D.I.Y. Debut

Finally, I can show you what I've been up to these past three months. I couldn't really talk about each of them one by one because... well, it's kind of hard to take any quality pictures when you're borrowing your DSLR camera, as a lot of my old posts might have shown you. Besides, I find it better to dump them all in one sitting, don't you? Haha.

Thanks so much to Tita Lianne from Sugarpuff Photography for the amazing pictures!

It all started with a sketchbook...

One of the things I'll miss the most about prep is writing and drawing my ideas in this journal, even if the debut shouldn't be the end of my entries. I guess this is the first time writing a journal wherein I truly didn't think about what I was writing except for the gist of it, of course. I just let the words flow~ Haha. I'm not really a journal-keeping person (says the girl who tries to maintain a blog harhar) except for all those fictional ones that I have to "script".

I can't wait to look back at this book and see what took up most of my time between August to October 2013, haha.

The Cake

Expectation, reality. Haha, but in fairness, I love how the cake came out, it complimented the party beautifully! I guess an entire ombre-on-the-inside cake is way too ambitious too anyway, but I really love the color blending. Thanks so much to the bakers from Cravings for achieving this so beautifully.

Painting everything...

From the watercolor invites... (these are the originals, I scanned them in and laid them out on Publisher so you could fold them into actual cards! I apparently fooled a lot of people into thinking I did them one by one... hahaha)

...to the poster paint menu cards (I actually had to go through several trials of this because of the changing menu, haha - but I loved food tasting and taking reference photos, although making the food look appetizing with poster paint was a liiittle challenging. Thank God we tackled the color wheel at school before this so finding and mixing colors was easier for me and with this medium then)...

...to watercolor signs and banners posted on the events page and at the candy buffet...

...to the watercolor background on the Freedom Wall, which also took several tries to perfect because the mother/"manager" had a few changes... hahaha.

I'm quite proud of the turnout of several days scattered with hard work, I can't believe it's all collected into this, haha. The whole thing really upped my appreciation for painting and watercolor, that's for sure.

The Souvenir Bag

Aside from the adorable candy buffet provided by Ate Jaz from Sweet Nest (who also did the gorgeous table set-up, backdrop, registration front, and provided creative ideas for so many things) my Mom suggested we have canvas bags for give-aways (aside from the tiny notebooks we hand-stapled and the paper of which we got from our usual supplier, Emerald, near Anonas station) and found the Rehabilitation Sheltered Workshop for the National Capital Region. We learned the bags are hand-crafted by persons with disabilities and even got a discount. They work so efficiently, we got the final bags a day after they started. Also, I sent them a preliminary study for the logo and they were able to Photoshop one for me (because I had no Photoshop at the time haha) and the two-tone print was included in the package.

Seriously, if you guys want to custom order bags or are finding a supplier to sell them, check out the RSW and their website here. You're supporting persons with disabilities as well as getting amazingly crafted quality bags and other products.

Miscellaneous Signages

Before we went to the salon Ate Jaz asked me to drop by so I could write on the black side of some illustration boards. I'm not so good at calligraphy yet so it took me a while (and a looot of erasures) before I could finish these hahaha. Luckily, I wrote a poem beforehand for the toast, but I really chickened out on saying it mostly because it was so cheesy hahaha. But oh well, both of them turned out quite nicely~

***

Like I said, I'll really miss stressing out on party preparations (even though my amount of stress is nothing compared to my parents' hahaha) and working on everything. The party passed like a dream - a four to five hour whirlwind of a dream filled with people who were hopefully happy, and things that took me by surprise, and things that hopefully went as planned, and then suddenly it's all over. Three months of hard work coming into something like this. But hey, in the words of the immortal Dr. Seuss, "Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened."

I'm looking forward to being legal, and even if I do have to be careful where I tread now that was one hell of a party, and I'm so glad to have spent my first day of being legal with the people I love (even though some of them unfortunately couldn't make it) and in a way that really captured my me-ness hahaha. Even though I stressed about the party not being about "me" it was still one of the most memorable experiences I've ever had. :)

Belated Happy Halloween, everyone! :D

OFF.

That's the way I can describe this week. My closest blockmate Ilsa has described me as such for the past few days and, I have to admit, I've been seeing it. I know I seriously have not posted nearly enough for my readers - unless you know me and are aware of my situation in real life - to understand what I am about to say, but I hope you guys still get a little out of it.

I was so out of it today, and for the past week perhaps owing to the fact that I'm running much lower on sleep than I was used to in High School. I slept in school yesterday and today, both in the CFA, and spent sixteen hours in campus yesterday.

