2023 - Positivity And Progress!

leftatthetrafficlights

 Thanks @Blackcats! I had a fab time! 😁

I've been a bit up and down with the wholefood diet recently- the few days away at the beginning of this month threw me off balance and although I've done okay since I returned I've eaten out a lot more than I usually do due to a variety of celebrations to attend. So it's been a shakey month but its given me the time to plan, see where I can improve stuff and think about ways to avoid the pitfalls when I'm not at home so I'm taking it as a win!! 

I've finally got everything I need now to launch into the wholefood lifestyle properly- I've bought more wholegrain (Rye berries, oat groats and barley groats), a tempeh starter culture, and I've got a tofu press coming this week. The salads in the garden are starting to produce so I have access to fresh spinach and a variety of leaves and the herbs are going mental!! 

Today I have started my day in the garden- it's beautiful out here and I'm already on my 2nd cup of chamomile tea! I've got a combination of grains cooking in the instant pot at the moment and will have those with dark speckled lentils, salad, mediterranean veg and a mixed herb dressing later today.

I've not done any asana practice recently- walking around London for 3 days then doing loads of gardening has pretty much wiped me out but I'm starting it again today - I've got a whole day of self care and relaxation planned for today! I'm going to spend most of it pottering in the garden and enjoying the sun and peace then I'm having a long shower, exfoliating and moisturising, doing a face mask, asana practice, meditation and then going to sleep with some relaxing music 😁 

leftatthetrafficlights

It's been a while!! 😳 

RL being how it is, things have been put on the back-burner but I'm ready to dedicate the time required to achieve my goals now so I'm back 😉 

From Monday,  I've sorted my food plans...

I'm starting fresh on Monday- breakfast will always be a smoothie with flax, greens, turmeric, berries and other fruits; lunch will be salad with greens, other veg, beans and grains, possibly fruit, nuts ad seeds included. Alternatively, I will have the previous days leftovers for lunch and the salad in the evening....planned evening dishes this week are: 

Monday - lemon scented beluga lentils served on a bed of quinoa and millet with courgettes and preserved lemons, topped with roasted peppers and artichokes 

Tuesday- Homegrown veg soup with chickpea frittatas 

Wednesday- Kale and calabrese risotto served with a lemon and tarragon dressing 

Thursday- Courgette and tomato jackfruit served in buckwheat pancakes with kimchi and sweet chilli 

Friday - Black olive, french bean and sage salad with lentil pancakes, sauerkraut, pickled beetroot, endemame in garlic and lime, hommous 

Saturday- Injera with potato, cauliflower, runner bean and broccoli greens wat, berebere french beans, green lentil and banana blossom wat

Sunday  - Cashew and macadamia nut cheese wrapped in cucumber,  beetroot and apple salad, courgette dip, root vegetable rice, roasted Mediterranean veg, pumpkin and sunflower sees buckwheat bread

I've designed my outside meditation/asana, pagan/spiritual area and it won't take long to sort it out - it seems a bit pointless with the current weather but I'm hopeful for the future!! 🤞 

Everything else is good in life, I'm hitting an important event in the next couple of days which has spurred me on to make some more definite changes - I'm feeling inspired! 🙌

leftatthetrafficlights

Didn't get to stick to the food plan yesterday as i had my grandbaby and I'd made a Thai style curry paste on Sunday which needed using so I made dh a curry last night....I didn’t feel much like eating (too much alcohol on sunday) so there's still plenty left for him for tonight along with the planned meal...

I've got my grandbaby again today - unfortunately the weather looks rubbish (again!!) so we'll have an indoor day, probably doing some painting and making stuff. I love having him but it does mean that a lot of my planned days go out of the window!! Never mind, I can start the proper self care stuff on Thursday (he's having a sleepover with me tonight) and just stick with the food plan for now. 

