Sound Investment

I am online almost every minute of my waking time and I've noticed a trending topic on bullions and how silver or gold can be a very sound investment. I don't know with that though, all I know is that gold is sound investment. That fact has been proven for years. I've been saving up for an investment for months now, and no - I am not talking about jewelry, but gold or even in coin form. After my mother in law gifted us with a silver coin, I realized it is nice to have some stashed for those rainy days. And why not? It is easy to store, give away or sell.

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Mommy&Me Monday

Hosted by Krystyn at Really, Are You Serious?
This is my very first entry for this meme. This is a picture of me and my first born during the weekend.

I was getting ready to go out to have dinner with my friends when he stopped me and said he wanted to take a picture with me first. His reason? I looked pretty daw. Awww. He's so honest! Hahahaha. ^__^
My pic with my friends!:))

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Friday Fill-Ins #190

And...here we go!

1. Laughter is often heard in our home.

2. "Okay, so tomorrow...." are the three words that started off the last email I sent.

3. What I'm most looking forward to today is 5PM which is 2 minutes from now.

4. The kids, no matter how noisy they get puts a smile on my face.

5. Where in the world can I get better service for my Dell

6. Ahhhh hot coffee on a rainy afternoon just what I needed!

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to chikka session with BFF JR, tomorrow my plans include photo session @ Picture Co. with my 2 boys and Sunday, I want to rest!

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New Dress A Day

I love her!!! I love her blog and her ideas ^-^

(Photos courtesy of Marisa Lynch)

Marisa Lynch set herself a challenge: Transform 365 unattractive frocks in 365 days, for $365. Just before her 30th birthday, she got laid off. To some, losing a job means hitting the streets with a resume or wallowing in grief. But for Marisa, it meant getting the sewing machine out and upcycling thrifted fashions. Every day.

“I was just in this not-feeling-good, crummy kind of mood, and I didn’t know how to kick it,” says Marisa. That’s when Marisa saw the movie, Julie & Julia. “[Julie] was finding something to do every day that made her feel great. I was jealous. I thought, I want to find that.”

Thus, New Dress A Day entered the blogosphere. The task: To make a new fashion piece a day — on a budget of a dollar a day — for an entire year.

Read more about her here. ORRRRR hop on over her blog. ^-^ I've been over there the whole morning and I can't get enough of her really great ideas!

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How to Hide from Friends You Don't Like

Everybody has this. Someone from you Facebook friend's list that you know but is not exactly your friend. It would be rude to delete them..but then again, you really2x don't want to share your status with them.

A repost from http://finance.yahoo.com/news/How-to-Hide-from-Friends-You-nytimes-3549740768.html?x=0

With more than 500 million people now on Facebook, it's inevitable that you'll be friended by someone you know, but with whom you don't want to share your online life. Once you've accepted them as a friend, how do you avoid them without the awkwardness of unfriending them?

Facebook has made it easy to hide other members' status updates. Place your mouse over an update from, say, Charlie, and a light blue X appears to the upper right corner of the update. Click the X, and Facebook will present you with three buttons from which to choose: Hide Charlie, Mark as Spam and Cancel. If you click Hide Charlie, you'll never see Charlie's updates again. (Click Spam and the message disappears and a notice gets sent to Facebook's servers and analyzed by spam filtering software.)

But how do you keep Charlie from reading your updates? Skirting your way around someone you've accepted as a Facebook friend is trickier. When you write a status update of your own, look for the lock-shaped icon below and to the right of the text input box. Click on the lock, and Facebook will pop up a menu. Click the bottom option, Customize. That will pop up a dialog box labeled Custom Privacy that lets you filter who will see your update.

There are two ways to exclude people. The quick and easy way is to type their names into the box labeled "Hide this from these people" at the bottom of the dialog box. To hide all future updates from these folks, click the checkbox at the very bottom that says "Make this my default setting." Then click the big blue Save Setting button. From now on, evil Charlie won't get your updates.The more sophisticated solution is to replace this blacklist with a list of people you do like. That way you can accept any number of new friends without having to accidentally share your updates with them.

