Making Our Home Homely

We live in rented accommodation and have been here for over a year now.  We had thought about looking for somewhere else to live, but now with all that's happening at the moment we'll probably be staying here for a bit longer.  The problem is that as it's rented, including the furniture, we can't make any changes to the property to make it suit us and that includes adding hooks to the walls to allow us to put up picture, which is what I normally do to add colour to a space.

There are a few things we have done already, such as the pictures I added to the wardrobes, perched some pictures around just sitting on desks and book cases, and some homemade crafting like my crocheted coasters.  However, I still want to add a little more to our home.  I have to admit that we did buy some stuff from IKEA including a table lamp that nods to a gas lamp and some flower pots to house our ever growing collection of cacti.  However, I would like most of the items we get for this to either some from charity shops or homemade.

Before

We've already brought a table cloth to go on the coffee table with matching napkins, but we don't have any napkin rings at the moment and I'm thinking of trying to make some out of the jute thread we have left over from the wedding.  If that doesn't work out I'll just look for some next time I'm in a charity shop.  We also got a wonderfully weird tea pot that we'll use for spare change.  

After

At the moment we have a throw to cover the sofa which I've had for over 20 years now.  However I feel like I'm getting a bit bored of it now so I'll keep a look out for another one in the future and, as Ed still quite likes this one, we'll just rotate them.  We also have a cushion that was a present from a family member, but it's falling apart in a way that I don't think I can fix.  So I've decided that I might just make a cushion cover to replace it, probably out of all the wool I have left over from previous projects I've made.

I'm almost done with making all the clothes I want to get my wardrobe looking the way I would like it to, though there are still a few more items I'd like to make just for the sake of it.  This means that I will then have more time to make things for the flat should we need them.  The one thing I don't want to do though is cover every surface there is with something as that'll make things a little bit too busy.  In fact, I'm hoping to get rid of more stuff as time goes on.

Who knows how long we'll be in this flat for, but even if it turns out to not be much longer I would still like to make it feel as 'homely' as possible and a place that it ours.  And I'm glad that I've learnt the skills I have over the last few years that now means I can make a lot of these things myself. 

Walking: Horseshoe Ridge, Brecon Beacon

We decided that during our week off in August we would do some walking in Wales, specifically the Brecon Beacons which are the closest mountains to us.  After having a look at what walks there are we thought that the most interesting one would be the Horseshoe Ridge as it's right in the centre of the Brecon Beacons, is a good walk that is challenging but not really difficult, and it includes the two highest mountains in the Brecon Beacons (and south Britain).  

I was having a look at some of the recommended ways of doing this walk and decided that the best one was the one recommended by my Ordinance Survey app.  It also meant that I could check where we were on my app and my husband could carry the physical map and compass in case anything happened to one of us.  We started at the Taf Fehan car park (which is literally labelled on Google Maps as the Brecon Horseshoe Walk car park) and followed the path that takes you up the reservoir.  It did take a little while to get to this car park (and there's no public transport to it) and there aren't any facilities there, but it's definitely worth doing the walk from this starting point.  When you get to the reservoir you get a really good view of the glacier valley you're in and all the peaks you'll be heading to during this walk.

At the reservoir we followed the path left (which got a little bit confusing around the buildings but we found our way in the end) and then headed up the very steep climb to the Graig Fan Ddu ridge.  This definitely gets your heart going, but also means that you've done most of the climbing right at the start making the rest of the walk a bit easier.  I also wouldn't want to do this part near the end of my walk.  Once we'd reached the top we turned right and heading along the ridge to Corn Du.  This bit of the walk is really lovely, easy on the legs after the straight up climb, and you get a really good view of the valley with all the birds flying around the area.  There also wasn't too any people at this point, unlike the peaks we got to later.  

Corn Du is the second highest point in the area and has a Bronze Age burial cairn at the top of it.  There is a little scrabbling section just before you reach the top, but otherwise this is a pretty straight forward hike to the top.  Then you drop down into the saddle and straight up again to the top of Pen y Fan.  There were a lot of people at the top of this peak and, even though the views were pretty amazing and I usually enjoy pottering around the top of mountains when I reach them, I really didn't want to spend too much time there this time.  For me, going out into the wild is about being away from other humans so meeting lots of people there is never particularly enjoyable for me so I dragged my poor husband down the other side pretty quickly. 

