Small Habits

I have been bringing my lunch to work for years.  Each year as my pay increases, my frugal habits mostly stay the same.  These days I'm willing to spend a little more money on convenience items like bagged salad or boneless skinless chicken breasts.  Saving time is important and if spending a bit more to make my lunch adds to the grocery bill, I still feel I come out ahead.

Age and Reinvention

 

We had an awesome team outing on Thursday night after work -- a local brewery tour, followed by dinner.  I had been feeling odd being the old lady at work but things are really working out.  Being social with a group that is so much younger had me a bit intimidated, but it was all in my head.  I had something in common with everyone and it was so much fun.

Humble Abode

Life in our humble abode isn't exactly picture perfect.  Right now, we are challenged to keep it clean as I'm not as  mobile as I'd like to be, we're both working a ton of hours, and we have weekends at camp to take up our time.  The thing is with a small house, more of it gets lived in so it gets ratty real fast.  However, it also takes less time to clean it up.  I can't imagine how much worse off we'd be if we had twice as much space.  Wait, we've been there and done that!

Living the Real Life

My new job is a big challenge, and I think I've posted about that.  It was a good increase in salary and I'm coming to realize it pays as well as it does because it's hard work. It is no fantasy job.  I get into work with a list of things to do that I've put together at the end of the prior day.  Then I start on that list and all sorts of other events take place and I have to address a ton more things.  By 10AM I am overwhelmed.  Then I just start a list going and dive into whatever I can.  Sometimes I prioritize, other times I look at something small that isn't as important but just do it so I can get it done.  By the end of the day, I manage to get 95% of what I was supposed to do done, in spite of it being stuff I wasn't even aware of before I got to work.  Sometimes I think my motto should be "Plug and Chug," just take in the work, plug away at it and chug on to something else.  This goes on for five days straight, then it's the weekend and I've got two days to sleep in.  Yeah!

The work I do is project related (I'm a project manager right now). I don't manage people in a supervisory role, but I do manage processes and see that work gets done.  My PM colleagues are all ages, gender and have a variety of personalities.  No two of us are the same.  We all have a lot of work to do, and we all get it done.  My company is expanding so I can guess our ranks will just continue to grow.

End of the Season Basil

With temperatures dipping towards freezing earlier in the week, I was desperate to save some of my basil.  Three plants were the size of bushes and there was no way I was going to let that much wither away from the cold.

Jewelry Cleaner

I love my bling!  The only way to really justify how much I own, is that I only buy it when it's a real deal.  Just because I get it as discount, doesn't mean it's not worth taking care of.  The thing is, jewelry cleaner can be pricey and just isn't a priority purchase for me.  That's why I make my own.

Stock Again

This week there were a lot of left-over tomatoes and of course an over abundance of basil from the garden.  We've got tons of it and one of the high priority items for me is to cut it all and preserve it for the winter.

Going Nuts

Are you crazy for nuts? As a daily consumer of nuts, sometimes it's hard to pull everything together if I'm in a hurry.  Lately, the cabinet where our nuts are stored had become a jumbled mess of bags.  Today, I decided to deal with it.  I put each bag into a jar -- a good plan since I obsessively hoard jars and need to make use them or else they'll pile up to become another jumbled mess!  Of course I didn't have an equal amount of jar space for all of the bags, so I made up a couple of jars of mixed nuts -- pecans, walnuts, almonds, peanuts and sunflower seeds.  This is a mixture I love over salads and also eat every morning.  A typical morning meal for me is a multi-grain english muffin, peanut/almond butter, chia seeds, jam, and mixed nuts.  Each day I've been opening a bag of each and pulling a few out.  Now all I'll have to do is reach into the jar.