This Rugged JoyFull Home

"The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to ignite." Plutarch I was talking to my older brother about how surprised we were that my lil 5 y/o boy learned how to read on his own in three weeks' time with our erratic schedule at school. I remember spending barely 3 weeks with him, 30 minutes a day, just orally reciting the alphabets and their corresponding sounds and in no time he started reading phonetically and with good comprehension.    Happy for what he has heard, my brother said, "that's quantum leap learning..." What's that again? quantum leap learning? I kept repeating those words to myself a few more times. I was reminded of the 80's TV series that my siblings and I used to watch which starred Scott Bacula. But that's a totally different story. I googled a bit about quantum leap learning and here's what the internet says it is: "quantum leap, a noun, an abrupt change, sudden increase, or dramatic advance" Tha...

Here are a  few good reasons: DURABILITY     The fabric materials that they use are sourced from the US, Japan, and the Philippines. A finished product underwent meticulous QC, it's a combination of machine and hand sewing, appliques, the works. Safe to say, they're HANDCRAFTED to perfection. A bed cover, queen or king with 2 pillow cases, would take 2-3 weeks to finish. This is our Honeymoon Quilt of 12 years, a wedding gift made especially for us by one of my dearest friends, Rina. No repair has been made ever since we used it over a decade ago. Here, you see that Rina's creation is still in good shape. Rina and I I just thought that this wonderful work of art was worth the posting, tattered and all, LOL! The oldest in my collection,  "she's"  still a beauty at almost 15 y/o. It was a birthday gift to me by another dear friend of mine, Debbie, who's actually the one who influenced me into sewing quilts and of course, HOMES...

Who's not loving quilts?  A  quilt  is a type of bed cover, traditionally composed of three layers of fiber: a woven cloth top, a layer of batting or wadding and a woven back, combined using the technique of  quilting .  “Quilting” refers to the technique of joining at least two fabric layers by stitches or ties. In most cases, two fabric layers surround a middle layer of batting (cotton, polyester, silk, wool or combinations of fibers) which is a lighter, insulating layer. Patchwork  or " pieced work " is a form of  needlework  that involves sewing together pieces of  fabric  into a larger design. The larger design is usually based on repeat patterns built up with different colored shapes. These shapes are carefully measured and cut, straight-sided, basic  geometric shapes  making them easy toe piece together.)                                ...

I'd like to share a few of the short story books that I wrote for my kids many years ago. Back when they were small and I would have the liberty to pick out what to teach them from home. I drew my inspiration writing these short stories based from our daily mundane activities which transpired around our kitchen or school table . I took value from them by coming up with a list of vocabularies that would describe what ever we were doing at the moment. The list of vocabularies served as anchor to our stories. I found this approach very useful in instilling love for reading in them at an early age as they found the stories relatable. Little by little they learned to read phonetically as they decoded the sound of each letter and blended them into words.  While we filled our family library with a collection of colorful illustrated story books through time, I also felt it was necessary to come up with a set of our very own early readers' compilation of short stories without the pictu...

This is a storybook I wrote about 7 years ago for our then unica hija , 4 year old Bethany. I wrote this book primarily to fill the need to have a set of non-illustrated story books to stimulate her imagination. I was intentional in teaching  her to read phonetically; decoding the sounds of every letter; blending them together to form words.  It was totally the opposite during my time because I remember learning to read by memorization (like most of us parents did) with the help of picture books. I thought that bookstores these days have a plethora of picture books that use heavy illustrations from cover to cover so that kids have become overly stimulated visually, leaving no room for creating imagination.  When I wrote this collection of short stories, apart from my daughter, I had a lil boy in mind. I envisioned him sitting next to his big sister and I while we do school at our kitchen table. But that had been yrs ago, and that boy came into flesh a year after I ...

For this Science lesson, instead of telling my boy to color, which he despised lately, I told him to just circle the pictures that showed how to take care of one's body. BOY: Teacher, DONE! MOM: Hmmmm...Can you explain why you think reading, like what this lil boy in the picture is doing, showed taking care of one's body? BOY: What, Mommmyyy? He's taking care of his body. MOM: Well, you did ok on all the pictures, but I'm just wondering how and why you think reading can also be a way of taking good care of your body as you would take a shower or brush your teeth or eat good food ? (Mom was trying her best not to say "You're wrong" right away for her son's debatable answer) BOY: Mommmmyyyy, right Daddy always tells us to read books because it will protect our brain? We needed to take care of our brain too. Right, Mommmyyy? Reading protects your brain...it also makes you smart too. Daddy always says that. MOM: Oh, I see...I s...

Almost 2 decades ago, an Italian missionary friend of mine cooked for me a what she called "classic Italian comfort food" that's as easy as ABC to prepare and yet delightfully delicious and tasted expensive. I mean, to this day, remembering her kindness, cooking for a sick friend that I was, that really meant so much. Down memory lane, here's what she did:  1.     took a left-over pasta spaghetti from the fridge 2.     melted butter in a pan with a little drizzle of olive oil and stirred in the left-over pasta noodles 3.     got a medium-sized red tomato... pomodoro ehh ...poked it with her finger on its base and sort of squeezed it with her bare hand so that the juice really oozed out as she threw it in the pasta while stirring 5.     cracked the egg directly in the pasta, stirring it well, turned off the heat 6.     plated for me...the poor hand-beaten pomodoro seated nicely on the center of the plate above...

Melancholic - adjective; disposed to or affected with melancholy; gloomy Grateful - adjective; warmly or deeply appreciative of kindness or benefits received; thankful                source: dictionary.com    Euy and I learned two big words at school earlier this day that we thought were worth discussing together. SCENARIO. Euy took a short quiz on vocabulary and got a score of 9 points out of 10 and was complaining about one word she had a hard time figuring out. She was given four word choices and was supposed to pick out the best word that would complete the sentence. This quiz was about knowing the meaning of words through context clues, no dictionaries allowed. She was a bit exasperated that although she found the quiz easy, this one word got in the way of her getting a perfect score. So we discussed THE word "melancholic." Her quiz says, "The girl was still___________ after recovering from her previous illness." "But Mom...