Goddess, I Am.

Yey! Meream tagged me again! And this was a particularly fun one, too. (Did I ever tell you that I love, love, LOVE tags?)

So here are the rules:

1. Post photos of 7 red things in your home.
2. Tag 7 people to do the tag.

My jewelry box, a Christmas present from mum

Octavian’s Case Logic sleeve

My M&M candy dispenser, a first date present from The Husband

(which may be yellow, if you wish to argue, but what the hell)

My favorite (and only) pair of Havaianas

(It’s quite grubby because I wore it to the bazaar.)

I actually have quite a lot of red shoes, but do not have a single red dress to go with them – just one of my life’s biggest mysteries.

My Sephora sleep mask (from eBay)

A stuffed rat dressed as Cupid, which I named Emile

I named him after the fat rat from Ratatouille, and he’s a Valentine’s Day present from The Husband.

Rose trinkets that a lovely girl named Kathy made for me

The clasp on the bracelet is broken, though. I dropped it in one of my clumsier moments.

Goodness, finding red stuff around the house was harder than I thought! And no, my current icky breakout of acne on neck (well, behind the ears, more like) do NOT count.

I love these photo tags because they give me an excuse to get Caesar out of his case and take photos, which I don’t – no, can’t – do often enough. Like Meream, I kinda want to do this again in other colors. Maybe I will.

I tag Chin, Maris, Kaye, Jen, Kaith, Kessa, and Maria. I hope these gals will enjoy this as much as I did.

Note: I now know how to make frames for my photos. Whoop-dee-doo!

The holidays – you gotta love ‘em. After all, it’s that happy time of the year when you can eat everything in sight without feeling the slightest twinge of guilt. In my case, at least.

And so here I am at the dawn of a new year with a head full of dreams and a belly that was full of lechon, pastries, and what-have-yous – and still somehow showing it, several days after the fact.

No, I did NOT eat it all. I had help.

I can no longer ignore the fact that my clothes seem a tad – okay, a lot – tighter, and that I haven’t seen my toes in a while. Methinks it’s time to bring out my hidden cache of the best diet pills ever created for lazy-assed, work-at-home freelance writers like me.

I did consider (however briefly) the idea of hauling my bum off to the gym and sweating the extra pounds away. But I find myself thinking of that disastrous time when I had a gym membership, and I couldn’t help but shudder. You would, too, if you threw up on your trainer’s shoes after 10 minutes on the elliptical machine! I kid you not.

For all I know, I could be very well and truly banned from Cebu Holiday Gym and Spa, anyway. And I don’t want to go anywhere else that doesn’t have a pool. And yes, that’s me making lame excuses not to exercise.

So it’s definitely back to the ol’ reliable for me. And for good measure, I could possibly (highly unlikely, but not impossible) pry myself away from this:

This:

Or even this:

Just wait, this lazy-assed, work-at-home freelance writer will look like this again in no time:

For the longest time, I’ve been using The Husband’s battered, old ‘Pixar’ lamp. I call it such because it’s exactly the same kind of lamp that hops in those Pixar movies. Unfortunately, the poor thing has traveled with him from London to Bangkok to Cebu, so it really is quite battered now.

Sometime after Christmas, I finally decided to pick up a new lamp. So off we went to CAMG in Parkmall (definitely one of my favorite shops EVER) to look around. The place carries stuff from IKEA, mostly lamps, so I was quite happy poking around the place all afternoon. Mind you, I wouldn’t know if they’re genuine IKEA or not, but I’m inclined to think so. (I’m also crushing on a plush, pink chair, but I refuse to think about it.)

Now, I originally had my eye on a white IKEA lamp, which was on sale (30% off!). But just as I was about to buy it, something pink and pretty caught my eye. It was one of those tactile lamps that would light up no matter where you touched it, and it was down from P2,500 to P1,500, so I bought it on the spot.

The uber helpful salespeople then rang it up through one of those barcode scanners – and promptly told me that I couldn’t have the lightbulbs! Well, I’m not one to make a fuss over something as trivial as lightbulbs, so I asked the guy to write down in detail the kind of bulbs that I needed for the lamp. And because there was no hardware shop to be found in Parkmall and it was quite late to go elsewhere, I figured my lamp could wait one night.

The next day, The Husband and I went to True Value in Ayala to get the E-14 bulbs that were required. We couldn’t find the round ones, but since the guy only specified E-14s, we figured any bulb of that sort would be okay. That night, we tried the bulbs on the lamp – and it exploded! And just like that, my pretty pink lamp was dead.

The next day found us back in CAMG. After all, I wasn’t about to write off a 1-day-old exploding lamp just like that. The staff was fantastic, though. They immediately offered to replace it. Unfortunately, the only colors they had left for the same kind of lamp were a tacky gold and a gloomy black, and I wasn’t about to settle for anything less than what I wanted.

