Do I Project Pan Again?

I stopped doing project pans a couple of years ago as I had finally down sized my makeup bag to a size where I was using all the products I had quite happily and didn't really feel like I had any surplus that I needed to worry about.  However, I have noticed that recently that I haven't actually warn any makeup in the last few months.  Not that that's a problem at all, but it does make me wonder about whether or not I really need all the products that I now have left.  Having a quick nosy through my bag did make me realise that I probably now have too many products for the amount of makeup I actually wear.

So, I've decided to bring back the project pan for the rest of this year to see if there are any products that I either don't want anymore or that just need to be thrown out.  It is very unlikely that I will actually finish any products in the next four months, but it would be good to get through the liquid items at least before they go bad.  I then need to decide, if I carry on using makeup, what products I want to replace them with as they might not get used very often.

I don't actually have that many liquid products, but the ones that I do want to get through are my concealers, Barry M's All Night Long Full Coverage Concealer.  I had brought Oatmeal first and then realised that it is way too light for me, even in winter, and so I also got Almond.  I tend to mix the two for my under eyes and use Almond on it's own for other areas on my face.  In the future I want to have a powder form of concealer, just for the longevity of it, but I think it might be difficult to find one without mica in it.  Obviously I'll just be working my way through the mascara, but I never keep more than one of those anyway.

Then there are the lipsticks, of which I have three.  They are all different variations of red, which is pretty much the only lipstick colour I wear at the moment, and whilst there are perfectly good reasons as to why I have three it seems a little bit silly to continue having three.  One did unfortunately get ruined in the heat (my Memi Luxe Lipstick in Old Flame) and, though I have tried to carry on using it as I love the colour so much, it's probably time to just let it go as it's just too messy to use.  I think once these are all gone I'll look into just owning a red lip pencil instead as that'll be easier to keep in the long run.

As for the dry products, I'll definitely be keeping the one eyeshadow I own (Urban Decay Solstice) as I just love this colour and how it looks on.  I'll also keep the eyeliner as I only have one of those.  However, I do think that four Tarte blushes, even though I also use them as eyeshadows, is probably a little excessive, especially as I'm pretty certain I don't reach for all of them.  I'm definitely not going to be able to use any of them up in the next few months, but I can decide whether or not I like the colours and get rid of the ones I don't.  I can't see myself needing to replace these anytime soon.

The last items I wanted to make a decision on are the solid mascara and my highlighter.  I really wanted to love the Bain and Savon Vegan Cake Mascara, but I just haven't been able to keep it on my lashes.  I just seem to end up with panda eyes, probably because my eye lids are so oily.  I do want to see if I can use it as a form of liquid eye liner, but I think I'll just have the same panda eyes problem so this might be a product that just has to go.  I've had my the Balm Mary-Lou Manizer for quite a while now as well and this is a product that's had quite a beating.  I do also use this as an eyeshadow, but I'm not sure if using a highlighter is still something that I want to do.  As with the other products this is unlikely to be something I can use up by the end of the year, but I will be able to decide if it's something I want to keep.

And that's it, this isn't really going to be a use up project pan, more of a what do I really not want /likely to keep using anymore project.  I should hopefully end up with a very basic kit by the end of it which I don't have to worry about going off anytime soon.  That way it can be there for when I want to use it with the knowledge that I probably won't be reaching for it very often.  Once I've decided on how much that is I should probably look at my makeup brushes.  I am glad that makeup has never been something I've felt I've had to wear to feel good about myself, but I do enjoy using it when I want to.  I just don't want to own this much of it anymore. 

Being a Tourist 2023

Now that we are properly settled in here in Wales it's a good time to really start exploring what there is for us to see and do.  We've always felt that we didn't really explore Devon properly when we had the chance and we really don't want to make the same mistakes whilst we're here.  Especially as there is so much for us to see and explore around here.  Obviously, we are still trying to keep our spending low to help with our long-term goals, but we don't want this to be at the complete expense of enjoying ourselves now.  Thankfully, most of what we like doing is free /cheap and we have also been given a Cadw membership as a gift which has opened up even more things we can explore for free.

After doing a little bit of looking around we now have an initial list of places we want to see, walk, and swim around that are close to us, along with a couple of helpful books that will be useful as we're still getting to know the area.  This should make it easier for us to quickly make a decision about what we're going to do when we have time off.  Once we have more of a clue we can start working out our own walks to explore even more of the areas we've gotten to know.   One thing I definitely want to make sure that I do is explore the walks that are right outside our doorstep as it's all too easy to only think about walking in the Beacons, but then I'd be missing out.

As we've just started out we haven't crossed off too many things yet.  There is also the slight issue of our mismatching work shifts which means that we don't get as many days off together as we would like.  Though we would like to visit as many of these places together as we can, there have been some walks that we've done on our own just so we can still get out and see things.  We also want to fit these around learning to surf, but this just means that we have to be a little bit more organised to fit all these in.