To do this, click on Friends in the left margin of Facebook's interface. You'll see a button at the top of the Friends page labeled "+ Create a List". Click that and use the dialog box that pops up to make a list of the friends you want to share with. Call it, say, True Friends.

Next time you post an update, follow the instructions above to bring up the Customize dialog box. But instead of typing into the "Hide this" field, click the menu at the top labeled "Make this visible to these people." Select the option Specific People. A text input box will appear. Type the name of your new list, True Friends, into this field. Click "Make this my default setting" and then Save Setting. From now on, only your True Friends list will see your updates. Complicated and annoying, yes, but probably much less so than it was going to high school with Charlie.

Got a how-to question about Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace or another social network? Hit me up on Facebook [http://paulboutin.socialtoo.com], Twitter [http://twitter.com/paulboutin], or email [mailto:boutin@gmail.com]. All correspondence will be kept confidential.

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Where Did The Months Go?

In a month, we will be celebrating Jacob's 1st birthday. Where did time go? Wasn't it just yesterday when I posted this?

The venue and the guests are more or less known factors. As of now, I am still debating on the theme for the cake and cookie give-aways though. ^_^ It won't be a kiddie party, more like a fun, not so stiff dinner @ Bigby's in Ayala. Good thing Bigby's Cafe, a restaurant which is original from Cagayan de Oro accepts functions and serves buffet. I haven't placed a down payment yet so that's not final but it is my first choice.

A good friend has generously offered to lend her services by making a tarp and an e-invite for Jacob. She asked me what I want the invites to look like, so I went on over at this site which has holiday invitations and graduation invites but I didn't find what I was looking for there. Here though, are some of my friends past creations.

Baptism Invites:

First Birthday Invites

...and my fave.

Something cute for the photo book after the party!:) We'll have to brainstorm some more on how I would like the invitations to look like. I haven't decided on the cake! Jacob has no preference yet whether he likes animals, dinosaurs, cars or pooh bear! So, really, it's up to me.

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A New Hobby

What is up with guys and their guns?

Hubby and his friends enjoying a friendly game of air soft versus some Norwegians.
Look how serious they are? They have the gear, the gun and the outfit to match ^-^ I didn't know how much these guns could hurt until when I saw some of his injuries. One time he showed me some of his bruises, and man was I pissed...I mean, what if he gets seriously injured??? He assured me that its perfectly safe...well it better. As long as he is enjoying himself with the company of other men then I am perfectly A-okay with his new hobby. I actually envy him, he has a hobby. Something that he can say he 'loves' doing. As for me, aside from motherhood and blogging, I have nothing. Uhmmm blogging is great, don't get me wrong, but what I mean is a hobby that would force me to go out, do something physical for a change. I was thinking about playing badminton again. Now, to ask my friend if they're up to it.^_^

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The Nerve!

Many times, telemarketers call up and offer to give me a new credit card or loan. They say application is easy and that all I need to do is fill up forms that they faxed over. I've never applied for a new credit card nor loan because aside from not needing it (right now) is that I get scared faxing over information about myself to some random number. They may be legally operating but that doesn't discount the fact that they can use my information for something I might not agree to.

I read something like this happening before with TransUnion a credit reporting company which illegally sold confidential credit information to target marketing companies in the US. That happened between the years 1987 and 2000. There are a lot of Americans illegible for the millions of dollars of Transunion Settlement but you may not know that, so better take time to consult an attorney about that.

Anyway, so yeah...that's why I got offended when this telemarketer called me up earlier. She knew my whole name and all! How she got my name and number is bad enough right? I tried to ask her but she said, it's confidential! The nerve???

So, when she asked me my credit limit, I said,"It's confidential." I immediately told her I won't get any credit card or loan and quickly hung up.

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Accident

Woke up late today!!! It was almost 7AM. Ozzy woke me up because he had an accident.

...he rarely, rarely has accidents so I was surprised with this one. Wonder if he was having a bad dream?

Might be thinking too much of the incident in school yesterday.

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First School Fight

"Mommy, Ian pushed me in school."

...that was what my preschooler said to me once he arrived home from school. Apparently, he sat in Ian's seat and thus Ian got mad, pushed him off the chair. He fell and cried.

