TOPAZ HORIZON

So many cute photos from Mariel's wedding so here are more!

The night before the wedding, maid of honor Kai Morales and matron of honor me trooped to Mariel's suite to go over the details of the big day.

Then all of Mariel's friends came by to help with the souvenirs. We all had to fold boxes for the candy bar and guests can just scoop all the candy and chocolate they want into the boxes!

Next morning was bright and sunshiny! Vince and me at the hotel lobby, gathering with all the other guests to board our coasters that will take us to the church.

Outside the church, we wait with Kai. It's breezy in the shadow of the cathedral but inside, ooh wow, it was hot!

The reception was held on the beach. This is my first beach wedding! It's very relaxed and happy. What I really like about Mariel's wedding was it still looked so fabulous! A lot of beach weddings I see in magazines are so... blah. 

Gorgeous guests: photographer Monica Barretto, Martha Stewart Weddings Philippines editor-in-chief Tata Mapa and makeup artist Marie Calica.

I really should put all these nice pics in a USB stick and plug it into our unused digital frame that we got for free when Vince bought his computer monitor last year. Yep, we have a really nice digital frame that we aren't using! But with all the pics I have now, I think it's time to fire it up.

Oh, for more on Mariel's wedding, click here and here.

Photos by Monica Barretto.

Blogging for this new year is off to a good start. My visitors are steadily increasing. Hooray!

Here's Nuffnang's report for the last 2 weeks, an average of 518 unique visits a day:

Here's SiteMeter's report for the first three days of March, an average of 535 unique visits a day:

So I'm basically averaging 530 readers a day, and these days the daily visits are actually at 600+. That's a pretty good number, considering that just a little over a year ago, I had about 100 readers. It sure took me a while to get those readers, though! Here's what I did:

1. Make an interesting blog! Good grammar, correct spelling. Lots of photos. Fun topics!
2. Leave good comments on other people's blogs. None of that stupid "Hey, great blog" and "Love your blog" and "Care to exchange links?" nonsense.
3. Promote on Facebook!

Oh man, that was a lot of work and I really just started promoting Topaz Horizon around October 2008. So that's about a year of hard work. Now I usually just do Step 1 because if you make a good blog, people will come back for more and maybe they'll like it enough to tell other people about it.

Thanks for reading, old friends! And to the new folks coming around recently, I hope you like what you read and come back soonest!

Someone, impressed with my husband's gift-giving skills, asked me why I didn't blog about Vince's Christmas gift to me. Well, because by the time December and January came along, I was in the midst of that first trimester madness and totally forgot that my Christmas--despite all the morning sickness, sleepiness, fatigue, etc--was extremely happy and blessed!

So what did Vince give me for Christmas? Actually, we gave this to each other because we both wanted it and since it was kinda not cheap, we both decided it'll be perfect for us both! We got ourselves this:

Happiness! We totally love Rock Band 2! Super funnest game ever! Ya, I know the girls reading this are disappointed ("A video game? WTF?!") but you have to understand I'm a geek and I'm really good at some video games. That would make me every guy's dream girl, right? But Vince doesn't even want to play with me sometimes because I can get fiercely competitive. It's not about having fun for me, it's about annihilating the enemy (and if you're the other guy, that would mean killing you). Worse, I'm a sore loser. I don't take defeat lightly at all, which makes playing games with me totally not fun. 

But Rock Band is just fun. Fun! Fun! Fun! I've never had so much fun playing with others--we've even done Rock Band parties because it's the kind of game that just makes everyone happy.