing pretty things.

as a matter of fact, right now, i think it's speaking volumes: i'm experiencing hair fall (thank goodness i have more than enough to spare), knotted ends, and this "bewang" look where the rebonded portion ends and my real hair begins. i've tried cutting it short and keeping it in ponytails most of the time but, to be honest, that's not exactly what i want.

i want pretty hair.

so i'm pretty ma-horde when it comes to hair products. if i have money, and i can afford it (translation: cheap), then i wouldn't mind spending money on a shampoo/conditioner/at-home hair treatment. once in a while, i even splurge on a salon hair treatment. that's how i want my hair to be pretty.

hence, the vietnam stash:

now, i'm also the type of girl who doesn't need to finish an entire bottle of shampoo/conditioner/hair treatment before starting on a new one. so, despite that i've four or five bottles of shampoo and conditioner currently in rotation, i immediately dove into these giant bottles of pantene shampoo and conditioner. after all, feeling ko, ako din sina erich, empress, and andi. showbiz is me.

a bit of a disclaimer though -- while i am easily swayed to buy all of these hair care products, i have also ceased believing that they can actually change my life, este, my hair. i realized that after i had my hair rebonded for the first time -- no amount of shampooing and conditioning will change the texture of my hair. admittedly, some shampoo-conditioner tandems are better, but in the long run, it's still the same banana -- my hair is buhaghag and unless i blow dry it or have it chemically altered, it will be buhaghag. such is life.

me, i just do what i can. and if that means that i use up two bottles of conditioner for every bottle of shampoo, then so be it. anything to make it easier to comb it out after a bath.

then, as i said, i tried out pantene. one of the writers who tried it out commented how she didn't need as much conditioner to "tame" her hair. when i read it, i said to myself, "phooey." i even thought, maybe she had nice hair to begin with. or nice water (our water is deep well which, to my mind, has all of these unwanted sediments). my first try, it felt like my hair was already conditioned after i shampooed it -- it wasn't so stiff, it wasn't so tangled. it could've been better, but even at that stage, the hair felt smoother already. then -- since this was my vietnam stash and no way i could get more in the immediate future -- i used about half of the conditioner i normally use, about the same amount of shampoo, and tried to spread that out on my thick hair. i kept my fingers crossed that my hair would be fine.

and you know what -- it turned out fine.

okay, i won't lie (like one of those hateful shampoo commercials) and say that i can now walk with hair swaying and what not. my hair's texture still leaves much to be desired. still, there are marked improvements, like how easy it is to comb my hair after each bath even if i just used a wee bit of conditioner. or how i can finger comb my hair. i'm still experiencing hair fall, but maybe i just need to wait a bit before that problem is cured too.

so, good job, pantene. you've turned me into a convert.

yet another sun cellular hate post

i think i've mentioned before how sun cellular and i go way back. i think it was sometime in december 2003, at one of those bazaars, when i signed up for sun cellular's i-text 250.

this was before call and text all you can.

this was before half of metro manila had a second cellular phone.

at that time, all i wanted was an alternative to my globe line which was giving my wallet a heartache each and every single time the bill arrived.

over the years, i've given up my globe line, switched to smart prepaid, then gave up prepaid lines for a while, then once more got a globe prepaid when they started offering the unlitxt promo, then switched globe prepaid numbers because of a phone stalker. one thing, however, has remained constant: my sun cellular phone line.

and, no matter how many loyalty promotions and what not they offer, i always choose not to avail of the promo since that would mean giving up my itext 250 plan, which i love to bits.

i don't mind the lack of signal whenever i head out of town - i lost my signal at the bee farm in bohol, at certain places in palawan, in calaguas, camarines norte - or even when i'm in my room at home. i think i've learned to live with the fact that no matter what phone i use, my sun cellular sim would never have a signal as strong as a smart sim.

i also didn't mind the fact that there are times when the bill would arrive late, and i wouldn't pay it cause it hasn't arrived yet, and then my line would be cut. after a while, i got to fix that problem and it never happened again.

as a matter of fact, i was so in love with sun that i even opted for their sun landline (which i paid so much money for but hardly got to use, again owing to billing problems) AND their sun broadband prepaid (which i paid P1,888 for but, again, hardly got to use, this time cause of signal problems).

i must however state for the record that once more, sun cellular has done me wrong.

a couple of days before we were supposed to leave for HK, i checked the sun cellular website for their roaming options. and, i was quite happy with it. i thought it was very informative.

it simply said that all i had to do was to call the sun hotline number and to update my account.

now, since i had paid my last bill in full, and the upcoming bill hasn't arrived yet, i thought i was good.

wrong.

i called the hotline number as i was in line at the check-in counter. turns out that since i had used my phone a wee bit more this month than in the months past, my unbilled charges were somewhere in the P800 range.

not bad, i thought, considering that my credit limit was P1,500.00.

apparently, that wasn't good enough for them -- i can only activate roaming if my unbilled and outstanding balance was below half of my credit limit.

now, where did they say that in the website?

even crazier was the fact that the person on the other end of the line -- who sounded as if i had waken him up from a gory dream -- told me to settle the bill that day so i can activate roaming. and, oh, he told me that after i had already mentioned to him that i was at the airport already.

boo, i say, boo.

needless to say, i spent the next four days in panic over the fact that i couldn't be reached since i had specifically (or stupidly?) put in my memo of pending work (something that we have to prepare for the office should we be going on leave) that i can be reached by phone. so much for that.

of course this had to happen when i left my globe prepaid at home -- i could've easily loaded that and went on roaming using that phone.

and of course if i had assistants and what nots i could have asked someone to go to the mall, pay my bill, and activate my roaming for me. but i didn't -- taong bayan lang ako - so i was stuck with silently fuming against the poor call center agent i had woken up from his leisurely slumber.

and, before you could say it, it was indeed stupid of me to have waited until the very last minute to activate my roaming when i could have done it in the days leading up to my vacation. yes, i agree.

well, now i at least know. so when i visit vietnam in august, and kuala lumper in september (yihee! travel spree this year!), i'd know better.

but sun cellular -- you have been warned!

