Monthly Archives: November 2016

$70 challenge, update 3

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We’ve currently got only $30.44 left for this week and quite a few items on the shopping list that we’ll probably need before the end of the week.  And it’s only tuesday! The reason for the $40 spend… I was given a yogurt maker by my sister for my birthday and Woolworths had the yogurt powder sachets at 2 for $7 so we spent $14 on those yesterday.  This is 4-6 weeks worth of yogurt so we’re ahead on that.

We’ve been eating a lot of salad sandwiches lately which was something we started a couple of weeks before the $70 challenge.  Andrew worked out that we are eating about $1.70 worth of sandwich for each one we have (so $3.40 per day out of the $10 per day budget).  We usually have wholemeal bread, although pictured here is white bread (The One by Tip Top).  Our sandwiches have lettuce, carrot, sprouts (we sprout our own in a sprouter using an approx. $4 bag of mung beans, this probably makes each lot of sprouts 5 cents), beetroot (I pickle my own, here), tomato, cucumber, mushrooms, capsicum, celery, cheese and ham.  Andrew prepared the salad and makes 2 days worth at a time.

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I mentioned the hot chook, $8, we picked up last week which served us for 3 meals, 2 lots of sandwiches and a chicken soup.  These chooks go a long way and I have to say that each serve we had was more than enough.

Chicken soup recipe
*Chicken from a hot chook, make sure the bits of chicken are chunky
*2 chicken stock cubes OR 1 chicken and 1 vegetable
*some mixed veg.  I used carrot and sweet potato and frozen peas and corn
*Noodles (whatever you want, I used 2 minute style noodles)

Boil your hard veges in the stock, about 1 litre of water with the cubes.  They should be tender after about 30 mins.  Add the peas and corn.  Add the chicken and cook for about 5-10 minutes which enough to heat it through.  Add the noodles and cook til they’re done.
Super easy and damn tasty!  This whole meal would have been about $4 in total.

The thing I am thinking about at the moment is that it is really essential to spend time planning meals as well as thinking about what foods you need to make sure you eat to get the correct nutritional requirements.  I feel that if we were more on top of the planning part of it we’d be able to spend at least a little less.

Made in Australia Gift Guide

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It’s Christmas time!  This means trying to think of what you can give people.  As someone with my own little biz I find that I always leave picking things out for family too late and lets face it, they probably don’t all want a handmade brain.

Here are my picks for the perfect Christmas gifts, and they are all Aussie sellers! Oh, and there are also some quirky ones 😉

For Kids

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I love this Aussie Animal Puzzle of NSW!  Just $50. From handmadepuzzles on etsy

 

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And QLD!

For Sisters

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Who doesn’t need a diary?! Weekly Planner from mulberryPOPplanners, $58

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Echidna hair pins.  I love these echidnas from One Happy Leaf. Just $12.50

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Are they a bit quirky? Bloody Murder Cushion on red Bubble by Microwave24.  Oh yeah, Microwave24 is my sister… $22.00

For Boys and Men

Males are difficult to buy for!

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This Huntsman Spider cushion cover by Photographic Textiles is pretty awesome! Just $26!

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Or Nick Cave by Spunk Valley, only $15

For Mum

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This Johnson Australia Dinner Plate from KoKo and Bear Co is perfect for mum, and only $10

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This gorgeous Corella from Sheryl Cole Art, $87.95

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How awsome are these Kangaroo Studs from Sweet November Jewelry, $43

For Anybody!

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I really love this Doctor Ibis print, inspired by plague doctors by Rosie Lace $18.  She’s also got cute dresses, tops and shorts.  One stop shop!

 

$70 challenge, update 2

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Last week, our first week, we spent $67.41.  This week we’ve spent $12.25 so far (it’s Tuesday).  I will need to pick up Spinach tomorrow (for the bird) and we do need veges.  This week we’ve spent $8 on a chook from Coles and $4.25 on a loaf of bread and 1l milk. The chook has fed us for 3 meals.  2 lots of chicken sandwiches and tonight I’m making chicken soup.  That’s $2.66 per meal.

As we had chook for lunch yesterday we had roasted vegetables, Jaipur Vegetables and rice last night. Jaipur Vegetables are by the brand Tasty Bite and can be found in Woolworths with the Indian foods (they are in a sachet and are microwaved for 1.5mins).  When they are half price they are $1.50.

We’ve definitely been eating what we normally eat but we’re paying a little more attention to what things cost and how many serves each food is, especially meat. A few weeks ago we started doing salad sandwiches for lunch.  My partner doesn’t like salad sandwiches without ham so we have bought those Bertocchi ham pieces that are shrink wrapped. They last about a week and provide us both with plenty of ham across the week for sandwiches as well as we used the last piece of it in a pasta carbonara.   I do think the ham is a little pricey but I’m interested in seeing how they price out across the 4 weeks.

I’ve been using the eatforhealth.com.au website to get nutritional info to make sure we’re getting the right foods each day.  In fact since we started eating the daily salad sandwich I’ve been feeling very contentedly full most of the afternoon and usually just want something small for afternoon tea.  So far my afternoon tea’s are my normal Weetbix (yes I have Weetbix for afternoon tea and I love them!)

