Rewarding Challenges

Today I had an appointment with the physio to treat these painful shin splints (pain in the muscle), I will hopefully go for a small jog tonight or tomorrow morning and following stretches three times a day and arch supports for my shoes I should be back to pounding the streets and longer distances (or should I say gracefully striding along on my toes) fingers crossed as I'm finding running very rewarding of late.
 Speaking of rewarding, today was the end of our sugar challenge!!!  I found it really helped my diet in ways previously mentioned and although I cannot wait to indulge in pancakes with maple syrup and strawberries I have no desire to eat 2-3 rows of chocolate or add sugar to my coffee.
 Another area that I've been challenging myself lately is the dreaded budget.  I like to go over it every couple of months, especially when I feel like going on a big shopping spree it changes my perspective of whats important.  So this month the aim was to cut food and groceries down buy $100 per week and general spending/shopping down by $150 per week.  In two weeks I've gotten groceries down by $200 and I've not been shopping for myself or the children or home etc in a fortnight!  I don't know how long this will last but if I can achieve a month of no clothes shopping etc every say six months and stick to the new budget every spending month than  that would be quite wonderful.  My budget is quite generalized for spending I have food (this includes cafes,groceries and even magazines), general spending(clothes, entertainment, toys, car wash etc),  bills, house repayments/ interest, fuel and cash out.  I find this gives me a little more freedom, if I want to eat out a lot one week I'll cut down on some items at the supermarket etc.  Some days or weeks we need a little frivolity as opposed to counting every last dollar.  Next month I'm going to compare our electricity supplier with others and hopefully safe a bit there also.  Going back to my groceries and food budget I've replaced one of my Safeway shops with Aldi and have found a great little fruit shop which has great tasting produced (sometimes a little blemished, less chemicals perhaps?) and it's really very cheap.  We only eat meat 2-3 times a week, although we eat fish 2-3 times which can be expensive however very HEALTHY so worth it, And also I'm going to save heaps on Chocolate and Sugar!! x