Quick - Superglue my DFW hat on!!

liltdiddylilt

I should soooooooooooooo be in bed but I have a number of things to get off my chest!

Number one, it is the weeeeeeekend!! Mines 4 days, for which I am eternally grateful! Got tonnes planned including lovely friends coming to visit & a day as a family with DH & Jellytot

Number 2, check out my signature. Just totted up all my little projects to see how I am doing with saving up for Christmas! I am sooooooooooo excited and shocked. Most of the tesco points have been transferred through from changing all the bills via topcashback. Nectar is mainly adpoints and all their get 100 points if you sign up to this, and 250 if you do that & their 800 points for a £30 spend HOW EXCITING!!!

Number 3, I may need to buy a new cable for my phone. Jellytot loves a good chew & some of the contacts are going black from where she appears to have practically set it on fire?! Its taking half an hour before it even starts to charge my brand spanking new phone - may I also point out at this time that the second she grabs it, I grab it back, but sometimes I am not quite the catwoman I feel I am in flying across the room!

Supposed to be sticking rigidly to a £40 weekly supermarket shop. Having not actually done a proper shop in about 5 weeks we were due a good-un so I will take that as the reason I spent £71.58 in ASDA. I only had to spend £50 to get a free £5 delivery slot

DH then had the cheek to ask if we had enough meat since there were only 2 packs of chicken breasts and 20 sausages to add to the groaning amount of meat in the freezer... Why do men think the world is falling apart if there are not two different meat meals in a day?

Just to prove to him that we don't need 'meat' per se, I made tinned mackerel in tomato sauce & toast for dinner, with 2 leftover onion bhaji's each & a couple of breaded mozzarella things that literally wouldn't fit into the freezer... Ha! :rotfl::rotfl: If he had got the stewing steak out of the freezer this morning instead of at 2pm when I reminded him on my lunch break from work, then maybe we would have had the beef bourguignon I had planned...

Bed. Small child is waking up once a night at the moment purely to have her dummy put back in her mouth by someone else for a change. And then I shall be up with her & cleaning up at 7am... Sigh

Night folks

Harri-bear

Hey Lilt (or should I call you Diddy?) - I didn't know you had a diary!

You made me chuckle about the phone and I should say it gets no better as they get older. Ok, so they stop chewing wires, but they then lose the battery cover and you will only ever have one battery in the back . No wonder no-one can ever contact us!

Can I just say, you have done fantastically well to get where you are and your SOA looks pretty darn fine to me. I always aim for a £40 shop, but it does sometimes creep over - I don't know how, as I always try to 'round up' the cost as I go along.

The man and 'meat' thing is similar to our house too - well done on the mackerel!

Hope you slept well xx

liltdiddylilt

Good morn...afternoon HB!! You may call me whatever you like. My name is like one of those tedious links that Comedy Dave does (did?) on Radio 1 so I will and do answer to pretty much anything anyone feels like calling me my nieces & nephews all have different names for me & Jellytot calls me a vague approximation of Barbara! Refuses point blank to call me Mama, mummy, and the like & usually calls me Dada. When I insist she starts in with 'Bwabwa' & it is definitely aimed at me... :rotfl:

I do indeed have a diary *extends arms & shows you around*. I had a subscription to it and have sat for the last few weeks/months staring at it waiting for the right time to bring it to life again. I think I now have the required motivation & have gotten the silliness with spending out of my system! Now I can plan & be happy with reducing the outgoings again rather than rebelling because I've been good & paid off all the debts! Lol.

Thank the lord for iPhones if what you are saying is true. You need a miniature apple screwdriver to even get the sim card case open & there is NO removing covers! Doesn't that sound extravagant... iPhone.. It's a 32gb white 5 too. I don't feel the slightest bit naughty. I pay £9.90 per month including VAT on my contract! I'm no wonderwoman though. The phone (all £600 of it :eek:) was a gift!

Thank you for the compliments on my SOA. If only I had known how to drop bills down to this level when I lived on my own, I may actually have managed to live without going further into debt each month!

I forgot to mention that I paid my home insurance in full for the year for the first time ever in October The renewal was £246 from £244 the year before. I got the same cover online elsewhere for £64.71 and then got £19 cashback!

Still in amongst all the savings & spare cash I don't feel like I have enough money to afford the Sky TV that I would so love to get. What a rip-off!

