3 Must-try home decor ideas for summer

Changing seasons are a great opportunity to update the way your home interior looks. Luckily, you don't need a total overhaul to update the way your house looks. Just a few decor tips would do wonders to your currently existing theme. This article will show you 3 must-try summer home decor ideas that will help you achieve a home that's light, airy, and full of sunshiny vibes.

Switch your linens

Photo from Pixabay

A new bed duvet cover can instantly change the way your bedroom looks. It's always a good idea to have spare linens that match each season, that way you don't have to think a lot when it comes to getting new fabric. For your couch you can change the pillow covers. And for your dining, you can change your place mats, table cloth, or even table runners. Check out VeeYoo tablecloth factory for amazing options. Don't forget to consider the weather as well and go for fresh and light fabrics like cotton and linen, and look for patterns that are cool to the eyes like blue and aqua. 

Update your table and shelf decor

Photo from Pixabay

Common summer themes are the tropics, the ocean, and the beach and there's no shortage of ideas when it comes to decorating under those themes. Try going for a rustic coastal summer look and get a couple of plants,  wooden crates, and cute lanterns. Also try out this cool and elegant VeeYoo watch box that could sit perfectly on your vanity.

Spice up your outdoor area

Photo from Pixabay

The outdoor area is an incredibly important feature during summer season that you can't miss to update. You will use this area a lot as you invite your friends over for a day of fun and refreshments. It's easy to get a new look for this space. Just switch up your outdoor rugs, change the lights, and update the seat covers. It's amazing how very small and simple changes can instantly give your home a pretty do. For your home decor, kitchen, and dining decor needs, head on to VeeYoo for lots of pretty and affordable options.

Beating The Bloat In Time For Summer

Even the most in-shape of us can suffer from bloating from time to time. Bloating can be uncomfortable, make you feel heavy and affect how your clothes fit. Bloating can be caused by many things, but there are some solutions you can try to reduce bloating and feel great in your own skin. Here are some suggestions for beating the bloat in time for summer.

Photo by Joseph Greve on Unsplash

Pay attention to what makes you bloat

Bloating can be triggered by all kinds of foods. From starchy carbs to certain types of vegetables, you can soon start to recognize which foods are making you bloat. You can take a look at some common foods that trigger bloating and establish some patterns to help you work out what to avoid on the days where bloating isn’t an option.

Cut down on alcohol

Alcohol can cause many adverse effects, and one of them is bloating. Alcohol can cause the typical stomach bloating, but it can also make your face and body bloating as a result of the dehydration it causes. If you think you can cut back on your alcohol intake, consult the Stop Drinking Expert to get some help. Alcohol can lead to weight gain and problem skin, so if you want to look your best, then it doesn’t hurt to cut back.

Make sure you hydrate yourself

Bloating can happen easily when you’re dehydrated. Your body will retain water easily, leading you to feel bloated and uncomfortable. Staying hydrated is the answer, so make sure you drink plenty of water - especially if it’s hot or you’ve been working out. Soda drinks can make bloating worse, so try to avoid carbonated drinks if you’re having a flare-up.

Keep moving

Exercise can help relieve bloating, even if it feels like the last thing you want to do! Regular exercise will help digestion and make sure you keep things ticking over. If you don’t feel like going for a run or doing some cardio while bloated, take a look at some empowering strength training instead. Some exercise will soon have you feeling better and help keep you regular too.

Get checked out

If your bloating is recurrent and causing you pain, you should make an appointment with your doctor. Bloating can be caused by conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and other conditions, which can leave sufferers suffering regular, painful bloating. Getting a diagnosis can help you get the treatment you need to manage your condition and soon help you feel better.

Bloating affects most people, and while it can be a misery to deal with, you can learn to manage it with the right approach to your health and well-being. Eat the right foods, get moving and make sure you don’t do anything that exasperates your symptoms. In most cases, bloating will pass quickly, allowing you to enjoy your summer wardrobe while feeling relaxed and comfortable.

Cucina Breakfast Buffet at Marco Polo Hotel Ortigas

Is it worth it to include breakfast in your booking at Marco Polo Hotel Ortigas? Read on to find out!

Here's a pic spam of what to expect at Cucina's breakfast buffet. The restaurant is located at the 24th floor, same as the lobby, and breakfast is served everyday from 6am to 10:30am. During peak days they display an info board of customer density based on the time, to help you manage your expectations. A similar board is provided for pool density as well. Great touch! Now let's look around to see what they offer.

Bread, cheese, and cold cuts

Pancakes and donuts. Plus a toaster for heating sliced bread

Filipino station with daing na bangus, tocino, and adobo. There's also congee, arroz caldo, and champorado (which is yummy!)

