New Year Updates, Class Schedules, and Blog Stuff

The first week of 2017 is done and everyone's easing their way from Holiday mode to get back into the grind and onto regular programming. I was actually paranoid about getting sick during the Holidays after the late nights, getting to one place and the other and all these activities we have during the Christmas and New Year. There's the feasts too. I actually never had so much food and been to a lot of buffets in a span of a little less than two weeks. Since there's so much going on, I've been sticking to mostly quick burn workouts or just training and working to 30 minutes instead of a full hour. Cleaning out my stuff does count as cardio and powerlifting, right?

The blog also went on vacay mode during this time, and this is actually my first post for the year. Last week, I just wanted to get back on track and lose the feast weight. I started getting more serious about training and cleaning out the baddies in the ref. I'm not really going through a cleanse diet but more of reintroducing good food in my system and reducing the bad stuff, like eating more yogurt instead of ice cream, sicking to brown rice/quinoa, and lessening the chips and dip. I kinda felt heavier too and sluggish, probably from all the refined sugars and all but once I get my energy levels and up and better food fueling me for the day, I'll be back on track. I have more time to cook again too!

108 Sun Salutations 

I ended 2016 and started 2017 with 108 Sun Salutations over at YogaHive. It was my first time doing the 108 Sun Salutations with a large group of people. Sun Salutations in yoga are like our warmups to get the body started. It's a great day to greet the day, just getting good energy and positive vibes into our system before we get to work and all. The number 108 actually has a meaning, and not just a random number chosen to torture us. The number 1, signifies Higher Truth, or in a religion, God. The number 0 stands for emptiness (like we empty out our thoughts or distractions in meditation to really focus) or completeness. The number 8 signifies eternity. Doing 108 sun salutations isn't easy and I admit, I paced myself and paused when I felt my arms and core were about to scream and turn to pudding and came back when I got a bit of strength and energy back. It was a great way to just totally let go of everything bad that happened in 2016 and just start 2017 strong and fresh.

YogaHive teachers Bambikitty, Marky, Paulo, Quino, and Isobelle

With that also I'm announcing as well my class schedules!!! Yaaay! For this month, I will be teaching yin yoga over at YogaHive in Salcedo Village, Makati.

I will be teaching two classes - Wednesday mornings at 9 to 10:15 am and Thursday nights at 7:30 to 8:45 p.m. These are all open level, beginner friendly classes (circus contortionist level flexibility not required) and are great midweek chillax sessions and gente re-energizers. amd recovery stretches for your active yang yoga practice, pole, aerobics, zumba, or even the busy things happening in life.  For the month of January, my classes are more on twists and re-energizing our liver and gallbladder meridians which are very detoxifying to start the year clean and just ridding ourselves of all the negative things physically and emotionally that do not serve us. These twists are also prep for my focus on the  February classes.

So that takes care of my January classes and updates, and now let's talk about this blog. As you all know, blogs evolve throughout the years. I also read up on my entries and just take a good look at my blog sometimes during my spare time to just see what it can be and how it can grow. Before it was just on beauty, makeup, some fashion too and all. Now, I've been actively putting more fitness and health-related posts over here at the blog. It's really been fun and actually, it kept me motivated to eat better and train harder. Did you know that my workouts actually helped me not just get stronger but also it literally kept me sane? The endorphins from working out and exercising plus eating healthy are good for our mental health. Hopefully, these fitness posts I write can encourage us all to live healthier and be happier. I want to add more workouts, recipes, tips, healthy restaurant option reviews, stuff like that.

I will be continuing on with Bambikitty Moving Makeovers showing my makeovers done on friends and colleagues who live healthy, happy, and well-balanced normal lives. There will be more fitness and health posts here but there will still be beauty. Beauty is what keeps this blog grounded, since it is the root of this blog too. There will be tutorials, FOTDs, reviews, swatches, work photos, and everything we love in this beauty blog. In fact, there's one post cooking up, due to insistent demand.

There's so much more to be done, and thank you to those who take time to read my blog in all its craziness and all - cats, compacts, camatkarasanas, and cross-ankle releases. Most of my almost daily shenanigans are happening over at Instagram so you can also follow me there. Hope to see you all soon, comment, follow, leave a smiley, or see you on the mat!

