What's In A Name ?

I've always loved my name because it's so unique, and it fits me to a 'T'. Derived from the original French 'Desiree', which means 'the one longed for', I've taken to putting it a naughtier way as I've gotten older by saying my name means 'the object of desire'. (Look at the picture below. Do I or don't I look like a Dezzi Rae/Desiree ?)

My parents liked the name 'Desiree', which they picked up when they saw the Marlon Brando movie 'Napoleon and Desiree' but knew very few Filipinos would be able to pronounce it correctly so they decided to alter it a wee bit. 'Dezzi' was because I was born in December, and 'Rae' was in honor of my dad, Ray, on whose 27th birthday I chose to make my grand entrance into the world (talk about being a scene stealer!).

Just this week, I stumbled on a story online about a high school basketball star named Dezzirae Cafferata. I forwarded the story to my parents. My dad thought it was quite a coincidence, but pointed out that mine is spelled out as two words - 'Dezzi' and 'Rae'. My mom said, "Aw, c'mon! Maybe they saw your name in the papers when you first came to the States as a Soroptomist International Youth Forum representative'.

I finally decided to google 'Dezzirae' and 'Dezzi Rae' and wouldn't you know it, there were a few other Dezzirae's out there.

I did a little bit more research and found out that 'Dezzirae' is in fact an old English name that means 'dawn' or 'sunrise'. From 'object of desire' to 'sunrise'. Who would've thought?

If you're looking for cool baby names (like 'Dezzi Rae'- Ha!), one book that we bought a year ago and still enjoy going through and making notes on which names we'd like for our wee ones when the time comes is Cool Names For Babies. Taking inspiration from the book, we decided on Katana Lily if we have a girl, Mace Atreides (yes, as in The House of Atreides from the sci-fi novel 'Dune'), if we have a boy.

So, I may not be the only one in the world who spells her name as 'd-e-z-z-i-r-a-e' but hey, at least I'm the only one who spells it as 'd-e-z-z-i' and separate word 'r-a-e'. Or at least that's what I believe until another Dezzi Rae emails me and refutes my statement!

Salt Dough Sculptures

I've been making fun things out of salt dough since I was a kid. It's one of the least expensive hobbies around, what you make is entirely up to you, and I love how it absolutely puts me in my "Zen Zone".

The photo above shows some of my latest pieces: a cute little ladybug, a leaf (both of which I'm going to hot-glue onto magnets so I can use them to hold notes up on our fridge), seals for our wedding invitations, and a gold-tipped rosebud (I have no idea how I'm going to use the rosebud, but I ended up with it while watching an episode of 'Ace Of Cakes' where they were sculpting flowers out of fondant - artistic osmosis via cable TV!).

The most basic recipe for salt dough is 1 cup of fine salt, 1 cup of flour, 1/2 cup water. You mix it all together in a bowl until it forms a ball, and you knead it on a well-floured board or flat surface until it's smooth and elastic. Your salt dough is now ready to use!

Whatever you can't use up, simply put plastic wrap around it and store in a cool place and it'll keep for at least a week or so.

I've found that air-drying my sculptures for a few days before I paint and varnish them is best, but since Corey got a dehydrator from his sister a couple Christmases back, I've been using it to speed up the process. I've also tried brushing them with egg wash and drying them in the oven for a golden brown effect.

Over the years, I've played with variations to the basic salt dough recipe (more salt makes for a grainier texture, more flour makes it softer, adding coloring and interesting stuff like coffee powder or glitter to the dough, etc.) so feel free to experiment. It's part of the fun!

-Dezzi Rae

Wedding Seals Made of Salt Dough

We like the idea of having a seal on the wedding invites but rather than buy the wax seals, I decided to experiment with salt dough instead, which is an extremely inexpensive alternative, given that it’s basically just salt, flour and water.

I simply took a stamp (we found one a couple years ago with our initials - ‘A’ for ‘Ascalon’ and ‘M’ for ‘Marshall’-when we were down at the Hollywood Toy and Costume Store and had to buy it), pressed it into a piece of salt dough that I had rolled out into a thin sheet, let it air-dry, and painted it with black and metallic gold acrylic. I waited for it to dry before painting on a layer of varnish.

For the salt dough recipe and more cheap chic tips, go to http://www.thecheapchiccouple.com/

L.A. Fashion District: A Treasure Trove for the Bride On A Budget

If you're a bride living in Los Angeles, you simply must go down to the Los Angeles Fashion District and check out the huge selection of wedding items down there.

I feel like a kid in a candy store everytime I go down there. Of course, there's horrendous, low quality, tacky stuff everywhere (but there's horrendous, tacky stuff at the higher-end retail stores as well) but when you find a good deal, it's enough to make you feel like you just found hidden treasure.

