Things are getting…

…a bit grim around here.  Money is going out aster than it’s coming in right now (oh, yes I feel guilty about my birthday now!).  I felt sure by now Blokey would either have a job or enough freelancing work to keep us going – plus I thought I might get more hours where I work, but alas not.  As careful as I have been to keep the grocery bill as low as possible, it seems every time we going shopping we get less and prices go up!  Eggs have gone through the roof lately…I used to get 30 for $5…now 30 costs about $7.50!  I use a lot of eggs as they are good nutritionally…but as I keep seeing mentioned a lot it seems it costs less to eat junk.  The cheapest bread I can get has gone from 0.99c a few months ago to 1.43 a loaf now.  I’ve been trying to buy more seasonal vege but even that is costly.

The weather this weekend has been the coldest I’ve seen it since I’ve been here…we had two heaters in the lounge to keep it warm on Sunday while we had people here…and with Blokey being home all the time he needs to keep warm and there’s no where else in the house he can work but the lounge…I hate to think what this month’s power bill will be.  He just needs a couple of good paying freelance jobs to come through…he’s doing all he can right now really…there are no jobs out there  – online freelancing seems to be the only thing that brings in any money…but half the problem is a high proportion of the jobs he bids on are not awarded….people seem to be off on holiday right now and are slow to respond to finish up their jobs…so we wait.  I’m going to start looking around to see what stuff we have that I can sell…I don’t really know what else to do….there are few other costs we can cut down on.  So I’m stumped.  We need something like Divine Intervention… something!

I went out with my Mum today.  We bought frames for the kids Baptism certificates…$5 ones and then I bought three pieces of scrapbooking paper and some double sided tape to make up a border as the certificates are an odd size and there are no frames anywhere made to fit them!  It actually worked quite well…and cost $25 all up…and I have 95% of the tape left over.  I also needed some pliers to make up the watch kit Thing Two gave me for my birthday ($2.50 for the kit -cheap as chips!)…I picked those up for $3 and found I had some clippers already which I needed to clip the wire bits to size…vague I know but I’ve never fiddled with making that kind of thing before…turned out well…photos will show up eventually.  Mum goes home tomorrow so I can begin to get things back into order and we get to sleep in our own bed tomorrow night which will be nice.

I tried making fresh pasta for dinner tonight…as was reminded as to why I don’t do this any more!  It’s something I have not been able to get the hang of and just ends up in a nasty mess – as it did tonight when Blokey found the one remaining packet of penne stashed in the back of the pantry….I wish I could get the stuff to work…I can’t roll it thin enough with my rolling pin…and my pasta roller machine just tears it to shreds when I run it through…and this is after doing a class with the wonderful Sophie Gray – actually standing up with her and making a whole pile of pasta…oh, the frustration!  Although on Friday night I made pizza bases for everyone to load up with whatever they wanted…and tried out a gluten free version for myself using pesto as the sauce base and spinach, feta, bacon, chicken, onion and cheese….it was huge…I ate half for dinner and half for lunch on Saturday…oh and Mum loved her pizza, as did everyone else…I love doing pizza night…especailly when you make it from what ever you have to hand…yummer!

Recently over the last two months I have been on a gluten/dairy/caffiene/and a few other things-free diet.  It produced interesting results.  I lost nine kilos and gained some energy/clarity.  Over the weekend I have dived off it quite a bit but I’m realising that some parts of it have to go as they are not cost effective…so from tomorrow I shall be back to porridge instead of the berry/nut/ricemilk/linseed smoothie….although I will keep the linseed part as they are cheap and worth the health benefits.  I’m still going to keep up the veges for lunch as I know they provide more benefits than a sandwich…and I’ve realise gluten is one of those things I should stay away from as well as potatoes.  I’m hoping not to get the cravings for snack foods as that would be counter-productive and I might as well go back on the smoothies.  And to be honest I’m not minding the weight loss!  I purchased the book The Ultrasimple Diet by Dr. Mark Hyman after having read some information about thyroid issues and being made aware of some family history that I didn’t know existed at the time.  While it didn’t make me feel instantly better, there were incremental changes and health benefits over the time I was doing it…and although we now are facing a financial crisis Blokey is still encouraging me to keep going…which I shall but I need to cut costs as much as possible and with it being winter it’s nice to have porridge for breakfast…with some linseed and a few warmed up berries to boost the nutrition…yum…I will still try to keep the dairy to a minimum.  I have to admit to the odd coffee, although I’m trying to stick to decaf…and the odd green-tea.  Once the tv is back from repair I shall also get back to some yoga as I was enjoying the gentle yet at times strenuous exercise…I need to build up some core strength…I have little upper body strength these days and my balance is rubbish!

I’m off now…might do some knitting before bed…listen to a podcast as I do…