Today I did indeed get up at the crack of dawn & start cleaning. DH stayed in bed until 11:30am and when he got up he was a bit shocked to find I have emptied every cupboard in the kitchen out & started again. He was very proud of his skills at loading the shopping away yesterday whilst I was at work & I think I burst his bubble a little bit.

He actually emptied out my 'bulk' cupboard and re-jigged in order to fit things in, which would be lovely except...Why does he not see the half empty pack of dried noodles that went out of date in January 2011? What makes him think it is a good idea to keep a gigantic mostly empty bag of teabags in the cupboard when the remaining bags can be transferred to the teabag jar & the bag thrown away? Why did he stack packet mixes in a haphazard fashion NEXT to the tin which proudly proclaims in permanent marker 'Packet mixes'?!?!?!?!

So, a bin liner and a half of thrown away packaging/out of date food & I have a much clearer picture of the cupboards. Mainly because I can see the actual products now.

I need pasta, rice, chickpeas, tins of kidney beans etc. These are things I NEVER run out of... and yet I have hardly any of any of them! Arghhh! Why did I not do this prior to yesterdays horror shop?!?!

Off I trundle to make a shopping list on ASDA & TESCO & see which one is actually cheaper. Mysupermaket is so ambiguous in it's choices, it doesn't natter where I shop, it always says that shop is the cheapest - maybe I will be extra good & walk down to Lidl to see what their prices are on pasta/rice/tins at the minute!

liltdiddylilt

Good evening diary... What a manic day! I barely slept last night. Haven't been sleeping well for the last few days. I'm not sure why. I woke up this morning to the sound of my beautiful Jellytot laughing and giggling, playing with the 2 teddies I allow her to keep in her cot & the numerous socks she manages to steal from the hanging tidymajig attached to the outside of her cot. I was so tired, where I would normally go in & change her bum & get her up for the day, I thought... 5 more minutes...

To quote Pretty Woman: "Big mistake, HUGE!" -:eek::eek: I wandered in bleary eyed to be met by a baby covered in poo.:eek: A bed covered in poo. :eek:Blankets... you guessed it, covered in poo. :eek: A regular poosplosion. In removing her sleepsuit, I found even the feet had little balls of poo in them. I gave up on trying to remove her vest. It was stuck to her back from bum to neck! I ran a lovely bubbly bath and dumped her in, babygrow & all, then removed it and put it straight into the bin. No arguments, I am NOT trying to clean that! Everything else from the bed went into a giant wash-bucket full of Napisan (baby Vanish) & it's still there now!

Nothing like stripping beds and bathing small children at 7 sharp to get you motivated for the day. I cleaned the bathroom once Jelly had been deposited with her toys, dressed and CLEAN. Then I moved into the kitchen & scrubbed the place up. Then I had a shower & finally as I sat down and had my first coffee of the day somewhere around 10:30 my friend text to say she was on the way over.

The rest of the day was spent delightfully. I spent £50 between the lovely poundland & wilko's on cleaning materials, vegetable peeler, utensil jar (Jelly has just managed to start opening drawer number 3 of the unlockable kitchen drawers & it is full of knives!! 1-2 are full of baby things now)... Ooh I got a breadbin, biscuit barrel, and coffee, tea, sugar jars, all matching! £20 I've never owned matching kitchen items in my LIFE! I also finally got around to buying some more cutlery to replace the mostly plastic, mostly broken stuff we currently have, and a metal drawer tidy to put it in, rather than the chaotic kitchen drawer full we have had for the last 4 years! It's always been pot luck, put your hand in for a teaspoon & come out with chopsticks, or maybe a fork you hoped was a spoon!

Dropped it all off at home & dragged the OH out with me and friend to go for a lunchtime meal at wetherspoons with the kiddiwinks. Jelly exceptionally behaved, as was lovely baby James.

Came home, played with Jelly, showed off her newfound walking skills to my parents on facetime finally, & then deposited a very tired & happy kiddo in bed. Not a peep since!

Now to have poached eggs on naan bread with spinach for tea as lunch was the main meal of the day. I know, naan bread is weird... but work with what you've got! :rotfl::rotfl:

All in all not exactly a very MSE day but I feel so much better finally getting some new things in my dilapidated kitchen. I left everything with my ex 4 years ago next month, & it has just been a succession of items other people left behind in the rented places I've been in since then & cheap, naff items that I needed but couldn't afford decent ones of.

