Kymbogs' long slow (and possibly painful) debt-free journey!

kymbogs

Babies both asleep so it's all nice and quiet here for the time being. Just grabbing a sandwich while I do a post.

Got a letter from Scottish Power today but it was just another statement for the last two weeks :rolleyes: what was the point in that. I'm hoping to hear whats going to happen about the ridiculously overestimated statements I was getting (10000 kwh overestimated to be precise) and seeing as they said I owed them money, maybe they'll decide now that they owe me money...yeah right.

When the girls are up from their naps we're going to (finally!) go down to the soft play centre and Husband is going to meet us there when he gets into town from work - he finishes early on fridays. Every day I decide we're going to go down there the sun comes out, it's gorgeous today, but I still don't fancy letting Molly play in the garden as it has rained for about a week really heavily and the grass/soil is still going to be pretty soggy I reckon.

Have had 2 loads of washing hung out today, I love line-dried washing! Not that I have a tumbler anyway, I just prefer it dried outside to dried in the bathroom...

I managed to pull large chunks of plastic off the front of two of my freezer drawers :mad: they just did not want to open! The milk i put in yesterday has expanded a lot and was causing a jam. Might have to look into getting replacement drawer fronts as they are pretty jagged.

Speaking of jam, I got some cooking apples with the shop yesterday so now need to get some rosehips and make some rosehip jelly. Which also means I need to fish out some jars to put it in!

But right now I'm going to go and do some preparations for our tea tonight, having toad-in-the-hole with veg and some new spuds so I'm going to peel the veg etc and make up the Yorkshire pud batter and put it in the fridge. Molly had a hot lunch (still off her food though) so I will probably get her a toasted currant teacake from the Big Blue Frog and we'll have our tea when the babies are in bed.

K,M&Mx

Bargainfinder_3

kymbogs wrote: »

Hey BF, have a great holiday, let me know when you get back and I can do a one-post-recap for you on what you've missed lol xx

I'll look forward to it:rotfl: Toad in the hole sounds nice.. what is the big blue frog??!!!

kymbogs

This evening whilst the toad was cooking I knocked up a lemon cake for the picnic on Sunday, I also spotted 3 over-ripe bananas lurking in the fruit bowl (I hate eating bananas like that, I like them when they've just turned yellow) and remembered having seen a banana loaf recipe in the River Cottage Family Cookbook so sent Husband up to get it and made one of those too, it smells absolutely divine! The cake not the Husband. It felt quite festive, not sure why, maybe cos it was getting dark so much earlier, and I had something in the oven and veg on the hob and I was cooking and being stressed - sounds like christmas to me. Husband also helped by lining the cake and loaf tins for me, and he also mashed the banana - every little helps

Spending for today;
Entry to Big Blue Frog (soft play centre) - £3.25
Jug of squash - £1.45
2 x toasted currant teacakes - £1.60

TOTAL - £6.30

This comes out of my 'travel and expenses' budget which is for taking the girls out and about. I have £60 down on my budget but have never had the money left to take them out very regularly before, however we ended the pay-month with £30 to spare Wonder what we'll have at the end of this month! (which is actually September 18th).

I've just done some rejigging on the budget actually. Put the CTC up as while they are looking at my dispute they aren't taking the 'overpayment' off, apparently this could go on indefinitely :eek: Also we decided to cancel the pet insurance (£10.70 a month) as it has an excess of £50 anyway that we'd still have to pay in the event of an accident or illness, and I know the vets we use offers payment plans if necessary.

Though I have said that I'll have a look if there's any offers on through cashback sites and see if I can get the insurance cheaper AND get some cashback while I'm at it.

In the morning we're going to town to take library books back and we have an appointment at the bank to (finally!) open bank accounts for Molly and Megan. I also need to get the baking potatoes for the picnic/bbq on Sunday and a lemon to do the frosting for the lemon cake I made - which came out flat as a pancake by the way. Hopefully once I've put a layer of buttercream and lemon curd from last week in the middle, and the frosting on the top, it will be a) sickly as hell and b) a bit taller. And we will probably end up getting a coffee somewhere and yes it will probably be Costa's, I know the prices are terrifying but they are so helpful when we go in with the babies and don't mind us clogging the place up with pushchairs. I'd rather pay the extra and have a nice experience than be treated like something they just stepped in and pay for the privelige which is what happens in a lot of cafes.

