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

Crumpets

Thanks for the wake up call RT, unfortunately I was already awake as I stayed at a friends house and her children like to get up at 6:30:eek: needless to say I haven't been feeling my best today :cool::rotfl: a good night out was had though and I spent £40...not sure if that's good or not. Not much to report today other than we had fish and chips from the chip shop for our dinner I'll hopefully be back on form tomorrow

Watching Eurovision now...Go Molly!_party_

P.s RT I hope everyone is back to full health in your household soon x

Crumpets

hello, it's been a busy, busy day today, and even though I stayed up far too late watching Eurovision I've felt quite productive. The camping stuff has finally been unpacked and put away ready for next time (camping at my mil's for her 60th party in a couple of weeks:D) and my labelling system worked out well :T

DD1 was invited to a party today and about an hour before the party I realised I hadn't even thought about a present:eek: After frantically searching the @rgos website looking for something suitable and at a reasonable price I remembered I had a book in the present box and I also found a lovely art set so at least £10 was saved there:T It sounds like dd had a wonderful time at the party which was pony riding and grooming and has now come home asking to have riding lessons:eek: I've said that we'll see how much the lessons are, she is no longer having swimming lessons and she wants to stop TKD so we might be able to stretch to it. It would be a lovely thing for her to do as a lot of the girls in our area are very into riding and her new school even runs an equestrian club! I'll phone up and find out a bit more info tomorrow.

Dh and I were a bit naughty today again and we took the little ones to McD's for lunch:o after we had fish and chips yesterday too...I blame tiredness, I must have an earlier night tonight. Back on track with my MS ways tomorrow. the only other spend was £8.75 in l!dl on a few essentials for packed lunches (which are made and in the fridge;))

Tonight Dh and I are going to review the budget as a few of our monthly outgoings have changed so we need to see what's what. i'm hoping there will be a bit spare to put towards some household projects we need to do. Due to having the wood burner installed we need to redocrate the living room, this afternoon I've been peeling the lovely anaglypta off the walls (have you got any of that RT? ) we already have the paint but we will need to spend some money to get it finished off properly. We will also need new flooring and curtains etc:eek: I really could do with playing the lottery and winning it!

Does anyone use money dashboard by the way? dh keeps mentioning it too me as a good way of keeping track of our finances but I'm a bit concerned about having all the bank accounts linked to a website.

Crumpets x

Goldiegirl

I stayed up and watched Eurovision too.

It's the voting that I find the most entertaining, everybody votes for their neighbours, which means some bizarre songs get twelve points. I thought the right song won - she sang it like she meant it, and it wasn't typical meaningless Euro pop

littlegreenpeas

Never,the planned person. Next year I'm going to put a bet on the Eurovision.

Crumpets I don't get on with the dashboards for personal finance. It's all to complicated and I prefer a good old fashioned spreadsheet.

Lgp x

Crumpets

Something funny happened to my post yesterday and it disappeared so here's the MS things I did yesterday

• eBay parcel posted
• Baked two lots of cakes so the oven was only on once (one batch now in the freezer for next week)
• Ordered a birthday present to save me rushing around at the last minute
• Dd chose the free NHS specs at the opticians instead of designer ones:T (still had to pay £40 for thinner lenses though)

Today we have a plasterer in making the fireplace all nice ready for the stove installation next week, I'm amazed how quickly and smoothly this project is going:T We have had zero progress on the porch for months so was giving up hope of finding good tradesmen.

It's my wedding anniversary tomorrow so I went to M&S and got a Chinese meal for two and a bottle of prosecco for me and mr C to enjoy tomorrow night, we're also going out on Saturday night so I've booked a table at a fancy resteraunt in a nearby town Dh received some resteraunt vouchers for his birthday so we were hoping to use them but unfortunately that particular resteraunt was fully booked for Saturday night:( never mind we have a date night fund so the money will come out of that:D

Shopping needs to be done today as we are desperately short of everything! I'm going to send Dh as I Bloomin hate going to the supermarket sometimes, I need to do a meal plan first though. We're having smoked haddock Fishcakes tonight though as I have all the ingredients for those.

I have sorted out a bag of baby clothes to pass on to a friend today as well as a few things to donate to preschool, more clutter going from the house:T I also need to list some DVDs on eBay tonight. Dh and I still need to go through the budget as we spent all night messing about on the money dashboard (which is fab) the other day:D we discovered a savings account with over £700 pound in it that we had forgotten about so that will help us with our house projects:T My iron broke yesterday , so will need to get a new one ASAP. It must have been over 8 years old though so it's lasted well. I want to get a steam generator iron so I'll need to do some research.

I haven't done to well on the weight loss this week, put in the 1/2 lb I lost last week so need to go and find something healthy for lunch now

Crumpets x

RoaringTwenties

Hi Crumpets . Wow I've been away a few days and you've been busy- specs, horseriding, re-decorations, eBay, baking - I'm cream crackered just reading!