Most of the places we've been about to cross off on our 'tourist board' I've already written about, but the most recent one was the Blaenavon Ironworks.  This turned out to be a very enjoyable day and also involved us having a little exploration around Blaenavon itself.  It's actually very close to where we live so I'm not entirely sure why we haven't visited it already.  It's very interesting to see how we use to make iron, but I personally really liked the workers' cottages that were on site and which they had decorated in the different styles of the decades that the cottages were lived in.  They seemed the perfect size for what we would like now, but maybe with a bathroom added on rather than just an outhouse down a lane.  There are a couple more industrial sites we would like to explore near us, especially as these played such an important role to those who lived here in southern Wales.

One thing we want to concentrate a little more on is wild swimming as we haven't done too much of that yet.  The warmer weather that is meant to be coming our way would make this the perfect time to really give this a go.  At least now we have all the equipment that we need to do this comfortably and we can just head out to a spot and enjoy it.  In fact, it would probably fit perfectly with surfing practice.

Walking: Carmarthen Fans and glacial cwms (the Black Mountain area)

I finally got to go on a nice long walk with Ed again, which we haven't really been able to do since moving to Wales.  We've been wanting to walk in the Black Mountain area for a while as we had heard that the views were pretty amazing and it's a less popular area than the central Beacons, meaning that we were much more likely to be able to enjoy a walk without too many other people.  The weather wasn't meant to be particularly great on the day we had planned to do this walk, but we'd worked out this walk would probably take us around 4.5 hours and that's an acceptable amount of time for us to be out in bad weather.

The inspiration for this walk came from the Cicerone book 'Walking in The Brecon Beacons' and we mostly followed the route recommended in it, apart from at the end when we decided to take a more direct route to the car park away from the work happening at Llyn y Fan Fach.  We started at the Llyn y Fan Fach car park and, as the stream was too high for us to cross at the recommended point, headed back along the road to connect with the more southern Beacons Way that leads up to the Bannau Sir Gaer ridge.

There were some steep bits as you head up, but for the most part, this was a very manageable section for us and we didn't feel the need to take a break at any point.  We knew the weather would mean we wouldn't always get a great view, but when we did first get to the ridge of Bannau Sir Gaer we could see down onto Llyn y Fan Fach.  This view was only marginally ruined by all the vans etc that needed to be there and the very dubious myth that's connected to it.

The cloud did come back down again after this and we ended up walking the rest of the ridge surrounded by white and getting quite wet.  However, the path was very obvious and we were pretty confident that we could safely navigate the rest of the ridge so we carried on.  We also quite like walking in these conditions as it's a completely different experience walking whilst being cocooned in the cloud.  You tend to come across a lot fewer people in these conditions as well. 

Despite the lack of views, we were still able to pick out navigational features like the cairn at Picws Du (which is probably a prehistoric funerary monument), and the trig point at Fan Brycheiniog which marked the highest point of this walk.  There are a few paths along this way that head down from the ridge back into the valley, but we stayed at the top until we reached Bwich Gledd and then headed down to Llyn y Fan Fawr.

We hadn't been able to see this lake from the top, but it was a very pretty site once we were there and it also looked like a very good body of water to swim in.  Something we've taken note of for a later trip.  The clouds did of course lift once we had gotten down and we got a much better view of this glacier valley from this point on.  We were both pretty wet by this point, but still nicely warm and just a little less worried about the puddles we were putting our feet into as we headed west following the northern Beacons Way back towards Llyn y Fan Fach.

It was just before reaching Llyn y Fan Fach that we stopped following the route recommended by the book after we had noticed the path that cut off and headed more directly towards the Llyn y Fan Trout and Salmon Hatchery.  Unfortunately, it's the wrong time of year to watch the trout jumping, but it was still a surprisingly pretty spot to look around nonetheless.  

When we had been at the top we had decided that it had been far too windy and wet to stop for a lunch break, and as neither of us was feeling particularly hungry we decided to just keep going until we felt like we needed to eat.  This actually ended up being when we had gotten back to the car and had changed into a set of nice dry clothes that we always keep in the back of our car.  I actually find it surprisingly easy to walk long distances without eating and I don't think I'm alone in that.  There must just be something about walking that shuts everything else off, but you definitely feel very hungry once you do finally stop.

This was a great walk and we enjoyed it despite the lack of views.  The weather didn't put us off, in fact, it meant we got to enjoy it with fewer people than probably would have been there had the weather been great.  It's definitely an area we'd like to explore more of as it feels a little different from the central Beacons where we spend most of our time.  Time to plan some more walks I think, but maybe looking at ones where we can come in from the east as that would be easier for us to get to.  We obviously have to walk straight up the Black Mountain as well at some point, but I feel like that would be a time when I wanted a good clear day.

