Checkin’ Out the New Neighbourhood!

With me travelling for work a lot this month, and Joe working 6 days a week and getting the café ready for summer (helloooo, espresso affogato!), we’ve been packing as much into our days off as possible. Mostly chores, and café-related errands, but also exciting things, like that time we signed a new lease! 🙂

Last week, we decided that we should explore what will be our new neighbourhood starting in June. So on Joe’s birthday, we checked out Dewolfe’s Park in Bedford, which has an awesome boardwalk, playground and great views of the Bedford Basin and Halifax Harbour. We’re pretty pumped that this will be close by. We currently live just up the street from the Halifax waterfront.

Joe lookin’ like some kinda rock star.

This month I’ve also been back aboard the running train. I started slow and easy at the start of April, and it’s felt so good thus far that I’ve just kept going! I made a cute little tracker to log my kms this month, and I’m now past the 50K mark. It’s been pretty motivating to fill in, so I took some time while in Cape Breton this week for work, to make up a new and improved tracker for May. Voila!!

I’ll start hills and increase my Sunday runs in May, and by the end I should hit 10km. Truth be told, I could probably go out and do 10km right now, but I’ve made the “too much, too soon” mistake in the past and just created problems for myself, so I’m making sure to ease into it. This isn’t a running blog, but running makes me feel like more of a whole person (more productive, happier, better rested, etc.), and it gives me time to mull over ideas that prompt me to write! It’s also time spent not spending money. 😉

I’ve even convinced Joe to come on a couple runs with me, which is quality time together, and time to talk about the things I write about here (goals, plans, etc).

It also means more blurry, terrible, tired selfies for you to enjoy. 😛

After a very chilly, windy evening run!

Today we went exploring a little more in our new neighbourhood. A friend told me there was a swimming hole nearby, which we did manage to find (it’s beautiful!!!) and we also found some great trails! I’m getting so excited to live here!

They even made steps into the lake. How thoughtful!

I think Joe secretly loves selfies, he just pretends he hates them. 

Might as well be in our backyard, it’s so close! Whoopee!

 

At first, I was a little afraid we’d be really isolated in our new place. At first glance, it’s not really close to anything, and it’s not exactly in a pretty location, between two highways. But when we went exploring a bit, we discovered all sorts of benefits to living there! Where we are now, we do have Point Pleasant Park, but it’s about 2km away (3-4km away to get to the actual water/beaches), and it’s not great for swimming since it’s Atlantic Ocean water. Brrrrr. As it is, I’d have to walk about 30 mins, or run for 15 mins to get to the good walking trails. These trails and the lake are about a 5 minute walk from our building, and hidden away from tourists and really anyone who doesn’t live in the area.

Bonus: the trail ends at a Tim Horton’s! I mean, have the stars aligned or what!?

Just kidding Joe! You know where I get my java! 😉

 

April Updates

Almost every day, we experience something in our current apartment that we won’t miss, and it triggers one or both of us to sing “we gotta get ouuutta this plaaace.” Sometimes we laugh about it (watching students fight the awful wind tunnels all around our building, as we watch from above)… sometimes we grit our teeth (construction noise).

So it was really exciting today when we got a casual form of confirmation (basically a handshake and a verbal ‘yes’) that we have a new apartment, starting June 1st-ish. It’ll be about $300 less per month for a bit more space, 2 minutes from Joe’s work, and out of the downtown with all its g** d*** construction!!! It also has a balcony and a dishwasher, and there’s laundry on every floor. What luxury!

It’s been a pretty exciting day and pretty darn exciting month. The apartment news is only the latest in a series of high-five moments.

Others include:

I got a raise! Nothing astronomical mind you, but a raise nonetheless, along with positive feedback from my manager. That’s always nice!

After a tough blow re: income tax (which really wasn’t that bad, and it’ll be completely possible to pay on time), I was super pleased to log into my student loan account today and see that after my last monthly payment, my federal loan is now down below $3000!!! It started at 14K only four years ago, including about a year without repayment (income was too low). In the last 3 months alone, I’ve managed to put an extra $650 on it, in addition to my regular monthly payments.

Goals for my student loan in May are:

1) Get it to $2500 by May 1st, and

2) Get it to $1500 by mid-May!!

