Finally I have a mortgage I can start to pay off!

Karmacat

Watty1 wrote: »

I hate sorting house insurance too - and find it fairly pointless as am so limited with who we can go with as I run my business from home. This has invalidated all the bargin insurance companies and left me with who we are currently insured with - which I think is a bit of a historic thing- and one other I found. Used the other to lower the first but what a faff.

When I worked self-employed from home, I only had one or two insurers who I could deal with honestly, because of having clients in the house, and even then I had to state that they weren't left alone at any time. A home office hadn't seemed to be a problem these days, as madvix has found. Do you have clients in, watty?

Home and contents was something like £295, for tiny little semi detached. Its now £204, I stayed with the same company as I've had so much on my plate, though I did bargain to get it down as far as I could. I'll do more next year

themadvix

It's amazing how much the insurance companies can rip us off isn't it?

Am feeling rather pleased with myself. We needed some snacks and I've got three bars of weird flavoured chocolate (gifts!) sitting in the cupboard, so now I have G&B Maya Gold cornflake cakes, with other flavours to come next week! Also need to use up bananas but banana cake will take a bit longer, so I'll have to see how I get on with jobs.

themadvix

Another busy weekend has flown past! Was out all day Saturday with my Brownies - it was a long and tiring, but good day and I was really pleased as I'd organised it for the district and it all went well (amazingly!). I took my flask with tea bags, so saved myself £1.50 on tea

Not sure where DH got to with MBing - I have a feeling he didn't actually make anything this weekend, but he was doing some... I don't know... I think the offers weren't great. Yesterday I spent quite a while listing things on the Bay - 22 items listed, mostly BIN but a couple of auctions. One thing has already sold, so need to pop that in the post later (along with two more small things on FB) and another has bids on it and 8 watchers! Fingers crossed they all decide to bid!

Am up to £23 on Prolific now, once they're all approved, so very pleased with that. Hoping to cash out on SBs for £5 Am today too.

Best news though is that debt collection agency think the Ukrainian company will pay up, so fingers crossed all the paperwork comes through this week - that will be a huge boost to funds!:j

It wasn't an entirely NS weekend - I mentioned naughty cats on Friday and this continued, so while I've got feeliway on order, I went and bought one in a shop (£37!!!!:eek:). We've rearranged some bits, and in combination this seems to have helped. They recommend replacing the fw diffusers after 6 months anyway, so it's not the end of the world to have one in stock.

Various jobs to do this morning, and then off for lunch (last year's Mothering Sunday treat for Mum with mum, sis and niece. We're terrible daughters!) at a delicious waffle place.

Things to be grateful for from the weekend:
* Lovely few mins yesterday with my Nan (who has dementia) and niece - she was smiling away at Nan and Nan and I were having a giggle about things
* DH brewed a batch of all grain homebrew yesterday, for the first time. It's bubbling away, looking forward to seeing how it turns out!
* DH cooked dinner so I could watch Call the Midwife :A
* Nw have written to say regular saver is maturing but there's another one on offer at 5% still
* Lovely walk yesterday morning with DH
* All the leaders got on well on Saturday (not always the case!!):T

ETA: Have been accepted for RM surveys and made banana and ginger cupcakes yesterday to use up a couple of brown bananas. Off to make bread using the spent grains from the brewing now

atypicalblonde

I saw your post on Watty's thread about Disney snow globe - I have been looking for a nice one for ages for DD please could you PM me your ebay username?

Great news on the Ukranian debt, I will keep everything crossed for you :j

Enjoy your lunch x

themadvix

Have PM'd you ATB. Thanks for the crossed everything!

No bread from the spent grain - apparently it goes off really quickly, so it'll have to wait for next time. I have fed the (frequently neglected) compost heap instead.

Kittenkirst

Fantastic work on the surveys and eBay listing TMV

Sounds like a lovely few days, especially time spend with nan and niece.

We're going to get two kittens and are looking around currently for ideas and to understand what we should look for from a responsible cat owner etc (to make sure the cats are the right age and we'll looked after). I've always had rescue or stray cats before so am very much looking forward to getting two lttlies from a young age and watching them grow :heartpuls

Banana and ginger cupcakes sound delicious! I'm getting bored of chocolate and banana loaf so will try this next time

themadvix

Hi KK, we got ours as kittens from Cats Protection - if your local branch has a website just keep an eye out - you have to move fast to nab kittens, but they do have them

Banana and ginger cupcakes were delicious, even if I say so myself! I too was tired of banana/choc loaf, and thought these would make a change - all I did was add the ginger/remove the chocolate and pop them in cupcake cases instead. Baked for 10ish mins.

Didn't manage to post yesterday as I didn't really sleep much the night before so had to focus on the important stuff, like paid work. Work is beginning to get back to more normal levels, so income, while still down, is less of a concern.

I did cash out on SBs on Monday and yesterday did the same from Prolific, so £20 is winging its way to me. Didn't make the spent grain bread as apparently it goes off very quickly, so it went to the compost heap. Next time, I'll be in there like a shot, especially as it freezes well, so can get a lot of loaves from it.

Yesterday was an expensive day - dental check up (all fine), so £19.70 (NHS) and then met DH for a wander around the shopping centre near his work as we needed new saucepans (ours were a wedding present and the non-stick is going). £89 for a set of 4, stainless steel ones. Much cheaper than I'd seen elsewhere and they have a 10 year guarantee. Expensive but necessary and hopefully they'll last a long, long time.

Got to pop to the PO in a bit, with a couple more things to post from FB. Unfortunately the proceeds belong to my Brownies, but I'm glad to get the stuff out of my house. Various other jobs to do today, as well as paid work and the money shuffle... watch this space for news of this month's OP!

Things I'm grateful for:
* Lunchtime wander with DH yesterday
* Good evening class, extra work I put in is paying off
* It's stopped raining!
* Feeliway seems to be working - cats are much more chilled

Have a good day y'all!

Karmacat

Sounds like things are going really well, madvix and I'm glad work is on an uptick - its presumably the best hourly rate you've got?

Definitely agree on stainless steel for the pans - its inert, so you know its not going to come off in the food. I just bought a huge stainless steel crockpot - quite low quality, if I'm honest, though it has two strainers that go with it too, but it was from a charity shop and cost £3 so it doesn't owe me much. The plan is to cook a bit more rather than just assemble, so I was thinking that once a week I'd cook several portions of onions, lentils and whatever, and freeze in portions to use up for lunch. We'll see how that goes ...

themadvix

Hi KC! Yes, I hadn't cottoned on to the issues with non-stick when we chose the last set of pans. It's been grossing me out for a while but I couldn't justify spending on new pans until these ones started to disintegrate (and then it was time for a quick change!). No more non-stick in this house! (Or any sort of plastic if I can avoid it, which sadly is too rarely the case!).

That was a nice CS find! DH has just bought a couple of large crockpots for brewing - one on Am, which was cheap and feels it and then another this week in Aldi for £17 because he discovered he really needed more than one when brewing - this one's a 12l one, and is much better quality than the other. We have a lot of saucepans at the moment!

try_harder

Sounds like the ebaxing and fbing are both going well,i have never really sold much on fb do you find it good ?
We have one cat and one dog ,they cost us a fortune ,does anyone know a really good treatment for fleas ,we have tried everything known to man to get rid of them and spent a small fortune ,the cat seems fine but its the poor dog ,just bathed him again this morning poor boy .Thanks in advance ,i know you are a great cat lover .