Jump Start Jan 2017: Tenner Week: Day 4

We’re now moving on to Day Four of our Tenner week, and there’s a new theme for today. The activity is to treat yourself to some pampering and / or relaxation.

It’s up to you what you do today, but if possible try to put at least half an hour aside for unwinding or a few beauty treats. Most of us will have a few toiletries or other pampering goodies stored in our homes, and maybe you were given a few nice smellies in your Christmas stocking, so it should be easy enough to put something together for free.

Here are a few ideas:

• A long soak in the bath with candles
• A pedicure or manicure
• Shower scrub followed by body lotion or body butter
• Put your feet up and listen to relaxing music
• Apply some fast acting fake tan, wash off before bedtime
• Listen to a relaxation, meditation or sleep app
• Go to bed early and read, or listen to an audiobook
• Have a glass of wine and watch your favourite movie
• Double wash your face and slap on your fanciest serum or moisturiser
• Change into your pyjamas and snuggle up on the sofa
• Deep condition your hair, or make a face mask
• Give yourself a neck rub or foot massage, or get someone nice to do it for you

You get the idea – dig out those beauty goodies you’ve been saving for best and make the most of them, or put some time aside for yourself to properly wind down and switch off.

If you don’t have any pampering goodies to hand, look in magazines for free samples, or try a department store for free sachets of skincare etc.

What’s happening here

Yesterday I managed to have a play with the free colouring-in Pigment app, and it’s very cute. It’s also very difficult to go over the lines by accident, so I had better results than I was expecting. Is that cheating? Not sure, but it was kind of relaxing…

I did that in front of the TV, and ran up of 64 minutes of screen time. That was two recorded shows, with the ad breaks removed and not watching the end credits. Add that to what we watched on Sunday and that’s a grand total of 154 minutes. So that leaves me 86 minutes for the rest of the week – good thing I’m not planning on watching any tonight.

This evening I will be getting stuck into the pampering with some serious gusto, and also having a break from all screens large and small. While I’m not going as far as to call it a digital detox, I think it will be a pleasant change for the always-on lifestyle.

On the money front, I have now broken into my £10 note after a couple of good no-spend days. We didn’t cheat and stock up on anything before the challenge started so it was almost inevitable that we were going to run out of something. In this case it was milk and onions, so I stocked up on a four-pinter and a bag of cooking onions, costing £2.20 all in. That leaves £7.80 which should be enough to get by on unless we have some kind of emergency.

A couple of those onions went into our dinner last night. I made what I call a scruffy lasagne, which is a pasta bake with pasta shapes, quick vegetarian ragu sauce and instant white sauce on the top. Not something you’d serve to close friends at a dinner party but it was a tasty speedy supper.

There’s enough left over to have again tonight with some salad on the side, so I don’t even have to cook this evening. Perfect for a relaxing night in.

How are you going to pamper yourself or take time out to relax today?