Home from Holidays

Finally home from Queensland today. What a holiday! The weather was fabulous and we had a really relaxing time.

We are thoroughly "theme parked out" and spent many hours enjoying the beach in front of our hotel.

First stop was Nelson's Bay where we stayed for 3 days and went on a Dolphin watching cruise and hopped into a boom net to cruise through the water with them. A fabulous experience.

Then onto the Gold Coast where we stayed at Burleigh Heads for a week. I really enjoyed not cleaning or ironing or any other household tasks apart from some light meal preparation.

But its great to be home.

Enjoying the dolphin cruise with Rhianna

Bill and Rhianna get a good position in the net.

The view north from our unit.

The view of the beach from our unit.
This is what 10 hours of car travel looks like.


I did not take a lot of pics on holiday as honestly, we were too busy enjoying ourselves. I am glad to be home so I can have a rest and catch up with all my blog friends.

Frugal Holidaying

Here are the ways we save money when going on holiday:


1. We go in school term time. It's usually 50% cheaper for accommodation, not as crowded wherever you go and we figure that a week off school never stopped anyone from becoming a neuro-surgeon.

2. We shop before we go. I do a huge weekly shop just as I would normally before we leave. I go to Aldi so the prices are cheap and when we get to our accommodation we have all our food ready to go. We don't eat out on holiday.


3. We stay at the same place as last time. We have found accommodation on the Gold Coast for around $100 a night. It is a high rise apartment with an indoor pool, games room, gym etc, and it's right across the road from the beach. They remember us from past years and give us good upgrades and service. Why look elsewhere for something new and different when you had a ball last time. If you find good accommodation stick with it.


4. Discount coupons/ cards. We have an Entertainment book and will use that if we go to any theme parks. It gives 15% off entry prices.


5. We always travel with a soft pack esky in the car. It's full of healthy (and cheap) snacks and water bottles. We also take these into theme parks. Yes, I know they don't let you take your own food into Sea World anymore but I tell them I have a food intolerance (Well, I am intolerant to high priced junk food) and away we go.

6.We fill our car with fuel at major towns and not at little townships between - it's cheaper.


7. We still have treats. Although we don't go out for meals we might treat ourselves with high tea at a nice hotel or go for a walk after dinner and have a dessert and coffee somewhere. It's cheaper than a full 3 course meal and it still feels like we are on holiday.


8. Drive don't fly.We tend to take holidays where we can drive our car to get there (cheaper and better for the environment then taking planes)

9. I make a list of all the stuff we can do at each place that doesn't cost money. We alternate money spending and non-money spending days.

10. We never go to the mall on holidays. A mall in Queensland has the same shops as a mall in NSW and we don't need their plastic rubbish any more than we need our own.

Yesterday because we were travelling we found we had to stop for lunch at McDonalds. I try to avoid this place for too many reasons to list in this little blog. But we were desperate and so pulled in on the proviso that we try to eat as healthily as possible.

I just had a coffee and picked up some of the propoganda, oops, I mean literature from beside the counter. I was surprised to read that McDonalds uses Rainforest Alliance Certified farms to source their coffee beans.

This means that the beans are grown on farms that meet quite strict environmental and social standards. The workers on these farms are covered for issues such as a clean, safe working environments, paid the national minimum wage, have access to medical care and free education for the workers children.

As its been so long since I visited a MacDonalds I was surprised and impressed that they have taken this stance and I felt duly righteous as I carried my coffee out to the car - until I realised how much packaging was surrounding the coffee and wraps we had bought.

Oh well, at least I'm trying.

A Crafty Morning

I have met the loveliest and cleverest Mum through Rhianna's school. Her name is Emma and there is not much she can't make with some cardstock and sticky dots. This morning she held a bit of a craft tutorial for myself and another girlfriend, Julie.

We made this organiser. Its all made with 2 pieces of cardstock and 1 piece of contrasting paper. So easy. I can see this being on my Home Made present list for 2010.

This is the outside.

On the inside there is room for some post-it notes, a note pad and in the top left hand corner a mini calendar will be glued (when I download one). The ribbon ties it all together and helps the pen stay in the middle of the folder. How cute.



Thnaks Emma, you're the best!!!!

