Are you ready for pets?

Whether to have pets or not is a household decision. Your kids may definitely like the idea but are they ready for it, or are you? The responsibilities that come along with pets and the physical requirements (like pet's home and where to put it) are just some of the things you need to think of before deciding. If your kids have allergies, you might need to think not just twice but many times.
We had hamsters last year, the female one even gave birth to 3 cutelings at New Year's Eve. But then because of the difficulty in leaving them when we as a family go someplace, we decided to give them away.

As a mom, I look for ways to train my kids to do their tasks and responsibilities so when we got the hamsters from the province, I assigned my kids some tasks related to caring for our new pets.But my younger one has this over giggling towards the cute hamsters. One day, I suspected that one of our hamsters suffered from broken bones because it could no longer stand up. Later that day, he died. Poor thing.
So here are some things to consider and discuss with your kids before you let those pets into your household.

Andre's Battleship

After watching the movie Battleship, my kids just can't get over it. It was the talk of the table for sometime. Prior to this, they were watching Scoobydoo and some ghost ship and ugly pirates in it. And so Andre, my 7-year old son who is immensely addicted to drawing anything that sticks into his mind - brought out his sketch pad and came out with this nice drawings. His dad calls him an architect in the making. Let me see what you think. Below are photos of his drawings of the USS Missouri in various angles. The fourth one is the same ship made up of blocks.

Angry Birds ala Avengers by Sean

Sean's artistic talent and addiction to Avengers got mixed in this most recent set of drawings he did. They turned out so cool, I am amazed there's no doubt. I hope the concept is really original as he said, to make sure he's not violating any copyright out there. Well, among the characters he created, I liked most his version of Iron Man which he named Iron Beak, and Captain America who turned into Captain Angry. Black widow's reincarnation - Black Bird-ow was so nicely conceptualized as it really looked so strong yet feminine, 'must have something to do with the eyes and the pink hair. My criticisms, though, which I told Sean is the version of Thor - Thor with Egg Hammer. Thor, who happens to be my big crush, is way more good looking than Sean's version. But overall, I'm so proud of Sean. He's really so talented - a cartoonist in the making. What can I say?

Busy with blocks

If there is any other thing Andre's busy with aside from sketching - it's building blocks -even his Jenga blocks are not being used for what it's meant for coz he likes to build things - a lot! He's got some nice, sometimes unbelievable, creations. I have no idea how he came up with these things in his mind because whenever he does them - he doesn't have any object in front of him to imitate. It must be there already in his mind - the picture of the objects he's building. The one above is a pirate ship. And owing to his addiction of Harry Potter, the train below is his version of the Hogwarts Express. This one below is, according to him, the Empire State Building inspired by Percy Jackson. Not bad huh?
This one below is an earlier version of pirate ship, because he liked Peter Pan.
And last but not the least - here's Andre's Ron Weasley's house in Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince.

Sean's Phineas and Ferb

From Sean's sketches

After featuring Andre's works, it's only fair I do the same with his older brother's artworks. Here is Sean's rare sketch of one of his favorites - Phineas and Ferb. It's a pity I wasn't able to document his drawings before. He also had lots of sketches like Andre. But more than sketching, Sean is more into building things out of Lego. Check out that post about Sean, the lego artist. He has created cute Wall-e, and Optimus and Jetfire together, Devastator, and Demolishor from his most favorite movie Transformers. There are also T-rex, spinosaurus, and various vehicles on this post. We're so glad and proud of both Andre and Sean, they're really talented.

Andre's sketches

Andre has been busy again recently with his sketches. I'd like to share some of them. Pardon the messy sketches, he has a habit of sketching many stuffs in one small page making it difficult for me to crop things to separate one from the other. The one above is the skyline of Paris, only the Eiffel Tower is smaller relative to other nearby structures. You would notice this if you compare it with the actual Paris skyline photo below (photo owner here).

This one below looks like a truck carrying a boat? (see top part), silly me. Next to this is well, a boat, that looks rather incomplete/unfinished. But I like the angle of this sketch.


