Coffee and chocolate

miggy

I've made my first overpayment! :j:j:j
I must be rich . It's just under a month since I started putting 'bits' aside with the aim of overpaying by one month's worth a year. I've paid about 13% of a payment today, so if I can keep this up I will be able to acheive my goal.
:j:j:j

miggy

Emergency dental trip this morning - but I think he's sorted the problem and he isn't charging me extra. Also have booked my next appointment (Friday 13th! Good job I'm not superstitious.) I tried to make another payment towards the treatment but their line went down so they couldn't process it. Still, I tried, and it's £47 less than I thought. :T:T:T
On to the car boot sale... £1 for some piano music, which is always good as long as I can play it, which I can. £1 for some embroidery silks to make DD's b/f's friendship bracelet, which is a saving - I can't remember how much the silks usually are but I think I've saved about +£1.50. I'm off to Wilkos (again) to get mum some hanging basket liners and have a mooch through the seeds, so I'll update later.

miggy

Bought mum's hanging basket liners, plus a couple more for me because I hadn't spotted before that they had some specially shaped for wall baskets. My wall baskets were a present from DH long ago and are really tatty but special because of all the memories and all the years with all the variations of plants that have been in them...
Food shopping, saved +£2.20 on the chicken and +11p on mangos, unfortunately had to chuck quite a bit out of the fridge though so not doing well there.
I was incredibly tired yesterday, so tired that after picking up the shopping before lunch, I went to sleep - even though we had a guest! Then it was time for work, which was quiet so I had to find lots of little jobs to do so I didn't sleep again. I made myself a coffee at about 5pm, which is normally not a good idea as I'm awake till 1 or 2 in the morning. but this time it did the trick and I felt all right afterwards, having been groggy all day till then.
Supermarket and fabulous fruit being sold off, on my way home.
Today: church in the morning (DS came) and remembered I owed £2.80 to somone but, having found the exact amount between us, couldn't find the people. It will probably sit in the front pocket of my bag for weeks now as I won't see them the next two weeks...
DD's b/f was here for lunch so some of the fabulous fruit went into a nice fruit salad. Still got 3 mangos, a papaya, some grapes and raspberries and some plums to go... and the remains of the melon, now well-travelled as I took it to work, left it in the fridge there, went back for it, brought it home again.
After lunch I told our neighbour that he was to hold me accountable if I hadn't made progress with our garden by the time he gets back from work. Did an hour and a half's worth and have made a big dent in the jungle.:) There's another bowl of redcurrants so +50p there.
And my hair is full of weed seeds - that's what you call getting stuck in, but doesn't count as money saving.;)
Off to do some driving practice - after our holiday I want to get my provisional licence and launch out onto roads again (I used to drive years ago but never got as far as a test). For now it's just car parks/industrial estate. I haven't worked out how we'll afford lesson yet, but I suspect the answer is as much practice as possible with DH (yes, our relationship has survived this before and will do so again!) and then just pay for lessons, making the best use I can of discounted block bookings. Oh, and really put in the ground work on theory, using DS's DVDs as he says I may.

miggy

Saved another 14p yesterday by not having one of my coffee sachets, and I think £1.40 on seeds (ones I had wanted as well, not a mad impulse).
I'm sure there was more but I can't remember now.
Spending included £7.99 on pet food, £3 tonight on a takeaway with friends and various bits at the supermarket - again I haven't got the receipt with me. Also £10 PAYG top up which should last me about 2 months as it's the Mr T one where you pay the amount and for a month they triple the amount on the phone - so for this month I have £30 credit but after that I just use whatever's left of what I actually put on.
Yesterday was feeding the multitude again - sausage and mash, beans and fried onions, followed by fruit salad and ice cream. Two kilos of potatoes is fractionally more than one multitude eats on a Monday. 32 sausages is about right, with two tins of beans and 3 onions.
It doesn't matter too much that I never understood long division: I can feed a multitude, albeit a small one, and how many of us need to feel significant on a big scale, if we can matter on a small one?

We are hoping DD has avoided a massive bill to replace her phone which is on the house insurance but may not be covered for what happened to it - she dropped it in some water. The touch screen is decidedly not happy but over a few hours she got it dry enough that she can now use it as a phone.

miggy

NSD today
Work causing headache but what's new?
Ebay seems to have sent me the wrong parcel, so I'm in the process of trying to find where it came from!

miggy

Another NSD, thanks to stashing a small packet of cereal in my work bag!
Work is proving a source of stress but never mind, I have time off... and I have cleaned out the goldfish so at least they are happy!
The bad news is that my dental treatment is going to cost some £47 more than I thought, though at least I've paid off a little more.
The mortgage savings are going nowhere, alas, but at least that's partly due to NSDs!
Oh, and 28p from cappuccinos I didn't have!

