Journeys Are My Diary

Life, Adventures, Entertainment and more - A little bit of everything blog!

Money Supermarket’s – #TheCharcoalChallenge

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As you all know, last week I moved house. Amidst a disaster of illness, unfinished decorating and lack of time, we still (sort of) completed the move on time! However having already agreed to participate in Money Supermarket’s amazing “The Charcoal Challenge”, I knew I had a BBQ to fit in some time that same week!

The garden was a MESS! I’m sad to say I forgot to take any “before pictures”, but there was no concrete or paving slabs, just weeds as tall as people, rubbish and unwanted furniture out there. However my partner Chris and my brother Chris, both set to work on Friday night – strimming, weeding, cleaning and so on. By late Friday night the back garden actually had safe places to tread! Saturday morning the hard work continued – cleaning the gas BBQ along with the patio furniture, while I headed off to Tesco…

Honestly, my Tesco shop took me three times longer than normal. I checked and double checked all prices, picked up and put down certain items, looked for the biggest bargains and added it all up on my phone as I went along. Luckily the BBQ was bring a bottle so I wasn’t having to provide drinks within my budget, but everything else was covered.

As we’d just moved house and most things were upside down, cutlery and plates were a must. I also got napkins, tablecloths and glasses in case anyone brought wine. I bought sausages, burgers and pork, along with the ingredients to make pasta salad, coleslaw and rice salad. There was also baps, cheese slices, halloumi, garlic bread – and no BBQ would be complete without pudding. Chocolate Trifle, Tiramisu AND Vanilla cheesecake. Finally there was the ingredients for homemade Sangria – the perfect BBQ accompaniment.

All in all my shop came to £50.06. A little over budget you might say… but pasta was on 2 x 1KG for £2.50 and while I didn’t need that much for my BBQ, it seemed unthrifty not to pick up that bargain! This was my total shop though, all done in Tesco. Enough food to feed nine people, along with the ingredients for two large pitchers of Sangria.

I headed home to prep for my BBQ, while the men continues to clean and tidy. I made pasta salad first, with mayonnaise, spring onions and peppers – followed by coleslaw with white cabbage, carrots, onion and mayonnaise too. Next came the Sangria, with a bottle of red wine, some lemonade, a splash of brandy (luckily from my alcohol stash and not my budget!) some cinnamon plus loads of apples and oranges sliced up inside. I cooked rice and I sliced baps – but most importantly I made pork and halloumi skewers!

Halloumi is such an underrated cheese, but no BBQ would be right without some halloumi skewers. I usually use chicken but as the pork was discounted and I was working on a budget, that worked just as well. A few chunks of meat, along with a few chunks of halloumi, some mushrooms and my skewers were complete.

Finally the cleaning of the BBQ was done and people started to arrive. I set the Chris’ off cooking, so I could get everyone a drink and give a small tour of the house. I had already made up a homemade BBQ sauce recipe and this was lavished all over the cooking meat, giving off the most amazing smell.

It wasn’t long before everything was ready and everyone gathered outside. The food was amazing and the company was great too. In total there was nine of us, myself and my partner Chris – along with my two daughters Megan and Lily, my brother Chris, my mum Penny, my partner’s sister Nikki and her son Mason, and one of our friends Jon. There was plenty of food to go around and I think everyone had a good time. Though I didn’t make the puddings, they were a great hit too – however everyone was pretty full from the BBQ food and so I took it as a compliment when not all the pudding got eaten!

As I’m sure you can see from the bottom picture, all the rubble, weeds and refuse was piled up in the corner of our yard for the BBQ. This shows you just what a state it was in before!

Thank you so much to Money Supermarket who let me participate in this challenge. It was a lot of fun and a hell of a good excuse to get two strapping young men to clear my garden for me!

With regards to the rest of my blog, look out for more house renovations coming soon! We’re nearly done with the kitchen!

Money Supermarket’s – Budget Bucket List Competition

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Have you ever made a Bucket List? I can honestly say that I never have… well not officially anyway. I’m sure I have a list of things in my head that I would love to do before I die, but then Never Say Never, right?

Money Supermarket are running a competition at the moment, to write about your bucket list. It needs to include one budget ambition or objective and one extravagant one. Sadly most of my bucket list wishes, would all fall into the extravagant list, but if I really had to pick one thing, I would pick…

A holiday to Florida

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I know this wish is probably on a lot of people’s wish lists or bucket lists, because who wouldn’t love a lovely hot vacation? (Actually not me, the sun doesn’t agree my my complexion especially…) However mine is more to visit two very specific places while there. If I had to pick just one or the other, I seriously couldn’t. The two places are both equal loves of mine – Disney and Harry Potter.

From a very young age, a lot of us are brought up on Disney. For girls, that desire of meeting your Prince Charming and being swept off your feet, is something that sticks with you for years and years (till you realise Disney gives you seriously unrealistic expectations!). Now at the age of thirty four, I still absolutely adore Disney. I have two little girls who are Disney Princess crazy and I am more than happy to fuel that addiction. Though we have traveled to Disneyland Paris, no sooner than we have left, the girls wanted to go again. Its expensive though and so unfortunately not a holiday you can afford often.

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Disneyworld in Florida, is just the pinnacle of Disney in my opinion. Having watched endless trailers, seen so many photographs, I would absolutely LOVE to visit Disney in Florida.

But then if I’m in Florida, how could I not go to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter too? Harry Potter was something I was a little late to the party on. Not massively late, but book three was out by the point I started reading and after only the first book I was addicted. I pre-ordered every book from then on, reading the whole thing on the day it arrived. As cliché as it sounds, I literally grew up reading Harry Potter, in the sense I could tell you exactly where I was living and at what point in my life I was, as each book came out. On top of that, I ran a Harry Potter related website, for over ten years of my life. I have only one tattoo, and that’s the Deathly Hallows. Am I a bit geeky over it? Hell yes.