Now here's a messy Lightning Mcqueen. One thing about Andre's sketching is that he rarely used a pencil, always a ballpoint - so that explains the ruggedness of his drawings, and without colors. This is perhaps his own style of drawing, that - I respect and admire.

This one below - he told me, is the house in the movie Signs (Mel Gibson) with the alien spaceships looming ahead. Brilliant. Then there is Astroboy, one of his favorite movies.


This finale is Andre's ever favorite subject, the house of Mr. Fredricksen in UP the movie. It is also my most favorite among his artworks - because even if it is very tiny, no more than 3 inches in length, it has great details in it. Check out Andre's other art works on this movie.

Andre is my younger son. He's now 6 years old. He loves sketching very much, among his other favorite drawing subjects are Harry Potter's Hogwarts School, Ron's house, Hogwarts Express. 'Gotta dig up those and put them all up in here. This is all for now.

Homey pizza

'Enough about my China trip, I'm back home to my usual working mommy mode. I wanted to make up for the lost time, so I made the kids a home-made (sort of) pizza - Hawaiian, their favorite. One thing I've learned about preparing food for my kids, they need not be expensive and complicated. They wanted a simple pizza, I willingly obliged. Apart from the fact that that's the only one I can do for now for I'm still yet to read the cookbook I inherited from my dear Aunt, the ingredients are quite easy to find.
I used Village Gourmet's Gourmet Pizza Crust Personal size, thin, and I was lucky to find pizza sauce in the nearest supermarket. Added some pineapples, ham slices, and bell pepper, quick-melt cheese - and there in an instant - pizza, fresh from the pan, without a lot of waiting or queuing. The kids loved it - we even used Gardenia bread when we ran out of pizza crusts!

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Growing Up

'Remember my post about the movie Up? Well, my younger son is actually not over it yet and his fondness seems to be growing as he himself grows up. He drew Mr. Fredricksen's house with the balloons on it in many pages of his sketch pads over and over again in different angles, different scenes. He was only 4 when the movie came out, now he's 6 and he still loves it. He has made himself lots of versions out of Lego, be it simple or 3D, used blocks too, and improvised with small balls of styrofoam for the balloons.

The one he drew above is the movie cover while the one below is a scene on top of the plateau where the Paradise Falls is found. Like his Kuya Sean, Andre is really talented. I couldn't be more proud. Take a look.

Drawn from below version

The midget out of Lego or the floor version out of Megablocks.

The 3D version he made in 2009.

A grander version he made just recently mixing Lego with styro balls.

And a whole bunch of random sketches.

Meet the Lego artist

If I'm not mistaken, this the first time I am going to introduce my lego artist - Sean, my eldest son. He's 10 but he started creating those lego transformers and other characters  back when he was only 6 years old. One of my favorites that he created is the Optimus-Jetfire union. The simple Wall-e he did was also cute. The liger (combination of lion and tiger) was really awesome. He still continues to amaze me and his dad until now. We're so proud of him, he did it all without any pattern, just pure imagination.
I'm sharing again some of his most recent works. One is a land rover, a mammoth, and his version of Demolishor from the movie Transformers. There were others before but sadly I was not able to photograph them.

Boredom buster: Paint!

Home-made Delight

What's best to enjoy the lazy Sunday afternoon but indulge on home-made banana split? The kids were bored 'til I gave each of 'em a bowl of Selecta ice cream, not the expensive  one but only the 3-in-1, with medium-sized banana, some crackers, wafer sticks, on top I squeezed some chocolate syrup. It was simple but enough to brighten up their day.

Great dolls by Dolljoy

My younger son just had his first educational field trip last Friday. I'd like to share some of the photos I took at the Dolljoy Factory, a great Filipino doll-maker.

They have a variety of real nice dolls. In fact they do supply Precious Moments dolls in the US and other countries. The owners Mr. & Mrs. Dy have four daughters and a son and their children inspired them to come up with their own dolls during the 1970s. My favorite among their collection items is a Japanese doll.
If you are interested about Dolljoy, contact them at 02-710-1627.