Have Children? Consider Pet Insurance!

Certainly, many women and men fantasize about the All American Dream. We all want the perfect house, the perfect family, the perfect pet and the perfect life. And it sure would be nice if we could all achieve those things. Trouble is, we do not live in a perfect world, and as much as we try to avoid them, accidents and tragedies often happen when we least expect them. For most families, health insurance comes to the rescue in the event of catastrophic injury or illness, and often saves parents from declaring bankruptcy thanks to mounting medical bills. However, when it comes to our furry friends, we do not often consider pet insurance – or even realize there is such a thing – until it is too late.

For families with beloved pets, their cats or dogs are just as important as any other family member. Especially for those pets who were part of the family before the kids even came along – it is super important to keep those animals healthy, happy and comfortable for as long as possible. Pet insurance is a smart step – emotionally and financially – to secure the safety of your furry family members.

For families with small children, it is absolutely imperative that they make pet insurance part of their annual health care budget. Just like you would never ever dream of having your child uninsured, you certainly should give you cat or dog that same consideration. Small children are often very rough with their pets and accidents are bound to happen. Should your cat of dog injure or break a bone, veterinary surgery to set and cast it can be astronomical. Sadly, most families who chose not to purchase a pet insurance policy are financially forced to put their pets to sleep in cases like this. Do your research, and a great pet insurance company is easy and affordable!

Babyproof Your Home

Bringing a new baby home can be quite an exciting thing. The first thing you want to do though, is to baby proof new jersey luxury apartments. The worst thing that can happen is having your child get into something they aren't supposed to and get hurt. By baby proofing your home early, you can prevent any of that from happening at all and keep your mind at ease.

One simple tip is to get down on your hands and knees and crawl around on the floor to see the same view as your child does. Look for anything that might be interesting for the baby to touch or play with, and make note of it.

Make sure that your house has new batteries in all the smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors. Take down all of your small refrigerator magnets, as they could pose a choking problem if they fall to the floor when the door is slammed too hard.

Locate all of the electrical outlets in your house and cover them with plastic outlets or buy special baby proof covers for them. Keep your cupboards securely closed with childproof locks. Some children may figure out how to open them, so if you have any cleaning solutions or sprays, place them high up on a shelf where a baby wouldn't be able to reach them.

Keep a list in a visible place of all emergency contact numbers. You can also program them into your phone so that you can dial them in a moment's notice. If you aren't sure what else you can do to protect your baby, there are professional baby-proofers out there that will come to your home and child proof the house for you. It's better to be overly safe then have an accident happen when you're least expecting it.

Need Assisted Living? New York Has it All

New York has long been considered to be one of the biggest and more important cities in the United States, and often in the world, as well. If you live there, you probably know that there's a lot of hustle and bustle going on almost all of the time. There are young people on the streets and in the cafes. There are middle-aged people going about their business by shopping and heading to work and back. But what about the older people? Sure, you see some of them out doing things, but not all of them are capable of that anymore. They need a little help.

With great options for assisted living, New York can still be a beautiful place for seniors. They don't have to give up and move away to live with family, and they don't have to stay in a nursing home just because there are a few things that they have trouble doing. If you're in that situation, or you have a relative who is, check into the assisted living options where you live. There are plenty of different facilities, and they have different levels of care and specific requirements. How much they cost might also vary quite a bit.

You don't necessarily want to choose the cheapest one or the most expensive one. There's much more to consider than how much something costs. The level of care is the most important things to consider. Some assisted living facilities can also increase the level of care as the person gets older and needs more help, so there won't be any need to move the person to a different facility. That can keep things more familiar and comfortable, and reduce anxiety. Assisted living is a great way to keep someone safe and still give them a lot of freedom and privacy.

home care project

Have you heard whirlpool's 4396508? This water filter replaces the old whirlpool and kitchenaid refrigerators filter 4392857 and 4396509. My online buddy shopper,Tina highly recommends to use this unit to eliminate bad taste, icky odor, lime scale buildup, chlorine, dirt and rust that can be found in water and ice. The great thing about the 4396508 filter, it does not remove fluoride from the water. Great huh?! Actually, her recommendation to change my water filter is very timely since I have plans of replacing our existing water filters now. It's been more than six months, you know. Time to change.

