Its days are numbered ...

DawnW

Its Friday :j

OH has promised today put a shelf in the beautiful old teak cupboard that lives on the landing, to support the baskets that I store out of season clothes in At the moment the baskets are stacked on top of one another which makes it difficult to get anything out - or put anything in, unless you just chuck it in there So I will be able to tidy and organise clothes this weekend. The curtain rail that caused all the swearing the other evening is now up, so I will be able to sort out the curtains for the kitchen as well

Fortunately the cupboard won't make him swear nearly as much, as he loves old things and working with wood - as opposed to !*&$£** curtain rails from B&Q :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

I love all that domestic stuff - I think it is my antidote to my job :eek:

DawnW

Bleurrgh, work a nightmare, one hassle after another

Still, managed to escape by 5.30pm, and I got paid, so not all bad

OH has made the shelf in the lovely cupboard

Also got some of the goodies I ordered through the post today - a book from Amazon that I started reading on holiday, and my Lakeland order

Bought the rest of GD3's birthday present - she will be 2 I got the cutest dress to go with the little thing I had already bought for her to play with

Also posh coffee for son in law, and camera accessories for daughter in law - so many birthdays this month :eek:

OH's truck cost £250 for its MOT and service :eek: Not unexpected, expensive Japanese 4 WD

Must do some serious wrapping and post parcels tomorrow morning.

Haircut tomorrow, boring, but necessary. Also food shopping. Must make a list. Won't need much.

DawnW

Right, parcels wrapped, and OH can post them while I get my hair cut. Lunch at DD2's after

Bit of shopping to do, bread, milk, spuds, dog food, that kind of thing, not much.

I have put the CS curtains up in the kitchen, and they look great, a lovely vintage style print. Not everyone's cup of tea, but I love old things, can't do modern, or minimalist - what is more, they fit perfectly, so I didn't have any sewing to do :j:j:j:j:j:j:j

Not my favourite job, as you may be able to guess :rotfl:

Shepherds pie to make for later, which we will have with one of our lovely spring cabbages from the garden

DawnW

Right, hair cut,shopping done,parcel posted. Didn't make shepherds pie though as DD2 did a huge cooked lunch. DS and his wife and children were down, picking up a first car for DGS1, which he was buying from a friend of DD2's. I can't believe he is 17 now :eek: It was nice to see them all - they live about an hour and a half away, and although that isn't very far in theory, we don't get to see them more than once every few weeks because of everybody's work commitments. DS works dreadfully hard, and hardly ever gets a day off I gave all 3 grandkids some pocket money, as I usually do when I see them They are such lovely children, and have always been really well behaved (proud grandma alert )

Did a quick round of the charity shops before the hairdresser's, and got a nice cushion, a cookery book and a little basket thing to keep some of the toiletries tidy in the bathroom Didn't spend much. Shopping didn't come to much either, even though OH did it. Things just seem to jump into his basket without him even noticing :rotfl:

Fell asleep on the sofa for an hour this afternoon too late to bed last night I think.

Weather forecast horrible so I have taken the precaution of bringing the young plants in from the pastic mini greenhouse in case it gets blown away :eek:

They are all over the lean to at the moment, so hopefully the dog won't defeat the object and sit on them or something. She can choose from a number of sleeping places, but prefers her basket in there at night usually.

Just bread and jam for tea - I had some part baked baguettes in the cupboard and cooked those, we had them with lovely conserve from Aldis. That's what comes of going to France

Now sitting by the woodburner with a cup of coffee perusing the diaries. Lazy day

Right, just realised my cup is empty - time to put the kettle on again

DawnW

Ugh, bucketing down all day again, but I think I see about an inch of blue sky now.

The plants are all in the lean to still, but as the wind has dropped, I might put them back in the plastic greenhouse thingy in a minute (it is still standing ).

Lazy day again today, though we did venture out for a little while this morning to a nearby town for a look around, and OH took the doglet out while I cooked supper. They both got pretty wet

I did dust off and declutter the dresser in the sitting room though, putting quite a few things away in the process .

Shepherds pie in front of the woodburner was necessary I think

Back to work tomorrow Must try to find some motivation!

DawnW

Work was ok, and I got quite a lot done

Weather lovely today - I saw it out of the office window

Raining again now though, with more forecast. The river has burst its banks, and there is quite a lot of flooding across the fields and on some roads. I read on the news that a poor man and his dog were swept away and killed when he tried to drive across a ford in the next county this morning :eek: What a dreadful thing to happen

On the home front, OH has already cleared out the space under the stairs where he is going to make my storage cupboard :j

He also remembered to put the washing out (cotton bedding, huge and really needs drying outside) :A Dry enough for the airing cupboard now.

Friend from France phoned in tears as she had made the decision to have her old dog put to sleep. It was howling several times each night, and she was having to get up to it. She really couldn't keep going like that. She was absolutely shattered. It was really old, and although she thought it was howling for food, I think it had something quite seriously wrong with it (I used to lecture on this kind of thing). I did feel sorry for her, as she is there on her own I wish she had made the decision when OH and I were there a few days ago, and we could have helped her. OH did dig a grave while we were there,at her request, but I guess she just wasn't quite ready to say goodbye. It is sad, I lost one of mine just before Christmas

On a more cheerful note, we had trout from the freezer for supper, cooked in butter with lemon and capers, a salad and some nice bread. V. nice!

