The budget and saving

This January, The A changed jobs. He had previously been paid monthly, but with this new one he is now paid weekly. This threw me through a loop as in Europe and with all my jobs I had been paid monthly. Trying to wrap my head around the whole weekly thing has been hard, and as a result we have had to change the way we budget, especially as I am still out of work!

Talking about money is hard and in the past used to stress me out. But we sat down and honestly went through what we thought we spent on different things for the year. We then tried out an accruement style of budget. For example we put $60 for buying books every month, on a 31 day month we accrued $1.93 a day to go towards books, only buying something once we had accrued the amount we wanted to spend. It seemed like a great system (originally from That Wife Blog) but it just didn't work for us.

We want to save money every month so we ended up streamlining our budget to the bare essentials.

We reduced the amount spent on groceries only by a little, with the added lifestyle change of eating out less and cooking more at home, as well as reducing our meat intake. Added to that we decided to buy our meat from a butcher (just up the road... convenient!), and not shopping at Woolworths but at the local Veg shop and IGA. Changing venue has actually made our shopping cheaper! Toiletries and house cleaning supplies are included in this.

This system has actually made me think more about what we have for dinner, making me plan and look through all the cookbooks that The A and everyone else has given me over the years. Our vow not to eat out as much as before has made it necessary to make dinners and other meals that bit more exciting. It also means we are BOTH less likely to put stuff into the trolley that we don't need or are not on the list!

Our 'other' sections have been smooshed into a 'weekend' section. We each get $50 to get whatever we want, including anything I eat or drink at knitting, books, make-up and clothing etc. We also have included a $20 that we can spend with each other, usually a bottle of wine!

So far it's worked but it took a while to find something that does. Do you have a budget, and how sis you decide upon it?

Missing

To catch you up here's a summary:

1. We've acquired a cat. His name is George it used to be something really crap so we changed it, but he also goes by Pookie, Pooks, Pookie bum, Pookie face and Pig.

2) We've bought a car. It's old and beat up but totally blends in with all the other beat up cars in Fremantle. I'm learning to drive in it (automatic) and it's actually really fun which I wasn't expecting at all! We took a trip down to Augusta one weekend with it and it did well. Augusta was fun but not much there that can cover more than 1 weekend.

I found my dream house and Ross took millions of pictures of the above as 'practice' with his camera.

3) Really in the TMI sector but the Landlady replaced our water heater to a gas one and OMG it's amazing. I just stand in the shower groaning, it's so good. Plus the dishes get EXTRA clean, and I need to wear gloves otherwise I can't put my hands in the water.

4) Related to the above but in the AWESOME section is that the Body Shop have brought back their banana shampoo and conditioner, so I'm stockpiling it.

5) Started another design related blog, I have lots of drafts and free downloads to put in it but haven't published much. I'll post the link when it's more substantial.

6) My laptop died its final death so we got a new house computer...

TADAA!!!

7) I finished school and currently looking for work. It's not fun and sometimes it's downright depressing but you've got to keep smiling.

8) I lost my knitting mojo but it has recently reappeared but I've decided not pot post any WIPs to avoid disappointment from certain areas. So they will be photographed only after completion.

9) After more than 6 months of endless HOT summer it has finally cooled down. My regular rotation of t-shirts is thankful for the break.

AND most importantly.....

10) The A and I celebrated our 1st anniversary at a wonderful restaurant called Star Anise. We had the degustation meal with the wines. We ended up staying there for 4 hours and it was the best meal and company ever. I wanted to take pictures of the food but it was quite dark so you wouldn't have been able to see anything anyway.

Mundaring Truffle Festival

Every year the town (or Shire as they like to call themselves) of Mundaring hold a Truffle festival.  As someone at The A’s work lent us his car we decided to drive into the hills behind Perth and have a look around the festival.

Even though we didn’t have anything with truffles in it we managed to eat till we burst! Turkish bread with fresh Tapenade and Hummus, REAL Pork Rilletes with French bread, a dessert tray and on the way home a Devonshire tea with mutant giant scones.

Easter Weekend footy

Hope everyone had a good Easter Weekend. I realise some people still have today off but The A left this morning, but only for a week this time.

Yesterday was HOT! Fremantle Dockers were playing at the Subiaco Oval so we decided to get some tickets and spent the afternoon cheering them on. They lost to The Adelaide Crows (80-104) but the last quarter was really exciting as they managed to equalise several times.

The Dockers mascot is that blond figure you can see above. He went around the oval doing back flips, cuddling kids and dancing with the ladies. The A thought it would be great to get a pic of me with him, I don't really like being photographed and I was stuck to my seat because of the sweat (I said it was HOT)

Even though they lost, it was a really great game to watch live and I think I will definitely be supporting the Freo Dockers. The A supports Geelong but thinks he will support the Dockers as a secondary team (he fells bad for them as they are the underdogs)

We did have some chocolate on Saturday, I got a Charlie the Easter Chick and The A had a big rabbit which didn't stop him from trying to eat some of mine! I eat chocolate really slowly as I'm not really a sweet tooth so while we were watching a movie (the Third Mummy movie) I had the last part sitting next to me and The A couldn't take his eyes off it and tried several times to distract me to try and grab it.

Sunday Tourists

We were both a little house bound on Saturday so we decided that we would get out and do something different yesterday. There isn't a shortage of free and fun things to do here, and as long as we can get there by train or bus (which is almost anywhere) we are there!