Parking can be as high as $8-15 for all day parking but I found a parking lot on 8th Street, near the bead stores and Michael Levine's, that has $3 all day parking. Be sure to read the signs before you park though. Some of them have the big ol' $3 sign on them but in tiny letters underneath, it says 'per hour'. Sneaky!

A Must-Read: The Millionaire Next Door

As a mortgage consultant, there are several books that I give my clients as gifts when they close their transactions with me. 'The Millionaire Next Door' is is one of them.

Growing up, my family instilled the value of frugality in me. My mother taught me to never buy clothing simply because it had a shi-shi-foo-foo designer label on it, and which items to stock up on when they went on sale. My grandmother had a bowl in the wash basin to catch the soapy water, and she'd make us pour it into a pail nearby. When the pail was full, she'd use it for flushing the toilet. My grandfather dug composting holes in the garden so we could fertilize the garden with what we normally threw out.

As an adult, frugality is tantamount to financial savvy in my book. Being frugal means being debt-free. Being debt-free means being able to work to live, instead of having to live to work. It also means being able to retire early because you don't spend most of your life paying off debt when you could be enjoying early retirement- which should be everybody's goal in life.

'The Millionaire Next Door' shows how we can all join the ranks of America's wealthy (defined as people whose net worth is over one million dollars) by following seven simple rules. The first rule is, always live well below your means. The authors mercilessly show how wealth takes sacrifice, discipline, and hard work, qualities that are positively discouraged by our high-consumption society. "You aren't what you drive," admonish the authors.

Definitely a must-read for everyone who intends to pursue the Cheap Chic lifestyle!

-Dezzi Rae

Make Your Own Yogurt

We'd always known that you could make your own endless supply of yogurt and that all you needed was a small container of yogurt to provide the active cultures. We'd been planning to try it out for several months but we kept putting it off because, well, the idea of making our own yogurt was intimidating. Somehow, to us, it ranked up there with making your own wine or cheese.

Well, last night, we finally tried making our own yogurt- and boy, we wish we'd done it sooner. There was absolutely nothing to it. It was really easy!

• We took 4 cups of milk and heated it to boiling until it was 180-185 degrees F (use a candy thermometer to monitor the temperature).


• We then cooled it to 105 degrees F, and mixed in 2 tablespoons of plain yogurt from a container that we had bought at the store (make sure that it says 'contains active cultures' on the label). It's a good idea to leave the 2 tablespoons of yogurt out on the counter so that it's not too cold when you add it into the milk.


• After pouring the yogurt mixture into clean containers and covering tightly with a lid, we slid them into the oven, which we had on 'warm' (between 105 to 122 degrees F) to encourage the incubation process.


• This morning when we got up, we checked on the mixture, which had been incubating for at least 8 hours, and found, to our delight, that we had made our very first batch of yogurt, complete with the whey (the thin, yellow liquid that forms on the surface) and slightly tangy yogurt scent.


• We then placed the yogurt in the fridge and left it there until it's ready to be used. As for flavorings, we're going to experiment wtih vanilla bean, blueberry and strawberry for starters and see which ones we like the best.

A few notes:

• Apparently, this batch will keep for 1-2 weeks.


• If we want thicker yogurt, we could add 1/4 to 1/2 cup nonfat dry milk. It also increases the nutritional content! (Given that we typically don't keep any powdered milk in the house, we didn't put any last night when we made it.)


• If we wanted to use some of it as starter, we'd need to use it within 5-7 days so that the bacteria can still grow.

(By the way, I scrounged through the kitchen and made myself a fruit-and-yogurt parfait for lunch today and it was dee-lish! I took the photo at the top of this blog so you could see! -Dez)

A Cheap Chic New Year's Eve

The Cheap Chic Couple says, "Who needs the expense attached to a wild, crazy New Year's Eve in Vegas when you can have a New Year's Eve Karaoke Marathon with family and friends?"

It's become a tradition in my (Dezzi Rae's) family to go to my Aunt Lydia's for hors d' oeuvres, drinks a-plenty and potluck, and to pull out the karaoke machine and sing, dance and belly-laugh the rest of the year away.

We just had to share this video montage we put together of this year's New Year's Eve party because we doubt anyone can top this family when it comes to being karaoke-crazy around the holidays.

Cheap Chic Wedding Tip: Get A Gifted Friend To Make Your Wedding Cake

If you're on a tight wedding budget, consider having a gifted friend or family member bake your wedding cake.

