Think before you speak

I went home last night and looked in my cupboards and had an 'oh shit' moment. So I am going to change my No Food Challenge slightly.

I need to buy eggs and sugar if I want to bake, and I don't have enough cheese to survive a whole month. So my plan now, is to buy VERY LITTLE food.

I do tend to wonder around the supermarket picking up stuff and trying new things, and it ends up costing about 3 times more than I planned. So I don't plan to go to the supermarket. I can get sugar in town and eggs from the farmers market and then we will have enough to make what we need. My aim is to spend less than £100 ($195 - hey the exchange rate has changed slightly) on food this month (there are only 2 of us)

Last night I made egg fried rice from some leftover rice, and had chilli from the freezer. I didn't feel that great yesterday afternoon so I only spun a tiny bit of my dyed merino silk before going to bed early. I need to start knitting again. I want to make some sort of garment - maybe il spin for it... hmm...

Something new

I got paid today and I am not too happy with the outcome. Its not that I got paid less than usual, its just that I was so stupidly overdrawn before that payday has made a minimum impact on it. Luckily my overdraft only costs a couple of quid a month (maybe £10) I should check. But I do not want to live this way. Therefore I need to save/make money very quickly.

So my half-assed plan for the month of May15th-June 15th is:

Buy no food this month.

The exceptions I am allowing are:

• Fruit - apples for lunch boxes or whatever is on special
• Veg - onions, mushrooms and frozen veg if we run out (its £1 a bag and a bag lasts us 4-5 meals)
• Bread - I will make some, but I will get stuff that is on special too
• Milk (and possibly sugar and coffee if we run out, which we probably will)

Luckily I have several packs of dried beans and lentils, a ton of ramen noodles and pasta, and a huge sack of rice. I have a ton of margarine for baking, lots of flour, herbs, spices. My freezer is full, and I will go out tonight and buy some spinach and lettuce seeds

I plan on making lots of lentilly, beany goodness, baking cupcakes for lunch boxes (I have ingredients for lemon ones and coffee & walnut ones), and freezing leftovers for future meals. I think I can do this :)

I will also allow myself to buy bargain fiber as I find it (and more cheap-o dye if needs be).

I will try to sell some handspun on etsy too.

Plans

I try not to make many plans, because that way I can't be disappointed when something doesn't happen. But I have a 3 day weekend, starting from about an hour ago, and I have a couple of things I really want to do. I finished knitting pomotamus, and just need to kitchener the toe (2 minute job) I have started a monkey using my home dyed trekking xxl, and in doing so, I found out that one of the finance managers at work knits too - I had both managers staring at my with my dpns, which happens a lot. Surely everyone knows how to use them? So my first plan, for tonight mainly, is to knit lots of sock. Tomorrow, Morven made an appointment to get a new stainless steel exhaust on the car. In typical male style (thats typical - meaning not quite every single man is incapable of thinking, but a lot of them are) Morven booked the appointment for 9:30. But its about a 2 hour drive away :( so he has to buy me pancakes and nice things from Lush to make up for this. Whilst the car is being sorted, I plan on buying my sisters christmas present from Lush, and having a look for some other things too. I looked for yarn stores but there are none close by :( That shopping/car trip is going to take up most of our day, so my plan for the evening is to knit more, and watch more of Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares on Channel4 on Demand. Sunday I want to make foccacia and soft pretzels (maybe just one or the other this week) and at the farmers market today I bought 3 squash and 10 beetroot, so I want to make nice things with those too. Im thinking soup. Must buy onions. Morven is going to transform 4 wooden pallets into a bed.... I am going to pull up all the old stuff from my garden, and compost it, along with my tomato plants from in and out of the house. This may happen on Monday, when the car is getting an MOT (hopefully) and we are just sat around. Along with masses of washing, not much else will be happening, but it will hopefully feel like I have acheived quite a bit if I get half those things done. I was in the gym today and my heart rate was averaging 180-190, which is HIGH, it should have been 150. It is consistantly this high when I go there, does anyone know why? I feel ok, and my theory is that surely the higher the heart rate, the more fat im burning? I am quite enjoying the gym, but its getting harder and harder to get the motivation (the £30 a month im paying usually motivates me) Im going to stick at it because I want to see some results so I can go off and do more, and once I am happy with myself in a swimsuit, il probably swim more and go to the gym less. My eyes are getting tired from my new contact lenses now, so I will be back soon with pics of socks

Stuff

Generic weekend - We bought tyres and brake pads, carried wooden pallets to the house to make into a sofa bed, I knitted some sock, found the perfect fabric to cover the sofa, but they only had 3 meters, I needed 8. Bought some cheap wine on Saturday, it was really not good. Im really sick of looking at kitchens, carpets, fabrics and all other kinds of stuff for the cabin. It could potentially be a house in a couple of years so we want all this sorting out now - but this is dragging on. I just want to make some jewellery on my jewellery desk which is currently 180 miles away. I want to go over thereon weekends, make some breakfast without having to make smalltalk, play house a little, wash some clothes, and generally do what I want. I want to move in! But alas, not possible. It will be a good 90% of the time place though. the second Pomatomus is about 90% done, I just have about 10 rows of pattern and then the toe to do, Im excited because they are so nice and comfy and they havent taken too long at all. Im tempted to make another pair, but im going to do the monkeys instead. I spent friday night looking at my stash and thinking I could make something, but I havent made anything yet, and probably wont until the monkeys are finished. Im going to the gym again today, I enjoyed it on Friday, and I plan on going 3 times a week whenever im in work. Im going to go in a few minutes, im just organising my ride first. Thats all.