I've thought about taking coffee in a flask and sitting on a bench but don't think we've got to that stage quite yet!

K,M&Mx

kymbogs

Thanks to hosting the picnic today we have some leftovers, quite a lot of salad, pork pies, sausage rolls, quiche, and am happy I have half my gorgeous lemon cake left

I made a new cake cos I was totally ashamed of the other one! But have put it in the freezer and if I should need sponge for something (tiramisu or trifle) I can use that.

Went to town as planned yesterday, I picked up 2 of those storage containers with the flip-top bits for pouring cereal out of and I've put the porridge oats and value rice crispies in these. I was looking for 2 mattress protectors for the cots - Molly has decided the fun thing to do in the morning is take her nappy off...and a couple of times she's left a puddle. They only had single bed ones though and I didn't want to have a load of extra tucked under the mattresses cos it would make them all lumpy and be no good for the babies. I found a pack of 4 pillow protectors for £1.99 and will cut them so they open out and should cover at least most of the mattress. Bargain!

Other than buying some baking potatoes and lemons, oh and some cards and 2 gift vouchers for Husbands' niece and nephews' birthdays in September, that was it...OK so that was more than was intended really but the vouchers would need getting sooner or later and the idea was we'd be able to give them to Husbands brother today to keep for them but we forgot!

Husband is off work tomorrow for the bank holiday, trying to think of something to do but am drawing the usual blank...would be nice if I could find somewhere we could go berry picking but it'd have to be somewhere easy enough to get to. Sigh.

I was SO close to saying sod it and ordering a curry last night, I was tired and hungry and we had chilli down for tea and the mince needed cooking, and if I opened it to make the chilli I'd have to make the bolognese for the month too - but after sitting down and resigning us to a curry and about £18 out of our budget for the month, I gave myself a mental slap and got up again and went and made a huge pot of chilli and another of bolognese which is now in the freezer in 2-person-portion bags.

Anyway I'm off for now.

K,M&Mx

Karmacat

kymbogs wrote: »

Hiya KC how the devil are you?

I'm good! I have a looonnngg day at work on Fridays (in London) and I was so tired I fell asleep on the train home (it gets in to my town at 11pm, full of youngsters out to the clubs. Embarrassing!).

But still tired over the weekend, of course, and just about caught up now. Your picnic sounds lovely - and I understand the thing about going to costa for the nice experience, I'd do that in your situation - you just go less frequently than you would otherwise....

Had a quiet time over the weekend - went for a good walk, tho, had tea with friends, and did a set of matched bets - just finishing now, as a matter of fact. But I wanted to do another set, and I couldn't get the site to work... hi ho.... thats something you might get to.

Still another day of the holiday - going to do some gardening hopefully. As you say, its soaking, makes it difficult. Hope you have a good one too.

kymbogs

So yesterday instead of spending the morning moaning about not being able to think of something to do we decided to just get things together for the day and head out and see where we ended up.

Of course given that we have a choice of 3 directions to go in from the end of the road, one of them heads up to a desolate place of nothingness, another heads into more rows of terraces that don't offer anything interesting and the last heads down past the shops and into town it's fairly obvious that we'd end up in town really!

We went into Home Bargains on the way down to see if there were any, well, bargains. I got two baskets of rather nice looking Belgian chocolates for 99p each, my idea being that when I make my gift baskets for christmas pressies I can seperate the choccies into 4's and put some in each basket. Got two bags of Chupa Chups lollies to go in the younger ones' hampers, they were 59p each.

In the Piece Hall (Britains oldest standing cloth hall apparently) the 'First Annual Piece Hall Music Festival' was slowly churning into life, apparently most of the bands were held up on their way back from Leeds Festival so some poor hungover bloke ended up doing an impromptu acoustic set. So we sat on the blanket we'd taken with us in the Piece Hall for a bit and listened and Molly repeatedly ran off. Good job she's so CUTE.

