Happy days

Slowly but surely, this blog builds up. Hopefully, one day it will be full of completely useless information for me to look back upon.

This weekend was very quiet, but very pleasant. Saturday was just me and the kids home - G had to work in the morning. So, I was up early and spent the morning just catching up with the household stuff. The afternoon was spent going through our filing cabinet and getting rid of old bits of paper.

Once I'd done that; I went right through everything again and organised it properly. By nature, I'm pretty organised anyway - but in this instance, I holpunched, I date filed and generally got that filing cabinet so organised it wouldn't know itself.

The aim of this, in my world, is to see where we are at a glance. Financially - I have all our telephone bills filed in date order, so at a glance, I can see just how good/bad/up/down the bill has been over the last 12 months. I feel more in control of our life like that, and if we do have a bad month; seeing all the *good* bills really shows me that this life is possible.

Today, we had a nice day. In the morning, we packed up the kids and went to a big wholesale nursery a bit of a way out. It was nice to look, but there wasn't much of what I was looking for. Specifically; a dwarf manderin. So, we kept going on our merry way and got some new knobs for the barbeque and then went to our local nursery.

I found my dwarf manderin; and I also got some geraniums. Geraniums have taken their sweet time in becoming something I wanted in my garden; until not so long ago, they were glorified weeds in my world. But, I have since seen some that have actually been looked after - and they can look AMAZING. So, I have tried them in pots and we'll see what happens. They are in the perfect spot; so hopefully I'll have some awesome looking flowers soon.

This afternoon was spent pottering in the garden. I just love spending a sunday arvo in the garden, and then having a roast dinner. We had roast chicken tonight and you just cannot beat a roast I don't think. Then, G got called out on a service call again - so now I have the house to myself. Kids are asleep and it's still probably about 25 degrees. So a beautiful night.

I've been thinking a great deal more about this whole simple life; and really; the more you start doing, the more you see what else you can do. Even 3 months ago, I couldn't imagine ever EVER getting down so low in our bills. It was just a given that we needed to spend xxx on food. Since I have completely ruined that theory of late; it cements the fact that I *was* a big consumer, and that I really never had one big thought about what I spent money on, OR what I got for that money.

In the last 3 months, we have saved so much money. Yes, it's a great thing; but up until I started this simple existence, we simply didn't do anything. Not because we couldn't *afford* it (because, in theory, we could well and truly afford it) - but there were so many leaks in our budget.

With that money that we have saved - we are having a party. Not a big one, not a formal one and not with many people - but we're celebrating. G turned 30 not so long ago and we didn't do anything for it; the terror is 2 shortly and my 30th is around the corner. We figure that we'll all have a great time - and it's a reward for all our hard work.

Obviously the party will be done simply - we're having a spit that G's brother has; and I will make some salads and some bread rolls - I will make a small cake for G and the terror - and that'll just about do it. It's not about the food (although there is very little that beats lamb cooked on a spit with salad and bread on the side) - it's about us enjoying ourselves. Catching up with friends we haven't seen all year - and having the kids spend time with all their favorite people all in one place.

I can't wait.