Donnie and Crickette Tantoco: One big happy hoMe

It was love at first sight for Crickette Tantoco. We’re not talking about good-looking hubby Donnie Tantoco whom she met on a blind date 12 years ago, both of them fresh out of school. We’re talking here about the Tantoco home that tons of love and devotion built.

"I was looking at four houses in the Alabang area," Crickette recounts her wild house-hunting adventure. "I simply fell in love with this place because of the way they organized the space. They really maximized the lot (which measures 450 sq. m. while the house is only 325 sq. m.). For a small space, they were able to fit so much. It had all the rooms I needed – a den, four rooms upstairs, an attic, a dirty kitchen, a regular kitchen. It even has a swimming pool."

The house was owner-built by Jomini Gatmaitan who builds and sells on a limited basis. Crickette went house-hunting without Donnie. "What I did was I made a shortlist and showed it to Donnie," she points out.

Donnie liked what Crickette liked. So, four years ago, right after Christmas, Donnie and Crickette with their twin daughters Nicole and Camille, 11, and son Bienvenido Christian Tantoco IV, 6, moved into their new home.

"Everything I needed was there," Crickette waxes ecstatic. "The only thing I had to add was the maids’ quarters in the attic. When they build houses like this, they never consider the househelp."

Finally, Donnie and Crickette found a house they could call their home. "We had lived out of the country for 10 years," Crickette traces their odyssey.

Donnie and Crickette began their life journey together more than 12 years ago. "My mom wouldn’t let me go to the prom because she didn’t like my boyfriend," Crickette relates. "I wasn’t going to go to my prom, and Donnie’s Tita Marites Tantoco, who was my classmate at Assumption, said, ‘You just have to go, it’s the most memorable event in your life. You should go with my nephew.’"

Crickette adds with a twinkle in her eyes, "And she produced this really cute boy. OK!"

A few more dates later, the young couple was talking about their altar date. They were married in civil rites in December, 1988 in Hong Kong. On Jan. 7, 1989, they had their church rites. Soon after the honeymoon, Donnie and Crickette helped Donnie’s mom Nena Vargas Tantoco run her flower shop in Hong Kong called Expressions. Nena Tantoco is Rustan’s visual merchandising consultant. Donnie’s dad Rico Tantoco is president of Rustan’s Commercial Corporation.

"Nine months later ... dadan (drumroll please!) ... I got pregnant," Crickette relates with a chuckle. "I thought I just had a fever. I was three months pregnant when the lolas came to visit me and Donnie in Hong Kong."

Then came a bigger surprise. "When I had my ultrasound, the doctor said, ‘There are two heartbeats.’ I said, ‘Very good!’ I thought it was the baby’s heartbeat and mine. But the doctor said there were two babies. What!?!"

Doubling up in laughter, Crickette adds, "Traumatic! It’s hard enough to be a first-time mom but to be a first-time mom to twins, it’s like ... pressure. But it’s nice, it’s so nice."

With the unexpected early arrival of the twins, young dad Donnie had his hands full, literally and figuratively. He had just finished his MBA studies and was working for General Mills in Minnesota. Enjoying a comfortable life in the US, Donnie and Crickette could have opted to stay on.

"But no, Donnie said that if he was going to make any difference in the lives of other people, it wasn’t going to be in the US," says Crickette. "He’d like to come home and bring back here whatever he learned there. Because if we won’t make our country better, who will?"

Back home, Donnie, who had travelled far and wide with his grandfather Bienvenido Tantoco Sr., helped put up Shopwise, the first supercenter in the country. Donnie has teamed up with wife Crickette to bring to Pinoys a state-of-the-art one-stop shopping experience.

This lazy afternoon, Crickette takes a rare break from work to allow us to invade the privacy of her home.

The place looks warm and lived-in. "I decorated the house, I had no budget for an interior designer," says Crickette.

So how did she fill up the place?