So off to kitchen filter home care ... next in line, bedroom improvement project.

bath upgrades

Oh, I so want this ... for our bathroom upgrade.

And since the husband is into home improvement mode after the Ondoy calamity, I so want to take advantage of extending our home improvements not only exterior and interior painting jobs, but to upgrade my favorite part of the house .. the bathroom! Wouldn't it be lovely and a dream to own a walk in bath tub with full air whirlpool spa with 24 jet spray! Totally relaxing comfort at your very own home. No need to visit the spa for deep soak tub body massage, but instead you get the royal treatment fit for a queen any day you want it. Great, huh! And I so want to get this. I just hope the Prestige model bath tub will fit just right at our present shower room set up. Otherwise, instead of bath upgrade, will be needing major home improvement to add more space to our present bathroom. And that is not part of the plan! LOL.

home improvements

For my last quarter project for the year, I am thinking of doing some home improvements. Home improvements particularly to my one of my favorite place inside our home, the bathroom. This time, I plan to concentrate at our guest bathroom. Though the installed ceramic tiles fairly new, I don't have any plans of changing the existing design. Instead, I plan to add some accent colors in our guest bathroom like installing glass tile . I saw great offer from the web at 10% off from buytile.com and it might be good idea to purchase these tiles now while on sale. Don't you think so? The company even offers free shipping! Great offer, huh! And with over hundreds of design to choose from, I am sure will enjoy all the accent colors I plan to achieve for my modern bathroom. Do check it out while most of the items are on sale. :)

Testing the chocolate fountain ...

Got my choco fountain as a Christmas gift from my sweet Tita Lolet. I told her my Christmas wish and she immediately handed me the money to buy it na daw. Hahaha! In less than one minute ha, without batting an eyelash, she gave me the money...wag ko lang daw sya papuntahin sa mall to buy it for me!


So eagerly, I bought the chocolate blocks (white and dark choco) and vegetable oil from Chocolate Lovers Cubao. I bought fruits (grape and melon) and tested the choco fountain early this evening... and... it was a great success! Wohohoo..ready na for the big party on Thursday! :)

Thanks Peachy for the choco fountain 101 tips! Truly helpful.



* note: hard to clean the choco fountain machine ha! Bilis mag-solidify ng choco when left alone, difficult to remove yun excess choco from the machine! :)

Weekly Recap

It’s been a busy week and I’ve passed the days with no post to my blog. I’ll just provide quick run through kwentos, shall we?

*Sam will start classes again by October 1 at Fairchild Learning Center located inside our village. Lately, I noticed she’s been quite shy during family gatherings and it takes her quite some time to warm up and interact. That is why I am thinking of sending her to back school to improve her social skills.

*In addition to item 1, I just got approval from hubby to enroll her. Won my case this time… especially when he noticed Sam’s been quite bratty and rowdy lately. She needs a new environment and not only under yaya’s everyday care. Another winning argument … :)

* Went home late last week and was surprised to see that Sam got a slight burn on her right arm. Was totally furious because yaya and our helper can’t explain where she got the accident! (or one of them was lying!!) By probing, I’ve deducted that Sam got burned while our maid was ironing our clothes. Though it’s quite a small scrape, but the fact that we found out on our own without the helpers telling us about the accident … this totally freaked us out! Their claim, they don’t know what happened. The nerve…. they thought we wouldn’t find out! Because of this incident, we gave ultimatum to our helper … and she’s bound to go by October after paying all her cash advances. (Well, we know Sam’s super likot stage now, and we do understand and acknowledge that. But unexplainable accidents and deliberately hiding this to us….that’s something we won’t tolerate!)

