little white truths

I sat down to write a review post this morning and didn't feel like doing that, so instead I've decided to write my monthly positives two weeks early.

I mean, why not. We're all sick and the kids are both home for a full day today, plus I had the monitors last night so I've been up listening to coughing all night long. I'm tired, flat and over it.

Sounds like a good day for a positives post ; )

I made my first Mecca order in months this morning

As you may know, I was on skincare and makeup spending bans for the first half of this year, and then I opened things up for June before returning to my makeup spending ban and going on a skincare low buy from 1 July.

While I did buy a few things in June, I'd already hit Level 3 status in Mecca's Beauty Loop program by then so I had to save the Mecca gift card I got for my birthday, and I wasn't able to use it until this morning. I'd hoped to buy Goldfaden MD's Wake Up Call with the card, but unfortunately it must have sold out in the last few days because this morning it said 'unavailable' and I had to remove it from my cart. Foo!

What this meant is that I had to use the gift card on makeup because there's no skincare I need at the moment (but I am low on a few makeup items), so I bought a tinted moisturiser and added a mini mascara to make up the value of the card, which I'm allowed to do under my no buy rules because gift card money isn't 'real' money - and I wasn't going to buy random skincare for the sake of it. Can't wait for my goodies to arrive : )

It's shaping up to be a reasonable panning month

I feel like this is the month when I'm finally starting to see decent progress in terms of finishing off the older items in my collection. I knocked out another Project Pan item this morning and I'm a hair's breadth from panning one of my products from Pan that Palette, which means that I can bring something else into the challenge if I want to.

What's good about all this is that not only am I removing more items and streamlining my collection, but I'm also opening up some gaps in my everyday panning routine so I can start playing more with other things - so more stuff is getting used, more often.

This has to be a good thing. I don't like it when things sit around gathering dust. Indeed, my aim for the remainder of the panning year will be to ensure that I have enough room to play with my non-panning items, because this ensures that no product is being forgotten throughout the year.

Things have calmed down a bit (touch wood)

The lead-up to the EOFY in Australia is always a big time and for some reason, every year, that's when I get a whole bunch of work coming in and need to balance that alongside all the tax admin I have to do (I'm self-employed so I do all my own tax).

This meant that May and June were super busy, and of course on top of all that the kids decided to get sick (damn winter) and my daughter had a big fall and almost lost her front teeth. Ach, it was awful.

Thankfully things have calmed down now (touch wood) and once I'd submitted my tax, I decided to give myself two weeks off work before getting stuck into it again, so I've done that now and this week I'll start up again. 

While I wouldn't say that things are particularly calm at the moment - hard to ever say that, with two toddlers - but they're not as bad as they were and one must always be thankful for small mercies ; )

We have a full social calendar for the next month

This can be both a good and a bad thing because too many engagements can cause extra stress we don't need, but I'm choosing to put it down as a positive and we'll deal with the details later ; )

Over the next month we have a couple of kids' birthday parties, events at our local kinder and some of Mex's friends coming out from Mexico to visit us - plus we have a few catch-ups and parties with different people spotted along the way.

If I think too much about all that then I'll start to wonder how we're going to squeeze it all in, so I've decided instead to just look at it all as a positive thing because we have plenty of reasons to rug up and leave the house in this foul, freezing weather we're having - rather than sitting around inside.

Geez I hate winter.

Our dog has recovered from surgery

Earlier in the year our Golden Retriever tore a ligament in her leg (the human equivalent of an ACL injury) and for that she needed surgery, following which we had to deal with an eight-week recovery process that wasn't easy.

At first we had to keep her in a playpen to restrict her movement, and for a while there we had to carry her outside to use the bathroom so she wouldn't put weight on her leg (difficult when your dog weighs close to 40 kilos, let me tell you). Then she was allowed out of the playpen but we could only walk her for ten minutes a day on a lead - which of course she hated, because she's used to running around the park every day for an hour.

It was a slow two months and the poor dog didn't understand what was happening - in her mind she was totally fine - but we've come through it now and the leg is looking good, plus she's allowed to go to the park off-lead again. Thank golly.

In sum

That's all from me. I hope you've enjoyed this little post and that you have plenty of your own positives for the month.

What I'll aim to do today is get more photos edited to set myself up for the next week or two, but I can't see any more than that happening since I've been listening to the tantrums of my daughter all morning and it's rather hard to get anything done. Ach, looks like it's shaping up to be a bad one...

Hope all's well with you, and speak soon x

* All images courtesy of unsplash.com