Still on the list:
--Knife block with vaguely decent knives, not costing the earth!
--Chopping boards that are not cracked, split, or sliced through with a stanley knife from when I used it to cut up a carpet remnant on.
-- Food processor
-- Slow cooker

Save those for another month!

please-let-me-be-lucky

Sounds like a fun morning! I sympathise entirely with the baby poo explosion! Been there, cleared up that!

Glad you had a good afternoon though Xx

liltdiddylilt

Hello Lucky!
Sorry I haven't posted in your diary in ages & thank you for posting in mine! I did indeed have a lovely afternoon.

I'm so cheerful every time I go into my kitchen & see the lovely matching tins all over the place. Amazing what can buoy you up really. I spent £50 but I am pretty sure in terms of wellbeing & self-respect it would have been worth £1000.

I'm going to take two paracetamol for exhaustion related leg pains & get my little self into bed. I really need to get a decent nights sleep tonight.

Night night!

liltdiddylilt

Ahhhhhhh...

I've had a lovely day. Got up bright & early with Jelly & got us both showered & dressed instantly. Got my morning coffee fix down me exceptionally early & powered through tidying & cleaning around. Face timed both Jelly's sets of grandparents so they could see her

I also made OH a cuppa, hard boiled some eggs & steamed some spinach so that he could have a decent breakfast before work. Took mademoiselle out for a walk up the sea front & let her have a little play on the grass, brought her back, gave her lunch & then popped her down for a nap & not a peep has been heard in over an hour so far.

Meanwhile, I've no cleaning up to do so have just sat down with:


Ready for a blissful afternoon of planning! I have a couple of ikea cube storage boxes my old landlady gave to me & I want to paint them up & make them nice! Would rather they were a nice blue & white than the grubby plain wood they are currently. I'm also thinking I could get some kind of cotton/linen sack-cloth & sew bags to go inside them thus keeping my stuff stored neatly but also hidden! Thoughts to be going along with anyway

Harri-bear

Glad you've both had a lovely day - the weather is absolutely glorious!

I really like the sound of your boxes and think they would look lovely in the colours you've described. I'm a bit of a fan of boxes - they hide a multitude of sins!:rotfl:

I'm quite partial to bags myself, but must confess to filling them up and then simply going out and buying new ones once they are full. This is a naughty habit and must be stopped immediately!:D

liltdiddylilt

Haha!! I am also a huge fan of boxes. I'm one of those people who puts a box, inside a box, inside a box! And I never throw boxes away, just in case.

Case in point: I just opened one of the storage cubes to see if there was anything worth keeping in it. At the bottom, is a huge Thornton's gift box. It was a gift for Christmas in 2008 (not the box, the chocolate inside!) from a client of mine. Inside that box is myriad other things including several jewellry boxes haha!

I was thinking blue & white as a nautical theme for the boxes. White lids, blue box - maybe I can find something like a wooden 'buoy' ornament or something to stick to the front of each & really camp the theme up! currently a bit scuppered though as the paint tubs are £11.99 each & the boxes were free to me, but only £16 each when my old landlady bought them! Not really worth spending more on the paint than they cost!

I've found something amazing!! I've got a mysupermarket widget thingy that annoyingly pops up every time I go to a supermarket website. Sometimes it really messes up the page but that appears to be because I haven't been using it properly. If I want to do an online grocery shop... I start it in Mr A's etc... and start adding my items. The widget asks if it can take my basket & transports me away from the A*** site & to its own site... I continue shopping, with it giving me handy hints on whether to swap one bag of potatoes for two to save money etc + then at the end it moves it all back to the supermarket of my choice, as maybe Mr T's is cheaper - now for the really super clever bit....

I was just hunting for recipes online to see what I could create from potatoes... when the widget pops up again. It asks if I want to transfer the ingredients to my basket! I said yes, just for the heck of it.. It opened a new tab in my browser, navigated to mysupermarket.co.uk & then brought up a selection of items, i.e. bags of potatoes, trays of eggs, peppers, fajita seasoning etc for me to choose from! It transported the whole recipe across I'm thinking I might search out a load of recipes now, just to play with this!

HeadAboveWater

Hello :wave:

Just came across your diary and figured I'd subscribe! Your life sounds [STRIKE]seriously hectic [/STRIKE]fun Will make things in our house sound less crazy! :rotfl:

PS. I like your t-i-double guh-rrrrrr mug!