Happy Holidays?

Hello faithful reader, today I would like to talk about celebrations. It just seems to me, that English people celebrate a whole load of holidays that they don't understand. (Ok, not all English people, and not JUST English people, but many.) For example.... Christmas is Jesus/Santa's Birthday, or a damn good excuse to get pissed, eat as much as possible, throw up and spend the next day sleeping/unconcious. Halloween is about threatening people that you will do stuff to them if they don't give you sweets, although its more about money than sweets these days, and Bonfire night (November 5th) is an excuse to set fireworks off for 3 months solid, at all hours, burn things, damage people and property and generally piss people off. Its a shame really, because all these holidays are ruined by people who give in to commercialism, the kind of people who buy their little brats the best (see: popular) new toys which are broken before 1st of January. Am I stereotyping? Maybe. Anyway. News. We have delayed the cabin arrival until Monday 19th November. Because of the weather, its been difficult getting the foundation materials to the site, and so we are a few days behind. This actually works out better, because we are taking a whole week off work and in theory, we should be in by the following weekend. (yeah, nice theory) We are also not worrying so much about money, as there was leftover budget to buy carpet, the kitchen, electrics and lights etc, so we just have to save up for the little things. Carrot is doing really well, although I think Pea may have bitten her today as she seems to have a small wound on her belly. She is ok though and is currently nibbling TP - one of her favourite foods. I joined the gym on monday and went yesterday and today. I plan to go Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays after work. Its a really quick workout but you do feel it, and I look forward to going. Hopefully I will have something to show for it soon. I will weigh myself over the weekend and cross my fingers :) My heartrate was pretty high so I have to be burning something. I have just turned the heel on Pomotamus number 2, and I am starting to lose interest, mainly because I havent looked at it for a couple of days. I will keep at it this weekend and hopefully have it done for Monday. I think I will try a Monkey with my homedyed yarn, but I am thinking about Christmas presents at the moment. I like the Via Diagonale at knitty.com and was considering making it from a self striping and a plain black mohair/acrylic mix, but im not convinced. I need to stop buying yarn for a while and use some of what I have, its just a shame I don't have much of anything nice. If anyone has any nice quick patterns for small amounts of yarn, please let me know. Before Christmas if possible :)

Reasons I haven't been to the gym yet...

This is really irritating. I bought new sweatpants last Friday and I was going to sign up on Monday. But this week has been one thing after another and so here I am on Friday and I still haven't signed up. Monday - Morven was sick, I drove to work and had to park at a colleagues house and get a ride in with her. So I couldnt go after work as I needed a ride back to the car. Tuesday - Carrot had an operation and I had to get back to the vet as early as possible to pick her up (got there 15 minutes AFTER the vet closed - but they waited) Wednesday - I brought my workout clothes to work with me but forgot my shoes - work shoes aren't apropriate for working out. Thursday - Got to work late after the post op appointment so had to work until 6 to make up for it Then the dreaded 'time of month' came around and I just didn't feel like it. And today I don't think I will go because I'd rather go on a Monday. So the plan is to go next Monday, and again on Wednesday. I won't be going next Friday as I won't be in work. On the good side I have lost a couple of pounds by not eating chocolate, although I am pretty sure I don't eat 4lb of chocolate in any one week - maybe the week after Christmas.... not quite. Almost finished pomotamus - Morven is going to Swansea with his mum tomorrow so I will finish one and probably start another. I hope it is warm this weekend as I have tonnes of laundry to do and there is nowhere to dry it if I can't put it outside. I was going to dye some sock yarn with Kool Aid too as I have the time now. Oh and as its Friday I was going to go get a pumpkin or a butternut squash to make a chunky soup and I was going to try soda bread in the breadmaker. Oooh and I need cumin seeds from the Olive guy too. I love having the house to myself

Tick tick tick

As you may have noticed, I have joined the ticker community (to the right there...). You know how as time passes, you put on a little weight, so you buy bigger clothes, and then you put more on, and buy more clothes? Well I did that about 5 years ago, and I have maintained my weight since then, but I am not maintaining a GOOD weight. I made this ticker and it said I need to lose 81lb to reach MY ideal weight (not the suggested ideal weight for my height, which would make me horribly thin) 81lb is a LOT - think how many bags of sugar that is... The thing is, I refuse to stop eating. I love food, I love cooking, I love eating out. I will make more sensible choices for the most part, but the way I plan on doing this is through exercise. Now I have a bike, but its cold out, and the bike just is not comfortable. And I live in hilly forests and I could just walk, but again - cold out and I dont really enjoy walking. So I am joining Curves gym as it is literally about a minute from my office. I usually have an hour to pass in the evenings waiting for Morven to pick me up on his way home, so this seems the most logical choice. I am a little aprehensive, but lets see how this goes... In other news, I had Carrot at the vet again last night. The vet thinks she has pyometra, which is a womb infection which is usually found in dogs. We are trying her on drugs but she may have to have her womb removed. NOT looking forward to that. Poor kid :( Oooh ooh ooh - I finished BOTH jaywalkers too! I will post some pics soon