The Crumpet family's journey to Mortgage Freedom:-)

GemDoll

Crumpets wrote: »

Yippee flights are booked and I got them for £150 cheaper than I'd seen them and that included seat allocation fees and luggage in the hold...excited now:D

Where are you going crumpets? I'm very jealous!

GemDoll

Crumpets wrote: »

Morning!

Today I'm going to try and put in place some things that will make my life easier in the mornings. For example making packed lunches! It doesn't seem to matter what I buy when I go shopping I always struggle to think of things to put in the lunch boxes. I have a very fussy daughter who won't eat sandwhiches:mad: and I have no idea what to put in that's healthy and nutritious. So today I'm going to make sure I have everything i need for the lunches. This will probably involve some baking and hopefully not a trip to the shops.

I also still have an enormous pile of fruit to prepare and make into pie/crumble fillings. I have the free apples I got the other day, rhubarb out of the garden, blackberries that we picked and a big bag of plums, apples and pears that a neighbour gave me.

So I will be making, apple and blackberry, apple and rhubarb and Plum crumble. Most of these will be going into the freezer but I'll make one for us to eat today:T

Yesterday was a NSD, we went to a nearby NT house that we hadn't been to before. The kids loved all the outdoor space, unfortunately down to bad planning we went over lunch time. I didn't want to spend an enormous amount of money on tea and cake so we didn't stay long and went home to have a late lunch. I was feeling really smug about our NSD , then when I got home I was carrying dd down the path when I stumbled, fell over, ripped my brand new £45 jeans and cut my leg:( so now I need new jeans as they were the only pair I had. I only brought them last week:mad:

Sold a couple of items on eBay yesterday but I keep getting international buyers :mad: why can't they get in touch to ask if I'll post to them before they bid?

Just waiting for dh to get up now so I can go for a run.

Crumpets x

I'm really sorry about your jeans, my jeans also have a rip in them and I desperately need a new pair but don't want to spend out

The children love the NT properties, we usually get given money for Xmas and spend it on family membership, so worth it!

GemDoll

Crumpets wrote: »

My second post of the day, it's been a very productive day so I wanted to update.

In the freezer I now have 2 rhubarb and apple crumbles, a spiced plum and blackberry crumble and a pear and blackberry crumble :T I still have a bag full of apples left, a lot of them will just eaten as is but I might make an apple pie too. I need to get to grip with blind baking as I've never tried it before.

Mr C also made some delicious bread rolls this afternoon so I made a batch of vegetable soup and we ate that for dinner

I have also decided to unsubscribe from all of my clothing emails that I get from various stores. Hopefully I'll be less tempted by things that I don't need. I'm quite good at resisting but the less temptation the better I say

Mr C and I have also decided to give ourselves a target for clearing the mortgage and we're going to try for 8 years, no idea of that is possible but it seems like a good goal to have. I'll be 41 and Mr C will be 44. Wish us luck :T

Crumpets x

I'm just doing the sums in my head to work out how old you are...:rotfl:

Your veg soup sounds lovely! I usually make to tomato and lentil but as it's the only soup I make the family must be bored of it...

Crumpets

GemDoll wrote: »

I'm just doing the sums in my head to work out how old you are...:rotfl:

Your veg soup sounds lovely! I usually make to tomato and lentil but as it's the only soup I make the family must be bored of it...

Hi Gemdoll, thanks for stopping by I'm 33 although sometimes I feel 73:rotfl:

Tomato and lentil soup sounds yummy, in fact I just picked some tomatoes from the greenhouse and I have lentils in the cupboard so that might be one to make tomorrow:T my veg soup was nice, I just throw in which ever veg I have lying around, I think it was carrot, broccoli, potato and mushroom. It's a good one to use up the odds and ends.

I agree about the NT membership, this is our first year of being members and it's definitely been worth it. I'll be rejoining next year, probably using birthday money;)

SmlSave

I really hope our parents don't go mad at Christmas and fill our hose back up again.

I bet you walk really funny Boxing day :rotfl:

I like the kids present rules and am going to steal the idea

Crumpets

SmlSave wrote: »

I bet you walk really funny Boxing day :rotfl:

:rotfl::rotfl: oops

Crumpets

Phew finally got the kids into bed just in time for Bake off:D Dd1 lost her screen time for today so we had to have a quick game of connect 4 before she went to bed (score was 3-2 to me:T)

Well as it's the first of the month the mortgage has gone out and my signature has been updated:T I have also managed to op £311.39 which is a lot better than expected. I did really well on my grocery spends so that's where most of the op comes from. I'll update my sig again in a few days when my new balance shows online

Speaking of grocery shopping, I went to Tesco today:eek: I needed a few non-food items from there so thought I may as well get some shopping whilst I was there. I didn't have time to go to Aldi too and we were out of quite a few things. I was pushing my trolley round and I couldn't believe the price of some things, I just got some essentials including nappies and some cards and it came to £58:eek: I got no where near enough to last the week and I'm really cross with myself for going there:mad:

It was photo day at pre school today so we took Ds down to have his photograph done as well as dd2 but he wouldn't stand or sit or look at the camera so he saved us some money by not having his photograph taken:rotfl: the ones that dd2 brought home weren't great either so I doubt we'll be buying them.

I decided to have a go at colouring my own hair so I got a dye today using my boots points so that's £10.00 towards this months OP. I hope it turns out ok. I've really cut (:D) back on trips to the hairdresser this year so I'm hoping that will mean a large op at the end of the year. Our usual hair budget for the year was £780:eek:

I've also persuaded dh that we should give up on the lottery so that will be another £20 a month towards our regular op. I worked out we'd won £30 for the year so far...no idea how much we'd spent playing it, and now the prices are going up it's going to get ridiculous.

Going to finish watching Bake off now,

Crumpets x

Crumpets

Hi there, not an NSD today unfortunately, took the little ones to playgroup and had to pay £4 for 2 weeks as I didn't have any change last week. The kids are worn out now though, Ds is in bed and dd is watching sleeping beauty so I now have a little bit of peace and quiet.

This afternoon I need to post 2 international parcels, one to Russia (EBay) and one to the US. That one is a gift for a friend that has just had a new baby. I've also sold a book on amazon so need to get up in the loft so I can post it whilst I'm out. I still need to label all the clothes I'm hoping to sell at the NCT nearly new sale this weekend. It seems like such a chore and I keep putting it off. I hope it sells.

Chilli, rice and tortilla dinner tonight so will get making that soon. Dd1 has brownies on a Wednesday so I need to make sure we have dinner early.

Tomorrow I have a friend and her husband and kids coming for lunch so I'm trying to think what I can do for lunch without going to the shop. I'm thinking pumpkin soup, hm bread followed by a crumble and custard. I think we have everything in for that.

Those labels are calling me:o

Crumpets x

GemDoll

Yum crumpets...I love crumble and custard, delicious....:D

Crumpets

Well the afternoon didn't quite go according to plan. The post office was closed this afternoon so the parcels didn't get posted. The book that I sold on amazon has unfortunately already been sold so I've had to cancel the order:( I also don't have any pumpkin in the freezer to make soup tomorrow so it's either going to be broccoli or sweet corn chowder.

I also didn't mention earlier that Mr C had a little bump in the family car and smashed the wing mirror on a neighbours wheely bin. It's going to be repaired tomorrow and is probably going to cost £100+:mad:

I managed to go out for a run though so that perked me up. I'm doing the Race for Life in 2 weeks so trying to get fit for that.:j

Going to watch all the house building programmes on tv tonight and get inspired/ jealous (not jealous of the mortgages though:D )