Christmas 2012

Belated Happy Holidays friends! Sorry for the suuuuuuuper late post. I hope you had a wonderful celebration as much as we did... Simple pero masaya.

Christmas 2012 is one of the best ones I've had. I realized that this celebration is not about holiday indulgences, but the sincerity of loving and giving. This day was extra special because God has given Papa another chance to celebrate this with us (he survived a fatal heart attack).

 The Tree and the Simple Gifts We Shared

This Christmas tree has a story. When my siblings and I were still young, our Christmas tree was made by our father. He used a meter or so of chicken wire, formed it into a inverted cone which was about my height and painted it with gold. My mother decorated the "tree" with ornaments that were handed down to her. Paglipas ng taon, kinalawang na yung tree. Waley na. So my siblings and I decided to chip-in with 100 pesos each and purchased the Christmas tree on this picture. The  only new decors purchased this year are the birds... the rest are ALWAYS recycled. Mother became too sentimental... she doesn't want to have this one replaced.

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Simple Gifts and Wrapping with Love

At dahil sa tagtipid this season, my sister and I decided to brave the Divisoria crowd to purchase our gifts. Bilang hindi bongga ang presents, kinarir ko na lang sa wrapping.

 

These are the gifts that I have given to my female office mates. The ribbon was made out of denim scraps (mananahi kasi si mother dear.. pinagtabasan to nung mga nagpaputol ng pantalon sa kanya) and buttons that I found somewhere in my mother's work area. I also used Manila Paper and brown paper bags from our purchases. 

The ones in boxes with red letters are my gifts naman for our male ELFs (EverLastingFriends... cheesy? I know. Haha. That's how we are). I looked for magazine pages to wrap the presents and colored paper from my previous projects. The denim cut outs were also recycled. Tapos, namulot na lang ako ng branches sa labas ng bahay namin to add. Meanwhile, the pink bunny and green pig wallets were purchased from Divi at PhP15 each. I used these as "envelopes" for Aguinaldos that I have given to my godkids.

Here are my gifts to our female ELFs.The red letters are the first letters of the receivers' names. La lang. Para personal. : D 

These were given to my male office peeps. Pambalot ng pandesal and peg. Bawal ang plastic sa surrounding stores near my workplace... uso at tipid. Bwenas lang at may brown bags akong nakita sa kusina namin. Recycled ulit. 

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Christmas Eve

Due to business needs, we had to work on Christmas eve. Luckily, I was able to work from home. After doing some reports, I was able to at least have our Christmas dinner with my family and village Tropa. Come 12:00 midnight, the rest of my family were sleeping soundly, (except for my sister Bujoy). Nanood na lang kami ng sister ko ng High School Musical sa DVD habang nagtapos ako ng ibang reports.

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Christmas Day

We went to my in-law's house in San Mateo on the 25th. Here are some snapshots of how our day went.

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Thanks for dropping by! Good vibes! 

Love,

Tropang Ina