At the rate I’m going, I should have it totally gone by the end of June at the latest. That’s so exciting!! Then I will have NO interest-accruing debts left. Only my interest-free provincial student loan (~$4500) and the 18K I owe my Dad (which he is so excited to get… it’ll be retirement fun money). 🙂

Joe also got some promising news regarding a car trade-in, so we’ll be doing some car shopping next week on his bday! He’s very excited about the possibility of lower monthly payments; about $200 less per month in gas (since we’ll live so close to his work); and a huge portion of his car loan disappearing.

Big things are happening! The year of sacrifice doesn’t seem that awful so far… in fact… I think life is about to improve drastically. 😉

Fingers crossed!

Cheap Meals: Vegetarian/GF Spaghetti n’ Meatballs

 

I don’t know what got into me. But I decided to do something nice for Joe.

The Joe who eats no meat.

I decided to try making vegetarian meatballs, using only things we already had.

We did get groceries on Saturday (using $40 in points, and only spent $15! ☺️👍), but I didn’t get this wild and crazy idea until Sunday afternoon.

As with any unknown culinary venture, I first Googled “vegetarian meatballs”. There are a lot of recipes for meatless meatballs, guys!

Usually, I use my trusty method of reading several recipes and taking note of the proportions of common ingredients and then seeing what I’ve got to work with. Which I did do, but ultimately wound up referring a few times to this recipe and making a few alterations.

Most of the recipes I saw called for quinoa, but honestly, I really dislike quinoa. It’s FINE, but it’s not my favourite. I could have used rice, but we already eat a ton of rice. I also could have used millet, but I wasn’t sure if it would be too mushy for a meat-a-ball. So I chose sorghum.

If you’ve never had sorghum. It’s like barley, but more of a spherical shape. And it’s gluten-free. It gets good n’ starchy too, which I think really helped hold these suckers together. It’s also cheap.

A+++ for sorghum.

So I cooked 150g of that (about 3 servings) in 2 cups water, then set it aside to cool.

Then I finely chopped up an onion, about half a large box of button mushrooms, and a few cloves of garlic, and found some parsley and thyme in my cupboard. The recipe I was following said fresh herbs, but I didn’t have any. So I used about 1/2 tsp of dried thyme and 1 tsp of dried parsley. I didn’t add any salt and pepper, but I did add the recommended soy sauce (actually, tamari) which I didn’t understand the purpose of, so I only used about 1 1/2 Tbsp.

What a lot of work! The onion was sauteed separately, then set aside to cool. Then the mushrooms, garlic and thyme were sauteed next, with tamari, then set aside to cool. Then the sorghum, onions, mushrooms, garlic and thyme were all mushed together in a bowl with GF bread crumbs (about 3/4 cup), parsley and eggs, until it was kind of paste-y. Then I refrigerated it.

1. Because those were the instructions, and B. because Joe wouldn’t be home for a while.

After a while, I used a Tbsp to make little balls, and then I fried them in nearly an inch of oil. Omg. It was beautiful.

Joe came home, snuck a meat-a-ball and then immediately died.

Then he came back to life, gave me a smooch, and died again.

Then we made spaghetti. With the meat-a-balls.

So good. Soooo good.

I’ll definitely be making these again (when he’s home… so he can friggin’ help with all that g** d*** chopping!)

We were so full afterward, we had to go for a walk around the block. Joe jumped in a bunch of snow piles and tried to offer me gum from the sidewalk. Straight from The Notebook he is. 😂❤️

Do you have a vegetarian version of a traditionally meat-y recipe that you love? Feel free to share!

Month-End Update: March 2017

What a crazy month! Definitely spent more overall, and got some harsh income tax news…

Work expenses (both directly reimbursed or indirectly) were higher due to more work trips than last month, and longer ones which affected hotel costs, rental car costs, food costs.

Personal expenses were also higher, due to one work trip to Toronto that I was allowed to extend a few days in order to visit friends and family. Sleeping was free, but eating was totally not. I ate a lot. 😛

No regrets. Kensington Market was my jam (and my jelly. And my marmalade).

Oof.

Groceries (for me at least) were significantly lower, since I was almost never home. I have yet to see what Joe’s expenses were… though I suspect he lived on expired cafe food and rice. He’s so high-maintenance, that guy. 😉

Debt payments and savings were also significantly lower, due to the fact that I found out I owe a lot of income tax! That being said, I did pay off my credit line near the beginning of the month… so that’s a bonus! It felt SO good.

Bills of course, were the same. 🙂

This is how it all looks!

Next month will also result in lower debt payments, since I’ll have to hold on to every penny for income tax. But I expect to be back on track in May!