Tales from The Shire

Fortune_Smiles

We are having a lovely quiet, calm Christmas. It's just Mr F, FDawg and I as family aren't coming until tomorrow. We went out to a local restaurant for our lunch yesterday which was lovely and then just chilled watching Christmas TV, drinking wine and eating chocolate. It's the calm before the storm :rotfl:

The emergency savings have taken a further hit as my latop died the day before Christmas Eve :eek: And, I hadn't backed it up for two years :eek: So a quick and expensive dash to PCW0r1d was required. The old laptop is beyond saving and they weren't able to recover any data I was very irritated about the whole thing and then remembered how lucky we are to be able to go out and replace a big ticket item like this. And, isn't that what the emergency savings are for. So I'm over myself about it now and busy setting up software and data. Most of what I've lost I can build again but there is one short story that may be lost for ever

Most importantly, I've had to input all my budgeting information from scratch. It's not perfect but it will do for now and I'll refine it as the year goes by. The figures are not looking very pretty at the moment but, hey, there's a whole new year ahead to fix that :rotfl:

I've had a few days off from the diet and may have done a significant amount of damage in that time :rotfl: So I'm back on it today although it will be tough as we have guests from tomorrow for about six days... and I got some delicious chocolates for Christmas :rotfl:

I shall write my traditional year end review next and soon it will be time to post goals for a new decade

Hope you're all having a great time.

Fortune x

Fortune_Smiles

Let's see how we did this year...

HEALTH :j

• I continued to attend yoga regularly and improved my flexibility
• We took FDawg out and about a bit more this year but not as much as I'd hoped as Mr F has had to travel a lot for business
• I started watching my calorie intake in September and lost 20lbs :j which has made a huge positive difference to my health

WEALTH :money:

• We've now paid 15% off the mortgage and made overpayments of £3874.12 this year
• The emergency fund is at 73% of target which isn't any more than this time last year but we have paid out for a lot of home improvement items
• We set up and ran our Annex as an Airbnb
• We sold a car, bought a car, took that car back, bought another and paid out for repairs. I'm hoping our car dramas are over for a while now :rotfl:
• Home improvements included roof and patio repairs, a new gravel drive and a new front gate. We bought a mower, a bathroom cabinet, two small sideboards, several smaller household items, a laptop! and a vacuum cleaner - of course :rotfl:
• We made some improvements to the garden and grew our own broad beans, cherry tomatoes, lettuce, courgettes, marrows, potatoes, onions, redcurrants, pinkcurrants, raspberries, apples, plums and one solitary butternut squash which is struggling to ripen on the kitchen windowsill :rotfl:

HAPPINESS

• I organised a monthly girls' night out with my neighbours and much fun was had
• Mr F and I discovered a couple of new venues in our local area but our adventures were curtailed by his business travel commitments.

Wow! That seems a lot now I've written it down and I'm happy with what we've achieved. I'm particularly happy with the improvements to my health. It's something I've been saying is a priority for years now but I've failed to really make it a priority. My health is generally good but I've been conscious of getting older and the need to keep as fit as possible. This year I've actually made some progress

Goodbye 2019 - you were a bit bumpy but have been pretty good to us despite that.

Fortune x

Fortune_Smiles

I can't wait to make a start on my new goals so here they are...

This next year our focus is going to be on Wellness in all it's forms:

Financial

Top of the list of course as this is a money saving diary Although I find that there is always a lot of overlap between my categories as one invariably affects others -

• continue to overpay a regular amount to the mortgage,
• get to 100% of target for our emergency savings
• improve our income from the Annex by 25%.

Emotional

Very important for Mr F as his work is becoming increasingly stressful -

• allocate one day of the weekends he's home for exploring, adventurising, socialising or gardening
• agree some days out we'd like to have over the year.

Intellectual

This one's more for me as Mr F gets most of his intellectual stimulation in the workplace so -

• there are three photographs of our life here in the Shire that I've been wanting to paint for a long time
• go to Writers' Group each fortnight and write something to read out at each meeting.

Physical

• continue with yoga
• attempt Couch to 5k again - this will have to be dependent upon the hip problem holding off
• reach target weight and review

Environmental

• keep more on top of the garden
• decorate at least two rooms
• identify and prioritise home improvements

Social

• I have plenty of girlie and interest related social groups but I'd like to do more with Mr F along.

