Kolakube is bBack on the MFW bandwagon!

KolaKube

Hi newgirly! Yay a familiar face!

Hmm... I dunno if take your own sweets will fly you know... we normally spend £8.60 on this massive popcorn / sweets / 2x what must be a litre each of diet coke combo...

Will be making a homemade 'fakeaway' - pizza and garlic bread for tea before we go out

Have just done out Novembers budget on a proper spreadsheet, get me lol xx

KolaKube

Anyone any ideas how to get rid of the extra 'b' from the title of my diary lol... starting to get a little annoying!

x

quintwins

I found you

i'm not sure where you live yet but the belfast freecycle group is fab and there are some good facebook selling pages aswell for baby and furniture bits, theres also a few auctions near me that you can get fantastic deals on furniture.

Hubby will be going to see bond (i'm not that into them i prefer superhero's) with his brother and dad they'll be going on a wed when tickets are only £3 if we go we bring our own sweets and maybe share a drink or nacho's but as hubbsy with family if he did that they'd just insist on paying so i'll have to send him with money for that aswell

KolaKube

Hi all! Happy Sunday, I hope everyone has made good use of the extra hour today (we got an extra hour in bed, yay!)

We're up and about early today! Normally we don't really get going until lunchtime on a Sunday but OH was out of bed at 9am (unusual as he normally gets up at 5.30am weekdays for work so it's important he gets a lie in on the weekend!). So far today we have sat round in robes drinking coffee and eating up some sausage sandwiches from sausages that 'needed using up' in the fridge... :rotfl: <heaven!>

Yesterday we went out for a meal for a friends birthday up in Belfast - cost quite a bit, but the food was lovely, it was great to get dressed up and go out and we had a great time with some people I haven't seen in a while. The non-alcoholic cocktails were DELICIOUS (and relatively cheap lol!)... I need to work out how to make a frozen virgin strawberry daquiri at home.

Todays plan is to go up to my parents house for a while - OH will sand down the chest of drawers for me to shabby chic while we're there, and he's got to finish off mini-Kubes cotbed too. We're both quite aware there wont be a huge amount of cash for new furniture if we get this place quickly... yikes! Freecycle, our sanding machine and a pot of white paint will be my friends lol.

Having sorted out the paperwork earlier in the week I had been thinking of buying a shredder to deal with all the scrap that I'm not comfortable putting in the bin... but then I remembered... Mum and Dad have a wood burning stove and I can burn it all in there for free (woohoo!)

Chuffed with myself today as last night I wore a lovely 'new' <to me!> maternity top out that was £1.99 in the charity shop last week, and I've a lovely stripey one which was also £1.99 to wear today. Both a good fit

Tomorrow I have some friends coming round for coffee (rather than our usual starbucks!). I rather enjoy baking but our oven is horrendous in this rented flat (I think the thermostat has gone, it burns EVERYTHING even on 100 degrees, only really good for things that need cooking on a high heat like bread, pizza, oven chips etc). I don't think its worth the waste of ingredients trying to bake something, so I'm going to scour the small change in my purse and buy in a few treats... might do a little count up now in a min!

We were at Ikea yesterday, some great baby bits stashed away for a grand spend of £43 (£9 of which was for SIL so will get that back - normally we wouldn't bother asking but we need to change our ways!). Now have plenty of reusable cloth wipes which should save a lot in the long run, little handy towels for spills etc, blue fleecy blankets x2, got the changing mat and cover to go on my changing unit and a sturdy baby bath too. And a cute little car shaped rug that wasn't strictly needed but I couldn't resist lol :cool:

I have been working hard on next months budget and I hope OH was rather impressed with my excel spreadsheet. Money will be tight this month (really tight!) as we're aiming to top our deposit account up by £1450 and can only really afford £1100 comfortably... even OH has volunteered to take the bus more often to work (spending an awful lot on petrol) and try to take a packed lunch every day - shows how badly we want this house! We CAN top it up to £1450 if we're careful. Positive mental attitude lol. Will be on here quite a bit to keep focussed. Payday is tomorrow and I will pay our bills / move money around then and then get everything sent to the estate agent.

Enjoy your Sunday everyone xx

Edit: small change count up (we're talking coins 20p and under here - no skin off my nose paying in pennies lol I just feed them into the tesco express till).... drumrolllllllll - £3.25!!

And £1.50 in bigger coins to slip into OHs wallet for to boost his walking around change (saves him drawing out a tenner for bits and pieces eg cans of coke etc at work for a bit longer!)

For £3.25 I bet I can not only get cakes, but top up our milk and bread too lol

They should make this a sport lol

xx

[Deleted User]

Hey Kolakube
just caught up on your diary and congrats on mini-kube
sounds like you guys are doing really well on the saving and fingers crossed for the house you want!!!
re: cinema we normally try and sneak our own in but often buy a drink or something - depends on the mood really! The prices really are extortionate and I begrudge paying them, but if its a date nite then have been known to "splash out" (lucky OH I know how to treat em! :rotfl:)

KolaKube

Hi Deleted_User, thanks for joining in

At our cinema you don't have to 'sneak' as such because they don't really seem to care... it's just hard to avoid the old popcorn at the movies lol :rotfl: We did end up buying snacks the other night and we managed to drop the drink on the floor handing over the tickets, and they replaced it free of charge, which was good of them at least!