Perhaps it's because we're big fans of Ace Of Cakes on The Food Network, but it's no surprise that when it came to our wedding cake, we wanted it fun and quirky, so we decided on a madhatter cake.

When we were doing our cake sampling, a lot of the bids we were getting for a madhatter cake to feed 80 guests was in the high $600 range. While we have a reverence for the artistry that goes into making a wedding cake, and respect for the fact that these bakeries do have a sizable overhead, that price range would throw our $7,000 Cheap Chic Wedding Challenge budget out of whack.

We were pretty lucky that over the Christmas holidays, I bumped into an old friend, Debbie Cordova. Years ago, she had baked a beautifully simple yet elegant wedding cake for someone at work, and it had been absolutely delicious. We had even commented on the fact that she should have her own bakery instead of doing property management.

Debbie still hasn't opened her own bakery liked we urged her to do way back then, but from the pictures she sent me, it looks like she's kept honing her craft all this time. We can't wait to try her cake samples, and have her do our wedding cake because we know it's going to be fantastic.

If you're not lucky enough to have a Debbie of your own, here are a few more tips to consider:

• I've heard that Albertsons actually makes a pretty decent wedding cake (although you're probably going to be limited to what designs they have available, design-wise).
• You may also want to consider getting a small cake just for the cake-cutting, and get sheet cake (in the same flavor as your smaller cake, of course) to serve guests.

Entertainment Book: The Cheap Chic Couple's Indispensable Savings Tool

The Entertainment Book is absolutely indispensable when you're living the Cheap Chic lifestyle.

We've used it for years, and with good reason: it pays for itself within the first 2-3 times that you use it. We love the fact that you get 50% discounts on the things we do everyday - especially the dinners at the nicer restaurants. Do remember though that even though they take the lesser-priced meal off your bill, you do need to tip the server based on the price of two meals. It's the right thing to do.

In case you haven't purchased your 2008 Entertainment Book yet, click on the image below so you can take advantage of the $10 discount and free shipping. The sooner you buy your 2008 Entertainment Book, the sooner you can start saving and stre-e-e-e-e-tching your dollars!

Isn't it time we all owned a piece of the internet pie ?

We just became members of AGLOCO, a company that wants to make sure that every person who uses the Internet gets to own a piece of the Internet pie. We say, it's about damn time!

After all, today’s hottest Internet businesses are all about the power of social networks. Companies like MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube have become worth billions because businesses have realized that these social networks are generating huge advertising and marketing opportunities. As these social networks grow, the economic potential for its owners – and the advertisers who target the site’s users – is remarkable.

At AGLOCO, they asked a simple question: The users created the community, where’s their share of the profit? It was from this question that AGLOCO set out to create the Internet’s first Economic Network, harnessing the power of Internet-based social networks to directly benefit the Members who help to create the community.

So how do we all get a piece of the internet pie? It's as easy as becoming a member of AGLOCO, which is as simple as completing a brief sign-up page (name, age, location and email address.). Once you’re a Member, you will be asked to then download the Viewbar™ software.

AGLOCO makes money for its Members in many ways:

Search: Every time you use the Viewbar™ to do an Internet search, AGLOCO earns money from the search engine providers. (For example, Google pays as much as $0.10 on average for each search that is directed to its search engine.)

Advertising: The Viewbar™ itself displays ads that are targeted based upon the websites you’re visiting. When you click on an ad and make a purchase, AGLOCO receives a referral fee, which we pass on to our Members. (Please note: Individual members do not receive any compensation for clicking on ads in the Viewbar™, and the Viewbar™ can detect if someone is clicking ads in a fraudulent manner.)

Transaction commissions: Many major retailers pay commissions when you refer customers who make a purchase. AGLOCO collects that commission and passes it on to our members. (For example, Amazon pays an 8.5% commission to most websites who refer customers, and has cut deals for even larger percentages. The bigger the AGLOCO community, the better commission we can negotiate for our Members.)

Software distribution: Numerous software companies pay websites to encourage the download of new software releases (for example, Adobe’s Flash and Acrobat Reader software), and trial versions of new programs. AGLOCO members not only get access to the latest and coolest software, they get paid for it.

Service distribution: Many online service providers will look to the AGLOCO community as a source of new and active users for their services. (For example, eBay, Skype, and PayPal, among others, all pay fees to people who help them recruit new active users to their services)
Product distribution: When Members agree to use a product, such as cell phones, high-tech gadgets, office supplies, new credit cards or financial services, AGLOCO can collect referral fees. Some companies even offer special rebate and cash-back programs.

AGLOCO Members make money in four ways:

Members earn a monthly share of the AGLOCO revenue based on the use of the AGLOCO Viewbar™ that month.

