The loooooong road to being MF!!

ammonite

Aww don't feel bad about spending when you are poorly you needed something to cheer you up. Hope you feel better soon x

chocoholic_chick

nattypants - It was a groupon deal so sadly not. Tried to cancel it on Thursday because I didn't think I'd be up for it but because I was only giving 47 hours notice I couldn't as I needed to give 48 hours notice :mad: Spoke to my sister and they really enjoyed it so at least it didn't just get wasted I suppose.

Slept alot better last night, well in the end I did, had that awful tickly cough thing going on for a few hours which was extremely irritating but thankfully it past. Still feeling really drained and tired so not planning on going anywhere today which should mean it's a NSD at least

Ammonite thanks so do I, I end up just getting angry when I'm ill and can't do things lol thankfully I don't tend to get ill that often, I just tend to take ages to get rid of colds when I do get them!

So then must be more positive today. Hubbys cooking brekkie so once I've had that I think I'm going to sort out the freezers. Both are completely full, it's like playing a game of tetris to get anything in there now so going to have a clear out of old stuff and do a stock take of whats in there. Do I dare posting it on here once done, it's probably going to be embarrassing how much stuffs in there

Ended up getting the beds stripped, washing done, made tea and tidied up a little so at least I got something done, even if it did take me aaaages to do it! Sundays normally my cleaning day but I just CBA today so might set myself a couple of tasks to get done rather than tackle too much.

It would seem that our little mealworm feeders been discovered as I'm having to fill it every day but haven't seen the culprit yet. Have seen a robin and blue tit on there but surely they can't eat a basket full of mealworms every morning! So I think a stakeout is in order ( which really means get my backside out of bed a bit earlier in the morning to have a peek ).

Right sausage sarnie is ready so going to scoff that

nattypants

I'm glad you're better choc_chick, although that's a bummer that you missed the notice period by one hour:(

I regularly put out bread and tit-bits for the birds and wondered how on earth they managed to get through it all, however one day I caught our greedy cocker spaniel munching away. She had been jumping up to knock as much 'content' as possible onto the ground then eating it all. Poor wee birds, although I do have strategically placed fat-ball holders on trees which thankfully she is unable to reach.

NP:D

chocoholic_chick

Lol well no naughty dogs here, after watching for a bit while I was sorting the freezer out it just appears we have alot of hungry birds coming to the garden, there's a never ending stream of them!

Ashamed to say I've thrown out a large bag of food, the contents of which have been literally frozen to the bottom of the freezer for years ( some has a use by date of 2010 :eek: ). So freezer has been de-iced and is now half as full as it was before I started. From whats in there I should only need top up shops for a few weeks. Compiled a list:-

2 loaves of bread
2 garlic baguettes
Mystery tub ( leftovers from something that had tomatos, onions and some kind of meat in which we can't work out! Only put in recently though so will be defrosted and used )
1 Cottage pie ( 2 portions )
Tub of chilli ( 2/3 portions )
Large tub of chicken soup ( 4 portions? )
Full bag garden peas
Almost full bag oven chips
2 corn on the cobs
Full bag sweetcorn
500g tub of frozen summer fruits
Half bag has browns
2 mini magnums
500g chicken thigh fillets
1kg bag sprouts
Bag brocolli florets
Half bag cauliflower florets
Quarter bag green beans
500g pork mince
Small tub tomato sauce ( looks like leftovers from making sauce for pizzas )
1 battered fish fillet
455g minced beef
3 muffins
2 lamb & mint sausages
4 other sausages ( from farm shop and label doesn't say what type! )
484g diced mutton
4 whole mackerel ( questionable whether usable as have been in there ages )
2 sea bass fillets
Some ice cubes

Got a large pork shoulder for dinner today, will be loads left over for sandwichs for lunch and maybe a curry or something. Bought a haggis yesterday as well so haggis neeps and tatties is on the menu soon nom nom nom.

