Brighton, Ontario

The second stop on my cycling journey is Brighton, Ontario. My friend and fellow teacher, Christy, told me about some of the best stops along my route.  So, before I arrived in Brighton I stopped near Colborne, ON and this is what I saw!!

 It's the world's biggest apple!

 Holy moly - that's a lot of apple!

So of course I had to try their very own apple crumble - you know it takes a lot of energy to peddle away down in my basement on Hwy 401!! Nudge, nudge, wink, wink!

Fortified for my journey I continued on to Brighton and spent some time enjoying beautiful Presqu'ile Provincial Park - you know how much I LOVE the great outdoors and this park is also a bird sanctuary!

 Isn't it gorgeous??

 Barred owl - so cute! So serious...

And a lighthouse!!
Now into Brighton itself!

 If only I had the time and $$ for shopping - I would definitely check out The Clan Shoppe!

 A very quaint Main Street! Much preferable to the usual mall experience!

 I'm the sort of person who LOVES museums - I checked out the Memory Junction Railway Museum and...

the Proctor House Museum.

Of course by then I was hungry (again) so on Christy's recommendation I dined at Dougall's by the Bay so I could sit by Lake Ontario and drink in the booze errr view! Yes, the view!

 Brighton's harbourfront.

Dougall's by the Bay restaurant.

And this is what I saw:

Simply divine!

Of course no visit to Brighton, ON would be complete with a visit to our very own Canadian financial guru - Gail Vaz-Oxlade!! I asked her if she had any tips she could pass along for the Christmas season and here is what she said:

"Do you buy expensive wine because you think they taste better? Save yourself some money: $20 is about as much as you need to spend to get a great bottle of wine. And there are $10 bottles that taste great too! And if you’re going to be drinking all night, start with a more expensive $20 bottle, and then switch to the cheaper stuff later in the evening. Most people won’t notice."

Heh, heh - "drinking all night"...she's MY kind of gal!!


Funny that! I recently read in the National Post about quite a few red wines that cost less than $10 and taste great!  So far I've tried two of them and they each cost only $6.95!  I found them very palatable:)


Here they are: (in the Italian red section)

• Citra Sangiovese T Di Chieti
• Casal Thaulero Merlot Cabernet Sauvignon

So, after Gail and I shared a bottle of each (ha ha no we didn't.......................we each had our OWN bottles!!) I got back on my bike and wobbled on down to Hwy 401! 

Next stop - Trenton, Ontario!!

It's turning out to be one of those times when the $$ is going to run out before the month does. Gail would not be pleased. I'm sure she'd be smackin' me upside the head if she were anywhere close by. 


I suppose I could have declined the wedding invitation for this weekend but that wouldn't be much fun now would it? No indeedy! So instead of moping about watching my $$ grow wings and fly far far away I'm going to grab a bottle of vino, watch my friend's daughter become a newlywed and then dance my little freshly painted toesies off during the crazy caribbean party afterwards, fill my face with east indian cuisine, hoot and holler and make considerable merriment into the wee hours. I'm sure it will be a terrible time.


Then we'll spend the rest of the night partying at the motel where we're all staying, crash for a few hours, go out for a trucker's breakfast and go spend what's left of our long holiday weekend (we get a long weekend to celebrate a former Queen's birthday from 130+ years ago - go figure! ...not complaining!!) at the trailer where I'll read, recuperate from the festivities and figure out how I'll make it through one more week before it's payday again. 


It can be done....it WILL be done...and I'll force myself to put a smile on my face and party like there's no tomorrow because isn't the world supposed to end on Saturday anyways??? So what the heck am I worrying about $$ for??


Happy weekend everyone!!

OK I Need to Stop Spending NOW!

Well here it is February 28th and we're spending March's money already. That's what happens when my pay goes in on the weekend before my actual payday. However, groceries needed to be bought and what we bought will last us to the middle of the month when I get paid again. One thing we are learning around here is how to make our food budget stretch. We really are handling our food preparation in a more economical way. We're eating a lot less meat and building meals around a wider variety of staples such as lentils, chick peas, kidney beans, navy beans, rice, potatoes and sweet potatoes.

BUT I need to put the brakes on spending! Have you ever noticed that once you start spending you want to keep on spending!!! We ended our weekend splurge yesterday by going to the Black History Month gala (which was wonderful by the way - one of our good friends Charmain sang - she's amazing) but it cost $12 each and then when it was done we were starving (we thought they'd have food but there wasn't!) so I suggested we go to our favourite Vietnamese restaurant for soup and "something". The "something" for me was shrimp pad thai and for Michael spring rolls and curried chicken and we shared a large sweet and sour soup. Scrumptious!! All in all it only came to $30 including tip so it wasn't expensive.  BUT we need to get back into the groove of spending less, eating at home and following our budget!

