Ecoelle's MFW Diary

jodles16

Hey ecoelle, well done on the job! Hope things are getting sorted with your health and LO is healing nicely, think its a right of passage getting burnt when your little, my friend pulled boiling hot water over herself from a cup and amazingly you cant even tell! My littlest nephew is also a handful as aunty I can laugh but I imagine from a mum point of view its exhausting! Keep up the amazing work!!

Jodles

ecoelle

Evening all. Been a busy day in the ecoelle household, work, kids, meetings, biking...takeaway being ordered asap!

£10 voucher arrived today from surveys so I've added it to my Sig. There is another on the way as well so I'm really pleased.

ecoelle

Morning all. Hope everyone is well. We are having a relaxed, TV based Saturday morning in the ecoelle house. One of LO's friends has a party later so we will be having a busy soft play style afternoon. Think I'm going to try and combine the trip to the soft play centre with the Aldi shop. It's a car journey away and I was going to shop tomorrow at a different Aldi, but there is one just round the corner from the soft play centre so it seems silly to make 2 trips, plus I'll be saving petrol and time

On a money front, I've got £40 for this weeks shop so I'm going to plan a menu out and then make my list.

Saturday Vegetable stew, carrots, broccoli, potatoes
Sunday Out for tea with friends
Monday Vegetable Chilli with Rice
Tuesday Burgers, Mash, Peas and Carrots
Wednesday Gnocchi, Tomato and Bean Sauce, Salad
Thursday Fried Polenta, Lentil Salad, Houmous
Friday Curry and Rice

Right...List done. Don't think it's too bad, I really have to stick to it though!

brizzledfw

Great yummy meal planning and good idea to combine trips.

Have a great weekend x

ecoelle

Thanks Brizzle

Nearly forgot my even more exciting news...

I've been doing supply work for a school now for half a term and they have a job opening coming up for a level 2 teaching assistant on 20 hours a week...they asked me to apply!

ecoelle

Eeek! Just got back from shopping at overspent...£40.99 in total!

Ha Ha! Who worries about 99p? My goodness I was annoyed at the till, almost contemplated putting something back x

ecoelle

Morning all.

Hunting for somewhere to stay for our summer holiday. We want to visit friends who live down south, unfortunately they chose to live in themost beautiful spot imaginable so the prices are sky high. We went last year and it cost us 450 for the week, we were looking at caravans last night and I found one for 300 a week,also emailed a lady who has a flat in the village and she has got back to me to say it is 325 a week, so I think we might go for that. It would be slightly more expensive than the caravan but you can walk into the village and to the beach in less than 10 minutes whereas the caravan is further out so we'd have to use the car more.

I am getting slightly frustrated that we are not paying more off the mortgage. So I've made a decision. If I earn extra cash from anything, selling stuff, baby sitting etc then half of it is going in the holiday fund and the other half has to be split equally between the 'do the house up' fund and the mortgage OP pot. At the moment I feel that whenever I get any extra it just vanishes int the ether.

Eg.

£100 from ebay = £50 holiday fund £25 House fund £25 Mortgage OP

Also I thought I might use my vouchers slightly differently too. So I already put money aside each month for the spends eg. groceries, christmas, birthdays...

So I think what I might do is to use the vouchers as cash. I normally order Sainsburys vouchers from one of my survey sites, so each time I get one I am going to choose an envelope for it and exchange it for the cash, so the voucher goes into Christmas/Groceries/Birthdays and I get £10 cash to split between the 3 funds mentioned.

I feel like then each month I could make a bit more headway with each fund rather than all the money going to one, or just disappearing all together.

brizzledfw

Great news about the job opportunity..sounds like it could be just the thing.

Good idea also about splitting into various pots

ecoelle

Right, after paying ebay fees I have £170.70 to withdraw.

So
£85 for holiday fund
£42.50 for house fund
£42.50 for mortgage OP

Feeling a bit more positive today about the whole money side of things but payday can't come quick enough this month!

x x

ecoelle

Morning all.

Donemy surveys for the morning and also checked all the banks so feeling positive.

Almost forgot to add £10 voucher to my sig today! It arrived yesterday, plus I think there is another one due soon. I did what I said I was going to do yesterday and sorted the vouchers I had into the corresponding envelopes, leaving £20 each for mortgage OP and holiday fund. I also popped to homebase and picked up some of the stuff for LO's room. So I used the vouchers and coupons I'd collected and got £51 worth for £11. Happy ecoelle

Today the lovely hubby has taken LO into town to get birthday presents for the 4 parties she has been invited to over the next month! It's lovely that children like her and want her at their party but my goodness I'm glad we have a £5 limit on presents. I mostly opt for something from Lush, as I can buy a bubble bar or FunD bath playdough for £5 and know it's vegan (happy ecoelle) it's fun (happy birthday child)it's not going to clutter someone's house (happy parent of birthday child). They also last ages. The bubble bar my LO got for winter solstice as still going and has been used loads. I just break a little bit off into the running water and they can do up to 20 baths.

Right. Plan for today is, get dressed...you know it's been a nice lazy morning when getting dressed is one of your daily goals!

Fill the holes inside the old boiler cupboard in preparation of painting.
Dentist with LO (eeek! scary! phobia!)
Spray paint another drawer (I'm upcycling an old chest of drawers and found a fab spray paint in B and Q yesterday so I'm using that, if it works as well as it looks like it is going to then I'm also going to do our bed)

That's it for now...off for a bath while I have the house to myself x