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Though I’ve been to the Studio Tours near London and I even visited a traveling Exhibit in New York, I would literally give my left leg to visit Hogwarts and go to Hogsmeade. Since Universal Studios is the closest I’ll get to that, I really really want to go…

What’s stopping me you might ask? Well having been a single mum for several years, money isn’t exactly something I have a huge amount of. If I could just tootle off by myself, maybe I would have managed to scrape together the money by now – but can you imagine the outrage if I went without my two daughters? They might parental divorce me! You’d need a good week away (preferably two) and although I’d happily go self catering, what with park tickets, accommodation and three US flights, the costs soon mount up. That’s before even considering the food and the souvenirs you’d likely buy while there.

For now, Florida is an unrealistic dream – but hopefully as Cinderella would say “Dreams really do come true.” To be able to actually complete this wish, would literally be a dream come true.

As for my budget bucket list choice, that actually pretty easy to decide on. If I could do only one more thing with my life, it would be to…

Write a Book

Simple you might think? Sadly not really. I love to write. My head is filled with story lines, plots, characters and more. I find it easy to spill words on to paper (or screens) but I definitely lack motivation and/or time.

About three years ago, I started a book called “Archways”. My partner at the time bought me two adorable notebooks – ones I had been eying up for a while. I told him “if ever I have one of those notebooks, I’ll write a book” and so he bought me them.

Picture Source / Notebooks from paperblanks

I have pages and pages of ideas in notebooks, even on loose paper too. I have the characters decided, the rough storyline, even the outcome. I borrowed books from the library and even bought a few, all for some background research. I started to write up the book, getting the Prologue done, along with the first chapter, but then it stopped. I’ve opened it up several times to continue… but nothing comes. Writer’s Block? Maybe. Possibly procrastination? Some of it I’m sure is the worry that I’ll spend so long typing it up, only to have no one interested. Because of that I feel like I never have time to write, but in the same token I often feel like I never have time to breath. Right now isn’t an ideal time for anything, since we’re currently in the process of renovating and also moving house. But one day? I’ll hopefully finish my book… In all honesty, I feel like its just something I’m meant to do. Before I die it would be amazing to have a “Belinda Smith” novel published.

As part of the competition, I need to suggest 3 other people who might like to take part in this competition. As such I’m suggesting my three favourite blogs. These are:

Amy @ Cocktails in Teacups
Rhiannon @ The Sparkly Panda
and Kate @ Just Pirouette and Carry On

However if any of you want to enter, the link is at the beginning of this post – you can find all the details on that page. Last entry is 2nd August, so you still have a fair amount of time to get posting!

So what would be on your Bucket List?

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For anyone who is vaguely interested, this is the prologue I have written for my book so far:


“Now don’t get me wrong my love,” she said, standing behind him with her hands on his shoulders “I’m very happy to have fallen in love with you, but I’m just saying, perhaps it’s not right for everyone.”
He didn’t reply, but simply shrugged instead. He wasn’t really sure if his wife wanted his opinion or not.
“Some people just can’t cope with it” she continued, sliding her hands down his chest, wrapping them around him and leaning her chin on his shoulder. “You only have to look around you to see that.”
“Not all of that is love.” he answered, shaking his head “You can’t blame love for every action people make.”
“How about jealousy and distrust? Isn’t love to blame for them?” She lifted her chin slightly and angled her head so she could see his face better. The thought crossed her mind that he was just as handsome as the day she’d first seen him.
He turned his head away, momentarily annoyed. “Well you’d certainly know about distrust…” he looked at her pointedly before adding “…wouldn’t you?”
She flinched slightly, the tone in his voice taking her by surprise. “I thought we’d got past all that.” She pulled away from him, standing up straight again. “I was stupid, untrusting and I listened to rumours, but you weren’t exactly trusting with me either. You didn’t even believe that I would love you for who you really were.”
Immediately his heart softened and he reached for her arm, slowly pulling her around so that she was facing him. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have brought it up again.” He pulled her gently down onto his knee and kissed her, feeling her weaken. “I’m sorry.”
She smiled at him for a moment, before slapping his shoulder in mock anger. “See! You just proved my point for me. Love makes people act crazy!”
He laughed at her. Always so much passion in everything she argued, whether she truly believed it or not. “But that’s what makes love so great. It makes you vulnerable, open to new possibilities. Everything is more beautiful, everything has more colour to it. When you’re in love, you feel like you can fly.” He winked, grinning cheekily.
Feeling herself grin automatically, she got up from where she was sitting and turned her back to him, feeling distracted from her point. “That doesn’t always last though, does it? Falling in love can be wonderful, but what about falling out of love? The hurt, the pain, the tears. Wouldn’t we just be better off without it at all?”
“What do they say? Better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.”
“I’m not so sure.” She shook her head.
He stood up and moved to wrap his arms around her this time. “What about sex? Passion, lust… pleasure…” he kissed her neck as he spoke the last word.
She felt herself waver for a moment but she loosened herself from his embrace and turned around to face him. “No” she shook her head again “I honestly think that for some people, love or lust, would be better off out of the picture.”
Frustrated by her brush off, he made a snap decision. “All right then” he said “How about a friendly bet?” He raised his eyebrows, challenging her in a way he knew she couldn’t refuse. “I say that love is needed for harmony and order and you say the world would be better off without it, so let’s see shall we?”
A smile began to spread across her face. “What did you have in mind…?”