In the next post I’ll post a bit more about our day to day eating habits.

$70 challenge update

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It’s Friday and we’ve spent $61.41.  I don’t think we need to buy anything else this week. If we do it’ll be a visit to the fruit shop.

We’ve been to Aldi twice to pick up general groceries.  Cheese, bread, milk, muesli, etc. We even bought a brownie mix from Aldi and I made that yesterday.  Aldi brownie mix is $2.99 and is really yummy for a packet mix. Making brownies from scratch is actually quite costly as it has so much sugar, eggs and chocolate in it.  We bought beef mince at Coles which for the 2 of us is 2 meals, 2 left overs.  It’s $7 a pack for the 4 star stuff.  I made Taco’s last night and we’re having the left over’s tonight.  I chucked 75g of red lentils into the Taco mix (as well as lots of veg).  Adding lentils adds protein and is also part of a serve of fruit/veg and a meat substitute.  I think it’s something I’ll be doing a lot more.

For the taco meal we used an Old El Paso box, I only ever buy these when they are half price.  I can’t remember the exact price but its around $3.25.  This has the soft taco’s, seasoning and salsa.  Of course you need mince, or a meat substitute& some veg (onions, grated carrots, grated zucchini).  I made a tomato salsa mix to add to the Taco’s.  We grow tomatoes so I had heaps to use.  I also love picking green tomatoes for salsa.

Salsa
Tomatoes cut into little bits, mix of red and green if possible
Capsicum
Salt
Sugar
Splash of Apple cider vinegar
Pepper

We recently tried the Lyttos Greek Yog from Aldi and it’s really yummy, and cheap!  We used the yogurt as a sour cream substitute as we always throw out sour cream left overs.  It was pretty yummy.  I think this yogurt will be really versatile for sweet and savoury meals.  We don’t eat yogurt by the bowl full but usually have it in smoothies or a spoonful here and there.

Andrew, my partner, has made some notes of what we’ve eaten and thinks that between us we’re having $8-$12 of food between us a day.  I’ll later do some posts telling you what kinda things we’re eating and what we’re buying. This is already long enough!

$70 a week food challenge

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This is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long while, a cheap eating food challenge.

My partner and I almost always add up the cost of each of our meals to see how much $$ we’re eating.  So from today, Monday 14 November, we’re doing a 4 week challenge where we can only spend $70 a week on food.

The Rules
*$70 per week for 4 weeks.  If we spend over one week we have to spend under one of the other weeks.
*We will still be eating food from the freezer/pantry but we will keep tabs on what we use and what we put back in.
*Shop where we normally shop.
*If someone else buys us food that’s fine, but we’ll tell you.
*We must eat nutritious food.

My partner and I usually eat at home.  I think we only eat out once a fortnight at most so we aren’t spending crazy $$ regularly just for some avocado on toast, in fact I’m allergic to avocado.  Also, I have GORD so I do watch what I eat most of the time and I’m never too keep to eat out (apart from the odd visit to Hungry Jacks).

Why do this challenge?  It’s personal.  I want to force myself to think about food and spending more.  To not waste money buying junk food as well as making sure I am well nourished by the food I am eating.  I want to take these 4 weeks and learn a bit more about what a serving is & what I should be eating.

I also hope others will read this and get some value, whether from a recipe, or be inspired to think about their own eating habits.

So, today is day 1.  I’ll post again in a few days about how we’re going.

New stuff!

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I’ve been wanting to make laser cut wooden pieces for a while and recently decided “Okay, let’s do this.”  I read through all of the instructions of how to set up the files on the Vector Etch site (the biz I used to do the laser cutting) and thought it was definitely something I could do.  I painstakingly added all of the outlines to the drawings I’d already done, thought about the designs, made the lines the right size.  The fun thing here is that I use Inkscape, it’s free software but is a little bit of a nightmare to use sometimes. I think I spent about 20 hours setting everything up and even then some of it went haywire converting to Illustrator at the other end.

I’m really pleased with the results and how fine the details are.  There are still a few products coming to this range, some of these were first printed in the first lot but didn’t turn out right (bummer) and others I hadn’t event though of for the first lot.

I spent a fair bit of time sorting out the pelvis, below, and I’m so happy I did as I really love how it turned out.

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Intestines never disappoint me and I’m really happy with this guy.  He’s about 3 hours of work.

Brain Earrings

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The last time I made Brain Earrings (of the needle felted variety) was in 2012.  They were something I made quite a few pairs of over a few years and I had become a bit tired of making them.  Making small brains like this is a bit of a challenge.  Half they time they don’t look very good at all and I’d started making them bigger and bigger, to get better details.  I wasn’t really happy with the size or the process and stopped, for 4 years.

Recently I got to thinking about them again.  Why?  I don’t know.  I just decided to give it a shot.  Forget about all of the OTHER work I need to do and spend way too long making brain earrings.  Yeah, they take forever!

The brain earrings come with a little glass jar so you can store them like a brain specimen, also available in my shop.