There was an overall feeling of "whatever" these past few days. I haven't interacted with my friends and blockmates the way I wish I could (naks, standards), and reciting in Eng10 today was just so... weird. I kept tripping all over my words in both situations and all of my thoughts came out in word diarrhea. One thing I want to keep an eye on is precise communication, because I've been deprived of that particular ability in the past. People won't wait for you to apologize for what you said and explain it all of it one by one. They'll comprehend it in a certain way so it's your job to formulate how you're going to say any of it.

The thing I'm most afraid of is hurting someone, physically or emotionally, because I haven't been watching my words and actions and general disposition because of my exhaustion. Yes, I'm terrible for blaming these things on something so trivial to my blockmates by this time, something they've been so accustomed to that they are able to complete beautiful plates with or without sleep, but aside from my period (TMI) that's the closest thing I could attribute it to.

Also, busy-ness. I've been avoiding blaming not replying to everyone on the Internet as soon as I can, not being able to get to my personal projects, not being able to just socialize on being busy. It's so easy to blame your mistakes on other things, isn't it?

It's so easy for people to tell us to take a break every now and then. It's so easy for them to tell us to manage our time - that I realize now. It's so easy to assess a situation based only on what you know. There are so many factors that contribute to a person making certain choices, whether or not they look good to you and at the end of the day you don't actually have the best say in what they should do. Hayz. Lesson: don't automatically assume you're reserved to a right to tell someone what to do. Plain and simple.

Speaking of people telling you what to do, I wish my schedule would become more flexible... transpo-wise. I'm a little ashamed of the fact that I have to be chauffeured every day because most of my blockmates are already so independent and have learned how to commute outside of school. It's not that I'm in a rush to be independent or whatever, it's not that I feel strangled or rebellious or any of that teenage bullsh*t adults try to rub on me, it's just that things would be so much easier had I not be required to think about other people when I want/have to stay late at school. Having to stay late at school makes me out to be insensitive to the people who have to usher me back and forth; but wanting to take transportation makes me naive, stupid, ungrateful that I have people who drive at my own beck and call. I can't win, and it frustrates me.

Thinking about all of this makes me realize how much of myself I made, and how much of myself is actually me, naturally raised up by others and uninfluenced by the society I perceive. Huwaw. Existential crisis ang peg.

I'm sorry, again, if all this sounds incomprehensible to you guys. I sure hope this feeling goes away by the end of next week and I get back on the right track. Wish me luck.

***

In other news, debut planning has been going well so far. I finished stapling just under 150 notebooks for souvenirs and drawing for the events page and invitations, feats I'm extremely proud of as a DIY-er. Food tasting will be on Wednesday. I really am excited. :)

Home Sweet Bed.

Here I am, running on five hours of sleep, pondering the last three days and two nights that passed by. I just came back from my Fourth Year retreat. I won't expound on much, since this is one of those things you will definitely have to experience to really understand.

This was, by far, the strangest, most emotionally exhausting, fun, scary, crazy, spontaneous, amazing retreat I have ever been to. And I can't expect any less from my section. Coming into school on Tuesday, I really don't know what to expect. There were so many things that had been thrown out in the open for everyone to devour that I'm both scared and excited to see how much these three days and two nights changed all 40 + 11 of us, plus our Homeroom Teacher.

This is just a feelings post. I can't put into words just how thankful and tired and blessed I am to be in such a family. I can finally say that I've caught up with life in this class and, even though I'm back to the old ways of reevaluating everything that had happened, rethinking about how stupid I must've looked at this particular point in time, or regretting the things I wasn't able to say or do, I'm not going to let any of that take my mind away from how perfect it was.

Oh, and I still can't get over how I'm going to UPD. :) Ahihi. Thank you, Lord! <3

Because You Saved My Life Once (A Bullets Blog)

Light Outside by Wakey! Wakey!

(mood music)

FIRST THINGS FIRST

Life Update: My school duties are piling up on me and I haven't even worked on some of my personal projects in a while, save for the PBBY-Alcala. However, things that have happened to me so far include passing the ACET, being able to reserve 10 tickets to D'Wonder Twins of Boac on Feb. 15, and finally finishing my PBBY-Alcala entry. I'm also going to Graphika Manila, which I will definitely blog about.

I confess I haven't been blogging in a while due to the fact that I really have nothing in my life remarkable enough to blog about on its own, except for the cloth. By the way, I'm not going with a full printed dress as before. :)

Anyway here is the more complete life update.