Indian station with vegetarian dishes

Classic breakfast options - corned beef, beaked beans, and sausages

Egg station if you want to customize your scrambled eggs

Bacon in 2 consistencies (crispy and medium //more like medium 1 and medium 2 hehe), potato wedges, grilled tomatoes

Chinese noodle station

Juice station - they have guava juice, apple infused water, and orange juice. There are healthier cold pressed options to like mango papaya, beetroot pineapple, and apple cucumber celery. Yum (note sarcasm). If you're looking for coffee and tea, you can request from the servers.

A selection of fruits, yogurts, and salads are also available

There's a cute maki station too and miso soup!

Cereals -- check

An assortment of pastries

And hey, there's taho!

The ambiance of Cucina is very elegant. The servers are attentive, they refill emptying trays fast, and they clear out your plates immediately. The space actually reminds me of Seda Vertis North's Misto.

You'll definitely get your fill dining at Cucina in the morning, but if you're not a breakfast person (like me), go ahead and exclude it in your booking to save money. I know I will in my next stay hehe.

Let's tour! Staycation at Marco Polo Hotel Ortigas

Spent the holidays at Marco Polo Hotel Ortigas for the first time and what can I say, I was truly impressed! I didn't think so highly of this establishment because the hotel sits tight inside a CBD and barely has any perimeter clearance for any outdoor amenities. I'm kindof partial to 5-star hotels with spacious outdoors like Sofitel or EDSA Shang but yeah I'm starting to look deeper than the facade and really look at the overall service and value of each booking hahaha! So without further adieu, let's tour you!

Lobby

Ground floor lobby

Marco Polo is actually part office space and part hotel so the ground floor lobby isn't the actual hotel lobby.

Reception counter

The real hotel lobby sits on the 24th floor. And it's gorgeous.

It's wide and spacious and the lighting is so beautiful specially in the morning. It's peak season during the time we checked in so the lobby is full of people in the morning.

Rare time I caught the lobby space empty. It's the wee hours of the night after all.

The earth tones remind me of Seda Vertis North hehe.

Premiere room

We booked a Premiere room with a king sized bed via Agoda. The room description says it's 51sqm but I managed my expectations. It can't be that big.

Boy was I wrong. It's hella big for a hotel room. It's so darned spacious I can't even! Just look at my Sofitel shots, I had to squeeze myself in a corner to get a decent shot of the room. You could see from where I stand how big the room is. I LOVE ITTTTT.

What the heck, this room is even bigger than our house. We got a room at the 36th floor. Guest rooms start at 27th floor I think? So obviously everybody gets a high floor. View from here isn't that great though, we're surrounded by taller buildings so I can't really appreciate the height haha.

Here's one side with the TV and desk. One of the drawers houses a safety vault.

All sockets are universal and there's also a USB port and and HDMI to TV port (which doesn't work). There's a total of three phones in the room. On the desk, on the bedside, and in the toilet.

Here's another side of the room with a small lounge and the minibar section.

Moving on! As usual, there's complimentary tea and coffee. But not just any coffee,

Freakin Nespresso man! The coffee capsules are complimentary as well. It's my first time to try this and I'm pretty amazed at the technology. It's cool, but I prefer the good old brewed coffee haha.

The closet area is super spacious, as you can see, they're quite generous with hangers lol.

There's an iron and ironing board, laundry bag, and slippers. The usual. I love how there's a lot of storage space for you to really hide your things in sight. I hate it when we stay in hotels and all our things are scattered on the tables and chairs. It doesn't make for a relaxing stay when you feel so at home, alam mo yun?! Hahaha

Let's go to the bathroom!

We've got two sinks, a bathtub, and a really good shower space. Water heats fast and the pressure is good.

Toilet is enclosed too. Noice.

As usual, we have the basic toiletries. Dental kits, cotton buds, shower caps, sanitary bags, body lotion, and sewing kit.

Let's also not miss the hair dryer, which is mounted in its own drawer. Cool.

Shower essentials are brought to you by Trussardi. Never heard, sounds posh, fragrance pallette smells a bit too masculine for my taste lol.

Pool and gym

The pool and gym is situated on the 22nd floor. Being that there's no outdoor space in this hotel, the indoor pool is kindof expected. Althouuuughhhh, I didn't expect it to be this nice! It's super no frills straight rectangular infinity lap pool with an amazing view. It doesn't look like it has some fun areas for kids? I'm sure there are shallow areas but I never got to swim hehe.

