More DIY + a day of mourning

First, this arrived:



I right away giddily snapped up pics of these:









Pardon the amateurish photos. This is my first time to use a DSLR so I'm still at the birth pains stages.

By the way, those are the tiny flaglets that will be pierced into the cupcakes. It was fun making these. I topped each toothpick with a plastic bead after seeing projects of these in other blogs.

Today is wrapping up and finishing touches day. I still need to print out photos and signages for the shower party tomorrow as well start crafting the pom-poms and paper flowers for table decor.

Tomorrow! Yikes!

A drastic change of topic at this point- have you heard of the massacre in Maguindanao province in Southern Philippines? (more info here and if you're up to it, you can see aftermath photos here). Election in the Philippines have always been bloody, but nothing like this. There are no words to describe this incident as the death toll continues to rise.

I make it a point not to talk about work and politics in this blog. I chew too much of these already in my job and I want my blogging to be a de-stresser and not an extension of my work.

But in honor of my fellow journalists who died in the line of duty in Maguindanao, I am making an exception and would like to publicly condemn the brutality that left more than 15 journalists dead. I take their deaths personally because I could have easily been one of them on my way to cover a news event.

More than 50 bodies have already been recovered and most of them are women, who according to reports have been raped before they were killed.

Their bodies, along with the vehicles they were riding in, were all buried in an attempt to wipe out evidence of the mass murders, to make it look like the victims just disappeared without a trace.

The arrogance and calculating coldness behind this barbarism astounds me. That someone, a human being, can actually think and plan this out, and the fact that 100 other persons carried out this plan to cold-bloodedly kill more than 50 people in one instance horrify me. These men were reportedly ordered to not spare a life and kill everyone, men, women and children.

Of the 100 armed men who carried out this atrocity, not one of them tried to stop the violence from happening. I cannot and I don't think I ever will be able to wrap my mind around that fact.

They are not men. They are not human beings. They are not even animals.

58 bullet-ridden bodies, of which 37 were journalists and 16 were women and 100 armed men. These are numbers that will never be forgotten.

Dear, dear Lord, have mercy on us.