Live on £4000 for a Year, 2009 Challenge, part 1

cw18

Skint_Lynne wrote: »

Not looking forward to staying in a hotel by myself but I'll be ok. Got my moby, laptop, and will take some dvd's and cd's for the journey back.

Don't forget your mains cables / battery charger leads.....

(here speaks the voice of experience :rolleyes2 )

sophiesmum_2

Skint_Lynne wrote: »

I'm just going to have some hoc choc DG. Well, I'm off to my training tomorrow and I'll be home on Friday. I'm taking my laptop with me and hopefully they will have facilities in the hotel.:D I don't think that I could live without you all for a week.:eek:

I'm driving back so will need to remember the tom tom so that I get back. Not looking forward to staying in a hotel by myself but I'll be ok. Got my moby, laptop, and will take some dvd's and cd's for the journey back.

Hoping to take full advantage of expenses, (should be free meals etc), and not to spend an awful lot of my own cash.

Nite all. xx

Good luck with the training SL - where do you have to go?
Keep in touch with us all if possible, I look forward to your posts at night:D

Skint_Lynne

Thanks Cheryl,

The moby charger is packed and I'll put the laptop away (complete with cable) in the morning.

Sophiesmum, I'm going to Leicester, the plane is going to birmingham and someone will pick me up there. When I am going home, it will take about 5 hours.:eek:

I went to Leeds and back on the same day, so I should be okay with that. Tom tom is getting packed in the morning, I've got to get it out of the car. Hopefully I can get on at night if they have the facilities in the hotel, I was meant to be getting a blackberry, but BT mucked that up.:mad: Never mind, most places have Wireless nowadays, so fingers crossed!!

Skint_Lynne

I'm just drinking my hot choc which is actually cocoa. I bought this as I am now a moneysaver and thought I would kill 2 birds with the one stone. It got me to thinking when I was going to the till, what's the difference between hot choc and cocoa........................I have found this out. Cocoa is very very bitter and I have had to lace it with sugar.:rolleyes:

It will be handy for baking with though. I also got whoopsied german salami type sausage for 58p. They made a mistake with this as there were loads with a date of 10th feb on it and mine was 22nd Feb. Not my fault though.

I also done something else...............I found a receipt in Tesco disacarded at the self service till which had not been used by a clubcard member. I took it to customer services and got the points.:D It's only worth 7p, but as they say, every little helps.:p Nite folks, hopefully I can get on tomorrow night. xx

[Deleted User]

Morning all!

I've been awake for hours very annoying! First day I could have had a proper lie-in too as its my first day of maternity leave today :j

I think I will save alot more money staying at home as when I'm at work I tend to drift around town at lunch time and waste money. Things are changing tho, have to make DH's pack-ups and cook tea now EVERY night (we used to share) so that could be interesting!

Have a good day everyone

xx

bails

Morning everyone! it's interesting that diet has come up as I've been thinking a lot about my food over the weekend. I've decided to refocus on more organic produce. This will of course affect my budget, especially this year when I'll be growing less, but I'm hoping that we'll be able to reduce spends in other areas of the grocery budget. It's a bit of an experiment to see how much we'll be able to afford but healthwise it's priceless of course.

For those following the low GI/GL path, I have a great recipe book by Patrick Holford which is very simple and yummy :T

Good luck with your training SL, hope you can log on. Sorry to hear about the early start Loopylou, I do this too on days I can lie in! Enjoy your maternity leave.

On the food topic, I'm off to the supermarket in a bit to start us off. I won't be throwing any of our current food out,of course, just gradually replacing it.

Have a good day all, I've got sign language later and possibly the gym so will catch up tonight x

Frugaldom

bails wrote: »

Has anyone got cashback for W@terstones please? Qu1dco offer 8%, wondered if anyone could better that? I want to buy an (expensive) book about my illness, no joy at libraries, Ebay etc etc. I can get 10% off though with my NUS card

Bails, T0pca$hback has 8% cashback but also a 10% off voucher code if you click on the tab there.

Prudent, you'll still be with us even though you aren't taking part. Good luck with your other projects & challenges

Andromache, well done on getting the India flights booked, you must be really excited already - summer is just around the corner, almost

Skint Lynne, good luck with the training, hope you find wireless connection somewhere close by even if it is MacD's

Loopylou, I hope you can resolve the cooking dinner dilema without any conflict, do you want to be a fulltime mum & frugal housekeeper/homemaker? You could always point out to OH that minimum wage is £5.73/hr and it'll take you X hours to prepare dinner each day. :rotfl: On duty 24/7 as child carer & homemaker/housekeeper is worth £962.64 gross per week just on minimum wage! :eek: :rotfl: You're worth an absolute fortune!

It's dry and cold here today, ground still has a little of yesterday's snow. I have quite a few seedlings to sort out and want to get a few more tomato, pepper, herb seeds planted to bring them on indoors. Also planning to get a few onions, cabbages and cauliflowers in before the end of this month. Oh yes, and I am still working on the kitchen project. I'll try to make a start on the curtains later this afternoon.

Back later to check how everyone is, make the best of the day whatever you are up to

Brighton_belle

Good to hear continued progress on project kitchen NYK.
I'm slowly getting to grips with reorganising former dining room and 'new' kitchen. I've been adding a couple of extra shelves into the dining room alcove: that's the benefit of have one of those systems with 2 strips of slotted metal fixed to the wall and you can addin extra shelves/move them about just by getting more brackets.
I've had 5 shelves about 1.5 ft apart for ages and find things have piled up so I have to lift off stuff to get at what I need at that moment. As this includes some relatively heavy oven dishes this can be a chore if my wrists/elbows are playing up arthritically. So yesterday added in one more shelf to see if what I had could fit into smaller spaces and it works brilliantly. So am going to add two more this week, so have a series of shelves about 8" apart now and most things now in single layers I can lift easily off the shelf :j .

Todays task is to fill in big horrid form that does me head in just thinking about it. Then relax with some 'creative me' time.

HH62

Hello everyone !

Not much to report really. Bathroom is still cold because of that radiator that needs bleeding - I'm going to have to go to the Big Orange DIY store tomorrow for something to turn the thing with. I need to do a grocery shop anyway, so I'll do Mr T at the same time as they're close to each other.

NSD today.

Interesting to see the posts on diets. I don't understand the difference, is there is one, between low GI/low GL. I've been doing a bit of low carb a couple of weeks ago - was all fine except my food bills went through the roof.
Interested to see sophiesmums comment on it and I'll pay more interest to her menu's in future !

Bit cold, a bit fed up, but at least I'm not spending

skint_chick

Back from Mr T's and my new low GI diet is in force - I've got chickpeas, lentils, spinach, wholewheat pasta and flour, oatbran, bran flakes and some organic chopped tomatoes that were whoopsied. Also got ingredients for OH's Valentine's present and card making stuff and his favourite pizzas half price. Bought lots but managed to spend over £50:eek: :eek: although I did save money on petrol because of it. Have enough to last more than 2 weeks with veg top ups so it's not too bad.

HH62 - GI is a set value according to the effect on your blood sugar but the GL is variable depending on what you have with the food item as part of your meal- apparently by putting milk on cereals it reduces the GL down? I'm supposed to eat low GI foods as much as poss but make sure my GL doesn't exceed 70 a day. It's all a bit complicated so I photocopied the little tables from library books so I can check up when I'm stuck - it's like Weight Watchers points all over again - but without the frozen choc brownies