On line shopping.

I know some people love it but while I dont dislike it, I am not a fan. Having said tht my new tablet arrived by courier just now, it was an online buy but Warren did it.

Anyway my experiences this morning with online shopping, I have entered a few challenges for the up coming year, one being no clothes shopping, so this morning I thought that I would have a quick look at Millers online, the challenge doesn't start until the new year.

Its probably been three or four years since I ordered anything from them although I do like to shop there. Yes! they had 80% off, I only look at the sales! Merrily ordered a few pieces and proceeded to the check out area, just like in a shop. However, the site then asked me for my account number, I guess I had one from when I ordered before, not to worry I will go in as a guest, thats fine until I put in my email address whereupon the site says "You are a member, if you cant remember you password, click here and we will re issue" FINE!

Back to hotmail account and there is a new fangled password which I had to write down as no way I could remember that! Back to order and its disappeared. Buggar, quickly go thru the whole catalogue again as there were some good bargains. Get to the checkout and entered bank card details and hit enter, then it tells me that I have nothing in the shopping cart What the? disappeared again.

Too much time spent on the computer and by this time I was rather annoyed, house got a good vaccumn and washed floors while thinking that i will go to the store. Made a coffee an did some online banking (that I can do with no hassle!)and saw that there was an amount pending for Millers, again what the?

Sat down to reorder as I had obviously paid for it, got everything organised and about to enter my back card details again and then I had a light bulb moment (I didn't want to double up on items) so i found a phone contact and rang to ask if they had received an order from me. Yes they had and it should be here on Friday. Apparently as soon as I pressed the button on the money, it deleted the order as it had been sent. Just as an aside I have nine (9) items coming and it was $104, free postage over $60, so of course need to knock off the postage, so no more clothes buying for me for a whole year, not even a tshirt (no winner shirt from Nanowrimo).

Challenges

After my success with my holiday challenge, I am continuing on, in my four days off from work I have made three pairs of pants and four tops for a three/four year old, using up three pieces from my stash. I have emptied one plastic storage box and I am filling that to take to the Salvos.

I also set a challenge to get the car/house loan under a certain amount by the end of October and that is done now with two pay days to go, maybe I should have made it lower. Will elect a new number for the end of the year.

In my Simple savers forum, many people talk about $21 for a weeks worth of food and I have thought for a long while that its not possible but  have trimmed off my food bill so this month I am trying to shop for only $21 each week. Three shopping days into October and my amounts are $19.40, $20.20 and $20.10 and we haven't starved yet!

I am starting to see a few spaces in the pantry but not much in the freezer as I made a meat loaf on the weekend mainly for my lunches and that filled it again.

Last nights dinner was meatloaf and salad, tonight we are having marinated pork chops with veges including an egg plant from the garden, so we are eating well.

Next month being November will be the big challenge again of a novel of at least 50,000 words in 30 days.

Its funny (or maybe its just me) ut I seem to work better of there is a plan in place such as my own challenges.

The end of April

I made it! There were times when I didn't that I would manage to make it. I agreed to do two challenges in the month of April.

 One was called the Ultimate Blog challenge and that was to blog every day for a month. I remember writing on a face book page that it was day 6 and I had no idea what I was going to write about for that day nor the coming days but I did complete it. Some days were better than others, some days the words just flowed, there were other days that I really did have to think about it. Going into a new month, the challenge has finished and I may continue to blog every day or I may not, I do enjoy the writing but its whether or not I have something to write.

The other challenge was called a photo a day and there are prompts for each day to lodge a photo that fits the prompt. Yesterdays was called "something silly" and this was my photo for the day.

I made several of these (its a bunny, can just see the ears and whiskers) on the eve of Easter and delivered them to foreign teachers when we were living in China. Just a bit of fun and silliness to remember Easter than people at home would be experiencing. There are 15000 people from around the world who join in with PAD (photo a day) and there are some fantastic photos being generated. It is a closed FB page and people need to be a member. I will be continuing this month, some of the prompts for this month are Pet, Create, side view and blue. This was fun and made me think about what I was taking and why, I used some old photos and took some new ones as well for a particular purpose in mind.

During the month, I also finished editing the book that I wrote last November, I didn't touch it for two months and then I did a couple of chapters every few days. My darling daughter is going to do the final formatting part of it and then it will be sent to the publishers. I need to find a cover pic for it.