"With lots of mistakes," she laughs. "I furnished my sisters’ and brother’s houses, all my mistakes are in their homes. The reason I make mistakes is I never measure. When I go out, if I like something, I buy it. I don’t think in terms of whether or not it will go with the pieces I already have. I buy it because I like it. So every piece that’s here is because I love it, I like it. Even now, when I look at the things in my house, I go, ‘Oh, I love this couch, I love this painting!’ even if they don’t go with the rest of the pieces. My house is so small it’s so full already."

No, Crickette is not a feng shui freak. "I do believe in the general principles or the obvious ones like you shouldn’t have a creek behind your house. But I will not fix my house according to feng shui; I won’t have it ruling or dictating my life."

More confessions from this frustrated interior designer: "Yes, I furnished my sister Frances’ house. There was a punching bag (Frances does taebo and kickboxing) in her sala and all the pieces of furniture were leaning against the wall. Her microwave was in the closet and her toaster in the drawer. I said, ‘I don’t think this house is really a good place for you, let’s fix it.’"

Having fixed all her siblings’ homes, it was time to fix her own. "I furnished all the bedrooms first, I did downstairs last," Crickette recalls.

Crickette is happy to note that she didn’t have to spend on a lot of new things for the house. "My mother-in-law gave me this pillow rack and this piano for the kids," she begins to enumerate. "We had our old furniture shipped from the US like our bed. The dining set I inherited from my mom."

She adds in jest, "It can only seat six, so there’s room for just one more kid, we could only have one more kid."

What’s the most expensive item in the house?

"It’s the Malang painting in the dining room," comes Crickette’s quick reply. "And I didn’t have to spend for it because it was a wedding gift from one of our ninongs, Bebo Quiroz."

Crickette declares she’s a wise housewife. "I shop at Shopwise," she endorses with a hearty laugh.

The quintessential budgetarian, she cuts corners where she can. "I love scented candles," she enthuses. "They’re a cheap way to decorate – instead of buying expensive Lalique crystal. When you have kids, you can’t have expensive things. If my kid breaks something, I’m not going to have a heart attack – sige, I’ll just buy a new one, no problem."

Fresh flowers brighten up a nook here and there. "It’s the influence of my mother-in-law, I never even noticed flowers before. My mom-in-law is really good at this, and all her helpers to some extent know how to decorate."

But Crickette often scrimps and uses cogon picked from an empty lot.

Whenever she and Donnie travel, Crickette brings home scented candles, picture frames and comforters. "Donnie wants to kill me already," she says. "He’d go, ‘Not another comforter, not another picture frame, not another candle!’ I always buy picture frames because after a while, they loosen and break or my kids break them. And I always buy comforters because they’re the easiest way for the room to look different. Or sometimes, I just buy the accessories like the matching pillows. I always overshop."

So the house is overflowing with assorted stuff, Crickette admits. "I end up giving away things to my sister Frances, my brother Sonny and my cousin Anna. I also give to my househelp – my help’s house in Bacolod is so full of stuffed toys that my kids have outgrown. I declutter every six months, I give away old clothes, old shoes."

Donnie has an office at home, "but it’s off-limits to us," says Crickette, "because it’s the only part of the house he can mess up, where he can do whatever he wants. There, he has his computer, his books, his games. The rest of the house is mine."

If there’s something the Tantocos love doing together it’s eating out. "We always try new restaurants," says Crickette. "We love Inagiku in Shangri-La Makati, Tsukiji, El Circulo, Casa Armas, Dencio’s, the list goes on and on. And King Crab! Have you been there? It’s on P. Guevarra off Wilson, Greenhills. If you love crabs, you have to go there – you order the chili crab, it’ so good. Oh my God, when you go there you don’t talk, you just eat!"

Aside from eating out, the Tantocos love going out of town. "Even if it’s just Tagaytay or Subic," says Crickette. "Once a year, we go to either Hong Kong or the US. This year, Lolo Benny is taking all of us on a cruise on Crystal Princess. If we can’t go out of town, we always take the kids to the mall, buy books at Powerbooks or go rock climbing."

