September Challenge Mid Month Update

Week one I was under £50 for shopping that week . Spent £4 on school lunches, £4 on kids boxing.

Week Two was £65 for shopping, £6 on lunches, £10 at Clan games on food and 50/50 tickets. £4 on boxing - lack of preparation makes for bigger spending!

Week Three is currently a disaster.

New spending is Boxing for me at £6 per week. So £10 per week on boxing for the two of us.

Also this week I have splashed out on amazon prime (!), bought the dishwasher hoses I've needed and picked my flooring for the downstairs.
Ordered some Christmas presents, bought some wraps for me, still need to get boxing gloves. I'll get them next week.
Also bought myself some new work out wear as my current stuff is two, yes 2 sizes too small. so that was £70odd. All I got was a pair of leggings/joggers, work out top and work out zipper and a pair of cheap trainers. As my only other pair of trainers where still covered in mud from Pretty Mudder.


Week one was great, I planned all meal and snacks. Even survived with my parents being on holiday and having to pick up my son from school every day.

Also more random news. Following a method called curly girls to sort my hair, and my hair has never been so healthy. I've always used conditioner as my 'mousse', 'hairspray', 'gel' and its always worked for soo long before the frizz got to much, but reading the information from diva curls/curly girls, I've cut out the silicones and sulphates and bad alcohols from my hair care and now my conditioner costs me 75p a bottle, I only use water or the conditioner to wash my hair. My curls are big and bouncy if I leave my hair to dry without any conditioner. If I put conditioner in to dry, the curls are more like curls with product in them, more defined, or 'lumped' together whereas the big bouncy curls are individual strands all curled together. its strange to describe. As much as I like the big bouncy curls, its not me, so for now, I'll keep with the 75p conditioner for when going out, and big bouncy curls after washing when having a 'stay at home' day.

September Spending Challenge

September Spending Challenge

Hello!
I've not been on blogger in yonks. But I'm back to participate in my friends September Shopping Challenge 2016.

Lori has 5 rules for her challenge.
Grocery Shopping - she is allowing herself two days a week for getting the messages in.
Budgeting - they have fluff money, she is aiming to use that after paying all bills etc instead of before.
Spending money - aims to keep better track of this as currently tied up with the grocery account.
No Spend Days (NSD) - she has firm no spending on a Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and only spending on the 2 days she does the grocery shopping.
Exceptions - they are allowed to eat out 1 night a week using only their spending money.

Lori is a family of 5 with both parents working, mine will be slightly different but sticking with her 5 rules, to fit my family of 2.

Grocery Shopping/ messages - I'm going to allow myself 1 'big' shop per week to get all the essentials in, and 1 top up/forgot shop.
Budgeting - I'm going to meal plan and actually stick with it. I've never managed to do a meal plan before that I have ever stuck to so this will be the big challenge for me.
Spending money - I need to work out how much spending money I actually have, how much I can give as pocket money.
No Spend Days (NSD) - aiming for 15 NSD, so that is 10 days of actual spending on the messages i.e. food, cat food, clothes, toiletries etc. and 5 other days where I can spend on what I deem essential non-essential items. Kind of goes with the spending money as it may not be food/clothing related, but it might, so giving myself this lee way for my first challenge.
Exceptions - Christmas shopping. If I spot a bargain, I'll pick it up, like last night Lego was half price on some kits, so I picked up 3, one for my nephew and 2 for my son.


My NSD doesn't count things like direct debits, standing orders or my son's fitness activities. These will be factored into the budget, but not included when assessing NSD's as some of these are cash only on the day.
Similarly any activities I plan for myself, will be in the budget but not classed as a spend day even if it falls outwith those 10/15 shopping days, as they are planned for activities that I can't pay any other way.

We go watch Ice Hockey. It starts back in September. I plan on including treats as part of my food budget and take the stuff with us, if we don't have anything with us, then we don't get to eat at the game, its not going to kill us, we won't starve, and the kid will probably moan, but that's great character building stuff, right?
Same goes for at Ice hockey practice, it takes us an hour to get there and an hour back. I will start packing lunch again.

I've went through my bank accounts and recorded everything on this great wee spreadsheet. For August their are cash things that are not included , I'll add them if I remember them but for September I WILL FILL IT IN!
Every single day!

Todays juice and #100happydays coincide.
I purchased this nifty wee drinking flask to use in the freezer. My aim is to make my lunch the night before, freeze it and take with me in the morning, it should be thawed enough by afternoon to drink.
My juice this morning is 3 apples, 2 parsnips cucumber and a tiny teeny weeny bit of ginger, then topped with coconut water.
Doesn't taste too bad.

Strawberry grapefruit coconut water

Into this baby went 3 apples, 1 carrot, drank almost half then added about 1 fifth of grapefruit, white pith on, skin peeled, and 6 medium strawberries. It tasted Erm... Tart, added in coconut water to full it up and its delicious. The coconut water balances that aftertaste from the grapefruit perfectly.
Once this baby has been drunk, I'm out a walk/run in horrible weather.
And the weatherman said it was to be dry!. My house sounds like if the wind changes direction it will collapse. Smirry rain everywhere.

Juice

So I've been doing more juices lately, mostly in the mornings, to get me used to making and cleaning in the school rush. With Lent coming up I decided to do a juice for breakfast and lunch with only fruit n veg for snack, have a healthy meal at dinner with Lyle and try and continue to healthy snacks, but that I can have puddings etc as long as its not excessive.
Yesterday was ok until I was watching greys anatomy, I *needed* something. I had some chilli nachos. I was not hungry, I just had a habit that I need to break. Tonight I aim to be prepared with some watered down chilled juice.

This mornings juice was 2 parsnips, 2 celery sticks, 2 apples, quarter cucumber and was nice.

Not the best, but drinkable, no nasty aftertaste.

I am getting a bit of a headache but nothing too bad.