Lechon

If my daughter got excited with her gifts – a lot of disney gifts for kids particularly the Disney Princesses and a lot of Barbie dolls, I got excited with the holiday food – particularly this yummy, juicy, absolutely delectable with crispy skin lechon from my grandmother! Mom also cooked up a feast – callos, chicken BBQ, two kinds of pasta, crispy pata, salmon and asian salad.

Who knows how to diet when it’s the holidays?!

Natural Beauty with a Natural Routine

Women spend millions of dollars on beauty products each year. As children are born, budgets get tight and beauty products are often one of the things that gets put aside. A little known fact is most products are made from readily available plant extracts or common ingredients that can be bought at a local drugstore. Here are some ideas to keep you beautiful. Who knows, while developing your own routine you may develop a unique product that you can sell to other women.


Image by dboyone, courtesy of Flickr

Water Treatments

Skin looks its best when it is well hydrated. One needs moisturizer on the outside to keep the day’s harsh environment or chemicals from aging skin. One needs liquid on the inside to hydrate the little cells in the body to make them plump and juicy.

  • For the inside cells drink liquid every time you are thirsty. This is different for every person. Drinking water throughout the day in reasonable quantities keeps the skin plump and happy.
  • Like Queen Ester from biblical days of old; take a milk bath—really. Milk, because of the calcium, nourishes the skin from the inside and the outside. To make it easy use about 250 grams of powdered milk in a warm bath and if you like add a few drops of your favorite scented oil. Sit back and relax and let the worries of the day wash away. Maybe like Ester you’ll catch the eye of a king.

Moisturizer Cheaply

Avocados are a beautiful, green and luscious fruit made up of mostly monounsaturated plant oils. Mash and smash an avocado thoroughly and add a splash of lemon and you have a deep moisturizer. Spread it on the face and leave it on for several minutes.

If wearing avocado on the face is not your cup of tea, try using the gel from an aloe vera plant. These plants are found in most local stores. The large succulent leaves contain a thick clear gel that is used for healing burns and it has been used as a moisturizer for dry skin for centuries. Pick a leaf, squeeze out the gel and smooth it on your face.

It pays to call around the local markets to get the best price. If yo need a cellphone, try using the Presta service. It offers a lease/purchase contract of tech devices that you can rent.


Image by Island Vittles, courtesy of Flickr

Anti Aging Remedies from Your Kitchen

The herbs one uses for holiday ham and turkey make excellent astringents for the face. An astringent is a substance that shrinks the pores and cleans the skin. Take a leaf of basil or oregano alive or dried. Use about a tablespoon of the leaf and steep in a cup of boiling water. Once cooled use a cotton ball to spread on the face. Enjoy the smell and tingling sensation.

There you have it; beauty products built from scratch at a price anyone can afford. Start your routine today and enjoy the looks of admiration.

Wendy’s

This was my first meal of the day, taken at 3PM last Monday. I went to the mall hoping to get some gifts for the kids and look at available switch plates for our ancestral home’s renovation. It was a very disappointing trip, save for my Wendy’s meal – my usual order of baked potato bacon & cheese, bacon mushroom melt and biggie iced tea. All the things that were on the kids’ wishlist were out of stock. I had to go to the city to get their gifts. I spent 5 digits in two hours of shopping. The holidays can truly drain you – that’s for sure!

Comfort Foods

What do I love most about Christmas?
It is the fact that I get to eat my most favorite meal out of my Mom’s cooking!


My mom’s macaroni is the best ever. Seriously! Everybody who has tasted it loves it and swears that there is no macaroni like other. Nurse friends leave with their dickies scrubs a bit tighter at the waist after eating at our Mom’s.


A new favorite is my Mom’s refrigerator cake. She has mastered that art of it not being too sweet and mashes the Graham crackers like the crust in blueberry pies.

So I guess not being able to stick to a diet this holiday season is a given.

HealthDesigns.com Review

Nowadays, there is a conscious effort from many people to be more health conscious. There is a revolution towards healthier living and maintaining a healthy body. If you are looking for a place where you can get a variety of health products, then a visit to HealthDesigns.com is a great idea. This website offers a wide range of health supplements, bath and beauty items, food and grocery items, household items, and even pet products.

Whether you are looking for health products to address a particular health condition or products that are free from some ingredients such as dairy free products, egg free products, gluten free products, and corn free products, among others, HealthDesigns.com has something of what you are looking for. HealthDesigns.com has products for allergies, candida, gastrointestinal conditions, joint support, menopause, prostrate, thyroid, and many more.

The huge advantage of HealthDesigns.com over other sites that sell health products are the general products that it offers such as beverages, household cleaners, laundry products, nutritional bars, and many more. Because of the wide range of products being offered by HealthDesigns.com, everyone has something they can from the site.

