Every month, I like to check in with the ‘New years goals‘ I set. I’m getting a little rusty on updating some of my reporting (like meals and volunteering), but if nothing else, it’s a regular reminder of what I’d like to be doing!
Financial
Save $20k $26k cash by 22 Dec (for when I get a mortgage offset account): nicely replenished with a tax return
July: $18,035.56
August: $21,140.13 (+3,104.57)
12 in 2 Adventures savings fund: something had to give in the month of rent + mortgage
July: $749.93 (how’d that go down?)
August: $1.72 (-$748,21)
Grocery spend: increase achieved
That’s a blog post in and of itself – probably on Monday. Let’s just say it’s more than doubled, and we’re shocked!
Volunteering hours: alright (poorly remembered though!)
Sat 3rd: 4hrs doing church flowers
Sun 4th: 1 hr doing Sunday School
I’m sure there’s heaps more – bad at tracking!!
Health
Cook at home twice a week: Achieved! Since no eating out month (and the BF being around all the time), I’m much better at eating hearty, homecooked meals!
Items in bold were cooked at home from scratch
(Thu)
Dumplings out (Fri)
Apple sauce (sick) (Sat)
Domino’s pizza (Sun)
week 1 –
Soup and garlic bread (Mon)
Mac & cheese (Tue)
Leftover Mac & cheese (Wed)
Nothing – feeling bloated (Thu)
Cauliflower risotto – as in no rice!(Fri)
Mum’s birthday dinner (Sat)
Roast lamb (Sun)
week 2 –
Quesadillas (Mon)
Out for a 30th (Tue)
Pizza Risotto (Wed)
Omelette (Thu)
Leftovers?! (Fri)
Thai out for another 30th (Sat)
Roast beef (Sun)
Week 3 –
Cornbread, with pork mince with homemade taco spice (Mon)
Macaroni with anchovies and bacon (Tue)
Leftovers (Wed)
Crust Pizzas out(Thu)
Schnitzel/grilled chicken & chips <- ready made (Fri)
Beef sliders (even using left over cabbage!) (Sat)
Pulled pork nachos with Mexican beans (Sun)
week 4 –
Macaroni & Cheese (Mon)
?? (Tue)
Red Rooster (Wed)
Mexican out (Thu)
Gnochhi, then Nutella pizza (out) (Fri)
Risotto (Sat)
Dinner at parents for Father’s Day (Sun)
The boyfriend has taken the lion’s share with cooking. He doesn’t need recipes, it’s tasty and it’s about 1/3 to 1/10th of the time it takes me. I enjoy weekend prepping ‘weird’ hand and home made meals (like gnocchi).
Sugar:
What? Surely I didn’t think I’d stop eating sugar. I have a killer caramel cheesecake recipe, remember! With a gluten free gingernut biscuit bases… mmmm. And then… there was a lemon meringue pie for the greater good of the family.
Train for polo – Training to run a half marathon: sort of – good weeks and bad
Stopped for a week after I got some bad shin splints! So I just bought some new shoes to (hopefully) help. Thankfully I googled for a outlet, and shaved $70! (!!!!) off the price by buying the old style.
Cultural
2 films a month: still none!?
2 books a month: achieved
I finished Zero Waste Home and I will add to my blogger friend’s review. I’m likely to be a little harsher, I looked very intently on all that was said :p I did read something else, but hmmm not sure what. Maybe there wasn’t
Social
Call/connect with an out of town friend: YEP!
Thanks to a Melbourne trip I caught up with a friend!
Career
Certification: oh so close…
Oh so close – I have the 150 hours (over the past three years), and I have one episode report that’s too long (a mash up of two ‘episodes’ and totally disjointed) and one that’s too short AND makes no sense… I have no idea what I was trying to write/say!
Wow, Sarah, that's a lot to keep track of! Beautiful flowers…and pie!
Sure is… bit of a mammoth bit of data tracking, but it keeps me honest :p
Those beef sliders look really good 🙂 And pizza risotto sounds interesting… It sounds like you and the BF work well together – he can do the quick weekday cooking and you can do the fancy stuff 🙂
Yeah I like how it's working – I prepped gnochhi on the weekend, then ate it last night, making it a quick meal for a weeknight thanks to the prepping. He did make a mean lasagna though, mmmm having leftover for lunch today!
Great job with your goals! I really hate feeling bloated; it happens far too often to me. I keep meaning to try cauliflower risotto, it looks good, as do the flowers! Yay for the tax return as well! I wish my boyfriend did some of the cooking, but as I get home before him, it makes more sense for me to start as soon as possible so we're not left eating at 8pm. I will be making mac & cheese when I get back though – seems like an easy thing to do and leftovers are always good to have.
Yeah bloating is bad, and until a few years ago, I almost never felt it!
I get home 2-3 hours before the BF, so if it's an involved meal, I'll make it (cause the BF does quick or easy all the time!). But yeah, I have realised trying to cook every meal, do all the after work activities (meeting mentors, having acupuncture/physio), going ot church meetings and running, plus other chores like washing, tidying, decluttering, I was stressing myself out worrying about meals too. Now I just try to let the meals go through to the BF and focus my energies where he doesn't.
LOVE LOVE LOVE Mac and cheese – I should almost register some domain variant with it in it!
Your Travel Fund looks very exciting 🙂 Do you have any ideas about where you might go? It’s fantastic that the cooking amd meal planning is going so well with the BF. The certification looks like it will be a big area to tick off the list once it is done.
And…I have to just say WOW to those flowers!! It must be so cool to know how to do flower arranging!
We\’re thinking Vietnam, but there\’s so many decisions (likely a blog post, OF course!). The flowers thing is good – though I am my own worst critic too, so what you see as lovely I see all the faults of what I was taught not being at play!
Beautiful job on the flowers! And you've done very well on everything, especially considering you also moved home.
Of all your goals, which one is your number 1 priority?
The flower arrangement is lovely! 🙂
Did you get your tax return recently then? (I'm a little thrown off because I usually file my taxes in February and get my return in March – the deadline is April in the US.)
And I love mac & cheese too – just posted a recipe for it on my blog. It's so easy and such a comfort food for me.
Australia's taxation year end on 30 July. I think you need to file by end of October, unless you have an accountant do it for you (and with good reason). I love your mac and cheese – I must try getting the BF the mix in some of the spices you use.