The Sassy Lawyer & Pinoy Cook on food, family and home.
Last Christmas, my mother gave me a pair of heavy glass ornaments which she said were flower vases. They’re made of solid glass, there are etched images all around them and they’re really beautiful. And heavy. For some reason, my mother likes heavy ornaments. Like that solid agate flower vase that she gave me not ... (more)
My mother has two obsessions: stones and metals. Stones meaning diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires… And metals meaning gold (white, yellow or rose) and, sometimes, silver. The obsession with stones is not limited to fine jewelry — she like rocks too. There was a store called Kabul in Manila where she used to buy uncut and ... (more)
One thing about this house is that, strictly speaking, there is no “living room” and “dining room.” Instead, there is a living area and a dining area. Meaning, the dining and living areas are contiguous and no wall divides them. Now I like every area of the house to be defined. The easiest solution would ... (more)
If you go around malls and interior decoration shops and boutiques, you will notice that fortune plants — a favorite indoor plant because they require little maintenance — are often placed in glass vases (or crystal in high-end shops). Pebbles are placed on the bottom of the vase, the stalks of fortune plant are inserted ... (more)
I wanted a shallow glazed pot with miniature bamboo for the coffee table. I haven’t found the pot of my dreams yet so, for the meantime, Sam’s collection of cacti has that place of honor. Three small pots look good together but they needed something to define them as a group. Last week, I found ... (more)
My grandmother had a three-tiered ornamental fruit plate on the bar beside her dining table. The lifelike (but very much plastic) fruits it contained always fascinated me as a child. I would hold the fake grapes in my hand and squeeze them, almost expecting them to burst and the juices to drip onto my arms. ... (more)
It doesn’t matter if you call them silk or plastic flowers — I really don’t like artificial plants in the house. I prefer live plants, indoors and outdoors. They are natural accents and they help rather than destroy the environment. We’ve started the process of decorating the house with indoor plants (the outdoor part is ... (more)
Leave it to teenagers to provide just the right accents in their bedrooms. Below, Sam’s flat white closet door becomes an eye-catching point with this monkey hanging from the handle. The monkey, made from fabric and fiberfill, was bought from the Greenhills tiangge (flea market) several months ago. Price: P100.00
In the construction of standard houses in the Philippines, window casing and architrave are not standard features. Even baseboards are often additions shouldered by the buyer. In our case, the house came with baseboards but the windows were bare. I wanted to frame the windows so we bought moldings and had the carpenter install them. ... (more)
We were at Vieux Chalet for dinner last night and we were chatting with the owner, Susan Hassig, about the new deco of the place. She pointed to her latest finds — bamboo lamps and candle holders. Okay, so I am crazy about bamboo. What’s even more crazy is finding out that there are at ... (more)
A window is a window is a window? Not really. Look at the windows in the photo above. That space is going to be my office/study. Normally, all it would take is a curtain rod across the top of the window and curtains to block or let in light. But there are a lot of ... (more)
Casa is Spanish for house. CASA is also an acronym for Connie, Antonio, Sam and Alex. We are all surnamed Veneracion. We all love to take photos -- of anything that catches our fancy. It's a family obsession.
This is a journal of how we live, eat, learn, play and have fun. Work? Work is part of playing and having fun. Seriously.
In 2003, a time when I hadn't heard of the term "blog", I started a recipe website at cooking.houseonahill.net using a now defunct content management system that ran on ASP. Ok, never mind the geek talk, I'm sure you're not interested in that. The contents easily multiplied and, in 2004, I moved the food site to pinoycook.net. Always unhappy with the fact that the dot com versions of houseonahill and pinoycook weren't … (click here to read all »)
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