Finance wise, things are okay - the savings and slush fund are almost at the level I want (they'll be there by the end of the month) and the other 'pots' are bumbling along nicely. I'm going to be doing a bit if investigating of savings products at the end of the week as I am going to be shifting some additional savings to a new home soon. Although it's not much, it will be enough to give me a bit of a cushion should I need it but I'm also thinking that if I can get it to a reasonable amount, I may invest in a new kitchen in a few years time 🤔 we were going to do it last year but then I 'retired' and I didn't want to spend the money!! 

It's almost a year now since I left work - in some ways I'm disappointed about the lack of progress in some areas but I'm really pleased that the finances have been pretty stable despite me not sticking to budget on some stuff. I'm resetting that though - the next year is all going to be about getting everything in my life more under control and enjoying every moment I have...this past year has been really useful by illuminating areas that I am not as happy with, healing from past experiences and events and highlighting the things that are important to me.

Leaving my job was the best decision I have made in a long time and now that I have proven that we can still live in a way that suits us on the one income, I want to make the most of the time and freedom it affords me. The next 12 months are going to be utilised properly!! 

leftatthetrafficlights

After realising that I have 3 threads on the go, I've decided that I need to keep the focus of each one on track!! 🤦‍♀️😂

Despite the fact that all of them are relevant to my saving money and doing things as frugally as possible, it will make more sense to break them down into their individual purposes, so from now on, this thread will be about building the debt neutral fund, the Wholefood Plant Based one will be about health and the Vegan Storecupboard one will be about using up my storecupboard!! 😉 

So, finances....! 

Over the past week or two I've had a lot of unexpected and probably unnecessary expenses so I'm drawing a line under it all and starting again on the debt neutral fund. In the next couple of days, I need to do the money shuffle to get everything back on a level playing field and then really dig deep to start building the fund. I'm intending to make my first deposit on 1st September- it won't be much, but I want to make a start! 

September is an expensive month for me - I have 2 birthdays to cover and a family visit too...I'm hoping that I can minimise the expense by cooking at home and not overdoing the gifts like I normally do 🙄🤦‍♀️ I've ordered the alcohol already to cover the family visit (tesco have the 25% off 6 bottles of wine deal on at the moment so made sense to buy it early! 😉) and I have meal plans in place to minimise the general grocery spends for the month...hopefully I'll have a reasonable amount to put to the fund at the end of September 🤞😁

leftatthetrafficlights

Yesterday I opened a new fixed term savings account and transferred the additional savings as intended. 

I have also transferred my first £10 to the Debt Neutral Fund (DNF)!! 🙌 

I have done the money shuffle and all 'pots' are where they should be now and the CC's are clear so it's a fresh start with a clean slate 😁 

I've been thinking a lot about how I've let the finances slip a bit over the last year and let my spending get sloppy again. I haven't been anywhere near as frugal as I could have been and I need to get a grip again.

I know that some of the good habits I had established have slipped - things like line drying laundry instead of using the tumble dryer for instance - and I need to get back to those. I'm going to spend some time this week making a list of what I need to do to save the pennies! 

leftatthetrafficlights

I applied for a tax refund yesterday which will hopefully arrive by the end of this month 🤞 I'll be putting the odd £'s into the DNF and the rest will go into my savings 😁 

I've shifted another £12.87 to the DNF today - I went through all the 'savings pots' in my account and transferred the pennies to the fund 😁 There probably won't be anymore now until the end of the month but I'm happy that I'm making progress! 