I told him not to sit in Ian's seat because he will get mad. I also explained to him that what Ian did was not nice. He nodded. I asked if he pushed back, he said no.

Good boy.

I don't want my son to be a push-over but I don't want to teach him to fight either. So I just explained to him fighting is not good and he better stay out of Ian's way from now on.

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Seeing Gold

With our growing family, comes my growing concern for each of my child's welfare. I can only do so much. Care for him ,teach him good manners, send him to school, set a good example...but after that? What else?

We are not exactly filthy rich. I don't have huge hectares of land to give them. So, the next best thing is to slowly invest in other things I can afford. For example, precious metals are good investment because they do not depreciate. That's why I am considering to buy gold bullion and when the right time comes, I can give them to my kids.

They can use it or keep it. That's totally up to them. The good thing is, gold coins are really easy to store so that wouldn't be a problem. My mind is at ease knowing I can give more than what money can't buy - and that is security.

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Ow Good.

These days when Ozzy get's frustrated he would say,"Ay sus, ay sus, ay sus!!!"

..well that's wayyyy better than him saying, "what the -ef!"

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Downside of Online Shopping

Oh gosh!

As much as I love online shopping, the downside of it, is that there are scammers out there who are out to get your money.

After paying for an item thru paypal - the seller immediately removed the item from the listing and didn't answer any of our queries. We've opened a case thru eBay and the seller has claimed to issue a refund but now he's saying paypal is holding his funds for 180 days!!

What the!!!! :(((

So what's our next step? Should we press the seller? Or raise the issue with paypal? *Frustrated*

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Online Degree Search

When I was in college we rarely did our research in the library anymore. The only time we went to the library was to sleep (because obviously it was quiet). Research was done online and some of our teachers even send their assignments by email.

I did really mind the influence of internet and the world wide web to our education until I learned that you can get a degree online. But of course, there's a cut throat competition between these online colleges that research online degrees program as well as research online schools, campus-based schools, or vocational programs may be very beneficial for you. What does these programs do exactly? They actually provide a comprehensive guide for finding the right accredited college or university which is a right fit for you and your goals.

It's easy to use, just click the “Find Your Degree” feature to locate the campus or online college that fits you. This way, you wouldn't have to weave through all the online schools offering this and that because it will be done by the program.

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Strange Facts

I got this in my email...and I don't know how true these "facts" are.

BIZARRE FACTS OF THIS WORLD

*In Lebanon, men are legally allowed to have sex with
animals, but the animals must be female. Having sexual
relations with a male animal are punishable by death.

*In Bahrain, a male doctor may legally examine a woman's
genitals,but is prohibited from looking directly at them
during the examination. He may only see their reflection
in a mirror.

*Muslims are banned from looking at the genitals of a
corpse. This also applies to undertakers; the sex organs
of the deceased must be covered with a brick or piece of
wood at all times.

*The penalty for masturbation in Indonesia is
decapitation.

*There are men in Guam whose full-time job is to travel
the countryside and deflower young virgins, who pay them
for the privilege of having sex for the first time...
Reason: Under Guam law, it is expressly forbidden for
virgins to marry. (Let's just think for a minute; is there any job anywhere
else in the world that even comes close to this?)

*In Hong Kong, a betrayed wife is legally allowed to
kill her adulterous husband, but may only do so with her
bare hands. The husband's lover, on the other hand, may
be killed in any manner desired. (Hahaha..bare hands, gotta go do some sit-ups and sets in the pull up bar to pull this off!)

*Topless saleswomen are legal in Liverpool, England -
but only in tropical fish stores.

*In Cali, Colombia, a woman may only have sex with her
husband, and the first time this happens, her mother
must be in the room to witness the act.

*In Santa Cruz, Bolivia, it is illegal for a man to have
sex with a woman and her daughter at the same time. (I
presume this was a big enough problem that had to pass
this law?)

*In Maryland, it is illegal to sell condoms from vending
machines with one exception: prophylactics may be
dispensed from a vending machine only in places where
alcoholic beverages are sold only for the
consumption in the premises

Laugh trip!! Hahahaha

How about your country? Is there some strange facts you want to share?

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Yes, I Can.

"People do not lack strength; they lack will."