Updates, Recent Shoots, and New Features

Hi all! How's the weekend hitting everyone? I hope you're all okay because there seems to be a bug going around. I'm seeing in Facebook that a lot of people have been getting sick either flu, fever, or cough and colds. Maybe it's the temperature change as we go from super hot summer to rainy season and towards the cold -ber months where it will be very chilly even at noon. However, the weather's also quite weird because we still get bursts of hot sunny in the mid morning then the rain will just blast down like crazy. I got sick as well - the flu for like just a day last week making me miss yoga classes. Then the flu went away like magic but was replaced by cough days later then cough and laryngitis for a day then the laryngitis went away but not the phlegmy cough. Super weird! Lately I'm also feeling like a limp noodle and I can't seem to keep up with my warmups and conditioning. Be sure to get lots of vitamins and antioxidants (natural of course, including fruits and veggies) and get lots of rest so your body gets time to repair its tissues. It's so hard to be sick, especially when you need to work! Thankfully, I didn't have work this weekend so I took it easy and restful because I'll be teaching some classes next week. Not only do I need my voice, I need to get better so I don't infect my students!

I'm just glad to be doing more test shoots and collaborations to get my makeup mojo up and continuously running (that will also tell me to get better). I did two shoots last week with Yeoh and Alvin and I got to hang out with them for dinner after so I get in tabs with the fashion world, since this lola hardly goes out. I also got to meet a lot of Yeoh's newest models and they are just gorgeous! Some of them call me tita ("auntie"). It's weird in a way coz it was just a few years ago that I was the one getting photos taken and sometimes, I'm as old as the makeup artist (or even older) or sometimes, I was my own makeup artist. I like doing collabs with these guys.

Here are some photos from our shoots:

Dianne

Aldaine

Steph

Bianca

Nikki

All photos by Alvin Chua
Special thanks to Yeoh Models

I've got new toys in the food department as well. I finally after 6 years have a mini food processor and it's powerful enough to grind nuts, coffee, and meats. I'm actually more excited to finally make my own cauli-rice and cauliflower couscous as well as fresh pesto and red pesto sauce, salsa, sherbets, granitas, and so on. I've made so many cauli-rice meals. It's got the carby feel and surprisingly, I get full easily so I can't have too much of it.

Lime cilantro cauliflower rice and pan-fried salmon. The flavors are so alive with the buttery mellowness of the fish. The dish even looks so gorgeous for Instagram.

I made also the sushi pizza from Blogilates. The real version uses sashimi-grade fish but there was none in Little Tokyo so I used the vegan version instead, which used mushrooms. It tastes like teriyaki. I'll be posting more homemade stuff in Instagram

If you've seen as well this update in Instagram, you'll know that there's going to be a new feature.

Cooking up a few things for my blog. Watch out for my #BambikityMovingMakeovers! #bambidelacruzmakeup #muathatblogs #makeupartistlife #beautyblogger #beautybloggerphilippines #fitmua

A photo posted by Bambi De la Cruz 🐱🐯 (@bambikitty) on Sep 7, 2016 at 10:13pm PDT

I'd like to present #BambikittyMovingMakeovers! I would be doing makeovers of several ladies which will be featured in my blog, very Kevyn Aucoin style. It started out as well as a little thing my pole friends and I were talking about, that I do makeup playtime on them after class. I used to do that before to my pole friends whenever I have my kit with me when I go to the studio, so I thought I'd do the same in my blog, also featuring the ladies that inspire me. It also gives me more chances to practice my skills on other faces aside from me. I call it Moving Makeovers because I'm like a moving salon, since I go from one place to the other. This also resets my energy.

I'm still thinking of a look for One Look, Two Different Price Ranges to do. Should I go smoky or stick to a clean, rosy look? Should I go Hollywood glam? Let me know in the comments below what I can do.

Here's what I'm reading while at rest mode: Hot SOS, a book written by one of my fitspirations, Solenn Heussaff.

This will incorporate new workouts in my routine when I have no time to go to the pole studio or do a full yoga practice in the studio, so I still keep my strength in check. There are also new recipes to try, and I love that it's a local book using locally grown ingredients that are readily available in our groceries so I wouldn't have to look high and low for most of them.

So that's it for today! Enjoy the rest of the week!

Suesh Vanity Starter Set Contest Update: Reformat of Mechanics -- CLOSED

Hey all! So how was your weekend? I spent my weekend in a very beautiful place and stuffed myself with all that's beautiful in it.