Since there are tons of products you can buy from HealthDesigns.com, you will surely want to buy a lot of items. It is a huge advantage that orders above $49 get free shipping so you can shop for more items. Staying healthy is a lifestyle because if you really want to be healthy it will have to apply to every aspect of your life. It may sound difficult but HealthDesigns.com can make it seem easy and hassle-free.

Affordable Professional Cleaning Services

As parents, we know how important it is to maintain a clean a house. A clean house makes it a more ideal place for your family to live in. You need to make sure that your house does not have any virus or germs that can present dangers to your family’s health. A dirty house has various health risks that can create various health problems to your family as a whole. But sometimes, maintaining a clean house can be quite hard especially if you have other responsibilities such as running your own business and taking care of your children first hand.

Acquiring the services of cleaning services providers can be a wise option. If you do not know where to look, you can search online for affordable Maid Service Ashburn VA service providers. They have websites that you can freely browse which contain all the information you need. They have a list of the various types of services that they can provide. Potential clients can post their questions or queries and they can be assured that they will be addressed immediately. You can even ask for particular services that your house may need. Setting up for an appointment is also made more convenient through their websites. A client can schedule for an appointment and they can also specify the type of services they want to avail. Clients can ask for quotes instantly making it possible to decide right away if they can afford to pay for the services they want to avail of.

Krill Oil, Moringa, Acai Berry: Good Sources of Antioxidants

Important information about antioxidants and its sources

Have you heard about free radicals? Free radicals are the harmful chemicals that attack our body. Our body can easily be attacked by the 100,000 free radicals created in just a few seconds by the food that we eat like microwaveable foods, our bad vices like drinking alcohol and smoking, lack of sleep, pollution and more. These free radicals are bad for our health as they attack healthy cells and damage tissues which can lead to illness like cancer, heart attacks, high blood pressure, Alzheimer’s disease, aging and many more.

So how can we fight free radicals? We can easily combat free radicals by changing our lifestyle and eating food that are rich in antioxidants. Antioxidants are vitamins and minerals that protect our body against the free radicals. They can be found in vegetables like cabbage, carrot, broccoli, sweet potato; fruits like strawberry, blueberry, acai berry, orange, apple, mango; nuts such as peanuts, walnuts; meat, sea food and other poultry products.

There are also a lot of vitamin supplements, which are a good source of antioxidants. Here are a few of them:

  1. Krill Oil. Krill oil is the oil extracted from krill, a small shrimp like creature which are abundant in the Arctic region. Krill oil is considered to be the best compared to other fish oil as it is rich in Omega 3,6 and 9, fatty acids,  phospholipids and antioxidants. Some of the benefits of krill oil includes:
  • Contains antioxidant to help flush the bad chemicals from our body
  • Lowers cholesterol
  • Improves concentration and optimize brain capabilities
  • Anti-aging capability
  • Improves immune system and overall health
  1. Moringa. Moringa is the green leaf of the Moringa tree, which grows in subtropical areas. This is considered to be the most powerful plant because it contains 46 antioxidants and 90 nutrients which brings a lot of health benefits to our body like:
  • Acts as an antioxidant to fight the bad chemicals that attack our body
  • Boost immune system
  • Improves digestion
  • Anti-aging effect
  • Aids in weight loss
  1. Acai Berry. Acai berry is a fruit that can be found in the Amazon rainforest of South America and is found to be a very powerful antioxidant. Here are some of the benefits of acai berry:
  • Improves cardiovascular health
  • Acts as an antioxidant
  • Improves immune system
  • Improves digestion
  • Aids in weight loss
  • Anti-aging capability

We live in a world where we are constantly exposed to bad chemicals from the pollution, the food that we eat, our stressful life and more. That is why it is important that we take measure to combat these bad chemicals and taking food and supplements rich in antioxidants, can help us achieve a healthy life.

Do You Need Help From Prescription Assistance Programs?

There are numerous diseases that require prescription drugs either for immediate action or for maintenance. Those who are afflicted with these diseases have to spend a lot of money on their medications because they often have to buy them regularly. Unfortunately, not all of them have enough money to regularly buy medicines. Most of the time, these people need prescription assistance just to be able to get discount prescription drugs.

A lot of low income families do not have insurance or have inadequate insurance. For these low income families, Prescription Assistance Programs or PAPs do a lot towards helping them get the medicines that they need. The good thing about these prescription assistance programs is that they do not set a limit on the number of medications that you can avail they can help you with. This is especially good for people who need to take several medications or those who have several different diseases. A qualified individual may take as little as one prescription drug or as many as ten. These programs will definitely help a lot of poor patients follow their doctor’s prescription better. And hopefully, they could start living a healthier and more capable life.