Little Lights - Cinny's 2011 Diary

Cinny91

Birdie - Sky is a stupid amount, we pay £61.25 a month for our package and that's not with all the channels. £10 of that is the HD charges though, I think 3D is free when you have all the channels but the telly converts normal TV into 3D anyways. Got the joy of Emmerdale 3D yesterday when I was faffing around with it, which was weird! And Rango was really good, pretty dark with more adult humour though which I wasn't really expecting with a kids film. We don't have steak very often, in all fairness OH only picked the ones we had because they were stickered for £1.95 or something. Came with chilli butter and were lovely!

Wendz - At least you've got a while before you need to worry about that! Would you just be able to get a taller stand for it to go on? I saw Ikea do ones with a high back that you can put the TV brackets onto, so no chance of baby getting in a pickle!

Not much to report from the weekend. Ended up going out with my Mum yesterday, and she treated me to some things in the Matalan sale so I've got some Spring ready clothes, and a new rather swish coat! (My old one was getting quite tatty, was only a £19 Primark one that I got at the start of Sept so it's lasted!)

OH felt bad about me having near no pennies, so gave me £50 back from what I sent him for the TV. But with rules that I need to spend it on 'fun' things, plus I get my top up wage in 3 Fridays. Weird having spare money But I finally bought the 30 Day Shred, not eaten into the £50 as I used the £5 from Quidco to get it. Been wanting it on and off for months, so decided to just go for it. I've started doing the workouts on Sky Fitness, but it'll be good to have something solid to work on rather than just doing bits and bobs.

Surprising OH with a night out at the cinema as I felt really rotten I couldn't afford to treat him on his Birthday. We've got a token for a free ticket so it's only really £7.60 for us both. Quite looking forward to it!

Birdie85

Well done on the steak bargains! And the token for the cinema! I'm jealous on both counts! What are you going to take your OH to see?

That was really nice of your OH to give you some treat money too, OH does that for me every so often, with the rule that it's to be spent on nice things or he gets it back!

wendz86

AWw bless your Mum for buying you some clothes and your OH for giving you some money. Sounds like you have some lovely people in your life.

Think i might just have to get something to go round it. My friends little one was very keen on hers when i was round visiting so got me worried!

Cinny91

Haven't updated here in far too long, lah! To be completely honest, I've got such a silly head on at the moment it's all I can do to remember when the bills are coming out let alone anything else. Normally I'm majorly on the ball, all the dates stored in my head and I know bill amounts to the penny. I just don't know what's up with me at the moment. I was at my Grandparents on Friday and my Nan said 'I heard it's someone's Birthday next week..' And all I thought was 'Oh b*llocks, what have I forgotten now?!' and then it clicked, it's my Birthday! (And Zigs too!!)

Regardless of my silly head, we're plodding along quite neatly into April. We've been sent full bills for the next years water and Council Tax. Turns out we've been saving £10 too much for water, and on 10 months Council Tax we've been saving £10 too little. So while we're not much better off (Until Feb and March when we have an extra £111 :j) at least we're not having to spend more pennies. Will have £50 extra this month though, as we've already got little bits put to one side for our first payments. Which reminds me, we're opting for direct debit for the tax so I need to send our form off.

Still doing the odd Toluna survery, but I've started doing the ones via Quidco at 70p a pop. Which is a lot better as it's proper pennies over vouchers. And if I aim for one a day, it's an extra £20+ a month just see if I can keep it up!

Food shopping wise, we're up to about £40 a week now. Mainly because we seem to be missing all the stickered meat; but we've switched to a different Supermarket who sell a bigger range of cuts, at a better quality and for a little less then where we were shopping before so I don't feel the grumps so badly for spending more (sheesh, that makes me sound like a tight bum!)

Also starting attempts to make our own bread. Tried my first recipe yesterday, and while it was lovely tasting, it didn't rise and could kill a duck like on About a Boy. Found a new recipe that looks promising, but I'm at my parents tonight. I don't think they'd find it too cheeky if I took my stuff over and used their bread maker to make the dough.. hmm.. I guess I'll just see what happens when I turn up with a bag of bread flour and my mixing bowl

We've also got our first pet(s)! The fair was in town last week, about a minutes walk from my house. So we went on Thursday with my Brother and his girlfriend and I won a fish on hook a duck. He's call Barry Then the next morning we went to get him some pebbles from the pet shop, and decided to get him a friend. Called Nathan! Then Saturday my Brother bought his old tank across, so I had to go buy some more pebbles to fill the bottom and maybe got another 2 fish called Curtis and Rock. As we've decided to not get a dog for a while yet, then give us something to love. Even if we can't hug'em!

Flower08

Cinny91 wrote: »

Still doing the odd Toluna survery, but I've started doing the ones via Quidco at 70p a pop. Which is a lot better as it's proper pennies over vouchers. And if I aim for one a day, it's an extra £20+ a month just see if I can keep it up!

Where abouts on Quidco do you find these? Could do this while watching emmerdale at night

wendz86

Glad the bills worked out ok even if you were budgeting slightly wrong, is good when you know how much everything is each month and can budget for it.

I feel a bit funny when our food shopping costs too much too,£40 is great though a week.

Hello to Barry and Nathan the fish hehe, hope they are enjoying living with you.

Cinny91

Flower08 wrote: »

Where abouts on Quidco do you find these? Could do this while watching emmerdale at night

It's New Vista Live. In the info box they say they always have 5 or so surveys waiting. You just need to fill in a little bit of information on the first page then they pick one for you

Wendz - We're off shopping today so I hope we can get it down a little. Like I say, we have £50 to one side each week to spend on food so spending more then £30 isn't eating into any other budget, but it feels a little wasteful really when I know we can do a good shop on £30. Glad we've got all the bills too so everything's to the penny. We're just about on our feet now with money, and it feels kinda nice Think in a month or so we'll be good to start factoring saving for car bills into the monthly budget.

Made bread again and it turned out lovely My parents have donated their old breadmaker so I'm going to make the dough in there this morning while we're out, then I can pop it in the oven when we get home. Poor little machine will be pootling on none stop today as I think we're having homemade pizza for tea tonight.

Really lovely and sunny again today, so hopefully we'll be attacking the garden this afternoon too!

Birdie85

Since you just mentioned the garden, I've just signed up to this website to get £5 worth of free seeds, may be worth doing! I'll probably fail to grow the poor things to maturity since I'm completely non-greenfingered, more like the finger of death... but if they're free it's worth a shot! Think they e-mail you a voucher to use in Homebase but mine hasn't arrived yet.

My parents have just bought a breadmaker and it's brill, I'm so jealous! We don't have the room for any gadgets that aren't small enough to squeeze into a drawer so we can't get one Sometimes our dinky little flat is just too darn small! Although when we have to clean it it's quite big enough! :rotfl:

Swinstie73

Hey Birdie what kind of seeds are you looking for? My sister got about 5 bin bags full of various seeds from someone who supplied garden centres but for some reason they were being thrown out. They all have dates of 2011 - 2012 (I think), if you want I could send you some (free of course), of course please feel free to decline if you think that's too cheeky.

Cinny, you're tv sounds amazing, I still have a wee analogue one, will get an LCD one once I move house.

Birdie85

Ooooh that's very kind Swinstie! I have no idea what I'm after... like I said, I'm the finger of death when it comes to plants! I'll give anything a try though! Will PM you!

Are you excited for your birthday tomorrow Cinny?!