Live on £4000 for a Year, 2009 Challenge, part 2

[Deleted User]

Morning all!

It has been hectic here over the last few days, DH has been working all hours cos he's been told theres only 5 weeks left for him so he's working while its there. I went for a long walk yesterday, thank goodness my sister came as well..... cut a long story short, 3 wheeler pushchair was too big & bulky to take on the walk (was over stiles etc!) :eek: and the path was too narrow, the front wheel 'went wonky' then a nice man from church fixed it! So we ended up walking with their family, him and his poor wife ended up manhandling the pushchair of doom and I carried Daisy for about 4-5 miles in a carrier. nnnoooooo! She's far too heavy for that but I dont feel too bad this morning (apart from very sunburnt arms) so it must've done me some good.
Been very rubbish on the challenge front, have tried not to spend much and have kept all the reciepts but havent found time to work them all out etc. Me & DH are self employed now so thats enough paperwork logging expenses etc.

Had to take Daisy to out-of hours doctors at hospital last night as she screamed from about 4pm to 9pm and nothing we were doing would calm her. She has a virus, sickness and diahhrea (cant spell sorry) she seems to be happier this morning so hopefully shes past the worst of it.

Desperatly trying to save some pennies, dont want to go back to work more than ever now.

Hope everyone else is okay, sorry for all the waffle! xx

cw18

nykmedia wrote: »

CW, Any dalmations I have known would be over those kind of heights without as much as a blink. I'd have thought you'd have needed at least a couple of feet in height just to deter him. As for the 'watering' near a veggie patch, umm.... I think I'd definitely be going for a fence around the edge as well. (Speaking as one who has fences everywhere to keep hens out. )

He can jump clean over things that are a couple of feet without batting an eyelid, but I've yet to see him jump ON to anything (except the couch, which he always knows he's in the wrong for doing and cowers when caught, and beds!) Haven't tried him near gardens with anything other than grass growing in them though, so am going to have to give serious consideration to dog-proofing everything before I finally get the 'landscaping' started.

He's actually very good about not helping himself to fruit & veg I leave lying around the house, so (as long as people don't feed him treats straight from the plants, but bring them inside before giving them to him) I actually think he'd learn very quickly not to help himself

The only exception has been red peppers, which were in the opened 'value' bag inside a carrier bag...... I lost 2 peppers in 2 days to him :eek: (But he knew not to eat the seeds, and spread them the entire length of my hallway carpet for me to sweep up instead :rolleyes2 )



Have just been through a few bags in the garage, and started filling my bin for the collection next Monday (they came just before I started on this)...... am now off to DDs for a couple of hours (at least) with my strimmer, so will catch up with you all later

HH62

Just a quick good morning, I hope to come back later to catch up a bit more. Had a NS weekend - spent nothing on Saturday or Sunday, and today should be NS too. I've been very boring and just stayed in trying to catch up with my studying and housework etc etc.

Hope everyone's enjoying their long weekend and the sunshine.

cha97michelle

nyk you certainly know your veg plants correcty identified. We also put some carrots and some garlic in that bed.

the other beds, 1 has potatoes, butternut squash, and cucumbers, and the other has parsnips, leeks, lettuces.

It's quite hard for me to tell what is weeds and not, so i am trying not to pick too much at them. I pulled up a carrot the other day by mistake.


The slugs, they were all in a big ball under the stone, so we scraped them into the green recycling bin and let recycling reggie deal with them. Any we have found since we have relocated by chucking over the fence at the back into the horses field. Probably a bit cruel, but there hasn't been much that has been munched so it really works.

loopy sorry to hear daisy isn't well. Hopefully she recovers really soon x

lilac_lady

Still struggling on but have really tightened up my spending (since last Friday...lol) as I'm way over budget. I had visitors staying with me and I know I spent a lot of money but feel that it was worth it.

If you have visitors for more than a few days, how do factor in the extra spending? Do you have another pot of money for this or do you deduct it from your annual spend?

I've just been doing a clothes declutter and don't think I'll need any more till the next century! Shoes and bags got ruthlessly dejunked so I'm beginning to take back control of my wardrobe.

I know I'll never be as good at spending less as many of you here but I'm sure this Forum is really helping me to cut back without feeling hand done by.