Anyway, Mike decided to put Sam to school for her to spend the days learning instead of having unexplainable accident from helpers. Besides, it’s safe and more importantly … Sam won’t sing & dance to Papaya song! :)

*On a lighter note, Mike and I went to Divisoria last Saturday to buy loot items, toys and prizes for Sam’s party. Surprisingly, hubby didn’t complain for waking him up early on a Saturday morning. Despite having a drinking-spree the night before, he didn’t complain on traffic and for walking far while bringing my super heavy shopping bag. Never heard any word! Wow! And these sacrifices all for Sam! :)

( Side kwento: he enjoyed the Divi trip so much that he bought kilos and kilos of fruits…dragon fruit, mangosteen, lanzones, rambutan, oranges and plums! Lahat ng fruits in sight binili! Grabe! He even accompanied me buying onions, tomatoes, garlic, potatoes, calamansi, eggplants, sayote and other veggies! Note: minimum of 2 kilos each yun! Hahaha! Syempre ilan trip kami balik sa car to deload our purchase then puro side car kami! Hahaha! )

Maid Stories

Well, I feel so blessed having truly nice and very concerned neighbors who happen to watch our house (and maids) while we are at work. You see, hubby and I work full time and we leave our precious daughter at home with our trusted maids.

I got a surprise call last Thursday from one of my neighbors informing me that one of our maids into a “major fight scene” with our neighbor and her helper. So surprised with the news, I asked my FIL to immediately go to our house (who lives 10 minutes away from us) to check what happened. I immediately called our house also and asked yaya to ensure Sam’s safety and away from all the brouhaha going on outside.

It appears that the cause of the away was a “love triangle” amongst our lady neighbor, a boy helper, somebody’s helper (Sam’s playmate yaya) and my helper! I was informed that it was a huge fight with exchange of bad words, hair-pulling and kicking scene. My helper was outnumbered and was hurt during the fight hence FIL accompanied her to our village security to file charges against her attackers. It was resolved during the “talks” that this incident will not happen again and more so, respect should be given to the owners of the house (us) before dealing with our maids. That is, if they have issues with my maids, they should inform us so we can deal with her accordingly and not to resolve the issue through street fight! Shame on them! :(

Anyway, I really felt helpless and scared when I got the call from my neighbor. I am afraid what might have happened to Sam with nobody to ensure her safety. Imagine, leaving your daughter to your so-called trusted hands and putting all your hopes with them to take care of your child while you are at work! Good thing I’ve got really nice neighbors who were so concerned with my daughter and our property, who called us immediately to report goings-on inside our house. Otherwise, I wouldn’t know all of these and I am sure my maids would not tell!

So, what happened to our maid? Despite my in-laws asking me to replace her immediately, I’ve decided to give her another chance. It’s hard to look for a new replacement especially we’ve already trained and got so used with her ways. She knows how we want our things done inside the house and teaching a new maid would be quite handful and time consuming especially for working moms like me. We’ve become stricter and we imposed new regulations inside the house which I believe would refrain my helper from mingling with other helpers in our street. She’s now on her “probationary” status again, until such time she can prove to us that she can be trusted again.

Sad to say, we will miss Sam’s BFF. Her yaya was also banned from going out so her alaga was also affected. So I guess one less afternoon playmate for Sam! :( We are still hoping that will change, eventually. Kawawa naman kasi yun bata!

Lessons learned:

1.Be really, really nice to your neighbors! Befriend them and let them be your eyes and ears while you are away!
2.Establish good relationship with them. Exchange contact numbers so they can reach you should there be any concerns, emergencies or problems.
3. Avoid getting young helpers -- they tend to fall inlove easily!
4. Maids should not entertain boys, texters, manliligaws etc... Be on watch!
5. Restrict their freedom. Small afternoon chit-chat with other helpers ok but should not be a venue for tsismis or ligaw time. Afternoon play/ relaxation should be kept to a minimum only (1-2 hours)