Right so plan is the next food shop will be bare minimums! So food for the guinea pigs and bits and pieces needed to make the above list into meals only!!!

Coco114

Just finished reading your diary

Great read , really positive & chatty ! Have subscribed. Good luck on the overpayments :T

Coco x

ammonite

Good luck with the meal planning/food shop minimum spends! It really worked/works for me! I'm surprised how much our food bill has gone down and because of batch cooking I don't waste any fresh veg now!

chocoholic_chick

Ammonite - I was really organised last month with meal plans etc which I think is why we came in so under budget for food shopping, I'm still feeling rubbish so off work again today to try to get myself sorted and might sit and do a meal plan later, though my heads fuzzy and I'm struggling to concentrate on anything too long. I don't tend to buy too much fresh veg as I found I was always chucking it out so carrotts tends to be the only veg I buy fresh unless I'm buying something for a recipe ( obviously onions and potatoes I buy fresh too ) but always have plenty of frozen veg in. Hate throwing food away and thankfully very rarely do now, when I dish up food I have my tubs out at the same time so any extra goes straight into tubs before hubby gets a chance to pick at it!

Thanks Coco I do tend to have a tendency to prattle on a bit, sometimes I read back through what I've posted and think my god woman you talk alot!!

Dinner tonight is going to be a lazy one of chilli from the freezer, so pleased I did some batch cooking last week!

Oooh got some lovely good news yesterday. My mum rang to say they had won some money at the bingo and so is giving me and my sister £50 each. No matter how much I protest my parents still like to treat us when they can so not sure what to do with that money, I think I might use it to treat us rather than it just going to OP something. Hubbys been lovely this weekend, taking care of me and sorting out the house etc so I think once I'm better we'll go out somewhere as we've been no-where this weekend except for food shopping.

Does anyone shop at Aldi?? Been thinking about giving it a try but from what I've read the layout can be a bit of a nightmare. Also do they not accept credit/debit cards??

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS

Hi, I can recommend shopping in Ald! and L!dl. Really does save money and a carrot from Waitrose doesn't look ant different to me, than one from A/I

They take debit cards, cash, but not credit cards
.

Tilly

HelenDaveKids

Me too, buy onions, carrots and potatoes but only other veg if confident will use. Carrots my favourite as most versatile veg, if run out of fruit then we have a carrot each instead in our pack ups! Also cant bear frozen carrots, YUCK.
Also have strange colour theories on veg so need carrots as they aren't white!

chocoholic_chick

Helen I've never bought frozen carrots and can't imagine they'd be very nice! Carrots tend to last for ages, and I always run out before they go bendy so happy to buy fresh :money: Intrigued about your whole colour theory though :rotfl:

Thanks Tilly, definitely going to give them a try. Funny thing is my mums just tried it this week as well and was raving about it.

This week I need to sort out changing gas and electric supplier as my fix is coming to an end, I think from the looks of it first utility are going to be the best to change to so will sort that out tonight and remember cashback! I'm £180 in credit with my current supplier so hopefully that wont be too much of a pain to get paid back to me.

Spent £18.52 in wilkos yesterday on a padlock, some peanuts for the birds, a new water bottle and chew tube for the guinea pigs, some de-icer and some screenwash as for 3 mornings now we'd had to scrape ice off the car. Going to track my spends now as we now have £181.48 left to last the month ( food and petrol is accounted for seperately ).

Contacted our mortgage broker to see if there are any other deals available, we might just scrape in the 85% ltv bracket and if we do we should be able to fix at 4.39% for 2 years which is better than Abbeys current SVR. Just waiting to hear back from her with more info.

Car is sounding a bit rattly when starting the engine so I'm a bit worried about that, hoping that it's nothing serious so might have to take it to the garage to be looked at. Need 2 new tyres as well so that could be expensive, have some money in savings to cover this, but only if any repairs don't cost a fortune! Breakdown cover is also coming up for renewal so need to check whether we can get it cheaper elsewhere

So alot of researching needed this week!