The road is long, with many a winding turn....

Jules28

Morning All,

Well the weather is refusing to cooperate with the nice family and MSE day that I had planned

We were going to head down to the water with a picnic and the wee one's skateboard and scooter and have bags of free fresh air and fun without spending a penny. There is, however, torrential rain coming down like nobody's business outside so my thinking cap is now on for fun (and free) indoor activities

Tonight my OH's friends are coming over, a lovely couple we just don't get to see as much as we would like as everyone always has so much going on. We are not doing a meal, just drinks and some snacks so my mum thoughtfully dropped in a huge box of 60 different chinese snacks (wantons, spring rolls etc) so that is the snack bit covered (they were languishing in her freezer as she forgot to use them when her friends came over). They are bringing some wine and I will lash out a whole £4 on another bottle - so a cheap night which will be loads of fun, I am looking forward to it.

Hope everyone else has a good day x

Woowoo

Hope you have a nice evening with your friends Jules x

Jules28

Oh thank you Woo. I have just finished gutting the house, got the dinner cooking away in the oven and the 4 year old is out for the count after playing all day (it turned out pretty easy to amuse him today after all). So he will be up soon looking for food.

I am having a small glass of wine as a reward for gutting the house (many calories burned off I am sure ) and then I will hop in the shower before organising the tea.

I am just after telling my OH that a woman's work is never done, I sound like my mother!!

Hope you're having a good weekend x

Jules28

Morning All,

I had a great weekend and now I am shattered, but it was worth it to get to catch up with such good friends. Also, a very MSE weekend as I managed to get the 5pm.com deal so our lunches cost us £5.95 each yesterday, the only issue was paying £4.90 for parking, but my reasoning is we would have been double that for the train and back.

I emptied out my change jar yesterday (it was half full so I cheated slightly) and got £7, not bad for coppers and 5p's I thought and also when gutting the bathroom I came across a fab big jar that had once held soap etc so I cleaned it up and it is now home to my £2 coin collection (only one it so far but at least I have started).

Only 3 days till OH is paid and then I can start rectifying the stuff outstanding from this month, can't wait!!!

Jules x

Kepp

Good find on the change jar - I use an old mayonnaise jar (washed out of course!) It wouldn't be MSE to buy money boxes would it! :rotfl:

Jules28

Hehe that's what I thought, all my change jars are recycled from their previous life doing something else

Jules28

Morning All,

Very quiet day here on the MSE front, still counting down the minutes till OH is paid and I can sort some stuff out. I put 42p in the coin jar last night (my online bank account doesn't let me move over pennies to my savings account, it has to be a pound minimum which is annoying) so I am being more conscientious about tipping out the pennies in my purse every night to the jar.

I did loads of surveys yesterday evening and claimed another £5 voucher for amazon. I am chuffed to bits as that is £20 for amazon headed my way. My OH is a huge Harry Potter fan (and he has successfully converted me too) and he would love to have all the books (he already has all the films). When we were out shopping for the wee one's birthday, we saw this fab boxset of every book in a big fancy box which he was immediately taken with. But it was £60 so we walked away obviously. I checked a few days later on amazon and the same boxset was £34. So I told him that as I only could manage a £5 DVD for his birthday (funnily enough, the latest HP film on DVD, using another voucher to get it for only £5!), I would give him any amazon vouchers I managed to get towards the set. So now he is really happy as he is going to get the set for £14. I am chuffed too as I want to read them too. I genuinely think that even if we had £60 to burn and we had bought the set, it wouldn't be nearly as satisfying as getting them in this way for £14 after doing a million surveys to get there!

Other than that, I am finally enjoying a smidge of sunny weather (got a cardie with me just incase lol).

Hope everyone is having a good day

Jules x

Woowoo

Hi Jules

What a result with the boxset, your absolutely right that you will get far more enjoyment out of it this way

Choc-addict

There is a sense of satisfaction in sourcing yourself something that you want in the best way possible isn't there? I'm sure there was a time when we would all just grab the box set of books and put it on a c-card or overdraft?!

The coin jar is a fab thing Jules. We usually keep ours going until a holiday or big expenditure. This year we had over £100 towards spending money for our hols which was fab.

Hope the dmp business is still ticking along. The first few months are the hardest but once it's up and running and everyone is on board life becomes more pleasant (in the financial sense) promise!! x

Jules28

Thanks Choc, yes I do feel hugely satisfied at having found a way to get him the stuff he wanted without reaching for a credit card and just paying the full amount

£100 is great for the coin jar, I intend to keep the £2 one going until is full (and it is really big) so I should get a good return out of it.

The DMP is ticking away fine for all those I added in at the start of my plan, for those I added this year (don't ask why I didn't put them all in at the start, your guess is as good as mine lol), I am still having severe aggravation from one of them. It will be nice to get back to how it was towards the tail end of last year when all was quiet on that front. Hopefully that will happen soon as my DMC seem to be on the ball with sorting it out with them.

Jules x