SF's road to mortgage freedom!

slowlyfading

Knit_Witch wrote: »

sourdough is easy to start, just remember you need to take up to 24 hours to make a loaf!

You do? See, I need to do some reading!

Knit_Witch

These give a few ideas - the best Dr Wytch found was the River Cottage bread book though

slowlyfading

Knit_Witch wrote: »

These give a few ideas - the best Dr Wytch found was the River Cottage bread book though

Thanks for the link - am off to do some reading

AlexLK

slowlyfading wrote: »

Alex - having a walk every day with your son sounds lovely and homemade is definitely better, as you know exactly what goes into it!

It is nice. My son really likes being outdoors, so we often go looking for something different each day. We should be getting a dog soon, if all goes to plan with my cousin's pregnant Labrador, my son is very excited about that and at least I will be able to pick him up from school with the dog.

The time when they're young goes by so very quickly, I hope you find being a parent as rewarding as I do. I realise I sound like some sentimental grandmother but I truly believe having my son saved my life and has even made it enjoyable at times, wish my wife could say the same though.

We've had a homemade food day, today. It's certainly better.

slowlyfading wrote: »

Just been to Mr Ms and have spent £44 on food for the week we're having sweetcorn and crab chowder for tea with some olive sourdough - I have made a mental note to explore how to make a sourdough starter and attempt my own at some point, I love sourdough bread.

We've been to look at carpets this afternoon, but three of the places we'd planned to go to were shut :mad: how frustrating is that?! Sunday is the only day when me and DH can do things like that together, as it's the only day in the week when we're both off at the same time. It'll need to wait until half term now, which is very annoying. I'd hoped to have got it fitted during that week, so again it pushes back the plans.

Added 5 x £1 coins to the baby pot today - it's basically a change pot that'll be left until baby arrives, then will be used for things we need unexpectedly, like nappies/milk or little things we've forgotten that we can pop to our local shop for. Trying to get organised! 28 weeks now and plodding along nicely

Happy Sunday everyone

Your food sounds delicious as always.

Don't worry about the carpet, your child won't notice either way. There's only one week to go until half term around these parts.

slowlyfading

Ooh, a puppy! Love dogs, wish we could have one And the carpet thing; the room doesn't have any carpet at all at the moment, so we'll need something

AlexLK

slowlyfading wrote: »

Ooh, a puppy! Love dogs, wish we could have one And the carpet thing; the room doesn't have any carpet at all at the moment, so we'll need something

Any reason you can't have one in a few years when your child is a bit older?

Understand regarding the carpet now.

slowlyfading

AlexLK wrote: »

Any reason you can't have one in a few years when your child is a bit older?

Unless our job circumstances change, both me and DH are out for too many hours during the day to be able to have a dog - there's no one around to let it out during the day one day though, I'm aiming for it!

slowlyfading

And another Monday is over

My blogging adventures have been a preoccupation for me today; I have lots of ideas and "what ifs" flying around my head about it all at the moment. I think that's possibly due to the fact that over the weekend I renewed my domain/online space etc., and it has got me thinking about where I want it to go, if anywhere. I think I'm going to give myself the next two years to get it up and running (not sharing too much here on purpose) and if it still isn't by then, then perhaps it's not the thing I should be pinning some of my hopes on to.

That being said, I have also mentally written a draft version of a business plan. I do need to get it down on paper and go over some numbers, but I have clarified more seriously what I hope to achieve from my little corner of the internet over the next two years. This does take into account having a small person around too, so we shall see.

One of my main objectives for now is to increase traffic/social media numbers/general interactions. If anyone fancies following my blog on twitter or facebook, I will love you forever! I have numbers in mind for where I want to be by the end of the year, so I need to work on increasing that steadily over the months.

In other news, it's a NSD in the SF household. I don't know if I'll reach my target for May, but I'm still plodding along. We're having homemade spaghetti puttanesca for tea (recipe on blog!) and then a chilled evening I think. Possibly watch a film if we can agree on one

Happy Monday everyone

Karmacat

You're on! I keep meaning to follow up the few followers on the blog I'm doing, so I'll do that tomorrow, and follow you ...

SuperSecretSquirrel

SF I don't understand why you're not monetizing your blog. A discreet ad or two won't do any damage, maybe a small banner between the end of the article and comments section? It might not earn megabucks right now, but a trickle of pennies towards costs is better than nothing, and if one day an article is linked to from somewhere huge and you get a massive spike you could be quids in!

If you worry that ads on a frugal blog would seem incongruent, remember us frugal people use things like uswitch, quidco, investment accounts, discount retailers, etc. There are ads that make sense to us. You can filter out unacceptable ad categories (payday lenders etc) yourself, from there google will take care of it - they have a knack for matching ads to content There's also the "thanks" factor to consider - grateful readers will click the occasional ad as they know it supports the author. Sucks for the advertisers, but I'm sure they price this into their bids!

Have you considered writing a "how to start a blog" article? I mean fully step by step, and UK centric? A self hosted wordpress blog with a domain name and the option to have ads is what most people would want. Worth looking into your hosting providers offerings, they may have an affiliate scheme? If you wrote a detailed how to get started article I would absolutely use your affiliate link to sign up, as I'm sure many others would. Interesting to note that those affiliate "*" links are what make a lot of MSE's revenue