Rubbish blogger

So, it turns out I'm a rubbish blogger! I remember every day but when I get home I forget to do it! I'm blaming it on the fact That my MacBook is out of action and it's really cold in the spare room where the proper computer is so I never use it!

Well, this past week has been a bit hit and miss it has to be said. Last week I only made it to the gym on wednesday, so started afresh this week. I did spin last night, first time for 4 or 5 weeks and my god my poor bottom bones are sore today off the saddle, but it felt good! I also made it down there tonight for Fitball and I have my usual body pump and body balance combo planned for tomorrow. It's typical as well, when I've been good I put on 1.5lb in one day! :-(

With my money saving mission I've managed to pay £550 off my credit card this month so im really pleased with that. I spent £20 all last week and so far this week spent around £22 (not got my spending diary to hand!) but I did make a massive turkey lasagna with the shopping and have 5 portions to freeze so that's quite good.

Here is a pic of my lasagna:



I find that the more I try cook from scratch, the better it is for me but the more weight I put on! So frustrating.

Meanwhile I now have £150 I thjnk jn my freezer fund. I need £270 for the beko freezer which will survive the winter in my garage so slowly getting there :-)




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Freezer fund!

Due to the fact I have been trying to spend nothing and certainly am not using my credit cards, I have been trying to save for a chest freezer for a while.

I didnt Want to move money out of my salary as I want as much of this as poss for my credit card debts. Therefore, I've just been paying my earnings from amazon and eBay into a savings account and now have grand total of £70.00!

I reckon in past couple weeks I've made another £50 so once amazon decides it's time to transfer more money I should almost have enough for my freezer! So excited! And also, it's soo much more rewarding saving for something yourself rather than paying for stuff on credit cards when it's not even your money.

Hopefully by the end of sept I'll have my chest freezer and it'll be all set up in the garage and then me and my label maker can go into overdrive batch cooking and labeling allsorts to keep me going through winter!

It'll be a whole lot easier as at the moment I am having to send stuff to my mams freezer and sometimes I end up throwing food away as I just have nowhere to put it, so hopefully soon I'll have my chest freezer and then I can really start saving money :-))


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A busy week...

Well, Ive had a busy week the past week, including Bank Holiday Monday yesterday.

Ive set myself a budget of £50.00 a week for everything except necessary bills ie Credit card repayments, mortgage, water, electricity, sky, mobile bills.

Last week I spent a total of £49.75, and that inlcuded managing to only spend £1.00 on food the whole week! My spending was as follows:

Dog Bowl x 2 = 1.98
Chopped tomatoes x 4 = 1.00
Dog Food x 2 = 11.00
Dog Eardrops = 10.79
Eye Shadow = 3.99
Mascara = 3.69
Dog Haircut = 15.00
Sandwich= 2.30

Total £49.75!

Hopefully I wont need to buy dogfood again for another 2 months, and the mascara and eyeshadow should last me a while. Instead of getting these items from Superdrug as I would usually, I got them from an ebay shop for much less money so a good saving made there! Also, the dog food is usually £7.99 a bag and I got two bags for £11 while it is on offer at Pets @ Home so another good saving there!

I have also finished transferring my Credit Card debt to my new card, so now I just have one card to pay off. Pity the one card has £8500 on it, but heyho! I have also closed my other 5 cards so that I do not have the extra temptation and also to hopefully increase my credit rating a bit, as I do not have access to so much money!

Also, I have been doing pretty good in my being Thrifty at home, on Saturday I made a massive batch of Lamb Stew in my slow cooker, I used lamb I found in the freezer (which at the time I thought was beef!) and added water and lamb stock, broth mix and made dumplings for the top. I had this for my tea Saturday night and managed to freeze an additional 5 portions!