I've made a start on my list to save the pennies - I need to start paying more attention to the weather forcasts so that I can plan to do laundry on dry days; I need to plan meals around what's ready to harvest and what I have in the freezers/storecupboard; I need to make sure I keep up with seed sowing for salad leaves etc; I need to make sure that the dishwasher is full before I run it; I need to pay more attention to the prices of things I use regularly so that I can buy them in bulk when they are on offer; I need to start turning off stuff at the wall instead of leaving them on standby and I need to stop buying stuff that I really don't need!! 🤦‍♀️ 

These are all ways that I have slipped recently and I'm annoyed with myself for doing so 🙄 however, recognising it is the first step to changing it so I'm drawing a line under it and moving on! 😁 

leftatthetrafficlights

Tax refund arrived today (possibly, I didn't check the post yesterday!) so that can be deposited on Monday and I will transfer the cash as soon as it clears 🙌 

I've been getting the washing out on the line and have been cooking predominantly from stores/the garden etc so the grocery bill has been low. I have had some bulk buy purchases delivered (whole wheat groats, rye berries, soya beans & chickpeas) so I'm unlikely to need any more of those items for many months 😁 

Salad leaves have been doing well but I'm not sure how the weather this week has affected them - I'll sow more at the weekend anyway but I'm hoping that everything survives - the microgreens are doing really well and I'll be harvesting quite a few of those at the weekend. 

leftatthetrafficlights

Tax refund deposited- will transfer once cleared. 

Got quite a bit going on over the next few weeks so my presence here will be erratic at best after Wednesday- just wanted to say thanks for popping in to the journey and I'll 'see' you when things go back to normal!! 🙄😂 

leftatthetrafficlights

Tax refund transferred 😁 

It's been a bit of a spendy couple of weeks - I'd forgotten to sow any of the winter bedding plants earlier in the year so have bought a few of those along with some spring flowering bulbs for the front garden beds. The bulbs are perennial so an investment and I've diarised the sowing of the summer and winter bedding now so hopefully won't make that mistake again!! 🤦‍♀️😂 

I've also invested in a soya milk maker following a disaster in the kitchen earlier this week- my nut milk bag exploded at the seams while I was squeezing it and I ended up with a tsunami of okara all over my kitchen which took over an hour to clean!! 😳 I'm not willing to risk that again (plus the squeezing of the bag is time consuming and a bit painful for my fingers) so as far as I'm concerned, it is a worthwhile investment (and I got it on offer too so that was an added bonus! 😉) I've been making quite a lot of tofu recently so it will save me lots of time...

I'm doing well with the groceries - I've made another bulk purchase recently of cannellini, kidney and butter beans as I'm running low on those but other than that, my weekly food bills are pretty much concentrated on fresh fruit and veg now - as I buy organic wherever possible and the quantity/variety of home-grown stuff is dramatically less now, it's still quite expensive but I'm generally under £30 per week most of the time 😁 

My Bulk Buy fund has been utilised over the past few months (need to check the figures) but I have enough variety of grains and lentils/beans now to cover me for months (definitely until the end of the year and probably beyond) both as whole grains and pulses plus their use for flour/tofu/milks etc. 

Despite the garden veg being more sparse now, we still have cabbages, cavolo nero, carrots, beetroot, parsnips, salad leaves, squash, radish, spring onions, leeks, japanese greens, microgreens and lots of herbs available plus plenty of stuff in the freezer like beans and calabrese that we've grown over the season.  

We're building the 'polytunnel' on one of raised beds this week so that we can extend the growing season further so we'll sow more crops next weekend. All of this will help keep the grocery bill low over the next few months. 

I've discovered that the shop I buy my laundry products from does refills which saves me a few pennies too so that was a bonus 😁 

The DNF is now standing at £31 - I'll be moving more into it at the beginning of next month when I do the 'tilly tidy' of all the accounts. 

leftatthetrafficlights

'Tilly tidy' done - £7.77 to the DNF 😁 

The soya milk maker has proved to be worth it's weight in gold 🙌 making tofu now is a very quick and simple process and I am using the okara for burgers and 'meat' balls - I've also started to use lemon juice as the coagulant which saves me money too 😁 

We cleared the veg beds yesterday and harvested the remaining summer veg - I've got about 1kg of scarlett runner beans to eat over the winter now which makes me very happy! We're sowing more winter salads, rocket, beetroot and carrots today - yesterday we potted on the cauliflower and put the staging back in the greenhouse ready for the winter sowing.