Sustainable Food Shopping

Just a quick post this time, but I've been sitting staring at the avocados I always feel bad about buying and thinking about why it is so difficult to buy things that are sustainable and ethical.  It seems so easy to just fall back into the old habits of buying things that don't really align with how we are trying to live at the moment. 

Picture taken from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46459714

After re-researching about the emissions, water usage, and general sustainability of the food we eat I felt a lot better about the food choices we're making, especially as greatly reducing your consumption of meat is still the best way of reducing your emissions.  I also felt a lot less guilty about eating avocados (their emissions and water usage isn't great, but is still no where near that produced and used by meat, especially beef) and about eating a plant based diet that has gone a little bit of travelling.  However, whilst we have been picking the best options I would like us to build on that further.

The hardest one is going to be packaging.  I do try and reduce the amount of plastic that comes into our homes, but it seems to be getting harder to find vegetables that aren't all wrapped up.  Not only does that mean bringing home more plastic than I want to, but it also makes it harder to reduce your food waste as you can't just buy only what you need.  Even when I've gone to a greengrocers some of the vegetables are still pre-bagged, but it is definitely much less than in supermarkets which has reminded me that when it comes to buying vegetables it would be better for me to go to the grocers instead.  It's something that I've gotten out of the habit of doing, but could easily pick up again.  On the plus side, and despite not being able to choice the quantity of vegetables that we buy, we are pretty good when it comes to not having a lot of food waste.

Got these from this Etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/askingfortrouble

There are also specific styles of food that we like to eat and the recipes we follow don't necessarily have vegetables that are seasonal for us here in the UK.  Whilst the latest research has shown that the distance the food travels isn't the main issue when it comes to carbon emissions, now that we've worked on the other impacts our food could have I'd like to work on the distance it travels as well.  We're pretty lucky in the UK in the fact that there is quite a lot of food that is grown here now and I have a list of what food is in season throughout the year.  Before I had decided I would work out what food was available that month and then work out what we were going to eat from that, but actually I kept finding that a little bit overwhelming.  Now I'm going to do it the other way around.  Once we've decided what meals we want to eat I'm going to look at what vegetables are available then and tweak the recipes to fit that instead.  That should work out a lot better.

So, just a couple of changes that I want to make to how we eat.  Once we've made those into habits than I'll start looking at the way in which we cook our food as that has an impact too, it's just a very small percentage and therefore not the biggest thing to worry about.  Hopefully these little changes are ones that I can make relatively easily.  It should also help us save money as well.

July 2023 Budget

This was a mixed month when it came to reaching our budget goals for July.  There were some things that went really well and others that really did not.  There were a couple of days where I wasn't expecting our finances to be great and these were when we decided to have a date day and when we spent some time with some friends who had come up to Wales.  Both were a little but spendy, but obviously worth it.

Most of our monthly bills were pretty much the same as always, but we did manage to save quite a bit of money this month on our gas and electricity.  It probably helped that, despite it being a very wet month, it has been relatively warm, but I did also fix our thermostat and that seemed to really help with the gas.  My mobile bill is also a lot lower this month after I made all those changes last month and it should be lower still next month as well.

Another positive is that we've been able to greatly reduce our personal spending this month.  After last month we manage to make an effort to be more mindful when buying things.  There are a couple of things that look like a big spend, but one me booking our surfing lessons and we'd already built up a sinking fund to cover that, and the other was an expected spend on an electronic that I didn't have time to save for but which I knew we could afford.  I've also still been able to put money into my pension again, so that I'm still keeping up with that goal for 2023.

On the not so good, fuel has been high again this month but unfortunately there's nothing we can do about that as we can't reduce the amount we drive as it's needed for work.  However, the biggest issue has been our spending on food, both groceries and eating out/ take-away.  In fact, our spending has been pretty excessive this month.  To be honest I'm not even that sure why, but I think we were just not really paying attention to what we were buying and going mostly going for convenience.  This is, of course, not entirely budget friendly or good for our health, so this is going to be something I'll focus on more in the coming month and that should hopefully help us put more money into our savings.

To end on another plus, we have been able to put a good chunk into our savings again.  Obviously this would have been much higher had we been more careful with our spending on food, but it does mean that we are now much closer to reaching our four month savings goal for this year.  If we do manage to reach it before the end of the year I think we're just going to keep going so that we can reach our final long term goal much quicker.  This would make this year a very productive year for us if we do.

So, a mixed bag really, but actually I would say that it was mostly positive and I'm very happy with that.  We just have to work on our spending on food - something that we actually struggle with regularly as we love our food.  However, if I'm stricter with myself and we keep to our menu planning and not eat out as much as we have been in July I think we should actually be able to do that just fine.  Guess we'll have to wait and see what August brings.