Got the rest of the pheasants out of the freezer for tomorrow, as OH has invited friends for dinner - he will have to start the cooking, but has made this (Nigel Slater's pot roast pheasant) before, so hopefully I will just need to finish off after work and make a pudding

For the first time in years, I will have no pheasants in the freezer :j:j:j Normally I am inundated with the damn things :rotfl:I guess we are lucky (OH shoots and fishes) but I must confess I get a bit fed up with them

I notice the interest has been added to our ISAs, so the spreadsheets will be a bit more interesting this month

Will review once I have done them and look at how much to overpay this month

DawnW

Ugh, more rain

Today's plans:

Work (obviously)

Try to do as few hours as possible - that sounds really lazy , but we in theory have flexi time, and I am always way over hours :mad:. Relatively easy week, as I am in the office all week, so it MIGHT be possible to lose some hours.

OH has invited friends round for dinner, so I must find the recipe he needs in a minute, as he will have to start the dinner, and it is something a bit more complicated than his usual repertoire :rotfl:Still, we will using up food we already have in store, so will not cost anything And very tasty too

As it is the first of the month, I would normally do spreadsheets this evening but will need to be sociable and talk to dinner guests so it will have to wait till tomorrow :rotfl:

Oh well, better get some breakfast and get ready for work.

DawnW

Yesterday's dinner guests were starving :eek:

Good job we made a huge meal

Still haven't done spreadsheets :eek: but did make a £50 OP this morning :T

Also transferred £1k to the Halifax Reward account, to qualify for the reward next month

OH has cleaned the chooks out - their run was smelly because DD, who looked after them when we were on holiday, filled it up with grass clippings which started to rot when we had all that rain :eek: I am sure they liked it when the grass was fresh, but chooks have to be kept very clean and smell free in our little garden! All nice again now though, with lovely new woodchips

He has also started on my new walk in store cupboard - done some prep to the walls, filling in holes etc where he took something else out, and painted over. Also measured up and bought some wood . He has now gone fishing ("dragged off" by his pal apparently) , and I now need to make French Bread pizzas - and possibly do spreadsheets too.

DawnW

OK, made French bread pizzas (could never work out why people buy them, as it is just like cheese on toast with a bit of tomato in the middle only on french bread baguettes ???) Mine have cheese, tomato, garlic and you guessed it, smoked sausage on. Really though, you can put whatever you like on them, and we often have just have veggie ones. Haven't tried them yet, as they are just out of the oven, but they smell good . 49p baguette from Aldi and various bits from the fridge made 8

Luckily they are really nice cold, or can be warmed up, as OH and I cannot eat 8 :eek:

I expect you could also freeze them, but I have never bothered, as they sit in the fridge and make tempting snacks for lunches or starters for a couple of days.

Also done 'spreadsheets'. I have a confession to make here . They are not 'proper' spread sheets. I am rubbish at those, and have clever people at work who do them, when needed, for me

What I actually do is to total up our savings every month. I am a bit anal about savings, as we were skint and in debt for years when the kids were little and I was either a SAHM or a student (confession time - we had debt, but paid it all off, and never missed a payment ). This was all a long time ago, I am much older than most others on here, and am looking back at the days before childcare was available to anyone except the well off and those involved with social services, and before the days of tax credits, or indeed anything for low paid familes except what used to be called family allowance (now child benefit). It was very hard for a long time, and especially now OH is not working full time (and given the benefits situation now :eek:), I worry what might happen if I lost my job.

When we bought our (modest) house, we put down almost 50% deposit. We were first time buyers aged over 50, having lived in accommodation that went with OH's job for many years (this was compulsory, he was contracted to this). Once we had bought it, we still had savings left, knowing that we would need to spend quite a bit to do it up. Mostly now done, though we do need a new roof [probably this year] :eek:

In theory, I could almost pay off my mortgage from savings today, but am too wary of being left without any money. I help my children out as much as I can, live frugally, and save / OP what I can.

So, I am pondering whether to make a big OP, or just keep chipping away for now. My mortgage is only at 2.5%, and all savings are yielding higher than this. Most are in ISAs. I do so want to get rid of it, but just looked at the monthly bills, CT, water rates, BT, Npower &etc :eek:

OH will get his pension in the autumn. Part of this entitlement will be a lump sum (apparently) of almost the mortgage figure. However, I will believe it when I see it and not before :cool:

My head says to wait till OH gets this money (if it materialises!) and possibly pay off then. My heart says I should just get rid asap. Any comments welcome!

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS

Hi Dawn, whilst I understand your desire to be MF - if you earn more on your savings than the interest on your mortgage then I would recommend continuing to save. Hard I know as I would want to kill the mortgage but I guess it has to come down to making your money work most effectively for you - and in your case that seems to be savings.

Good luck Tilly x