And speaking of beautiful? Remember the Suesh Vanity Starter Set contest I wrote a few entries back? Well, since we haven't been receiving entries, I decided to change the mechanics to make it easier. :) All you have to do is this:

1. In the comments below, all you have to do is post a comment on the comments section on this post answering this question:

Why you would love to win a Suesh Vanity Starter set?

2. Don't forget to leave your full name since I'll be using that to choose the winners.

3. Winners will be chosen via random order. There will be three winners for this contest, so still three sets given.

Now here are the rules:

1. The rule applies to Philippine readers/residents only.

2. Only one entry per contestant.

You don't need to be a makeup artist to join. You can be a makeup fanatic, a makeup school student, or anyone who loves makeup but doesn't know where to start. As a refresher, let me show you the prizes:

A color palette to do your eye makeup with cheeks to match:

Suesh 7-piece brush set for touch-ups or to do personal makeup:

Suesh Portable 3-way LED mirror (eyes open):

Hope you guys join! Take care and enjoy the Holidays

Makeupbybambi's workweek

Since I'm a pro makeup artist, I have an erratic work schedule and while people are slaving off during weekdays, I'm basically at home resting from my full workweek. So here's a recap of what I did during my super absence in the blogging world.

Shoot #1: shoot with Bella. Bella is my new friend I met thru ModelMayhem. She's based in Indonesia and she came here in Manila for a vacation and we had a shoot with Stan Ong. :)

It was absolute fun and Bella's gorgeous. She reminded us of Anggun and she had such a fantastic personality.

After the shoot, I walked around Ayala Center (depositing my malette first at Rustan's) to run some errands when I decided to finally cab it (with all my stuff to head over to DPI Makati for another shoot). However, it was 5:30, a rainy Friday afternoon and the cab line at Greenbelt was long. Traffic was hell and cabs were picky. I finally got a cab who barely wormed his way out of Makati and going around the location was hell. Ang traffic mga tsong! Had I not brought all my stuff - big malette, small malette, and backpack plus handbag, I would have walked the whole of Pasong Tamo.

When I finally got there, I set up and immediately did makeup to maximize studio time. Of course, I got to pose too. :) The shoot is for my friend's underwear clothing business, which he would be launching online.

A preview of the shoot:

Photo by Glenn del Rosario.

Here's me with the director/photographer Mike Yu

That's two pairs of falsies on my eyes. Now I know how my models feel when I give them the heavy ones. I couldn't open my eyes. :P

My shoot marathon didn't end there since I had a shoot at another location at 8 am in the morning (with barely a few hours to sleep and wash my brushes). The gowns were avante-garde and so was the makeup. It was really fun since I got to meet a new photographer through Model Mayhem with a totally different style. I sure can't wait for the pictures which I would definitely post very soon!

By the way, when I finally did get home to unpack, I had to re-pack again and wash my brushes and reassemble for.... a Sunday shoot with my friend, Kirk Barbosa at Rouge Studio. It meant getting up early in the morning to have a shoot. The shoot had two pegs and we were done in a snap plus we even played with my prosthetics.

Here's the model, Kat. The first peg was vintage where there were soft curls, red lips, and winged eyes. Here's the second peg, a natural, beauty headshot with luminous skin.

By the way, foundation here used was Paul and Joe Moisturizing Compact Foundation #30 under Paul and Joe Creamy Compact foundation in Clair, in case you want to know how the P&J foundation registers on camera. I didn't have to retouch her much.

Here's the prosthetics mini-shoot I had with Bugsy, another photographer friend of mine who hung out during the shoot.

Bugsy and I with our "slashes"

Heeheehee... barely any of my guy friends would say okay to makeup but for prosthetics they sure are game. We even wore the prosthetics when we visited Apy and Ardin for their Life in Mono Shoot and the guards at the studio building actually thought we came from an accident. With matching acting!

The following day, I had a 6 am shoot at Shaw for a magazine. :) Details to follow, when the issue comes out.

Since I was really tired, I went to get a massage and fell asleep right at the middle of it.

I'll probably be sleeping until my hectic workweek ends. But really, Erratic or not, I would not have it either way. I love what I do and wherever I am, there's nothing else that I could think of doing, hence my uttmost decision of taking it professionally.

Right now it's back to blogging again to rest and to recap the nice stuff that ever happened this week. :)