I also made pea soup yesterday, randomly, as everytime I opened the freezer peas kept falling out and it was doing my head in! I made this just with peas, an onion and vegetable stock and a couple of potatoes. I was pretty annoyed I had no mint sauce left, so I Improvised and added in a sachet of lamb & mint gravy to get the mint in there! My soup is now a little bit brown but still delicious. I had a portion yesterday for Lunch and today for lunch again at work. I am also going to freeze the rest tonight when I get home.

Also yesterday I made some Strawberry Jam using frozen strawberries and jam sugar i already had! I got 4.5 portions so that should keep me going for  a while :-)

I have however put on 9lb which I am most unhappy about, I am booked in for Spinning tonight so If I can be bothered Ill go! I do however have an issue with having my puppy with me at work, so will need to find a babysitter pretty sharpish if I want to make the 630 class!

Almost forgot - another Thrifty thing I did this weekend was go to Newcastle Library! It is MUCH better than Gateshead Library and I got 10 thrifty books out, almost all of them were on my Amazon Wish List :-)

An iffy day...

Today has been okay, not great anyway. I continue to be disappointed by someone and for that I am a fool ;-(

Anyway, for lunch I had some leftover chicken and noodle soup from yesterday.

In the afternoon I baked some bread in my breadmaker and then had a couple of slices with butter on, and then randomly salmon paste.

For tea I had leftover paella I cooked yesterday, I also froze another five portions! My mother had a go at me for being wasteful (?) but I think it's great, thats another five teas I dont have to make! This will be perfect for evenings when I can't be bothered to cook, and will hopefully save me from wasting money on takeaways.

I have had to put my five portions In my mams freezer for now, I am continuing to save for a chest freezer, using only my money I've made on amazon or eBay, I currently have £61 so a bit of saving still to go!

With my paella I had a piece of Italian bread with tomatoes and onions on top and a glass on white wine with strawberries in. At the moment I have something of an obsession with strawberries floating in wine, kind of like a dessert and wine in one! The italian bread I got last week in Costco and have still got an additional four pieces in the freezer, it cooks beautifully from froZen.





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Sunday brunch

Having already had 30g of Chocolate Ready Brek this morning, i have made myself brunch.

I had some bacon that needed using, so I cut all the fat off it to make medallions:


I served this with half a pack of chopped tomatoes and two poached eggs.












And a cup of coffee as always, although to be fair I am a bit worried that this is the second day in a row I have poured myself a cup of coffee without actually boiling the kettle!

Here is my brunch, hopefully not too bad for me and a good amount of protein in the eggs and 4 medallions of bacon











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Sunday...

Today I am mostly chilling at home, just me and my miniature schnauzer Dougal (who is ridiculously naughty)

I have never really kept up with the blog writing but having taken inspiration from various blogs i follow everyday, especially those in America, I have decided to give it another go.

I originally wanted to just blog about having lost weight and keeping it off but my life got a bit complicated after that, my seven year relationship broke down, and I've put quite a bit of weight back on! I've recently got a dog and realized I have quite a bit of debt so am really on a money diet now as much as anything.

So, from now on this blog will generally just be about my life with Dougal, trying to lose weight, be healthier, whilst trying to budget for the first time and pay back my debts :-)





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Oh dear...

Not posted for quite a while. Ive had rather a lot going on in my life. First our dog died and recently my relationship brokedown so it's been interesting.

My food has not been great and I've been to the gym once in two weeks. I did body pump on Wednesday and hurt my thighs so badly I had to hold onto the walls in the toilet and lower very slowly in order to just have a wee! Hopefully next week will be better


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Location:Gateshead

Long time no see!

Oops, this is the first blog post I have done since July last year?  I have fallen off the waggon somewhat with my health & fitness routine. My dog died in December and I haven't been able to keep on top of it since!

Hopefully from now onwards I will be able to start blogging again, and do it properly this time and my body fat % and weight have really crept up this past couple of months. I wouldnt mind that so much but I am really not feeling happy with myself at the moment, so a good talking to myself is needed.