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Flu Shot 2015

I had my flu shot over the weekend & it’s resulted in this giant lump yesterday. It’s about as big as a standard size mug bottom. The ring around it was done by my colleague who wanted to make sure it didn’t grow any bigger.

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I was not a happy camper at all. My boss has the theory that it’s a reaction indicative of how bad a flu I would have caught had I not got the injection. Old wives tale or partial truth? You be the judge to that.

App Review – Gardenate

I’m a pretty keen amateur gardener & was using the good old fashion pen & paper when it came to recording the progress of my garden or what I’ve planted where. I’ve been following the website Gardenate to have a bit of an idea on what to plant when. I have been waiting for the app to finally come to Android, and forgot all about it till recently. I’ve been building up quite a bit of credit on the Google Play Store by doing the surveys & decided that I needed to spend it soon before they expire. I might do another post at a later date explaining about the surveys for people who might be interested as I found it quite a nifty way to make some money on Google to purchase stuff. Good win-win advertising on Google’s behalf.

Anyway, I digress. I started using the Gardenate app in February or March & have found it pretty good so far.

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This is the landing page you get to when you open the app. There are a few tabs on the top & they are rather self explanatory. I like the simplistic design of it all, making it rather easy to navigate around. I haven’t used the wish list yet, just cause I’ve been pretty well stocked in terms of seeds at the moment, maybe in about a year or so when my supply dwindles, I’ll try it out.

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The Planting Now tab features the types of plants that can be planted according to what month it is. I take this tab with a grain of salt as I also go according to the specific seed packet as well as the present weather conditions.

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This tab features the things I’ve planted & the locations. Kind of like a digital map of my veggies. And good news is that the app is available on iOS as well as Android OS.

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There’s also the All Plants & Diary tabs which are pretty helpful in identifying any plants that you might consider planting & it gives details of suitable planting conditions & tips.

All in all, I quite like the app as I can always refer back to what I’ve planted when & replant stuff if they aren’t successful. They even feature a plant again button so that you can press it & it’ll document that you’ve planted something on that day.

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I find it very handy to know when I can roughly expect my veggies to be harvested. The app is able to link to your calender to insert a reminder when things can be harvested. Good to know as I’ve planted some things for the first time & have no idea how long it takes.

All in all, I really like this app in all its simplicity & for all the information provided in it. I bought the app for $2.58 I think, from memory & it’s one of the better ones I’ve spent my money on. Do you use any gardening apps? Let me know in the comments below!

App Review – Monefy

It’s without a doubt that I spend a lot of my time on my phone (my trusty Samsung Galaxy Note 4) each day, reading stuff on blogs, going on social media, as well as making phone calls. I figured, that given that the majority of you will own a smartphone, I’d review a few of my favourite apps for the Android OS. Sorry iPhone users, I don’t use one anymore & can’t review any!

I tweeted this week about the money tracker app that I recently purchased, Monefy. I tried the free version for a while & liked it & decided to fork over the money for the full version (AUD$2.58). I’ve been doing Google surveys & have earned quite a nice sum in the Play store, hence the decision to buy it was a pretty easy one.

The full version has the ability to password lock, sync to Dropbox & a few other features. I particularly like the visual display & the pastel colours of the app. I’m a bit of a visual person, and being able to see the percentage of my money being allocated to certain categories is really handy.

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Please forgive the stickers, I’d rather keep my actual balance sheet private. The balance at the bottom shows you how much is left after you spend stuff. The ability to categorise spending works well for the librarian in me, there isn’t a shortage of categories to choose from either – going from house, bills, eating out, groceries, right to entertainment, taxis, toiletries & clothes. Now if you’re not like Becky Brandon (nee Bloomwood) & makes excuses to categorise dining tables from a trip away as essential items, I think you’ll survive.

You can view your spending in daily, weekly, monthly or yearly modes & even go into a budget mode where every dollar is allocated to something – including savings. I’m by no mean a financial expert but I love dealing with figures & coming up with ways to challenge myself to save more & pay off my mortgage sooner. That would be another post for another day.

The ability to be able to enter purchases or bills in advance is really handy if you’re short on time or forget to account for recurring expenditure or bills. I’ve entered my mortgage payments in a few times & also my utilities. It’s been a pretty good visual representation of how each dollar is spent. You can also enter if you paid cash or card for certain things. Helpful if you need to keep track of how much plastic gets used in planning for potential credit card spend control.

There are many more features to this app & I’ll be playing around with it some more & might report back at a later date. So far, I’d give it a 4.5/5. Just cause I can’t set recurring expenses like mortgage payments to occur. Other than that, a fantastic app!

What’s your favourite money tracker app? Let me know!

Garden Updates April 2015

The cold has just started to set in properly, the mercury dipped down to a chilly 11 degrees last night! The days are getting shorter & it is certainly getting harder to crawl out of bed in the dark each morning & drag myself to work.

I’ve planted my winter veggies in their mini greenhouse – kale, Brussel sprouts, purple broccoli & green broccoli. They look like they’re taking a while to make an appearance & are slowly growing in the shade.

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My Mila radishes are almost ready to eat, my basil has almost stopped producing & my butter beans & snake beans are giving out the last of their wares. The peas that I’ve put in last month are making a steady appearance with the cold. I’ve created a decent amount of pesto from my basil, given that I was late in planting them out this season. I must say, I’m pretty proud of the pesto. It’s the first time I’ve made it from home grown basil.

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I’ve also put in a fresh crop of silverbeet & rainbow chard as my current plants have been going for a good 5 months or so. I figured it was time to remove the old, revitalise the soil & put in some more. They were one of my better producing crops, with very little maintenance required apart from keeping the bugs away!

Being verge collection in the neighbouring council, we managed to get some nice big pots & I have made a start on more planting with them. I’ve put in the long white icicle radish & have plans for a few more items like leeks & onions just to make use of the portable space afforded with the pots.

I’ve got many other things growing in the garden too at the moment – chillis (Devil’s Brew, jalepenos & 2 other unknown types), capsicum, sweet potato, carrots, broad beans & chives to name a few. It’s going to be a pretty good growing season ahead!

What have you got in your garden this month?

The Week That’s Been

It’s been one of those weeks post public holidays that is a 5 day week but feels shorter. Anyone else with me? It’s just weird.

It hasn’t been a particularly exciting week, mainly cause things at work has been very quiet & I’m waiting to hear back on the job hunting front. The problem with having a job while looking for another is the ability to take time off work to attend interviews. I haven’t dared to apply for as many positions as I would’ve liked because of this, but the ones I’m picking & choosing are my better picks in a sense. Better to hedge my bets at this point than lose my job completely.

Here’s my week in pictures!

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I found a plant growing in a drain in St Georges Terrace while walking to work one day. Someone on Instagram pointed out that things just grow where they want sometimes, which reminded me of tenacity & when there’s a will, there’s a way. Was good motivation to keep me perky in my job hunting.

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Matt & I were chatting about playing Borderlands 2 this weekend when this typo came about. Haha luckily I knew what was going on, but I haven’t seen him type so many messages so quick in a while!

I’ve got a few things on my list of things to do this weekend which include:
– Studying
– Fixing some broken plugins on my blog
– Sorting out my phone data sharing issues
– Sorting out my TV warranty & repair

What have you got planned for your weekend? Anything remotely exciting? Comment below!