Something New: Milea Rewards and Loyalty Program

Don’t you love it when the product you use offers rewards and loyalty program?

Just the other day, I received an email from Milea Bath and Body about their recently launched Rewards and Loyalty Program. This is such a good news for me since I and my husband have been using Milea organic shampoo for almost a year already. The program offers customers one point for every Php 1 spent for their products. Aside from that, they will also give 10 points for opening a store account and another 50 points for new referral that successfully completes a purchase for the first-time.

With this program, I’m pretty sure my next purchase will be more rewarding. I get to care for my hair the natural way plus I will be getting points I can redeem later on for discounts.

Want to start earning now? Create an account with them for your instant 10 points and additional Php 200 discount off your first order. Check out this link for more info.

Passbook Savings Account For Less!

Last week’s post about my 24-payday money challenge, I mentioned that I opened a passbook savings account with PSBank. Today. I will be talking about it here.

Gone are the days when you can only open a passbook savings account with at least Php 20,000 to Php 25,000. Nowadays, opening a passbook account is made easy because people can now open an account with Php 5,000. Yes, you read it right! Passbook account for Php 5,000.

All you have to do is go to the nearest branch, proceed to “New Accounts” teller and express your intention of opening account.

Product Features

Maintaining Balance	PhP5,000
Daily Balance to Earn	PhP5,000
Evidence of Deposit	Passbook
Interest Rate	0.5000%
Interest Crediting	Monthly
Service Fee	PhP300 if account falls below required Average Daily Balance (ADB)

Benefits

• Ready availability of funds
• Easy tracking of transactions through the passbook
• Deposit earns interest
• Additional column in the passbook lets you write down details on every transaction
• Enroll in PSBank Online and PSBank Mobile, the Bank's secure and convenient electronic banking facilities, to be able to check your account balances and perform other banking transactions anytime, anywhere.

24-Payday Money Challenge

Last year, the 52-week money challenge made waves among people, especially young professionals, who aim to become financially stable. As one of those who want to become financially stable, I aspire to follow their lead, however, I find the 52-week money challenge a bit tedious. I'm afraid I may not be able to keep track of my progress and in turn might make me quit the challenge.

But determined to achieve something for the year 2015 in terms of my finances, I decided to create my own version of the challenge and that is when I came up with my 24-payday money challenge. In this scheme, I base the amount of money I need to save to my net income for that particular pay day. I started with 1% for January, 2% for February and so on…

Here’s the table for sample computation:

24-Payday Money Challenge Sample Computation
Month	% of Savings	Net Income	Amount to be Saved
January 15	1%	Php 10,000	Php 100
January 31	1%	Php 10,000	Php 100
February 15	2%	Php 10,000	Php 200
February 29	2%	Php 10,000	Php 200
March 15	3%	Php 10,000	Php 300
March 31	3%	Php 10,000	Php 300
April 15	4%	Php 10,000	Php 400
April 30	4%	Php 10,000	Php 400
May 15	5%	Php 10,000	Php 500
May 31	5%	Php 10,000	Php 500
June 15	6%	Php 10,000	Php 600
June 30	6%	Php 10,000	Php 600
July 15	7%	Php 12,000	Php 840
July 31	7%	Php 12,000	Php 840
August 15	8%	Php 12,000	Php 960
August 31	8%	Php 12,000	Php 960
September 15	9%	Php 12,000	Php 1080
September 30	9%	Php 12,000	Php 1080
October 1	10%	Php 12,000	Php 1200
October 31	10%	Php 12,000	Php 1200
November 1	11%	Php 12,000	Php 1320
November 30	11%	Php 12,000	Php 1320
December 1	12%	Php 12,000	Php 1440
December 31	12%	Php 12,000	Php 1440
Savings for 2015			Php 17880

No-bake Oreo Cheesecake Recipe

No-bake oreo cheesecake is one of the recipes I always wanted to try. However, the brand of cream cheese available in my area is often limited to expensive ones so I felt like there is no room for mistake. LOL! Thankfully, there’s a branch of Chefs and Bakers in the city and they are selling cream cheese that is a bit cheaper compared to the ones sold in malls so it can be less frustrating when something goes wrong.

You can make Oreo crumbs by using a rolling pin, blender or food processor. In my case, since I do not own a food processor and was too lazy to wash the blender after use, I opted to use a rolling pin. First, I removed the filling and break the cookies into pieces. Then placed them inside a clean plastic and roll the pin over the plastic.

