Caz counts it down

cazmanian_minx

Yay, we're back up early - well done MSE team

Mr Minx and I made a successful raid on Tesco and managed to get over £15 off the bill with coupons. I spent another £12.50 in the tack shop for a bag of Speedibeet and £118.55 (gulp) at the agricultural merchant paying off Mr Minx's account after I got some new electric fencing bits on it last month. (These horses are expensive beasts aren't they??)

We've also solved the holiday dilemma, I think. Because it's been such a good summer here, travel agents are reporting bookings are down 40% and there are some really good deals around. Our budget was £1100 each and we've been ummming and ahhhhing about where to go because we wanted somewhere as good as the place we went on honeymoon (which cost us around £4,000 after you added in the flights down to London, the transfer over to Heathrow and the airport hotel). I was browsing the cheap holiday sites last night and found our honeymoon hotel in Mauritius, flying with Emirates from Glasgow via Dubai, for £1142 each. So the cocktail budget is getting reduced by £100 (our loose change savings - we have nearly £600 put by for holiday spending money) and it will be booked next month

I know it seems ridiculous to be blowing that sort of money on a holiday in my financial state but a) Mr Minx is paying and b) he *really* needs a totally relaxing, switch off and do nothing, be completely pampered break. This is the hotel: http://www.sands.mu/ and it really is as good as its Trip Advisor reviews - if you ever get the chance to go there, do.

eBay sales are still going well. I have 30 orders to go on Monday already :eek::eek:

Mara_uk7

What a fantastic holiday deal ! I just booked ours on thursday, a week in Madeira , flying out two weeks tomorrow ! Good deal too, including flights to Glasgow from here plus a couple of nights at the holiday inn, all for less than £1800. No bad considering the flights from here cost over £220 each !!! You're right about blowing the money on a holiday, but goodness knows we had a long winter and if i don't take hubby away from the farm, he will just not stop for a break !
Glad the sales are ticking over so well for you. My beads were lovely, my nieces will love them .

cazmanian_minx

Glad you like them

I've just come in from the field after spotting a surcingle strap on Finn's fly sheet now appeared to be going around his back legs instead of underneath his stomach - yes, he's knackered it again, probably permanently this time :mad::mad::mad::mad::mad: The problem with this brand (Masta) is that it's got very long surcingle straps and even on their shortest setting they dangle underneath his belly a bit too far - so when he kicks at a fly on his stomach he can get a foot hooked into one. I'd far rather have a ripped fly sheet than a pony with a broken leg, but it's still annoying!

cazmanian_minx

Not much to report today other than I managed to take Finn to the beach for a ride this morning before the rain started Now it's knitting in front of the Grand Prix - a nice lazy Sunday.

cazmanian_minx

It's been one of those days. Mr Minx got up early because he was off to Manchester for a meeting and found he had a slow puncture. I put Finn's original slightly-trashed fly rug on him, with the intention of attempting to repair it this evening, only for him to completely shred it beyond repair within three hours - that's both of his knackered now so he's been naked and annoyed by flies most of the day. I'll try and make him some home-made fly spray tomorrow as none of the three shops that sell rugs within an hour's drive had his size. And the third thing was the electric fence battery - it hadn't finished charging yesterday evening, so Mr Minx turned it off overnight and told me to put it back on for three hours this morning, which I did. When I went to check on it, there was a funny smell in the shed and a pool of liquid on top of the battery, so I think that's FUBAR'd as well.

AAARRRRGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

That's better

On the plus side, I had 62 orders this morning and banked over £600. I've been sitting on the sofa all evening watching Hannibal (the TV series) on the Sky+ box and listing stock. Only 7 to go tomorrow so far, but I have such a huge to-do list to catch up on that I'm not too worried if that doesn't increase much overnight!

cazmanian_minx

That's HMRC paid for another 6 months - £700 from the business savings account and the remaining £354 from my overdraft. Not ideal, but I'm still about £200 short of being able to pay a supplier at the end of this week and I didn't want to risk taking out the extra.

I finally finished listing all those resin flatbacks on all three sites today. Embarrassingly, two of the first ones I listed when they arrived 3 weeks ago have already sold out completely! I need to order from that company again and I'm down to my last 1000 charm bracelets as well. And I have absolutely no free cash at the moment. But things are definitely moving in the right direction with the business; I'm going to bank over £7000 this month which I think may be a record for July

hillside777

What great sales. :T

Keep up the good work! If only I could get something to sell on ebay which is listed.

Best I go and get on with ebaying.

cazmanian_minx

It would appear that the end of the month has sneaked up on me. Month end personal debt figures:

Debt 30th June 31st July

Overdraft £0.00 £491.90 +£491.90
Egg card £3350.00 £3280.00 -£70.00
Barclaycard £2575.00 £2535.00 -£40.00
Nationwide £2685.00 £2658.15 -£26.85

Total £8610.00 £8965.05 -£355.05

And the cheque for the electric fencing hasn't cleared yet, so that's another £118 not included in the above

My office PC's hard drive made a really horrible sound when it was booting up this morning. It seems fine now, but I think this 4 year old Dell is probably on its way out, so I need to find some cash in the business budget for a replacement. Everything's backed up, at least, so if it does go PHUT I shouldn't lose anything.

One happy thing for today (apart from Mr Minx being home this evening, obviously!) is that my flatback supplier has started offering the Minions from Despicable Me - I think it may have to be done

cazmanian_minx

And *still* the orders come flooding in! Keeping up with the stock turn is making the cashflow very, very tight and I sometimes feel like I'm juggling about 16 balls at once, but so far I haven't dropped one...

We're off to Fife for the bank holiday weekend (Monday is a bank holiday up here) as it's my brother in law's ruby wedding anniversary and he's having a big party to celebrate. I'm leaving the shops open - sales are too good to close them - but they'll have a message on stating no dispatch on Monday due to the Scottish bank holiday. Even if I was here, Royal Mail wouldn't be collecting the bags.

I need to start planning for being away at the beginning of September. It's going to be 9 days altogether, nearly a 3rd of the month, though I can switch the shops back on from my phone as soon as we touch down in Glasgow (or possibly during our wait in Dubai if I can get free wifi!) - so I need to stash some cash to make sure there's enough in the account to cover all the bills in those days.

Knit_Witch

Have a great weekend! (and bother I sent something to Memory Girl in Fife! if it doesn't get there tomorrow/Saturday then there will be a wait!)