Money Lessons 2009 - The Bad

I'd like to talk about 10 of the things I wasted good money on in 2009. There are far more than 10 but these were the first ones that popped into my mind .

Gym Membership

I hate gyms and I always have. They combine three things I hate the most in this life: exercising, air conditioning and large rooms full of women. But in a weak moment I found myself signing up for 12 months. I went for about 4! I'm still paying but I don't go. My membership finishes in March.

Buying Cheap Shoes.

In a store, there does not look to be too much difference between a $36 pair of shoes and a $150 pair of shoes.

But you soon realise the difference when you have to wear them for a couple of hours.

I bought Rhianna's school shoes last year from Payless shoes. They lasted 6 weeks before they fell apart. Bill went and bought her the $110 from Shoes and Sox and they lasted the rest of the year. Lesson learnt.

Breadmaker

I ummed and ahhed all year about purchasing a breadmaker and didn't. My darling husband bought me one in the January sales and it's been going full steam ahead every day since.

The bread is fabulous and fresh, tastes great and has no preseratives. I should have bought this sooner. Oh, and it costs less than a $ a loaf.


Buying clothes from Op Shops

Now, don't get me wrong I love my op shops but I will never again buy clothes from there.

First of all, I never try them on in the shop as I will not try on old clothes until I have washed them (scabies anyone?). So I take them home, wash them, try them on, find they don't fit, are uncomfortable or unflattering and I put them back into my charity bag.

Birthday Presents for kids parties.

I estimate I spent about $500 on buying presents for other people's children last year. Most of it was cheap crap.

I feel bad that because of the number of parties we go to I have to limit how much I spend. Thus the quality suffers. Also I feel bad that I am giving another home on the planet more non-disposable junk to get rid of. Not this year.

Trashy magazines

There was a time whem I cared what the people in these magazines wore, said and did. It was around 1987 and I just got into a habit of buying them each week. Have gone cold turkey since the 1st of January.

Buying new books and DVD's.

If I saw a great book reviewed I had to buy it immediately and read it. This year I intend to order it through the library. And if I saw a movie that touched me I would buy it when it came out on DVD. And on the bookcase it would sit - never to be watched again.



Going blonde.

I used to be the Director of a Pre-school and one of the kids at the Preschool had 2 parents who were hairdressers. They talked me into going blonde. It looked O.K (I never loved it) but the cost to upkeep it was insane. About $150 every 6-8 weeks. Now, I'm back to brunette.

False nails

Coming into Summer last year I decided to treat myself with some new nails. I've had them before and hated them, but I told myself this time I would love them. WRONG!!

They get in the way, get dirty underneath and it costs $35 every 3 weeks to get them "filled". I ripped them off myself in December when I couldn't stand another second of them.

Growing stuff

I want so much to be "green" and a big part of this is growing your own produce. Well I have not had a lot of success so far.

I've tried to grow strawberries, onions, shallots and lettuces. The only thing that did any good were the lettuces.

And the money involved in setting up these projects is not cheap: planters, soil, seeds and fertiliser. Then there is the time and water you need to invest in the nurturing of said plants. I'm over it. I'm just going to buy local as much as I can.

Kitchen Decluttering

After much procrastination the kitchen declutter has been completed. This, as it turned out was not the huge task I was anticipating. I do love to cook and bake and most purchases in the kitchen have been worthwhile.


There were some things I had purchased from Tupperware parties that had to go and a mountain of recipes torn out of magazines that had to be culled and put into a folder but other than that not much at all.


Now, decluttered does not mean clean - this is a much larger job that I will tackle in autumn.

Other projects I want to accomplish in the kitchen this year are a compost waste container situated on the bench, better cupboard organisation and I want to start a pantry stockpile.

Beautiful Bunting

One of my favourite purchases from last year was this book by Kelly Doust. She recycles old fabric and wool into the most amazing and beautiful projects. I have her book out all the time as inspiration and have developed a bit of an email friendship with her. She was also nice enough to feature some of my work on her blog, also called The Crafty Minx. If you love sewing and making beautiful things this is the site and book to drool over.

Below is another of her projects that I have attempted. The fabric is just leftovers and very easy to sew and put together. A little bunting decoration for Rhianna's room. It gives a her room a real carnival feel.