There are also Spiritual and Occupational but I think they're covered in the other categories.

I'm going to give things a little more thought over the next few days so might tweak this post later. But I feel I need a focus now to keep me on the straight and narrow over the rest of the festive season.

Well begun is half done after all :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Fortune x

greent

Love the goals and categories - I may steal some of the categories! x

Moneyfordreams

great goals Fortune

Fortune_Smiles

greent wrote: »

Love the goals and categories - I may steal some of the categories! x

Moneyfordreams wrote: »

great goals Fortune

Please do Greent - I pinched them from here.

Thank you Money. There's nothing too stretching there but small things can make a big difference can't they.

Fortune x

Fortune_Smiles

I made a small start on my new goals yesterday. It's going to be slow to begin with as we've still got the rest of the festive celebrations to come. However, by having the goals, I'm at least hoping to limit the damage :rotfl:

It was an NSD and I re-started the diet. We had Roasted Root & Sage Soup for lunch to use up the stash of root veg in the fridge. As you would expect at this time of year, my veg box has been very root heavy. Lovely and healthy but I'm running out of ideas for using up carrots :rotfl: Supper was Venison Sausages Braised in Red Wine. This will be our lunch on New Year's Day when we have friends staying. I made extra so we could have some for supper last night and freeze the rest to save time on the day. I did have some chocolates but they were calorie counted and in my allowance for the day.

The boys are arriving this evening for a couple of days so I'll need to spruce up the house a bit. It won't be an NSD as we've run out of beer so Mr F will be taking a trip down to the brewery. The grocery shop is arriving this morning with supplies. It was only about £10 over my usual budget as we got a lot of things in before Christmas. We've planned a low key time so I'm hoping not to have to spend too much more.

I managed to download some malware yesterday. Nothing dangerous just an anti-virus programme that came bundled with another piece of software I needed. It uses a lot of memory so my laptop started crashing. Fortunately I figured out what was happening and used some free malware protection to sort it out.

Hope you all have a great day.

Fortune x

Cheery_Daff

Love your goals Fortune, and I'm impressed you've made a start already! :applause: Glad you're having a happy festive time :j

Fortune_Smiles

Cheery_Daff wrote: »

Love your goals Fortune, and I'm impressed you've made a start already! :applause: Glad you're having a happy festive time :j

Thanks Cheery - I'm not sure why but I'm keen to get started on 2020. Let's hope my spidey senses are telling me it's going to be a great year for us all :rotfl:

Fortune x

Fortune_Smiles

We've had the boys here for the last couple of days so not much accomplished on the financial goals but some progress on others.

They bought their pup down with them so we had a long dog walk on Saturday. We went to a local common which we've been meaning to check out for ages. FDawg seemed to remember pup from his last visit and, by the end of their stay, was trying to play with him. FDawg doesn't know how to play with other dogs but he he was definitely trying and this is the first time we've seen him do that Pup is showing FDawg how to be more dog :rotfl:

We had cheese and biscuits and Christmas cake when we got back and exchanged our secret santa presents. Then a fish and chip supper from our local takeaway as a treat and to give me a break from cooking. So a relatively small spend there which will be met from the fun money.

We went to our local independent cinema in the evening to see The Pe@nut Butt£r F@lcon. I'd bought the tickets previously and the boys bought the drinks while we were there so no extra spending. It was a really beautiful film and I'd highly recommend it.

Yesterday we stayed at home and played board games then had a late lunch of Meatball Macaroni followed by Raspberry & Amaretti Crunch Cake with cream. I made the cake ages ago when we were harvesting raspberries for the garden and it's been waiting in the freezer since for an 'occasion'. I popped it in the oven with a little demerera sugar on top and it proved to be very popular. The amaretti crunch didn't survive the freezing but the demerara restored some of that. DS1 requested the leftovers to take home :rotfl:

So that's something towards my Social, Physical and Intellectual goals (it was a very challenging board game :rotfl:).

The boys left after lunch but we have friends arriving today for the New Year so I need to give the house a quick clean up. The festivities continue

Hope you're having a great Twixmas.

Fortune x