Members earn part of the company based on the use of the AGLOCO Viewbar™ that month (currently a maximum of five hours are rewarded).

Members who use our referral system to help build the AGLOCO network will earn more. (AGLOCO only has significant value as a large network and people who help build it should be rewarded. – We also feel that the early users who told friends about YouTube or MySpace or even Google probably deserved something too, but no referral system was available to record their work).

Members will also get a share of any commissions AGLOCO gets when a Member purchases a product or service from an AGLOCO Sponsor company.

Why should you join now?

First, it costs nothing to Join and takes less than one minute.

Second, you can help build the AGLOCO community by recruiting new Members TODAY. Right now, inviting your friends to join AGLOCO is as easy and productive as it will ever be – but you need to invite your friends before someone else beats you to them. Remember, the bigger the AGLOCO community, the more attractive AGLOCO is to potential business partners and advertisers.

Recruit your friends and family by contacting them through email. Use your blog and your existing social networks, such as MySpace and Facebook, to contact your friends and encourage them to join a new community that will actually let them earn money.

Be a part of the Internet’s first Member-Owned Economic Community.

Click here and join AGLOCO and own the Internet!

The $4.25 Bargain for A Bookworm

Don't get me wrong. I love Borders and Barnes & Noble. However, being the Cheap Chic Chick that I am, I always turn to Amazon.com and eBay if there's a specific book I want to buy. When I do find it, I typically opt for the slightly-used-but-in-good-condition. Unless you've got an obsession with having books in immaculate condition, it ain't gonna' kill ya' to buy a preowned book. After all, isn't it the content that you're after anyways?

Another great source of bargains for bookworms is the local library. Yesterday, I stopped by the one down the street from our house and in addition to borrowing a few books, I indulged myself by browsing the selection in the Used Book For Sale section.

Here's the treasure trove that I walked away with:

• 4 back issues of National Geographic (NG's are timeless. I read and re-read mine all the time, and the library was giving them away so I took some. If I do get tired of them, I will use them to make handmade paper or art collages...FREE!
• 3 hard-cover books...$1 each
• 2 paperbacks...$0.50 each
• 1 hard-cover children's book (Dr. Seuss' Green Eggs And Ham)...$0.25

That's a grand total of $4.25. Woohoo!

Bacolod Chicken (Chicken Inasal)

My requirements for a cheap chic recipe? It has to be easy to make (because, much as I love puttering away in the kitchen, I do have other things to do). It has to be inexpensive. Most importantly, it has to taste good.

Tonight, we're having Bacolod Chicken (or, 'chicken inasal' as we born-and-bred Bacolodnons put it) and it's definitely a Cheap Chic Couple favorite.

Making this dish always brings me home to Bacolod City, figuratively speaking. While we also frequented the more upscale Bacolod Chicken House, owned by my University of St. La Salle batchmate Dino Cajli's family, my fondest memories are of going to Manokan Country by the Seaside Reclamation area, choosing a stall from the dozens that lined the entire block, sitting at rustic, bare-bones benches and tables, breathing in the aroma of the chicken grilling just a few feet away wafted in the air, and in no time at all, being served 'pecho' (breast) or ''paa (thigh) with a plate of steaming hot white rice topped with fried minced garlic.

Here's my recipe for Bacolod Chicken:

2 chicken breasts (or thighs, if you prefer dark meat) with skins on

MARINADE
1 c. coconut palm vinegar (found at Filipino or Asian stores)
1 bottle Sprite (20 oz.)
1 thumb-sized ginger, sliced
juice of 4 kalamansi (but if you can't find kalamansi, use the juice of 1 lime or lemon
2 stalks lemongrass, pounded and cut into 2-inch pieces
2 T. salt
2 t. pepper

BASTING SAUCE
1/4 c. vegetable oil
2 T. margarine
2 t. salt
2 T. achuete/annato seeds
juice of 2 kalamansi (or juice of 1/2 lime or lemon).

To make basting sauce, heat oil, add margarine and salt. Drop in achuete/annato seeds and stir until color is extracted. Remove from heat and add kalamansi/lemon/lime juice.

Prick the chicken with a fork to ensure that it absorbs the marinade. Marinate chicken in vinegar, Sprite, ginger, lemongrass, kalamansi/lime or lemon juice, salt and pepper for at least an hour. Grill over medium to high flame while basting with sauce.

Don't forget to make a side dip of 'sinamak' (coconut palm vinegar with minced garlic, ginger and chilis) since no self-respecting Bacolodnon would eat his or her Bacolod Chicken without dunking it in 'sinamak'.

-Dezzi Rae