Walking: Beacons Way Stage 5 - Storey Arms to Glyntawe

I've already written about the section of the Cambrian Way that I did a little while ago which also starts at the Storey Arms and ends in Glyntawe, but takes quite a different route to get there.  In that post I wrote about how I wanted to try the Beacons Way next to see the difference and, a couple of weeks later, I did.

The Cambrian Way is definitely the more direct route, but with the terrain being a little more difficult and the route a little less obvious I was expecting them to actually take around the same time despite the additional miles on the Beacons Way.  As before I actually started my walk at Pont ar Daf car park and walked up to Storey Arms before heading up the side of Fan Fawr and following the route on my OS Map.  As before I won't go into a description of the route as this is easily available online and is marked really well on the OS maps.  

As before, and with a number of my walks, I really lucked out on the weather meaning that, whilst I did need to repeatedly apply suncream, I did get really good views all day long.  This route was a lot easier to navigate through and most of the time it was pretty obvious which path I was meant to be on, even without too many sign posts, but there were still a couple of times where I needed to quickly check the app on my phone to ensure that I had actually taken the right turning.

The ease of the route meant that this walk was a lot kinder on the legs then the Cambrian Way, but the section on the Roman road was a little unpleasant on the feet and made being able to put them up during my lunch a must to ensure that the last section was actually enjoyable.  On the plus though, the Roman road does take you past another standing stone, Maen Madoc, which is believed to have been erected during the late Roman Period (though there is some thought that it may have been originally been erected in the Bronze Age) possibly as a burial stone given the Latin inscription on the side.

One of the best things about this walk was that, even though this is a relatively popular route, I was able to do it on a week day so that I mostly had it to myself.  In fact, I only really past three people giving me the time away that I needed and usually hope for when I'm walking in the mountains.

This time I decided to not go all the way the Glyntawe as I had already walked that section and cut off onto the path that runs south, parallel with the A4067, to end my walk at the Ancient Briton for a pint (always a good way to end a walk I feel) and to meet up with a friend.  This is a really nice walk and I would recommend it, especially to someone who is wanting to spend a day out in the mountains, but isn't 100% confident with their navigational abilities.  The wildlife on this route did seem to be a little less, but there's still a good amount of history to look at, spanning about 2000 years of Welsh history.  Even with low cloud cover you would still have plenty to see.  And now it's time for me to start organising my next walking trip.

Crafting 2023 Update #2

I can't believe that that's half the year gone already and it definitely feels like I haven't managed to do as much crafting this year as I did last.  However, I am still enjoying it and to me that's the main thing.

Completion and Use Up Projects

Managed to cross off another two projects on this list -  the matching tie for my husband using the fabric I had used to make my dress and what was left over from my wedding outfit, and the knitted strappy top.  The top was made using a pattern from Kutovakika called the Lola top and I used the left over wool from the Guarnsey jumper I had made for my husband.

Socks, Mittens, and Cowl

These were a gift for a friend and I wanted to make her matching socks and mittens.  However, I ended up having plenty of wool left over so I also added a cowl to the mix.  It was a little bit of a challenge to make these as I didn't have any measurements to work from so I just had to go with the vague idea that her hands and feet are longer than mine.  I did enjoy making them though, and they helped keep me calm during our move to Wales.

The Maggie and Coddy Jumpers

I now have the yarn for both of these jumpers, which I brought with some of the money I had put aside after doing my tax returns, and I've started the Coddy jumper which is for my husband.  This jumper is made using a cotton yarn and it's been quite interesting learning to knit with this type of yarn as I hadn't done that before.  It definitely slips through your fingers a lot easier.  I did have to unpick some of it though as something wasn't quite right with the pattern section and I could see the black yarn through the white sections.  Once I've completed this one I'll move onto mine, where we're back to good old wool yarn.

The Jabberwocky Embroidery

This one is also completed and didn't actually take me that long to do, just a few nights.  It's not really my style, but I did enjoy doing embroidery again and it's reminded me that it's something I would like to get back to in the future.  It was a pretty good kit as well, with everything you would need to complete your project.  Right now it's sitting with the other sewing that I have completed but haven't gotten around to framing yet.

More Socks

I've had a request for some socks from a friend, so I've added this on as a little side craft that I do whilst I knit the jumper for Ed.  It's another one where I don't really have the measurements so I've having to wing it a little bit.  However, it's a relatively simple knit which means I can give my mind a little break from the more complex pattern knitting I'm doing at the moment.  I'm using my go to Voolenvine favourite socks pattern and the yarn is Regia 4 ply in Leaf.

I guess I've still managed to get quite a few things completed this year, despite it feeling like a slow year.  I don't think I'm going to get all the projects I had planned for 2023 completed, but I'm hoping to finish at least another three before the year it out.  It does all depend on what else is going on though, so we'll see.  Let's still aim for three.