I have a love-hate relationship with my armpits. No, scratch that – I have a hate-hate relationship with my armpits. I hate the fact that the laser hair removal treatments didn't exactly work on me. I hate the fact that they're not pretty. And I hate the fact that no matter how much I seem to do for them, they never really yield positive results. So, while I may hate the fact that my legs are big and my tummy looks like I have a baby inside of it, if God were to give me the chance to change anything, it would have to be my armpits.

Growing up, I have heard about the wonders of tawas. Tawas will make my armpits pretty. Tawas is magic. Tawas will be my savior. But no matter how wonderful tawas seemed, the fact that they came in powder form meant they were unwieldy and complicated. And so I stuck to deodorants. And I tried all kinds: roll-on, spray, gel, cream, and powder. Most importantly, I bought every single thing that promised me whitening or smoothening.

The fact that I am writing this post means only one thing: none of the promises materialized.

So when a friend recommended that I try out a solid tawas deodorant, I immediately said yes. What's yet another product to subject my armpit to, right?

The come on:

As I've mentioned, tawas allegedly equals pretty armpits. That was enough. No, that was MORE THAN ENOUGH for me.

The verdict:

Since the product is solid tawas inside a jar, you'll need to make sure that the surface is wet before you “apply” it onto your skin. I gently rub the product over and over the entire armpit area cause, and this is the biggest problem for me, I never exactly know if I am actually getting any product on. It just feels like you're rubbing a smooth wet stone on your armpit.

Since tawas is a deodorant but not an anti-perspirant, be ready to sweat when you're exposed to high temperatures. And of course, since sweat is liquid, I think (believe?) that some of the tawas “washes off” when I sweat, leaving me “unprotected” for the rest of the day. And, for some reason, there are times when I sweat and I smell okay, and there are (quite unfortunate) times when I sweat and I smell like someone who's been out on the sun the entire day. Translation: you never know what you're going to get. Me, I've learned my lesson – on days that I know I'm going to end up sweating a lot, I use a regular deodorant/anti-perspirant so no surprises for me.

Have they changed my armpits? I'd like to think so. I think they're not as dark as they used to be. Sweating aside, I try to use them as much as I can so that I never have to go back to artificial products which I believe have caused the darkening on my armpits after years and years of use. In fact, I can't wait for summer to end and for the cool days to begin so I can use them exclusively day in and day out.

Here are more pluses: (1) you don't get sticky armpits since the product dries almost immediately; (2) you don't get “product transfer” on dark-colored clothes (don't you just hate on putting on a black top only to see “stripes” caused by your deodorant?); and (3) white or light-colored tops don't get yellowish. In three words: I love this.

And save for the sweating (which, let's admit, is really a normal thing for armpits to do on a warm day), I think my armpits love it too.

rosa, the crispy lechon

my bad.

they've always said that an ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure. unfortunately, while i believe in it, i failed to act on it. and so i came back from my weekend at the beach burned to a crisp.

boo. i am fat and burned. i feel like a lechon at a fiesta. kulang na lang, apple.

all self-mockery aside, my skin's present state is horrible. i am sunburned, and days after i got back, i still feel slight pain on my back and shoulders. my face is peeling like crazy, including my ears.

and in case you were wondering, i did apply sunblock, i just forgot to re-apply.

since i couldn't do the past over, i thought i'd do the next best thing: take care of my skin. so i trooped over to watson's megamall and tried looking for something that'll (1) fix (2) cure (3) alleviate my sunburn.

in the end, i came home with this:

the packaging promised to help "renew skin in the shower" (yes, my skin needs major renewing). they claim that it is "infused with dead sea salt and exfoliating beads to help remove old skin cells" (uhm, including sunburn peel i hope!) as well as "concentrated vitamin c known to increase the synthesis of collagen and help reduce skin damage cause by free radicals" (collagen is good, right?). and, while it was inside a box and sealed i (gently) opened the box so i can get sniff the contents. what good is a product that fights free radicals is it'll make me smell like chowking's orange chicken, right? (connection: orange chicken = orange = vitamin c. i always associate vitamin c products with the orange smell. don't you?)

the verdict? the slight orange-y scent was the selling point. i LOVED it.

i used it last night and again this morning and i just love how even without a bath lily or scrubbing glove (neither of which i could use cause my sunburn HURTS!) the product is easy to use. i hate how you can't maximize bath gels unless you use a bath lily to distribute the product on your skin but the consistency of the radox "shower cream" allows you to wash your entire body without using much product. i could feel the tiny dead sea salt that they incorporated in the product and while it does exfoliate, i believe that the sparse amount of the sea salt makes it gentle enough for daily use.

it didn't hurt that smell lingered even after i had washed off the product. ☺☺☺ shower love ♥♥♥

going back to my predicament, i'll need more than two showers to determine whether or not it does help in renewing my skin and making it all better. but, to my mind, the mere fact that it makes showering fun and it makes me smell slightly of oranges is a happy thing. and i think that if you want happy showers and the hint of an orange-y scent in your bath, then you should hie off to watson's yourself and get a bottle of this product for only P220 for 450 ml.

*image from beauty haven