miggy

And to prove it, this is me. Been away a week, so a lot of money has evaporated! Also my job is currently very much pear-shaped and I am so NOT looking forward to going back tomorrow. I've no idea what will be waiting for me.
I managed some oddments of savings while away but they are so far outweighed by the spending that I'm not going to catalogue either, and just try to get back on track. The good side of that is that once again the freezers are both full, and in addition there is a superfluity of cleaning things, due to buying while on holiday. The joys of self-catering - save space on the way out by not bringing things with us, buy when there (plus a few extra because hey! It's a new supermarket and things look different!) (Or maybe they have different lines? Anyway I see things that call my name...) Where was I? Yes: save space on the way there, buy when there, buy more when there, bring the surplus back...
There always is a surplus, isn't there? Even if we've lived off leftovers and takeaways since Wednesday, there are still veg and potatoes, cheese, two sausages, five eggs, some nice coffee that was going cheap, oddments of baguettes, freebie plums going squishy, half a lettuce, some Ranch sauce and all the bits of things I thought would be indispensable and I brought with me and barely used.
I'm off to try to find the kitchen under the carrier bags.

miggy

Yesterday: NSD.
Today - put in a huge order to Approved Food, using a discount voucher I had so it cost just under £30. I have been spending near that on shopping recently so I am rather pleased to have all these bargains, and am training the family to eat cous cous three times a day...
Which reminds me - there's no storage space! Eek! Off I trot to find some.

miggy

After all my marvellous savings with Approved Food (well, current spends equalling future savings) I went out and bought about £12 worth of various vitamins. My excuse is the kids don't always have enough fruit & veg, so a bit of vitamin C won't come amiss, and for various health reasons I wanted to boost particular vitamins in my own diet.
Now guess what's happened?! When I finally have a tiny bit of fridge and freezer space but am about to overfill kitchen cupboards and probably behind the sofa too, LOL, AF have some catering-sized bags of white bread mix!
Can I justify spending £5 on delivery for a bag even if it was originally £15?
Can I even put the breadmaker on and use up a batch of the bread mix I bought a few weeks ago, when there's plenty of bread already and not enough freezer space?!

Oh, and I have to confess that work has driven me to spending £1.79 on posh chocolate! I got DH some raspberries at the same time (saving £1) and apples another £1 and some nectarines (not a saving!)

DH bought some cooking apples and added homegrown blackberries & sugar so we had that last night. What a beautiful colour it was too! The blackberries are abundant - we have picked several punnetts' worth, saving probably £2. Also the last of the blackcurrants - another 50p.

Trouble is, whether or not to make another mortgage overpayment? Going away for a week was more costly than it ought to have been and the bank balance is looking weak at the knees. We don't really have the money to spend but the oerdraught would stand it and I get paid tomorrow (so that would be a good day to overpay if I did it).
Or do I buy the bread mix? :huh: It won't be available for long...

miggy

I've so far resisted the bread mix, but think I ought to succumb tomorrow.;)
Today has, strictly speaking, been an NSD for me but I admit I sent DH out for an ingredient for DD as she's working three jobs this week and needs to eat properly. However, she settled for noodles and sleep.
My food order is due tomorrow so I'm getting excited! LOL.
Tea was pretty MS - the boys had burgers and various potatoey things from the freezer and DS1 tried some of my hm pasta sauce. DH and I had the pasta sauce which was a bit inventive as I was trying use what we had in but I didn't exactly check before I started, whether we had what I thought we had!
Here's how it went:
pasta
onion - chopped
bell pepper, ditto (supposed to be green or orange but we had red)
garlic
olive oil
... all sauted together, so far so good.
Dried basil - whoops - good job there's fresh on the windowsill, and very good it was too,
tuna in oil, drained - used up tuna in brine, which none of us likes but the sauce disguised it
sweetcorn - didn't have the 'right' one but to my amazement the family was okay with me using a tin of corn with other veg in, and again, it worked well
tin of tomatoes - I found a carton of chopped tomatoes at the back of the cupboard - turned out there was olive oil & basil already in there so it was perfect, though thicker than usual.
So, tea was MS.

Other than that buried a deceased goldfish (:(), DS2 and I had an onslaught on the ivy that's trying to take over the house and cleared it - yay! - and I cleaned out some of the critters.
I faced up to making a doctor's appointment for myself (going from one rough spell to another is doing me no good) and managed to sort out Mum's meds long distance with the help of a freindly District Nurse. Mum was thankfully not annoyed with me for doing this!
DH has a day off tomorrow but I'm working in the evening. Having decided to speak to the doctor about the stress I'm under has changed my attitude to work. I feel somehow it's official I'm suffering from stress and while I don't want to leave in one way - hate to knuckle under - I feel I have official permission in another. Anyway, tomorrow is only a short shift and who knows, once I've seen the doctor next week, things may change again and I might either feel okay and stick with it, or decide to find something else!