Cloth Diapering Journey: Where I Got my Stash

Even before getting pregnant, I have always wanted to provide my future kids the best care I can possibly offer. And since I learned about this pregnancy, I have been searching high and low for tips on how to care for a child in modern times. One of the practices that is becoming popular among modern moms is the use of cloth diapers. No, not the same “lampin” popular during the time of our parents and grandparents but the modern ones tailored like a disposable diaper but washable.

I first learned about cloth diapers from my co-workers who resorted to these. Some of them gave up on using this for some reason while some continue to do so until their kids are potty trained. As for me and my husband, we decided to try this practice firstly because, we care about the environment. We, particularly the husband, have been trying to minimize our waste and avoid activities that could contribute to the destruction of earth and distract the natural order of things so this cloth diaper project is definitely a yes for us.

This cloth diapering system, however, is no joke. It has lots of parts to familiarize and involves washing and preparing as opposed to disposable diapers in which you just have to grab a pack from the grocery and throw them away once soiled. Additionally, with cloth diapers, you need a bit of cash to invest for a number of pieces your child needs. Thankfully, cheaper brands are now available and acquiring them is no longer as hard as before since there are lots of local sellers.

I already purchased 12 pieces from two different sellers and as per advised by other moms from a forum, I got three pieces for each kind/brand to find out which one will best suit my baby. I know my stash may not be enough for a newborn but I’m hesitant to buy more without trying first. And besides, I intend to use disposables for the first two weeks of our son as babies that young may not have established their bowel schedule yet and may use as much as eight diapers daily. Clearly, 12 pieces of cloth diaper is not enough.

Anyway, I am sharing to you the items I got and where I got them.

The above picture shows the first stash I bought. I got them from ThriftyMamaShoppe.com. They are having a Christmas sale that time so I grabbed these few pieces only as these are the only designs/types left. Besides, we were not aware of the baby's gender that time so I made sure to get gender-neutral designs.

Black Sambo Recipe

Ever since I tasted it for the first time, I have always wanted to try making my own but that didn’t happen because I wasn’t confident of my cooking skills back then. But now that I am married to a man who is also a foodie like me, I am becoming more “adventurous” when it comes to cooking because of his encouragement and also, he eats everything up regardless of the taste. LOL!

For more than a year of being a married woman, I managed to try cooking a few dishes and desserts and the first one is this black sambo. However, I only managed to blog about this now since I always fail to take pictures to go with the post.

There are lots of recipes from the internet and I got mine from pinoyrecipe.net. My first attempt was a disaster because I added the second layer too soon (two hours waiting time) so my black sambo became chocolate marble (based on my husband) because the second layer mixed with my first layer which I thought is already formed. Anyway, my succeeding attempts have been successful, thankfully. I have tried this recipe many times already and our families love it that they would sometimes ask us to bring some during family gatherings.

New Year, New Look!

As what I mentioned on my previous post, I hoped to change the look of this blog before the year ends and thankfully, I am able to do that. There might be some finishing touches to be done but at least I am done with most of the major stuff.

2016 is definitely an exciting year for me and my little family as we have big things ahead of us, especially for me and my husband. First of course is the birth of our little one! He/she is expected to be in our arms last week of April and we have started to prepare for that day. I have started to buy important stuff for the baby and thankfully, I don’t need to buy much since I have cousins whose children are older than mine so we expect a great volume of hand-me-downs from them. Big savings for a practical mom like me. Besides, I don’t mind letting my child wear second-hand items because I am sure the stuff we will be getting still look new since they are just slightly used.

My routine will definitely change as well. I am preparing myself for many sleepless nights, or at least, a couple of hours “nap” every night. I know becoming responsible parents takes a lot of adjusting but I’m sure we can get through it as we have been waiting for this moment to come.

As for this blog, this could take a back seat for a while but I will never abandon this as this has been a part of my life for years. This may not be as popular or great as other blogs in the same niche but I worked hard to get to this and I just couldn’t throw this away just like that. I aim to publish once or twice a month but I will try to do more when I have time. Actually, I think there will be a lot of things to talk about since I will have additional topics to talk about. I just have to learn to manage my time by then.

So… there! I think this is it for now. Wishing you all a prosperous 2016!