Birdcages, owls and poopie nappies.

When you are eight months pregnant, it's easy to feel left out. It's easy to feel like the world is speeding past you while you waddle through your days. It's easy to feel like so much is happening around you and you lose your breath trying to catch up. For your girlfriends will still have their dinners over cocktails and red wine. Your girlfriends will still go out dancing and your girlfriends will still sleep in the next day rocking those ultimate hangovers.

Life around you goes on and you miss out on certain things. 

But at eight months pregnant, a walk down the hall leaves you breathless. 

Lying down on the couch with your swollen feet up sounds more appealing than dancing in your five inch heels.

Drinking a cup of ginger tea warms you up more than that glass of Pinotage. 

Wearing comfy pajamas at nine in the evening is more comfortable than those skinny ass jeans.

And then special days happen that celebrate the main reason why you are in fact missing out. 

And then you realise, that you are not missing out on much. 

On special days like this one, your friends remind you that you are missed as much as you miss them. 

And that they are not going anywhere. 

            

in the fog and playing in the rain

A secret garden with floating lilypads, a mountaintop escape in the middle of rainy season tucked in a vast green rainforest. Just the perfect spot to run to when the city gets too claustrophobic, the perfect for city girls to escape to when they just want nature. We do need it too, you know.

With truffle oil and honey to complete our cheese and biscuits evening, her with her pinotage and me with my chai tea, we sat on a 'floating' lanai and caught up with our lives. Our last one on one was in LA, the day we cruised through the beachfront and drank wine like our lives depended on it. 

Couldn't think of anyone else to have shared this weekend with.

More about Moon Garden? Jump over to here.

two peas in a pod

They're like Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

Attached at the hip. 

Best buddies. 

Some even think they're twins.

It's nice to see little friendships mean something to three year olds. 

when v came to see us

It was like yesterday we sat in my lounge in my little flat keeping warm in the crisp spring weather. Like yesterday we ate that vongole in a little restaurant in Soho. Like yesterday we danced around singing to "Part of Your World". Like yesterday we climbed the Eiffel Tower and ran along the Paris roundabouts. Like yesterday we salsa-ed in a Brazilian club in central London. Like yesterday she held the little man in her arms making sure he would always remember her. 

Three years ago, I walked away from V on my brick lined street and turned off into the park with tears running down my face as I left London with the angst and anxiety I never expected. 

Three years on, we sat in my new renovated house that I'm finally back in. Three years on, we ate vongole on a humid night in Manila restaurant. Three years on,  we sat in bed in our pajamas singing "Part of Your World". She boogied with her new favourite little boy as I watched them bond over Spiderman and Captain America. We drove up the mountains, ate lunch in a garden sanctuary and spent a day within a walled city of Old Manila. She made sure the little one would always remember her and kissed him goodbye knowing that he would.

So forgive me for being in hiding this May. 

Three years is a lot to catch up on. 

'unscripted conversations'

Two beautiful ladies.

Unscripted Conversations. 

The traffic was horrendous that night but all of it was worth is seeing the happy and 

extremely proud faces that were there that night. I know I was one of them. It truly is wonderful to witness dreams come true and when you know how passionate people are about their art, it is then that you understand the depth of their pride. 

To my friends, Sarah + Vicky ... for their dreams that came true. 

 And to a book that truly is worth having on my coffee table.

The amazing "S&V" flower installation courtesy of my cousins over at Holland Blooms who pulled pretty much an all-nighter getting it set with over 7000 pins and ficus leaves. 

Now let's try get this video over one hundred thousand hits by January 15th.

 " It symbolizes being able to get eyes on something that was built and created from the ground up, by Filipinos, about Filipinos, but for the world. It's our bridge between old and new, Fil-Ams and the motherland, other cultures and ours, our grandparents and our children. It's a representative of Filipino talent, and what we are capable of -- today. On the brink of 2012. With the internet at our disposal, and the world, literally at our fingertips." - Sarah Meier-Albano

friends & food

A perfect match, a wonderful equation of how those two work extremely well together.

How could you ask for anything else except nights that involve lots of food, good conversations  which include travel, dreams, goals, + creativity, lots of laughter, and a whole load of grilled cheese.

.... when you walk waddle away full and fulfilled, well, to me that is a whole lot of happiness.