I can do this. 20++ posts to go before I call it a day. ^-^ Actually, I can do some tomorrow, we'll see, I am in the mood to write today. Must be the weather. In fact, even though I am feverish, I have this craving to do something new today.

I wonder what that is.

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Think Of It As An Investment

When you say investment - you automatically think, "no...you cant afford it."

Actually, with the influx of choices these days, there are many available investment opportunities to chose from. Realty, stocks and even precious metals, like Gold, Silver and Platinum. The United States Gold Bureau is an authorized dealer for the U.S. precious metals, and you can even check them out in Facebook. If you become a fan of their page you would get updates on prices of these precious metals. Last I checked, August 5, 9am CDT Gold was valued at $1192.60, Silver at $18.29 and Platinum at $1562.00.

See that Chi...when I asked for a diamond ring set in platinum I wasn't thinking of myself, I was actually thinking of it as an investment. Something that we can use in case of emergency.^-^

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Wednesday Happy Thoughts

1. Online tasks keep pouring in. Of course, this was made possible by Milette ^-^ Big hugssss dearie.

2. Bed weather.

3. Some secret that I know ^-^

4. Jacob's 1st birthday party prep. For some reason, I am excited.

5. ...Jacob and his ability to balance himself better. I can see him walking in a few months time.

6. Midweek. I've said this last week, 2 days closer to the weekend =D.

7. Good hair day today. For a girl, this is something worth being happy about.

8. Good times with Mo. This show makes me want to get up in the mornings.

9. SM 3 day sale. 'Nuff said.

10. well...everyday is one day closer to finally seeing Hubby ^-^

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Missing Him

Quoted from: http://inspiredbythisfeeling.tumblr.com/post/922540157

True story. When will meet again ='(

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Just Walk Away

The one time I tried betting in a casino was not on online slot machines - it was in fact on a real slot machine on an actual hotel casino. It was a great 1st time for me because I won a few thousand pesos which I used to buy, what else, shoes! I remember those shoes vividly, in fact I have it in my closet still. It has been 4 years but the shoes are still wearable and in fashion ^-^

I am not one to obsess about casino games and such, but for about a month, Hubby and I went to the casino to try our luck. I never bet anything over a hundred pesos however, turns out my beginners luck have worn out and I never won big again so I stopped trying. No big deal. I had fun anyway.

I am sure, not all are like me. The taste of winning is addictive and I am sure many have succumbed to the call of the machines. These slot machines - casino games in general should be played with caution. One should know his limits and accept loses if any. When you are playing games of chance, when you are ahead, walk away ^-^

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My Kind Of Room

How cute is this!?

A wise way of optimizing a small space. 2 words = Symmetry & Mirrors!!! I love it =D

Got this here.

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Wednesday Happy Thoughts

1. No school for my boy meaning I don't need to wake up extra early to prepare and stuff. Plus - no assignments to worry about. =))

2. Ebay and online shopping ^-^ I am thinking, Aviator shades.

3. My boys are both finally sick-free. After weeks of battling eye-infection, fever and colds - both seem fine this week! I hope it stays that way~

4. Got myself a great deal on cheap car insurance. I am lucky my agent keeps me updated on these things because I really don't keep an eye.

5. Great weather. It's perfect. NO rains but it is cloudy and cool outside.

6. Midweek. Wednesday hump-day! You all know what this means, 2 days closer to the weekend =D.

7. Facebook..keeps me updated and it is a great way to reconnect with long lost friends.

8.Radio streaming. Keeps me from getting bored here @ work.

9. Loving family. I am just really lucky my family is a close knit one and my parents and parents in law are cool and great people!

10. Extremely sweet Husband whom I miss terribly everyday.:((

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Going Gleek

I am loving the 'straight hair' look again. Hmmmm. Been thinking about getting a rebond. My curling iron got busted only after 4 months of use. I don't even use it that often to begin with. Anyway, Hub said he prefers my hair long and straight. So it got me thinking...^__^

I am very much into changing my looks every so often because I get bored easily. For example, we were goofing around one afternoon and I was trying on my sister's glasses to channel Charice Pempenco's character in Glee.

Do you like it?

Judging from Hub's face.......

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