The Challenge Results #1 December 2013

The results are in for my first challenge month! I will aim to get these up on the last day of the month, before introducing a new challenge on the 1st, but Christmas and New Year has thrown every schedule out of the window!

My December challenge was to spend no money on any make-up or toiletries. I admitted this was a little easier because of my beauty advent calendars, but when weighed up with the temptations of amazing sales it was still tough.



I did it, though! I’ve begun working my way through products I had forgotten about, and using up a lot of sachets and samples, which is clearing up space in my room. I definitely want to continue working through all the things I already have, and try and use up as many as I can before buying loads more.

Judging on the way I then acted yesterday, when faced with the sales, I have begun to think a bit more about what I want and need. December gave me the chance to look through and rediscover what I already own, so I have a much more clear picture of where the ‘gaps’ are, and what I really don’t need to buy.

Challenge number one complete, I was left with a healthy extra chunk of my pay left, which has wriggled straight into my savings ready for finding somewhere to live.

Have you ever tried a spending ban?


Sophie x

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Reading List #7

Image
The weekend seemed to fly by and I didn’t get around to finishing my reading list post, so here it is now. I’m still going through my period of pulling lots of books off shelves that I haven’t read yet, so the wide mixture of books continues… The Sea, John Banville I read two Banville novels at university and was more than impressed, so was excited to find this gem on my parents’ bookshelf. In ‘The Sea’, art historian Max returns to a place he holidayed as a child, following a personal loss. The novels flits between two periods of his life - the then and the now - leading to themes of childhood discoveries, maturing, and loss. The time periods almost blend into one another, yet there is something distinctly separate about them too, so it is not confusing. It reads almost like poetry, and is utterly beautiful. Any literature fans, or fans of superb writing and narrative, need to give it a go. A Small Part of Me, Noelle Harrison Christina’s mother, Greta,
Read more

Writing fiction as a way to move forwards.

Image
Last week I shared a bit about the writing course that led to me writing my short story, Aftershock. Today I thought I'd share a bit about what it was about, and the process of writing it. I had planned to write it slowly, leaving myself lots of editing time and really making use of the month or so we were given. In fact, I wrote most of it in one sitting, on a single afternoon when I most definitely should have been doing other things. The words just kept coming and I didn't want to cut them off. I based my story on something that had actually happened to me, as one of the things recommended on the course was that it could be easier to get inside a character or situation if it was something you knew and understood. I share a lot on this blog and I'm incredibly open about my journey with anxiety and depression, but one of the big things I haven't spoken about was something that happened to me in October 2016, when I was living and working in London. It h
Read more

The Reading List # 5

Image
Weekends are the perfect time to catch up on reading, so here’s the latest instalment of things I’ve been reading recently. Fatherland, Robert Harris It is 1964, and Hitler is nearing his 75 th birthday, having been victorious in the Second World War. Detective March finds a naked dead man in a lake, and this begins to unravel a huge conspiracy. The premise of this book was so interesting, and it certainly delivered. There is enough fact weaved in to make the events believable, and the atmosphere and architecture of this 1960s Germany is conjured up well. The book is realistic in that there is still plenty of discontent in the country, so it was a rounded picture, and then in amongst it all was a gripping detective story. This is well worth a try. Revenge Wears Prada, Lauren Weisberger Ten years after The Devil Wears Prada ended, Andy is co-running her own successful wedding magazine. Her life has changed a lot, and is the usual rollercoaster of emotio
Read more