The gym is also super spacious. I can imagine running on that treadmill with a view of the CBD. Lovely.

Now let's take a peek into the changing areas.

Lockers over here.

Very elegant vanity counter on this side.

Equally impressive line of sinks. It's getting hard describing hotel amenities lol.

That's pretty much it for this pic spam! Marco Polo Hotel Ortigas is now definitely one of my favorite hotels. It's centrally located and you won't starve lol. There's Jollibee beside it and Metrowalk across, plus a whole array of restaurants just around the block. The overall feel of Marco Polo is serious and luxurious. Like it's for one of those snob bachelor businessmen wanting to take a break and enjoy being alone. Anuraw?

If you're curious about the breakfast buffet at Cucina, I have another post for that. 

Here you go: Cucina Breakfast Buffet at Marco Polo Ortigas

Marco Polo Hotel Ortigas is located at

Meralco Avenue and Sapphire Street

Ortigas Centre, Brgy. San Antonio, 

Pasig, Metro Manila

Hey Monday!

This day was interesting.

Everybody knows about the earthquake earlier. It was probably the strongest I've felt so far. I was at the office that time, and looking out the window I could see people swarming down below observing the swaying buildings. We weren't told to evacuate so we just stayed in our seats and even tried to make light of the situation. We were gossiping and making chika pa nga to each other, as usual. We were scared but we weren't in panic. Which is wrong. Whatever happened to duck, cover, and hold?!

I don't know how to feel about the lack of alarm in our faces. I felt like oh wow this is a strong earthquake but I know it's gonna stop soon so should I worry? I clearly underestimated the situation. The truth is I may not know how to react properly if something more grave hits us. Oh Lord. :( I was imagining if the shaking didn't stop for more than 5 minutes I'd be freaking out for real. Yikes. Back at work, we had a meeting about RPA. My manager informed me this afternoon that he couldn't make it so that made me frkn worried. What if they ask questions I can't answer? There are some meetings I can't take without my manager because how am I to survive without his guidance and his bigger grasp of things, you know what I mean, the top level managerial stuff I'm obviously oblivious to cos I'm just the downline who takes orders and does things?! lol

And his protection too, like you know I'm a big 'yes man' and I could really need a hand that says "STOP, my resource is getting overloaded let's talk about this some other time" --- things like that! I knew he was an important part of the meeting, I think he's supposed to be the main guy in that discussion but oh well. Good thing he brought in my senior. I was so relieved to share the burden of explaining things I'm not too confident about hehe.

Turns out the meeting was about something else. Something bigger. Maybe exciting. Definitely puts pressure on us as the technical resource. The ideas I got on the table were pretty overwhelming. Whew.

On another note, I had quite an eventful weekend!

We attended a wedding!

At Estancia de Lorenzo

Yesterday, Jeckie and I attended the wedding of one of our good friends in college, Bon and Edlaine. It was a happy moment finally seeing them tie the knot! The wedding was beautiful, they were both so stunning (I'm more partial to Edlaine of course haha), and the venue was perfect. ❤

Staycation at Marco Polo Hotel Ortigas!

Jeckie and I decided to book a biglaang staycation at Marco Polo Hotel Ortigas for Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. I'm a fan of staycations and this one's just 5 minutes away from home so I was sold. I used to underestimate this hotel. People say it's a 5-star hotel but I couldn't believe it because from the road the lobby looks really small and at night its exterior walls are decked with these multicolored LED lights that always makes me cringe. Doesn't look elegant to me tbh! 

But boy was I wrong. The place truly impresses. But more on that on a different post! :)

New hair color!

L'Oreal's Ultra Light Golden Brown on me

I bought a different shade this time and had my husband color my hair ❤. It's pretty easy anyway it's just hard to do it yourself! A box is enough for my medium length hair so I didn't think of having myself serviced at a salon. That's around ₱2,000 versus this box which is ₱399 only hehe. On the color though, I don't totally like it cos I think it looks too light for my face but kebs. I wanted it more brownish but I guess I was wrong picking a "golden" brown shade huhu. Will try another color next time!

Bought a faucet-mounted water filter!

This one's a great purchase! I can't believe we just learned about faucet-mounted water purifiers. This invention saves us a lot of effort going back and forth to the water station to fetch our provision. This also saves us money from sourcing drinking water outside when the water station is closed during holidays or whatever. Best of all, it's freaking space saving seeing that I don't have to keep our ugly blue water container on the table anymore! Will review this one on a separate post! FYI this unit is called the IVO Faucet Mounted Water Purifier, got it for ₱1,980 at TrueValue. Also available on OShopping :)

How was your week so far? :)