Brighton_belle

loved the raised bed pic Michelle - looks really good.
cw - I'm appreciating why it is taking a while to get your decluttering done. I've got loads to do, but summoning up the oomph takes forever.
Still, cut and fixed 6 shelves into bookcase carcas yesterday so have moved loads of books into dining room, freeing up space in our living room for more of OH's. The freecycle bookcase is deep enough to take a double layer of books, so the ones I want to keep, but don't particularly need on display are stored behind the ones you can see at the front of the shelves.

Today I need to go to a DIY store and buy some rail to fix for hanging clothes in our alcove so we can use the wardrobe as a store cuboard in our sitting room insteadc: we're trying to utilise our space in a new way in prep for switching our bed to the 'study'. I say 'we'. Really it's me doing it all but it's that or it doesn't get done... Still a little bit every day and I'll get there.

Last night I dreampt I kept ducks. Only the fence keeping them in consisted of a single wire: and yet I was suprised when one of them just slipped underneath it. It then flew up an sat in a tree. Somewhere my brain was saying... I'm sure they are not desigened to do that with webbed feet:rotfl:.

Frugaldom

Brighton_belle wrote: »

Last night I dreampt I kept ducks. Only the fence keeping them in consisted of a single wire: and yet I was suprised when one of them just slipped underneath it. It then flew up an sat in a tree. Somewhere my brain was saying... I'm sure they are not desigened to do that with webbed feet:rotfl:.

Surprisingly enough, the Muskovey ducks do exactly that - were the ones in your dream black & white, by any chance? LOL The mallards here fly all over the place and are really strong flyers, they normally manage to land less gracefully on the marsh but haven't seen any of them up trees and mine haven't tried that 'cos they haven't grown any wings yet.

Brighton_belle

nykmedia wrote: »

Surprisingly enough, the Muskovey ducks do exactly that - were the ones in your dream black & white, by any chance? LOL The mallards here fly all over the place and are really strong flyers, they normally manage to land less gracefully on the marsh but haven't seen any of them up trees and mine haven't tried that 'cos they haven't grown any wings yet.

No -they were archetypal ducks - white with yellow beak and feet & going quack:rotfl:

patchwork_cat

I do believe that toads love slugs too, so keep your toad onside! Mind I had a cat and the only thing he could ever catch were frogs, we rescued a few!One of my neighbours keeps putting awful slug pellets down to keep them off her hostas, grr. We did have a hedgehog around here, I hope it didn't eat one of her poisoned slugs.

They are quite a bain we put vaseline all over grow bags and pots, shingly stones, eggshells and beer traps, but they are still munching my Basil and Tarragon. DH goes out and picks them off and throws them onto the railway bank, but I believe they are supposed to be able to make their way back!

I thought the black and white duck was a reference to Escher!

cw18

lilac_lady - any expenses due to visitors (in my case, elder DS home on leave) comes out of my budget. I initally set my grocery budget allowing for him being home for 4 weeks, but as it quickly became clear it was going to be much more than that I had to increase that budget by £100.80 (allowing for an additional 8 weeks) which had to be 'lost' from other areas to stick to the £8k total. I guess it depends on whether your budget is set to match your income, or if you're "just" doing the challenge to enable you to free up as much as posibble for other reasons


BB - de-cluttering is going much slower than it should be, but as you say it's finding the 'oomph' to tackle it. I'm also juggling it with looking after my GDs around school which doesn't help, so I need to make serious in-roads this week while they're off school and I don't have them......

Can't get motivated this afternoon though, as I've spent 4 hours on DDs lawns and we're still not finished :eek: The front is done, as it three-quarters of the back - but her green (garden rubbish) bin is almost full and she still needs to rake/sweep up and bin some we've already done !!!! That's not due to be emptied until Tuesday of next week, so I can see me having to go down ASAP after then to finish the job off :rolleyes2

Love the duck dream :rotfl:


We've had a hedgehog visitor every autumn since we moved in - much to the confusion of the dalmatian who can't figure out what it is It only 'passes through' our garden, but I have to admit I'm wondering whether I can build something into the garden to encourage it to move in..... my only concern is I hear they're terrible for carrying fleas, which I don't want with two dogs going into the same garden space

(oh! and the big dog kindly watered the back brick wall this afternoon, so I need to measure how high it is to the top of 'brick layer 6' to give me some idea of the height I want my raised beds :rolleyes: )