MF at last! Now for the £300,000 'Mansion' Fund.

[Deleted User]

Homemade cards are good! DD has made a few with help, sometimes I prefer to just let her scribble in one glitter goes EVERYWHERE in our house!! Also depends on how many parties you get invites to. When we used to go to a few toddler groups, some of the mums were VERY competitive so they'd invite nearly the whole group!

I don't do competitive!

x

Courgette

Glad you're enjoying the time off, if anyone deserves a good rest you do! Am very intrigued about what the £15 you're spending on ttc is actually being spent on!

I'm not sure you're gonna need to think about potty training this year. Boys tend to be older than girls and it's also a lot easier for extra washing if you train in the summer. Older they are the quicker it is too. I'll be thinking about training gherkin spring 2013[/SIZE2]

museumworker

I was wondering about that too courgette!

Don't think children need a massive amount at that age - I got clothes from jumbles and charity shops, and most of our craft sets etc we got given as presents. Chunky pencils and crayons and plain paper/colouring in books good. It is a LONG day when they have such short attention spans, so a few films on dvd/video help, they need a bit of quiet time in the afternoon IMO, especially as I would try and take her to a group or park in the morning and means you can get dinner on. Books- you can get from libraries, although they like to read the same thing over and over so you may want a few favourites for them. Stair gates if you haven't already got them. Toy boxes (especially one for the living room you can chuck everything in at the end of the day to make it look like a grown up space again!). Swimming nappies if you plan on taking him swimming. Dressing up things (at least DD was well into dressing up by then, you could of course make them). Bath toys/things to play with in the bath.

One thing i bought as an extra but loved was a portable potty and potty liners for potty training. Meant in places like festivals, parks, walks etc where were miles from toilet and dd needed to go RIGHT NOW she could use. It fold up for easy storage. I think it was only about £5 or so, and a few quid for the linings. Boys might be easier to improvise toilet places than girls.

earthgirl

Thanks courgette and MW - they are great tips!! I will maybe leave the potty training till next spring then, but he always wees at the same time of day and I could just start by praising him when he does it on the potty... Maybe the wrong way to do it I need to read up about it!

TTC stuff is not anything exciting I am afraid! Its just the clearblue fertility monitor sticks, thay cost about £18 for 2 months. I think We fell pregnant 3rd month with this system so I am going to try it again. I have pcos so anything helps - and its stops me second guessing myself as well!!

Unfortunately I will have to update my totals, and we haven't quite made £30,000 saved since may. This is due to our projected spending in Jan being high. I am going to go through the cc bill to see exactly where we are overspending, but I predict it is wine!! At current count we have 70+ bottles, and need to stop buying - oh loves wine.

Yesterday I did a ms for £15 and have also done lots of colouring and card making 'with' lo - he really enjoyed it and we have lots of lovely thank you and birthday cards ready for next year.

I have also made a couple of jars of chutney today too. I hope to make some smaller jars of marmalade to give as presents when I go to peoples houses for meals instead of taking flowers again , that worked well last year.

I love being off work and doing stuff like this, in a clean tidy house!

museumworker

Merry Xmas earthgirl - hope you and family have a super brilliant day.

coldcazzie

Happy Christmas EG, and Mr EG and Earthlet too, and hope you'd all have a great day (it's taken me 3 weeks to read your mf diary, now I'm working on this one!)

LilacPixie

earthgirl wrote: »

LO is 16 months and a bit of a tearaway!

When I can't /don't post I miss it!!

Glad you enjoyed your "time off" though, I am interested though, what changes have you or will you make after your evaluation??

Mini Pixie is 10 months and much the same. nothing is safe. After evaluating I feel I have been spending too much time trying to raise more money on things like survey sites and looking back the rewards are poor. The say 3 hours a week over the year has made us a grand total of about £120. Assuming 4 weeks off for holidays then it was worth 84 pence an hour. I really could of raised that amount in about 8 hours of overtime after tax etc. Really the time away from family and sacrifices we made for couple time means really it just wasn't worth it. On evaluation we realised our aim to be mortgage free by 40 is idealistic but not really acheivable unless we win the lottery or unless we lose a relative and get some inheritance which we do not want to happen for well ever. As the kids grow we will outgrow this house in probably 5 years so we are hoping to plug the gap so we don't have a mortgage when whe move of any more than we have now.

We would love to build our own home so we intent on visiting the self build exibition in 2012 and possibly getting a conservetory for more living space shorter term.

With OH being redundant in 2011 and my mat leave, if we hadn't saved and overpaid we would of been in a very sticky situation but overpayments gave us breathing space and we were relieved to know the OP fund was there and would of covred 4 months payments if we had needed it which we didn't but the peace of mind it being an option that it gave us was huge.

Basically priorities have changed and we hope to pull out our OP's mostly by saving money and overtime when availible.

earthgirl

Thanks for the Chrsitmas wishes, I have only just got back and unpacked now!!

Hope eveyone had a nice Xmas too. Ours was quiet but very good.

LilacPixie - I agree with the survey sites, I am having a go now and then if I get chance but I won't let it impact my family life. Hopefully it will pay for one Christmas present!

Today I have a meeting for ohs work. I will then do a bit more cleaning and decluttering. I have changed my teaching union and saved £100, so pleased with that!! At some point I will meet with another couple to plan new years eve - another quiet one I think!

LilacPixie

I hope you have claimed tax relief of any professional fees you may have to pay.

pioneer22

Earth girl what is it you do? Is it primary or fe? And what kind of tutoring do you do? What does your oh do? My oh is a teacher and between us we earn between 55 and 60k a year and I really wanted to reduce the mortgage or even pay it off. Your story is really interesting