Good Things Friday (29)
August 30, 2019
This is my weekly list of things that were good this week, even if they weren’t all unadulteratedly good things. Please share your good things in the comments!
1. We had done a Save the Date with some friends this weekend and didn’t actually pick a thing to do until two days before. That’s very unusual for me BUT it worked out so well – we picked out a festival / carnival thing to attend. There was something for everyone there! We packed a ton of snacks and brought my refillable water bottle to avoid overspending at all the food trucks – I am a sucker for a food truck.
We consciously chose to spend $25 on rides and $4.50 on one treat for everyone to share (an overpriced delicious soft serve cone). JB has never been to a carnival before.
After 3 hours of walking around and running into local friends we didn’t know were going to be there which was extra fun, we sat and talked for an hour, catching up while JB colored. It was a perfect afternoon.
Bonus: I whipped up a perfectly balanced meal in ten minutes after we got home because we already had marinated meat in the fridge, I had some broccolini that requires very little prep, and rice didn’t take long to heat up. I need to make note of this and start to have prepped proteins on hand even if it’s not yet cooked.
2. I experimented with cooking a whole fish, mashing up some recipes, to duplicate an old family recipe and it worked!!! I am so proud of myself.
3. I took a nap and it was pretty amazing, minus that confusion on waking up when you don’t realize that you did fall asleep because you didn’t mean to. Oops? But … it was so refreshing. It’s such a cycle of life – you fight naps as a child, you crave them as an adult. How can we trade??
4. My zucchini lasagna that was lasagna soup: Oops. Is it because I should have salted the zucchini before grilling it? Should I have added eggs to the ricotta? And cheese as well? I definitely forgot a middle of the casserole cheese layer so that’s another fail. It was very edible but obviously still needs a lot of work! That’s ok, this is the kind of work I enjoy right now.
5. Monday Dread isn’t usually a thing I do but it was in full force this week. Might be I’m setting expectations for clearing all my work on a Monday too high? I’m working on tempering that and not by thinking that I should work on weekends specifically to ward off Monday discomfort. What do you dread about Mondays? What do you do to make them better?
6. Happily, I finally snagged a survey that paid $35 in Amazon money. It didn’t come in time to cover an order of sporting equipment that PiC needed but it’ll cover a part of the order we have for eye drops, dog treats for Sera’s training, pill pockets, flea treatment. That list just keeps getting longer
7. My Bing rewards points total after 101 days: 34,425! That’s the equivalent of $25. I like to celebrate the small wins same as the big ones. They take a lot less time 😉 I’m saving these up to cover our robot vacuum or to cover a few items of clothing at Target and thus freeing up cash for the vacuum. My hope is that holiday sales will bring that cost down enough to be not so outrageous.
8. As part of my budget review to trim costs, I have been weighing the cost of maintaining this blog while regular and necessary costs mount each week and I made a decision: I’m going to start offering readers a way to support the blog if they so desire. I’ve added a little widget at the top of the page and will add to that as I experiment with creating neat things!
I’m dreading Monday (really Tuesday) next week in a huge way, as it’s my first day back to work post my glorious sabbatical. The sabbatical has made it clear that I’m done with the “career” job & the international travel. I have a very short runway where I need to get things done, and then I start the search for a flexible & fun part time job.
For frugal wins, tracked down my missing package & filed a claim with USPS. Magically, I’m getting 1/2 the money back. I have no idea why not the full amount. At this point, I’ll be happy with anything.
We did well with spending at our relay. I did share the cost of a family meal out (my dad’s birthday), but the rest of our food spending was a $5 baked potato & $11 for sandwiches. I also brought a few shared treats home, which made the kids very happy.
I filled out matching gift request for all of the “back to school money”. As a heads up to you when your kiddo goes to school, California requires all field trip/class room donation/materials fees/etc to be voluntary & thus categorized as a donation. All donations are eligible (at least at my work) for matching gifts of 100%. I also took the time to donate to the yearly fundraiser in order to attempt to win tickets to Disneyland (would have passed them on to my parents), but alas, no luck.
I made a frozen lasagna upon a very, very tired return from our relay weekend. Real cooking wasn’t going to happen, but at least we avoided takeout.
I found a 4 pack of Nick’s favorite Costco cheese pizzas for $4.99. These aren’t individual sizes – more like a pizzeria size Medium, so it was an incredible deal