Yes we have plenty of anaglypta, we have two different patterns in the lounge and in our bedroom we have anaglypta rainbows everywhere - I kid you not, it's shocking . When DD was on the way we had the kids rooms decorated, the chaps who did it said it nearly killed them getting it off the walls, apparently it had been sealed with some kind of covering that they could only describe as 'glue'. I think when we do the rest of the house we'll just have to move out whilst they blast it from within :eek:

Mrs RT has done her back in so I'm effectively a single parent atm which is exhausting - all power to any single parents reading this, you have my utmost respect :T - so I'm off to my bed, but will keep reading even if I don't have chance to post

Crumpets

RoaringTwenties wrote: »

Yes we have plenty of anaglypta, we have two different patterns in the lounge and in our bedroom we have anaglypta rainbows everywhere - I kid you not, it's shocking . When DD was on the way we had the kids rooms decorated, the chaps who did it said it nearly killed them getting it off the walls, apparently it had been sealed with some kind of covering that they could only describe as 'glue'. I think when we do the rest of the house we'll just have to move out whilst they blast it from within :eek:

Loving the sound of the rainbows :rotfl: we also have it in every room of the house and were are slowly getting rid of it, it's tough going, I see it as a bit of a work out though

I've got another busy day ahead of me today (when do I have any other type?) lots to do in the garden. Ds and I have cleaned the chickens out and I'm having a cuppa for five minutes before heading back out. I need to transplant my seedlings from the greenhouse into the raised beds as they have got rather large lately! So lots of digging over to be done. I need to nip out to get some compost as the stuff from our compost bin hasn't composted down enough yet:(

As it's such a beautiful day today I thought I would have a go at washing the children's duvets, I've never tried it before and they definitely needed it:o One is on the line and it looks like it's come up ok, I really don't want to have to buy new ones. Hopefully they will dry before bed time.

I'm really loving the new eBay rules of having 20 free listings a month. That's plenty for me and it's great to be able to list things when I find them instead of waiting for a FLW. I have 11 things listed at the moment and I need to list our current secondary glazing panels :T I also have a box of DVDs and CDs ready to go to mu$ic m@gpie, hopefully that should get me about £15 :T it's so nice to finally be getting rid of these things that have been sat in the loft since we moved house.

I'm having to go off plan with the meals tonight as [STRIKE]ds[/STRIKE] someone turned the freezer off:eek: I've no idea when this happened but most things are pretty defrosted so I'm having to use up what I can, so it's sausage meat meatballs and spaghetti for dinner tonight now.

That's my tea break over now, back in to the garden I go

Crumpets x

Crumpets

Hello, it's a quick up date for me today. Funds are looking very tight at the moment, Our small car that mr C uses for getting to and from work has had to go into the garage as it's been having quite a few problems, the garage has just phoned and it's going to cost £630 to repair:eek: :mad:We were just wondering if we could get away with one car for a while but I don't think we can. We live rurally and dh has a lot of hospital appointments in the big city that often take a whole day so it would be very difficult to collect the children from school on those days. It's cheaper than replacing the car though so we'll have to get it fixed. Hopefully it will keep running for a while once it's problems are sorted out.

The entertainment fund is really taking a battering at the moment too, we have a social event tonight and then Mr C and I are off for a fancy anniversary meal tomorrow, plus Mr C went out last night :eek: I'm feeling a bit panicky at the thought of all this money being spent :cool:

At least the sun is shining

Crumpets x

Crumpets

Ooh I forgot to add yesterday that I've been selected to take part in a new cif floor cleaning trial so I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of the stuff I'm very excited as I've never been selected to take part in anything before

Crumpets

I'm finally having a quiet day today after a very busy week :T. We're just taking it easy today, and we're going for a barbecue at my mil's this evening...yay!

It's been a bit if a mixed bag with regards to spending this weekend, on Friday we had a pre-school fundraiser which was quite spendy, but we won a night of fee baby sitting on the raffle :T I've discovered that Ds's shorts still fit him from last year so no spends there, i've also found some summer pjs in with the things we've had given us :T

I had to buy dd2 some new crocs yesterday but I've listed her old ones on fleabay so will hopefully recoup some of the cost, I've also listed 3 more things today but I've not done very well at all this week, hardly no watchers and no bids at all:( on the plus side my mu$ic m@gpie stuff was collected yesterday and we should get about £23 which is more then expected :T I've also sorted out 2 bags of things for the charity shop, a bag of baby clothes for a friend and a bag of clothes for a school fundraiser:T I just need to get it all out of my house now and then I'll be happy :rotfl:

Yesterday I reserved a new iron at Argos and I thought I would just test the old one to make sure and it worked! So another £40 saved :T I'm not sure how long the iron will last but I'm going to keep using it until it's completely dead. I've also made the decision to drastically reduce the amount of stuff I iron, I'm only going to iron stuff that really needs it and not worry about the other stuff...that's the plan anyway. I found it quite difficult hanging unironed clothes in the wardrobe this morning We had good news on the car front as it came in about £90 under what they quoted, so that's a relief

Last night dh and I had our anniversary meal out at the very swanky resteraunt in a nearby town, it was VERY expensive but we had about 3 months worth of date night fund saved so we had the cost covered :T it was very delicious and a real treat:) After having a rather boozy weekend I'm really looking forward to some rest and an early night tonight.

Crumpets x