Gilligansyle's outside her comfort zone

Karmacat

How lovely with the brandy smell! I'm not really into Christmas cake too much, but I adore mince pies, tho the ones in the shops are usually dreadful - I'm determined to make my own mincemeat this year, as thats just mix and let stew ... I have some little miniatures of whisky too, that have been around since a trip to the Scottish Isles when I was well off - that'll do nicely!

Enjoy today - sorry its a bit squeaky (Pippi's term!) but as you say, at least you know its cash flow because of expenses. Good idea to get the loyalty hotel points sorted, I like teh sound of that

gilligansyle

Not sure about mince pies this year, although I make my own mincemeat, normally Mum spends a day here and makes the pastry, which I then freeze. She did it all by guesswork and it was always really light. I can make cakes, but not very good at pastry, so will have to look for a foolproof Delia or Nigella or something.

Abu Dabi Grand Prix later!

Off to get weighed - I'm liking this WW stuff!

Karmacat

Ouch for you .... thats another time bomb for you, isn't it, I'm sorry ...

I'm glad you've got the GP to look forward too - and even WW is something to look forward to for you, you're doing so well on the weight loss. Enjoy

gilligansyle

I've got some more mysurvey points! I used to get screened out loads, but lately seem to be picking them up. The way I look at it now, is I can do this stuff when I'm in a hotel room. If they pay around 100 points then that's £1 on paypal!
They've also relaunched Slicethepie, which I'm quite pleased about, not that I want to go back to it, but I never got round to withdrawing my funds when they closed the site and I've got over $20 in there (yes that is dollars!) as DS was doing some of the reviews so he got to a decent payout level.

Qualifying was good, and for a change it looks quite close, though you don't know the strategies of course.

I've lost another pound and a half this week.

gilligansyle

Money stuff:-

Cash in purse £17 - have stocked up for DS, still need to get some drinks
Money in bank £67 - refund from Merseytravel for tunnel tag!

Money silly news - have had a letter saying that I can now only use my debit card to get cash out in machines belonging to the bank. The card I use mainly is from a basic bank account, as it doesn't have any overdraft facility and they only charge you pennies if they pay something they shouldn't have and you go over. So now I'll have to go back to the other account (same bank fortunately, so can just transfer money) which I didn't want to do, as it has an overdraft facility. I don't want to get drawn into that again. I can still use my original card as a debit card, but I prefer to work with cash, so I know where I'm up to.

I'm going to make my Christmas cake today!

Karmacat

There's a lot of faffing around to this moneysaving lark, isn't there! Good job you've got the other account.

gilligansyle

Morning

Christmas cake is now made - carefully wrapped in foil and will be 'fed' over the coming weeks.
I've a collection of nice jars - mainly M&S - that I can use for chutneys, so need to decide which one to do this year.

This morning I will potter round to local shops, and then will be off to 'that London' later. Google maps, and AA and every other electronic map on the planet wants to take me right through Central London to get south of the river. Don't fancy that, so will head for M25 and go round. So long as I avoid peak times, should be OK.
Can't do public transport really this time, as have to go from South of the river back up M1 before going home, and logistically that would be a bit of a nightmare.

savingholmes

well done on the xmas cake

gilligansyle

Well, I survived the M25 - just! It's just like a moving car park! Am with a colleague in this hotel, so have had a drink and a snack in the bar, and am back in my room and going to sort through my audiobooks.

I've brought my little sewing bag with me, so tomorrow I'll be doing some cross stitch for a change.

gilligansyle

Playing an interesting game on FB at the moment with some cousins. I found some old photo's of Mum's and whilst some are obvious, there are a couple that we have no idea who they are. In a family the size of ours its easy to lose people; made me think with KC's stuff about genealogy. Maybe I need to speak to the aunties now, and get some names to these photo's and try and work some of the stories out.