How swiftly time flies! It’s once again that time of year when the lot of us are busy making “best of” or new year’s resolution lists. As a matter of fact, my Arn and I have this ritual of enumerating highlights of each month by year’s end. (It’s fun, you should try it!).

Anyway. Instead of listing the said highlights here (as if naman you’d be interested to hear about our kitty‘s vaccination last May and other events of the sort), I thought I’d just point you to the definitive 2005 list of lists by the net’s big guys.

#6 in DVDTalk’s Top 10 DVD Packaging in 2005. I love Peanuts – the cartoon and the snack d: )

I think I spent over three hours this morning trying to click every link (and their succeeding sublinks) in the abovementioned list and so far, I’ve learned that “Podcast” is the word of the year, that Russell Crowe is surprisingly chatty and not surly at all in his first-ever DVD commentary, that 13 scientific theories do not make sense, that Jack Nicholson isn’t so scary in The Shining *must click*, and that I may be guilty of at least one web design mistake, yikes.

Do share what you’ve learned from it too. 🙂

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Change the World for a Fiver: Tippi gave me this beautifully-crafted-and-designed, very inspiring book for Christmas.

This year, I was inspired by a gift from a good friend to take my list of new year’s resolutions to a global context by signing up for We Are What We Do‘s action tracker. As of today, I have completed 26 of the 50 suggested actions and I do hope to accomplish more by around this time next year.

Action #1: Decline plastic bags whenever possible.

What you can do to help won’t cost anything at all: smile and smile back, hug someone, have more meals together… effort-free, right? I hope that by posting the link here on my blog, I’ve somehow inspired you to do a little something to change the world too. 🙂

In a few hours my Arn and I will be turning two, can you believe it?! (: It seems like it was only yesterday when I announced our engagement.

Now that I’m about to enter my third year as a wife, I can tell you that married life has been nothing short of great. I always tell my husband that I can’t ever imagine not being married to him. Of course we know there’s still a great deal of learning to do but the wonderful thing is we can do it side by side. And like all happily-together couples say, a marriage is something you really, really have to work at continuously. Some people may make fun of him but Dr. Phil’s advice is nothing to laugh at:

*insert Letterman’s Dr. Phil theme*
“Wake up each morning and say, ‘What can I do today to advance the ball? Even small things will accumulate over time and make a difference.”

And to my dearest Arn, I will never get tired of being married to you. Here’s to a happy forever. (:

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When we were still planning, the best advice we got was “The wedding will only last for a day. Focus on the marriage, it should last a lifetime.”

If you’re a bride-to-be though, it’s very tempting to start obsessing about the teeniest detail – say, the beadwork on the straps of your shoes? – that it’s easy to lose sight of what the big day is really about. Believe me, I know. It was only when my Arn said that he’ll marry me no matter what sort of plant life I’ll be holding or what color our aisle runner is (I made sure it was blue so it would go with our theme by the way) that I knew it was enough that I was marrying someone I had waited for all my life. From then on, I learned to let go of the small stuff… well ok, some of them. The morning of our wedding, I woke up not worrying if every topiary is in place but looking forward to the beginning of the rest of my life. My make-up artist Marie, the first to arrive in my hotel room, told me “you look sooo refreshed!” soon as I opened the door which, I think, was the best compliment anyone who had just gotten out of bed can receive.

Please allow me to indulge but our wedding certainly turned out the way we wanted it to. What more can we ask for? Family, friends, and food – lots of it – were all around us as we began the journey of a lifetime. And because we want to share our joy with you, I compiled a buffet of the entries I made leading to the big day along with pictures and information about the key players who helped make it happen. Enjoy!