An update from Golightly Gardens

Hi everyone. It’s been a bit of a whirlwind January, and I’m sitting here having a cuppa on my lunch break, sort of wondering where the month went. In A Good Way, mostly, which is great.

We were kept busy by Jump Start January, doing one good thing every day. If you want to look back through any of the posts and comments, it’s all stored in the Jump Start category. There was also a Tenner Week, where I managed to live on £10 a week and stay within budget, and I didn’t rush out to the shops immediately afterwards. For all things related to Tenner Week, feel free to browse the new Live on £10 section.

The Jump Start 2013 ebook was also released, and made it to #5 in the Amazon Personal Finance downloads chart. That was a bit of a shock, but a very, very welcome one. Many thanks to everyone who’s bought a copy so far! It can be used all year round too, so there’s still plenty of time to treat yourself if you fancy one.

In other news, after promising to do this for about, er, three and a half years or so, I have finally created a Facebook page for this site. I’m really looking forward to hearing your news and views on there, so please give us a quick ‘like’ when you have a moment. There’s currently a poll on the Penny Golightly Facebook page where you can vote on the kinds of articles you’d like to see more of on this blog, so it would be great to have your opinion.

One more thing, I’m planning on doing a lot of stuff about seasonal food and grow your own vegetables and fruit this year. As 40% of households don’t have a garden, I’ll be paying a lot of attention to container and windowsill gardening, as well as growing food in back gardens or on allotments. I’ve set up a separate ‘Golightly Gardens’ Twitter page for all of that, so if you’re a foodie or a gardener then you are very welcome to follow over there.

I’ve been doing a few seed swaps and going to events, and it’s all been lots of fun so far. Special thanks to Rosie Slosek of One Man Band Accounting for donating me some lovely looking seeds too.

This site was also mentioned over on Yahoo! Finance UK in an article about kitchen cupboards and food waste. Many thanks to Felicity Hannah for including us.

What’s next?

February is going to be very busy with seasonal food and gardening writing, I think.

I’ll also be bringing back ‘Extra, Extra’ for 2013, where I try to earn some extra money outside of my day job. Like last year it will include selling on eBay, earning cashback, doing paid surveys, and so on, plus I’ll be trying a few more methods out as well.

Alongside ‘Extra, Extra’, I thought it would be nice to commit to a few savings-related projects as well, seeing as I haven’t written much about savings on here before. I’ll put my own goals up and make a few suggestions, and I’m really interested to see what other people come up with too.

Looking further ahead, there will be another Tenner Week and another Jump Start month, possibly March or April, with some new activities and topics included. Stay tuned.