We pottered about town for a bit after that but didn't get up to much, I did buy a cooling rack as I've been searching high and low for one. No more soggy bread-bottoms! When we came home I roasted the chicken which was down on the meal plan for this coming Sunday but I haven't got room in the freezer for it. I used to be terrible at getting meat off chickens and would take off the breast meat and the rest would go in the bin. Last night I got tons off it and am going to use some of it to make a chicken canneloni which has been mentioned on the Grocery Challenge thread along with some smoked bacon I've taken out of the freezer. Spose I better go do that....

K,M&Mx

kymbogs

I made a terrible mistake today. I went to ASDA.

It just made a nice change to be able to go! Molly went to my mums and will be staying the night so it was just me and Megan. I wanted to see if they had any plant pots reduced for next year (they didn't btw) and I also didn't fancy not going anywhere all day but it's wet and windy so town wasn't a very appealing prospect.

I did quite well with reduced things though. I needed some fish for the fish pies on the meal plan and got that half price, also got a giant pack of mince for £3 which will be part of OCTOBERS meals :eek: and some other bits and bobs for the freezer. Just got to try and get them in now!!!
And ASDA had in the Philadelphia that I've had a free voucher for in my wallet for about a month now. I printed it out and took it along to the Tesco in town, they didn't have it, and the Sainsburys didn't either. So am glad I finally found it and managed to get my free cheese. Also the voucher took £1.34 off the total even though the cheese was on offer at 99p

I did treat myself to a small pizza to have for tea as I thought Husband was going to do his roleplaying tonight but he's just emailed to say he's coming home as there's no game. What a shame, he doesn't like pepperoni and pineapple so he can have one of the other things I got, save me trying to get it in the freezer.

I wanted a small pack of dried apricots as I only really use them for baking but they only had giant ones which were £1.88 each! Get this, 2 for £2 :rolleyes: so I got the big bag of apricots for cooking and a bag of mixed dried fruits to see if Molly likes them as they were in the offer too. Just had a thought actually, I bought some white choc chips to put away for my christmas pressie baking (white choc and cranberry cookies) and I decided I could probably get away with white chocolate and apricot cookies instead? I may have to make some and see

So thats £28.86 added onto my total for the month. We really need to get some chickens, I seem to be spending a fortune on eggs lately. Though probably not as much as it would cost to run a couple of chickens...

I did put a sneaky magazine in the trolley which I took out again when I got to the checkout

Fingers crossed for the weather holding out till my bedding is dry please!

K,M&Mx

amyandjon

ive slipped into the habit of nipping to asda grrrr and spending what i shouldnt... i dont buy magazines anymore lol thats one thing i stopped buying when i realised i hd a mountain of debt tehe.... sometimes its just nice to buy asda cooked chicken tonight we will have chicken and salad we have some chicken breasts to have hehe .... im been really good on diet...... grrrrrr od like to tuck into a nice big bar of chocolate hahaha :P

kymbogs

oh don't get me started, I have so much weight to lose it's ridiculous! But I don't eat so terribly really. I guess you're trying to lose weight for the wedding?

kymbogs

Yay for NSD's! Apart from the fact that I'm bored stiff, am trying to think of something fun and indoors to do with Molly when she gets up from her nap.

Oh having said that...nah I can still call it a NSD. I've ordered a 'baby organic veg box' from Abel and Cole for just over a tenner, it will be delivered on Monday and will be charged on Monday so not today. I will get £10 for it through quidco too, so it's only cost me about 50p and it says it's full of fruit and veg suitable for weaning and feeding young children, I'm banging my head against the wall trying to think of things to feed Molly, and I'll be weaning Megan next week and can't decide what to give her for her very first meal!

Husbands old bank keep hassling him, he has a £100 overdraft on an old account and we originally told them they could have £1.50 a week but I figured we could stretch to a fiver a week which he told them last night so they should leave him alone now. I know it wants paying off but they're not a priority as he's not being charged for it anymore! Oh well it will be paid off soon then the money can go onto something else.

Am trying to find some daily clicks to do, keep seeing in peoples sigs that they make a bit of cash from it over the year so it has to be worth doing, must bookmark them all in one place so it's easy to do quickly each day