Live on £4,000 for a year - 2009, Part 3

Frugaldom

Hi guys

SF I hope you had a great time in Paris - how was it spending all your time together with bf? This could be serious, you know!

Whitewing, hope everything goes alright for your brother and he manages to avoid the swine flu outbreak. I've read several posts in the MSE forums from people who now have family members affected yet the topic seems to have been pulled from the news as the virus is now out of control. Oh, and make the most of the freebies, don't forget Boots do baby packs of some description too, I read about them somewhere.

Frugathering in Peru does sound rather fun, but sadly it isn't in keeping with my frugal living. Isn't that from where Isinoho and Paddington originate? Cheapest flight I've seen from Glasgow, so far, is almost £1000 and that's on current prices without 2 years worth of increases. :eek: How about you just visit Scotland, walk the Southern Upland Way and I'll take you to see the local standing stones and ruins? :rotfl: I'm sure that'll be every bit as exciting. There's plenty of wildlife, too.

Oh, and Mark from Spendingdiary.com 'popped in' to say thank you to everyone on here for using his site. I feel a bit guilty now for having let mine fall by the wayside. MUST update spending diary.

slowlyfading

nykmedia wrote: »

SF I hope you had a great time in Paris - how was it spending all your time together with bf? This could be serious, you know!

Its Skopelos, Greece we've been too and it was lovely to spend all week with him

SF - Hope your hols were good!

They were lovely, thanks! xx

Savvy_sewing

Blairweech wrote: »

Mooloo - The Big Lunch is on Sunday, see if there is one near you which you could go to

The organiser of the local lunch got back to me. They had to cancel it as there were only 5 people interested. However there is a local community project that meets in the baptist church hall on a Tuesday morning. The guy that rang me back is going to get a leaflet about what they do, and put it through the door for me. This week I have things on on Tuesday morning, but I hope that infuture I may be able to rearrange my Tuesdays so that I might be able to go to the coffee morning and meet people from the village.:T

savingfortravel

Really pleased for your Mooloo. sft x

Had 2 people around about the roof. First guy just glanced at it and said he'd give us a fix it for now and a fix it for 10-15 year quote.
Second guy has just left. He got up on our roof (without a ladder!) and said he would only do it as a proper job, not interested in offering a short term fix. Spend a long time with us and seemed very knowledgeable. Going to drop off the quote tomorrow morning. Just as well as I can't cope with not knowing how much we are going to be charged.
I dread to think how much its going to cost. We only have about 2k avaliable unless we dip into mortgage savings. That would give us another 2k. Not touching nephew trip savings as we've promised him...

SF-Glad you had a lovely trip. You really deserved to. x

Frugaldom

Good luck with the roofing quotes, SFT, these guys can charge a fortune when they want. If he quites something ridiculous just tell him you have X amount of cash and the job needs doing, what can he suggest?

Tonight's veggie lasagne was rather nice and I now have 3 more tubs of the sauce in the freezer after batch cooking it in the slow cooker. Very frugal recipe when Ald! has peppers included in their weekly 49p selection, I reckon the whole pot cost me about £1.50 to make and I'll get 4 meals out of it for 3 of us.

Had coffee with the neighbour this morning and hope to drag her out walking tonight so I can, at last, show her the forest and the places we'll be foraging when the berries are ready. Plenty of sloes, brambles, rowans and rosehips appearing, so I may invest in some resealable jars & bottles for the preserving. My list of items I want (as opposed to need) is growing and growing. By the time I've got past DD's wedding this year and DS's 21st next year, I'll not know where to start.

Picked another tub of peas this afternoon. They really are growing at some rate. There are also another couple of heads of broccoli and cauliflowers about ready for picking, but I haven't touched the main crop of potatoes yet. Plenty to keep us going for now and it all tastes so much better knowing it was homegrown

Kittikins

NYK - definitely with you on the taste aspect of homegrown veggies, DD loved her 2 (yup, count'em, 2) spring onions the other day which were chopped up and put in a soup followed by the 3 or 4 strawberries picked from the tubs outside. She always says "food tastes better when you eat it yourself", bless her little greenfingered chops

SFT - the roof chaps sound scarily different in their approach! I'd go for the more long-term fix, I had a hole in my roof the other month (well, I'd had it for a while but it got to the point where I had to fix it when rain came through the loft hatch and ruined the vintage/awful carpet) and my dad did a temporary fix - that lasted a whole fortnight!! This is your dream home, and a nice secure roof will be the icing on the cake, hope the quotes are reasonable...

slowlyfading

Okay, so can someone talk me out of buying a £195 Mulberry purse? :eek: i feel really down this evening being home alone with the raining pouring, and I just wish I was back on holiday with the bf

I'm feeling sorry for myself, shouldn't be, sorry xx

whitewing

sf - you MAY buy and enjoy a £195 Mulberry purse....



......but only when you've listed 195 ways of raising £1 to make up for the cash-splash.

Savvy_sewing

Its not ways to raise it, its WHEN you have raised it!!!!

slowlyfading

whitewing wrote: »

sf - you MAY buy and enjoy a £195 Mulberry purse....



......but only when you've listed 195 ways of raising £1 to make up for the cash-splash.

Okay, if I had to do that, I may struggle just a bit.. :rotfl:

Mooloo wrote: »

Its not ways to raise it, its WHEN you have raised it!!!!

That's certainly a better way of looking at it!