Today is going really slowly, its so strange! I don't know if its the extra hour, getting up earlier, or what!

We didn't go up to mums in the end as I forgot, they're on holiday lol... baby brain

I fired up the worlds hottest oven and successfully made a batch of 10 scones (Delias recipe, they work out so light and fluffy every time, yum yum!) and 2 loaves of homemade bread (which, if I do say so myself, look *really* good, but are slighty doughy, and cost about 50p in total lol!). Also made a roast chicken dinner, but that created quite a bit of smoke in the kitchen so spent ages trying to air it out lol! Lots of leftover chicken, stuffing and roast potatoes for the next few days, will have to get creative though as OH is a bit sick of chicken...

Ironing is all done and the house is clean... nothing left to do but put on the tudors boxset and get on with my crochet Sundays eh?

xx

ammonite

Hi Kola, we have a mini-ammonite due soon too. I'm trying to get Christmas stuff sorted early too Good luck with the MF journey and congrats on mini-Kube

KolaKube

Hiya ammonite! Congratulations on mini-ammonite! Good move on getting xmas sorted early, takes a lot of pressure off for definite When are you due..?

Well, this morning I am up early as I need to nip into town to go to the bank and transfer some money into savings as its payday... I'm transferring a good bit more than we're comfortable with as we need to 'prove' we have our deposit today but could do with another month saving up really, in the hope that we won't need to dip in / need to dip in only slightly if we keep the right mindset through the month. We'll have to see how that goes! I've worked the budget this month so that we hopefully won't end up in overdraft by the end of the month (we normally do end up in it to a varying extent, and its only through excess spending / working to an unrealistic budget..!)

This month is a 4 week month for us (well, 4 weeks and 2 days!).

I'm planning to park on this side of town for free and walk in, exercise and bonus of saving paying a carpark <yay!>

OH has gone merrily off to work today with his little packed lunch, we normally only manage this maybe twice a week as (understandably!) he doesn't like sandwiches made the night before and rarely has time to make them in the morning. Will have to encourage this by trying to keep it interesting for him (soups, pasta, leftovers etc).

I'm such a fritter. Normally if I went into town I would have a good scour of the pound shops and charity shops, buy a coffee, park in the car park in town...

Repeat after me: I WILL NOT FRITTER AWAY OUR HOUSE DEPOSIT THIS MONTH!!!!

So, this months savings contribution £1450 :eek:... with a hope of needed as little of this as possible by the end of the month :rotfl:

Will update later on xx

KolaKube

You know... this month might not go *too* badly afterall...

Have had a busy little morning. OHs car bill paid (£240), OHs OD from an old account that continued to get used for a little while after we set up our joint account paid (£280).

Went to the bank and transferred that £1450, and sent the required bits and pieces off to the estate agents.

Used the change in my purse to buy a few bits and pieces for the girls coming this afternoon instead of starbucks (MrT do packs of 5 jam doughnuts for 55p! Yum yum!) :rotfl:

Arranged with a friend I'm meeting tomorrow that we can meet at her place or my place instead of town for coffee (cue pack number two of doughnuts lol!)

So, money wise,

As it stands, all our bills / groceries / petrol for the month are covered with money set aside in one pot.

What we're missing out on is general spending money - having transferred that much to the house deposit fund it literally left us with zero in the spending account (which, with the best will in the world, is just not do-able as we have friends coming from England later in the month, and its my birthday mid Nov so we'll be out for a meal etc, plus we need to LIVE our lives as well lol).

OH has his MOT on the 7th, and theres £100 set aside for a quick pre-MOT once over next week (hopefully it wont come to this much as hes recently had a full service, but you never know!)

I had £100 set aside for mine too (mine is due in early December) however we worked out the time mine is getting a service will be on/after next payday so we'll cover that out of next months budget...

So that's £100 transferred into the general spending pot!

Refunds from groupon / indemity insurance should add another £95 to the general spending pot (if they arrive!)

Looking at other areas of the budget which could be manipulated...

1) if OH was *particularly* good with petrol we might be able to squeeze out another £50 or so.

2) Just checked my MrT clubcard account and theres £69 of vouchers... which I had been planning to double in the next exchange on baby and toddler stuff but in actual fact we don't need very much / I'm sure family will want to buy us a few things when mini-Kube arrives - I know its not very MSE but I'm tempted to use them for groceries throughout the month and transfer the rest of the grocery budget into the spending account... what would you do?!

The rest of our bills etc are pretty much fixed. But that means there's a potential £300-£350 or so for the general spending pot if we play our cards right... which I'm sure we could muddle through on

---

MIGHT NOT NEED TO TOUCH THE HOUSE MONEY AFTERALL!

Wish us luck lol xx :rotfl:

KolaKube

Hmm... upon further inspection of the MrT website I see the next exchange starts on Thursday... Will sit on the vouchers until then at least to see whats included

Edit: it would seem baby and toddler isn't included anyway!

Decision made - we will buy me a dolce gusto machine with half the vouchers for my birthday present (yay!)

...and use the other half for groceries (will double up on frozen and stock up on meat and veg etc). May see if there are any frozen turkeys / hams to stash away for xmas too, Mum and I often do an xmas shop together combining clubcard vouchers to split the cost - last year we bought loads of the finest wine lol. Not so interested in that this year seeing as I can't drink it :P