Mommy Pehpot, Author at Mommy Pehpot

Inconvenience is the price I have to pay…

Whenever I got into this situation, I always ask myself why I am still doing this.. and the answer is simple:

Inconvenience is the price I have to pay to save Mother Earth.

a very small price considering what it can do.

What situation? that I had to endure discriminating remarks and looks and lengthy discussion on why I want my merchandise to be placed on my ecobag rather than their plastic bags or brown paper bag. It’s the same mall again..

I bought some school supplies and when the cashier is about to place my items on brown paper bag, I refused. And he refused too! SOP lang po! amp! So I had to perform a monologue on why I use ecobags instead of plastic bags and brown paper bags. And they have no choice but NOT to place my items on their brown paper bag..

And again, I still don’t get it why they would offer eco bags (and sells it for 35 PhP) when in fact the use of it is discouraged.. o dapat ba pati sa ecobag brand conscious? kung anong mall ka bibili un din ang tatak ng ecobag mo? sakit sa bangs ha!

Yes, although brown paper bag is friendlier than plastic bags, we also say no to it. Ecobag is the friendliest..

And I hope funds will come in so I can make another batch of ecobag.. specially for Make or Break 🙂

Sati’s New Play Clothes: Tie Dyed Shirt with Heart Design

If you have noticed, my boys only wear white sando as their pambahay..it has been that way ever since. And we only buy one kind of sando (Loving Couple sando)..when Sati arrived, most of her clothes were printed house dress or house blouse. Recently, she’s developing a certain likeness to Chico’s sando and insist on wearing it from time to time.. it must be the cooling effect of cotton sando.. but oh boy! she looks like a boy wearing a boy sando!

It’s so hard to say no to this girl.. so I take out my creativity once again, bought a few boy sando, dyed it and sew to make a razor girl sando.. teehee

That’s the finished product.. 10 new sando fro my little girl! to make it a bit more girly, here’s what I did:

I sewed a garter on each side of the sando (leaving at least one inch from top and from the bottom) then sewed the back to give the a more defined razor back effect, and here it is:

Tie dying is one of my favorite thing to do.. when I was in high school, I used to tie dye my old shirt, but I only knew one design, the simplest tie dye design.. circle tie dye. When I had my first born, I learned how to make spiral design with 3 colors and tie dyed some of their clothes with spiral design in red, green and yellow! (reggae yeah!)

Here’s how to to create a spiral design for tie dye:

Take the center of the clothes and start twisting it to form a circle
Tie the clothe and make sure it is tight.
Divide the clothes into 3, then pour dye in each part.
Do it on the other side then rinse with water.

For this project, I used blue, green and red.. not a good color combination haha

For Sati’s play clothes, I had to look for other designs and so far, the easiest was the heart design:

Here’s how to tie dye with a heart design:

Using a white shirt, flat it out then take the center of the front of the shirt.
Fold the center then draw a half heart, mark it heavily
Fold the heart design and make sure that your marking forms a straight line when folded.
Tie the folded shirt, to the part where the markings are

to make a two tone tie dyed shirt, dip the smaller area to the desired color, as it is with the photo above, the heart design submerged into red dye. After that, dip the bigger part to the other color. You can also use one color for this design (like the violet sando above)

Here’s the finished product:

MY little girl love her new sets of play clothes so much!

Practical And Time Saving Laundry Tips

I say practical and time savings because those two words best describe how I run my household. Practical in terms of finances because I have four kids.. and raising four kids financially is not easy, we have to be very practical in every aspect. Time saving because, again, with four kids, I have to spend little time doing the household chores, and more time with the kids. Years of being a home maker taught me how to save time as well as save money on the laundry department.

errr… allow me to use my local tongue with my 10 Practical And Time Saving Laundry Tips (oh yes, you’re welcome to imagine as if Doña Delilah is doing her magsumikap ka spiel):

Ihiwalay ang panty, bra at medyas sa mga damit. Hmm not necessarily in that order, just make sure that yo have two laundry bins, one for clothes such as shirts, shorts and the likes and one for undergarments. Clothes and undergarments are washed separately, if you do not have a separate bin for each, you will have to separate each from each, which adds up to your laundry time. Another thing, dirt coming from clothes and undergarments are different too, if you do not have a separate bin for each, the smell and dirt would mix and you will end with dirtier clothes than you already have.

Ihiwalay ang Puti sa de Kolor. Just the same with the undergarments, separate the colored garments from white garments. If you can’t have too many different laundry bins for undergarments, colored clothes, white clothes, just make sure that when you do the laundry, do not mix colors. There are clothes that bleeds when washed and that can be damaging to your white garments.

Gamitin sa de kolor and pinaglabhan ng mga puting damit. That, I got from my grandmother. Is it a common practice? I asked some friends and they said that they do that too. After washing the white garments, they use the laundry solution for the colored garments. But only do this if you think the laundry solution is still clean.

Ihiwalay ang paglalaba ng mga itim na damit. This, I learned the hard way. As I practice tip above, I noticed that our black clothes are slowly turning into white garments. White threads from white garments were left at the laundry solution and when I use it to wash the black garments, the thread stick to the black garment. Ang sagwa!

Maging praktikal sa pagpili ng sabong panglaba. Oh yes dear! be very very practical, in a sense that you not only save money but time as well. It should always be quantity vs quality, with quality winning the game. Do not buy laundry detergent that’s cheap and yet you will end up using 2x the amount that you need. Use detergent such as Ariel Stain Lift.

Ariel was kind enough to let me try their newest product, Ariel Stain Lift with deep cleaning technology. As my boys wear white sando as pambahay, stains are inevitable. I usually rely on stain removal solutions for stains. And of course, that’s additional expense on our budget. When I use Ariel Stain Lift, it was effective that I no longer need stain removal solutions.

Gumamit ng mg Produkto na makakatipid sa oras mo. Well, that one I learned when I had my third born and I still have no helper. I have seen innovative products on TV to minimize laundry time and I tried it and saw the result was OK. I think I have mentioned how thankful I am to Downy for bringing their Isang Banlaw variant.

Sa pag gamit ng dryer, siguraduhing puno ito. It can save you a lot from paying high electricity bill, specially in the rainy days where washing machine drying is needed. Imagine if you have 3 loads of laundry that you can squeeze into two loads on the dryer, that’s one load save.

Kung ma-araw ay gamitin lang sandali ang dryer. Another tip when using your washing machine, if it’s sunny, use your dryer just a few minutes, just right amount of time to squeeze out excess water. During summer, I use my dryer for less than a minute each load.

Itiklop na agad ang damit at Ihanger ang mga palantsahin. This one, I still have to master but this is one of the best time saving tip I can offer. For one, folding the clothes as soon as it dries up will save you from wrinkles. I mean the clothes will not be wrinkled. Leaving the clothes that needs to be ironed in a hanger will also prevent it from wrinkling, making it easier to iron.

This year, as I face the challenge of being a full time home manager (my sister used to live me and helped a lot in the household chores) again, I will share with you more tips on home management and how to make the most out of your time. Saturdays will be about House and Gardening so expect to see more practical home management tips every Saturday (as well as photos of my garden).