Fremantle itself has a lot of nooks and crannies that you wouldn't know about unless you passed them on your way to somewhere. The city offers a lot of Heritage walks and you can either get a leaflet (with map and explanations) at the information centre or you can get them online. These are fantastic, but they do need to improve on the map directions a little.

Yesterday we decided to do the Convict Trail. Unfortunately a lot of the buildings or sites are no longer there but you do get a good idea of what it was like when you visit the Fremantle History Museum (more on that later) We started out in the harbour (to see a jetty that is no longer here) and had fish and chips for lunch (part of why we did the Convict trail was because it was the longest trail... burning off those chips!) the trail then went through the main strip in town to the Prison where we took some pics of the cottages just outside it.

You can apparently stay in these cottages, but I'm not sure that I would! We looked to see how much it was to look in the prison but you have to do a tour. I have been wanting to do a torchlight tour in the evening so we will probably do that sometime soon when The A isn't at the mines.

From the prison the trail took us to the Fremantle Arts Centre, a lovely limestone building that houses the Fremantle History musuem and is also where we went to see the Cat Empire last month. The museum is by donation and we both thought that it was really informative and the old photos in the corridors are fascinating to look at. The building itself has been a lunatic asylum (it has a 'Cell' that they had for patient isolation that you can go into) a women's shelter and has housed American soldiers during the second world war.

The last stop on the trail was at the top of the hill and was the quarry where the convicts got all the limestone for building (the prison and Arts centre) all that was left of it was two stone entrance gates that looked out over towards the maritine museum. The area also had the first cememtary which we discovered had been levelled for the (nasty 60's style) High school. I ended up taking lots of photos of the area hoping to capture 'something', but with no luck.

As a treat once we got back to town we had a beer!

Happy Weekend

Hope everyone had a fantastic weekend, we had a busy but fun one. On Saturday we went into Fremantle for the morning, I ended up having a ham cheese and mushroom crepe again and found the new Interwaeve Knits Spring 09 which has some great patterns in it. The Archaeologist and I agreed that the 1 male pattern in there wasn't anything special and would need some mods to make it look less blah.

Yesterday we went to check out wedding locations in Kings Park. I wore shoes for the first time in months and I advise people not to wear flip flops for 4 months solid, my feet still hurt from the shoes! We walked around and took loads of pictures. The Archaeologist was really involved and full of ideas which was great. I had thought that talking wedding stuff would bore him and he wouldn't be interested, but he pointed out that he also wanted a day which he would remember and could be involved in.

It was a Sunday so the Park was quite busy and I will be going back there on Thrusday at the time we think the ceremony will be at to see how many busy it is on a weekday. Out of the 10 locations there were really only 3 that we really liked:

Rotunda 2

Water Garden Pavillion

Beedawong Meeting Place

Looking through the photos you can tell we really liked the Beedawong Meeting Place:

We loved the 'old' feel about it, it wasn't anywhere near Fraser's Avenue (which has cars on it), there is only one path to and from it, we would buy some seat cushions from Ikea or even Bunnings for people to sit on, and it's shaded. We still need to look at some other locations, one near Cottesloe and some others around Fremantle but so far this is the fave.

Kings Park also has a great Restaurant that has function rooms and a private dining room for groups of 32 people or under. They have a functions package that looked great (food and price wise) but they have a different one for the private dining room that I will have to ask for.

Shopaholic

Went to see 'Confessions of a Shopaholic' today. Funny, sweet and reminds you that your parents will love you no matter what.

The cinema was unfortunately full of overly-developed pre-teens who pushed to get in, wouldn't shut up and clapped at the end. Made me feel old and grumpy but not in a bad way, in a 'I guess I'm an adult now and know how to behave in public' HAHA!!

One resulting thing from the movie was the feeling that I would love to go and find an amazing maxi dress (something I have been looking for for a while) so while the film may not make you debate shares and tax, it might just stimulate the economy from women coming out after watching it. The urge to shop from this movie might just save the world!

I went and bought a $10 bracelet instead. Dresses cost too much for me at the moment.

Beaching it up

Before leaving to go to the mines, the Archaeologist always gets the day before off. We always try to do something relaxed and fun. Today we decided to head to Cottesloe beach to look at the sculpture art that is taking place at the moment and to swim in the cooler water (it was 37 degrees today)

A lot of the sculptres were not really our thing, but the water was cool, there were few people and the sea was crystal clear and refreshing.

Little date

Last night the Archaeologist and I met up after his work in Fremantle for a mini date. We ended up finding a small french creperie and had cheese, ham and tomato galettes. They were really yummy but didn't quite fill us up enough. It was an amazing day, sunny and not too hot with a cool breeze so we decided to go down to the foreshore to have a beer at Little Creatures brewery.

(Source)

When we first got to Perth we tried going there on a Sunday, big mistake! It was a beautiful day and 'Sunday sesh' was in full swing. We waited for 15 mins to be served at the bar and left a little pissed off. This time we managed to get a table and served really quickly, they have food there which looked really good and was actually pretty reasonably priced but we decided to go to Bathers Beach and grab a cheeseburger instead.

It made the evening really relaxed (no cooking or washing up!) The Archaeologist got to tell me all about the happenings at his work (someone quitting, people moving to different projects, people getting pro and de-moted) and I got to tell him about my day (much less exciting) We also talked some wedding stuff and all the ideas he's had since coming back from New Zealand, the main of which is how he wants a stress free day!