We climb upstairs where we first visit the little girls’ room done in chic lilac. For her girls, Crickette bought a dresser and a cabinet, among other things, from Talipapa, a store that also exports. We see one not-so-big bed in one corner.

"My twin daughters sleep in one room, in one bed," says Crickette. "They do everything together. I bought them twin beds but they insist on sleeping together, so I changed their beds into one queen. It’s such a small bed, nagsisiksikan sila. They’re very close. They’re fraternal twins – they came in two separate placentas."

Crickette used to dress up her twins in identical clothes. "It’s hard to buy two separate things and be fair about it. One color will be nicer than the other."

Speaking of colors, the girls’ paintings lend color to their room. "The twins went to an art summer class," says the proud mom. "Nicole won first prize in Category II of the contest with the theme ‘Makulay na Diwa ng Pistang Pilipino’. This is her interpretation of the Pahiyas festival, it’s so original, so imaginative. Camille didn’t get an award but she was very happy for her sister."

The twins’ happy works share the wall with sad paintings of orphans from Kids’ Smile. "The contrast is so stark," Crickette sadly notes.

Then we drop by Christian’s room where the energetic Christian, his cousins Francis Yu and TJ Yu are on the brink of a pillow fight. Bienvenido Christian Tantoco IV was named after former Ambassador Bienvenido Tantoco because the lolo insisted.

The boys’ room is tidier than most boys’ rooms. Thank God for organizers and hampers where the boys can simply dump their toys when they’re done.

Next on our house tour is the family room – so cozy, so neat!

And finally, the master bedroom where we exchange pillow talk with the lady of the house. Done in yellow, it’s Crick-ette’s favorite part of the house. "I just love my bed," Crickette gushes. "We bought it from the States, it’s so thick when you lie there, you can’t get up anymore."

Crickette loves looking out the window of her bedroom that has a good view of the garden and the swimming pool.

We take a peek into Crickette’s dressing room where we see the "his" and "hers" closets. "Yes, I spend a lot on clothes," Crickette admits with a passion. "I buy anywhere but of course, I patronize the brands of Rustan’s. I have three closets full of clothes and two shoe closets."

Crickette’s other favorite part of the house is the lanai, "I just sit out there and watch the kids."

And she feels so lucky that when she’s not there to watch the kids, there’s the ever dependable Yaya Jonjie. "She’s also the disciplinarian in this family," says Crickette. "We make sumbong to her if the kids misbehave. We spend so little time with them we don’t want to discipline them. We just want to spoil them and have fun with them."

She adds with a smile, "Credit for this house goes to my househelp – two yayas, two cooks and a labandera. I have a major doma who takes care of everything. My househelp was trained well, they’re very good, very intelligent," says Crickette. "They plan the menu, go to the market, do everything. I think trust is very important. If you’re always looking behind your back, they will not develop and grow. The problem is we don’t allow them to make decisions."

Crickette runs her household much the same way that she runs her office. She points out, "You hire people for their expertise and you get out of their way so they can do what they do but you’re there to support and guide them. But at the same time, you have to have that iron fist. You only give them enough rope to hang themselves. Every day, you give that rope but you don’t let go, that’s not Filipino, it doesn’t work here – it’s a First World idea, not a Third World thing, not yet. Not until education levels get better and we get more affluent."

So, being partners at work, too, do Donnie and Crickette bring their problems to bed?

"It used to be really bad in the early days," Crickette admits. "He’s a thinker, I’m a doer. But now, we’ve learned to complement each other instead of oppose each other. As far as working together in one office is concerned, I’d say the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. You’re exposed to the same new ideas, new concepts, networking so you grow and develop together. I find that Donnie and I are very close, the relationship is very interesting, it’s never boring – we never run out of things to talk about and fight about."

Glad to have met this lovely happy family.