It's a pretty steep climb down Craig Cwm Sere and an almost similarly steep climb up to the top of Cribyn.  The top of this peak was much quieter and we did stay a little bit longer before turning right and carrying along the path down the other side.  It was at this point that we past an 80 year old lady practically skipping past us up the mountain, making us feel very unfit.  This walk down is a double descent, where you descend half way down quite steeply and then get to walk for a little bit along a flat ridge, which I would imagine would be quite boggy normally but as it had been pretty dry over the summer was actually quite easy to walk on.  This is where we decided to stop and finally have our lunch as well as reapplying some suncream.  Then we dropped down again to the cross road with Gap Road.  This is labelled as a Roman road, but I couldn't find any archaeological evidence for this.  However, it was one of the first horse and cart roads over the Brecon Beacons.

As we wanted to hit the five points on this walk we crossed over the Gap Road and headed up the last climb to the top of Fan y Big.  You can get very close to the edge here and get a really good view back across to the peaks you've just climbed.  We then climbed back down the route we'd taken up to get onto Gap Road and headed back to the car park.  I was hoping this last section was going to be a gentle road back to help us cool down before we had to get into the car, but unfortunately this path ended up being a complete foot destroyer with loose stones all over the place.  It was almost nice to get back to the tarmac road which takes you to the car park.

On the day we had originally planned on doing this walk it was meant to rain with thunderstorm warnings for up on top of the mountains.  Even without the storm it was going to be very foggy, which isn't the safest way to climb a mountain or the best way of seeing the views.  So we decided to put it off until the next day where we got clear blue skies and views across the whole of the Brecon Beacons.  It wasn't the most difficult walk we've ever done, but it was still quite physical and gave us a pretty good leg work out.  Pen y Fan is obviously a very popular destination, to be expected on a good day and a peak that is close to good parking spot on a main road, but the rest of the walk wasn't too bad when it came to the number of people you come across.

We did really enjoy this walk and it was nice to get back out into some mountains again.  It would have been nice to have done some more walking when we were there, but we didn't want to push it too much seeing as we haven't done this type of walking in a while and we were already aware that our fitness levels aren't as high as they use to be.  I would definitely recommend this walk if you're in the Brecon Beacon area and I'm glad we came here to do it.  We want to come back to the Brecon Beacons again as it's beautiful and very close to us, so we'll be looking at what other walks we can do in this area for the next time we come. 

August 2022 Budget

I have to admit that I didn't really want to write this blog as we haven't done particularly  well this month at all.  We were already starting this month on the back foot we hadn't been able to build back up the baseline of our joint account to £1000 which covers our regular bills.  I also lost one weeks pay as we went on holiday this month.  Thankfully my husband still got paid for the days he took off, but it still made a noticeable difference not having that one payment.

The other thing was that, even though we knew that this month was going to be tight,  we still spent way more money than we should have done.  Ironically this wasn't actually during our holiday, as we had expected, but mostly on items that will allow us to do more free activities in the future.  Theoretically this is good, but maybe not for this month.

As I knew that the money would be low during our holiday I didn't pay one weeks pension or pay off some purchases I had made with my credit card.  Then there was the week I was off and not earning to I wasn't able to pay these again on that week.  I will need to find a way of catching back up on these two items and if I could do that by the end of September that would be very useful.

That being said, we haven't done too badly on the groceries and eating out spending which I was expecting to be much higher as we were on holiday.  Obviously the fuel was quite a bit more this month from all the driving we did when we were away.  We have still had to move money over from our savings again to help pay our standard bills, but this is a habit we really need to break.  However, by the end of the month we were able to bring the balance of our joint account back to where we want it and put just over £200 back into our savings.  Have to take the wins where we can.

Despite all this I don't regret us going on the holiday as we needed the break and we got to go to a place that I love and have a family connection to, but which Ed has never been to.  We also got to get in a great walk as well, but more on that in a future post.

However, it's now time to get serious again about our financial situation now.  We've known for a while now that it is pretty unlikely that we'll reach our savings goal by the end of this year and, if I'm being honest, that did dishearten me a little bit and put me into a 'why bother' mentality.  I did try and fight it, but sometimes you have to sit with those emotions for a bit to actually get through them.  Now the time for wallowing is over.  We may not reach our savings goal, but we can get closer to it and that's still a good thing to hold onto.  I also now made a visual representation of our savings that I can look at on a daily basis and that should also help.  So, bring on September and whatever that month has to throw at us.