And then my eyes settled on the white IKEA lamp that first caught my eye. I told them that I’d take it instead, and they let me – for P600 more. This time, I made sure that the guy talked to The Husband about the lightbulbs required, so there can be no more scary explosions. Thankfully, it works with the spare lightbulbs that The Husband normally has lying around, so I now have an awesome new lamp that is somehow making my bedtime reading 20 times more pleasurable.

On my desk chair: IKEA lamp, Antony and Cleopatra by Colleen McCullough, Moleskine planner, and Squirt (from Finding Nemo), the stuffed turtle that The Husband bought for me on our last trip to Hongkong Disneyland in 2007

Next project: a couple of proper bedside tables. Right now, the green chair is just so . . . WRONG.

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. I do, however, make it a point to figure out my goals for the year. What’s the difference? I find resolutions more fleeting – insincere, even. Goals, on the other hand, are more concrete, serious, and often realistic, so I find myself more driven, more inspired, and more determined to achieve them. But that’s just me.

All in all, 2009 was quite a great year for me. No, I did not manage to achieve ALL my goals, but I did accomplish a great deal – some of which were totally unplanned and therefore, pleasantly unexpected! It only makes perfect sense that this year’s goals should be just a tad loftier. In fact, it seems like an insult to the year that passed to regress!

So enough babble. Here are some of the things that I’m hoping to accomplish this year, in no particular order:

1. Get my government paperwork FINALLY sorted out, so I can start processing the PAG-IBIG loan, which, in turn, will . . .

2. Start the house construction, and hopefully, let us . . .

3. Buy a car – nothing fancy, but something that works. I want a Suzuki Swift. The Husband wants a Honda Jazz, or a secondhand two-door Pajero. Whatever it’s going to be, it’ll most likely be secondhand for the rest of the list to come into fruition. (Read on, do!)

4. Have about a million (pesos) squirreled away. How we’re going to do that is beyond me, but it’ll happen, I tell you! And no, robbing a bank isn’t part of the plan.

This year, I hope to do away with unnecessary purchases – meaning, no more gadgets (unless necessary), weekly online shopping sprees for clothes, expensive dinners (do you hear me, T.G.I.Friday’s?), and two-way cab rides (one-way will do).

5. Build Innuendo, especially now that I own 50% of it (yey!). The company was fairly successful in 2009, and it gave us an idea exactly how huge its potential really is. We’re hoping to hit the ground running this year, what with Chris & Berns at Ayala Center’s The Maze now carrying our swimsuits and another bazaar in I.T. Park coming up on January 11 to 24 (I’ll see you there, yes?).

Progress is a bit slow on the Innuendo website, however. I’ve got so much work to do that I haven’t had a chance to sort out the ecommerce fulfillment and even the site design. Plus, we haven’t had a chance to shoot the new collection, so I don’t have photos to post. BUT all these will be sorted out before January ends, AND I’ll be doing a little giveaway on this site, so I hope you’ll watch out for the launch.

6. Travel, travel, travel. The fact that we traveled very little in 2009 was probably the year’s biggest disappointment, but we are determined to remedy that this year. We’re off to Donsol, Sorsogon for my birthday to swim with the migrating butandings (whale sharks), so hopefully the inevitable Mt. Mayon eruption won’t be too serious, considering that we have to fly to Legaspi City to get to Donsol. We’re also off to a 6-day Hongkong trip come June, yey!

7. Still on the subject of travel, another reason why I have to sort out my government and financial papers is that I’ll need them to apply for a Schengen visa this year, if we are to tour Rome (!!!) and the rest of Europe in 2011. I’m hoping the process won’t be too painful, considering that I am married to a British citizen, after all!

8. Invest. The thing about working online is that you never know when it’s going to end. You could be working on a project that you’ve been on for years, yet find yourself unemployed the next day. That’s reality. So though I know that my bosses intend to stick around for a long, long, LONG time (fingers crossed!), I still want to invest in something tangible. Presently, I’m considering a laundry franchise. (Just imagine: Iris, Goddess of Laundry.)

9. Get in better shape. Last year saw my weight going up and down like a freakin’ yoyo – literally. I was 102 lbs. at my thinnest, but I have now ballooned to 112 lbs. after the holidays. I intend to stay within the 100 to 105 lbs. bracket throughout the year. And. This. Starts. NOW.

10. Lastly, I intend to be more productive and better organized this year. Although I’ve worked extremely hard and gotten more things done in 2009 than I initially expected, I still have a tendency to slack, sometimes for days on end. I intend to do away with slacking for good. This means I will sleep earlier and wake up earlier to get more things done during the day. I will also learn to delegate more effectively, so I don’t end up climbing the walls in panic whenever I’ve got deadlines coming up.

So am I likely to achieve all my goals for 2010? The year is young, so we shall see. But if 2009 was anything to go by, I daresay, it’ll be a cinch!