It's startling to realize how quickly spending a bit extra here and there can develop into a full-out binge and before you know it the budget is in tatters. So I'm reining in the spending and putting a lock on my wallet. Gotta get back on track. 

Luckily "Princess" is on tonight followed by two episodes of "Til Debt do us Part". Gail Vaz-Oxlade will get me back on the straight and narrow like NOBODY else can while I pedal like mad on my bike. I've missed pedalling my way east for awhile but I'm feeling well enough to get back in the saddle so OFF I GO!  I did 15km on Saturday and will try for 25km tonight. I'm heading past Cornwall and will soon be in Quebec - La Belle Province!

Tally ho!! Zoom zoom zoooooooooooooooooommmm!!!!!



Beat ya!!



Weekly Wrap

http://www.barnespaper.com/

News Beat:   Did I have any no spend days this week?? Hmmmmm...yes, I think I had a couple, this week has been a blur so my memory is a little hazy...that's not a good thing...bad things can happen in a haze...like...overspending...yikes!!

The good news: our breakfast went off without a hitch! but almost with a stitch! or two! Sigh...I was doing EVERYTHING in a hurry today as I wanted to get to school even earlier than my usual 6:45am so here's one thing NOT to do when you are in a hurry: trim the hair around your ears with a sharp pair of scissors:( Do you folks know how much ears bleed when you give them a little snip??  Oh my.  So picture this - me with a huge hunk of gauze embracing my ear with my glasses sitting on the outside of it so that no blood drips while I  crack 60 eggs. Not an easy feat but I did it. Luckily I was all alone so no one had to witness my weirdness. After what seemed an imterminable length of time it finally congealed enough to remove the gauze. When my EAs started to arrive I let them take over cooking the eggs.

By 8:10 everyone had arrived, we said grace and sat down to scrambled eggs, bacon and sausages, hashbrown casserole, croissants and orange juice. We had a few leftovers that we managed to get rid of at lunchtime and what with tins of cookies and homemade peanut brittle that students brought in we were stuffed to the gills!

The bad news: I'm stuffed to the gills...no that's not it...I'm pretty sure I won't make it to the end of the month before the end of my money. So...do I make a transfer now from my savings or wait til the end of the month, calculate the damages and then make a transfer. If I transfer $$ now will that just encourage me to spend more resulting in possibly yet another transfer of $$?? Hmmm...I think I'll wait and be very CONSCIOUS of my spending...I'm not going to throw caution to the wind. Boy, December is very challenging isn't it? I felt the old pull of bad thoughts a few times this week: have I bought enough, should I spend more, oh oh sounds like Michael spent more than me, should I buy him another gift? what about Kazi...will she be satisfied with just 3 or 4 gifts this year instead of 10 or 12? I think it will take a few more Christmases before I get used to this downsizing. I'm willing to do the work.

Heartbeat:  Tomorrow morning Kazi and I leave for our trip to Toronto. Yesterday she drove for only the second time.  She needed to pick up her contact lenses so I went with her. She had to turn left at a major intersection and got really stressed out - after she made the turn we pulled into the optometrist's parking lot and she had a few tears. This is not going to be easy.

This photo of an ice-covered lighthouse was taken by the Associated Press and is making the rounds on the internet. It was taken December the 10th at the mouth of the Cleveland (Ohio) harbour.

It reminds me of the Kremlin.

Isn't it eerily beautiful?

Stuff vs Good Stuff

Excellent post on Gail Vaz-Oxlade's blog today - check it out!  Canada's answer to Dave Ramsey:)
http://gailvazoxlade.com/blog/archives/2239

One Woman's Junk is Another Woman's Contribution to the CL Jar!!

I have seen the term "snowflaking" referred to on other blogs but wasn't entirely sure what it meant. I thought perhaps it was a different spin on "snowballing" a strategy Gail Vaz-Oxlade uses in paying down debt. Pick the debt with the highest interest to pay down first while maintaining minimum payments on the other debts. When the highest interest debt is paid off combine, or "snowball", that payment into the next highest interest debt and get it paid off, then add that payment...well you get the picture.

So I googled "snowflaking" and came across a post by Matt at One Million and Beyond that explained the concept.

"The idea of snowflaking is pretty straightforward in that any extra money that you save or make is applied to a financial goal right away regardless of the amount."

Well I am proud to say that today we "snowflaked" (can I use it as a verb??) A few days ago my partner brought home 2 boxes of old LPs that a friend of his was going to give to Goodwill and today he exchanged them for $70.00!!!  We immediately socked the money away in the Crofter's Lane Jar. We hope to...or should I say we PLAN to have enough money for gas and motel to and from PEI next summer for which we would need approximately $500-$600.

Stay tuned....

Have: $209.20              Need: $600.00

So over 1/3 of the way there!!
P.S. can anyone tell me the secret to making those financial goal bar graphy things in their sidebars??