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

Crumpets

Hi pooky, (great name, dh used to call our dd2 pooky when she was a baby ) lovely to see you, do you have a diary? I will head over if you have.

The gig was fantastic the other night, it was a very small gig in a 17th C thatched barn, we watched a brilliant Scottish folk band, it's the second time we've seen them now and they're fantastic. The baby sitter got on fine with the kids too so it's great to have some one other than my parents to be able to call upon:T it did add an extra £20 onto the cost of the night out so it isn't something we'll be doing all the time.

It's been a similar story again this week, some spendy days some not so spendy days, nothing major has happened though so there's nothing unexpected to come out of the bank.

Today I met up with a friend and we went out to brunch -£11 and then coffee-£3.25, we only meet up a handful of times a year so it's good to have a proper catchup. I also brought a 1st birthday present from TK m@xx for £9.99 saving £5 on the amazon price :T I've got my mums 65th birthday next week and it was mil's 60th birthday yesterday so it is a very spendy time at the moment:eek: my mum would like perfume and we've no idea what to get mil, she's having a party next weekend so we need to have it sorted by then!

We have organised a BBQ for tomorrow and the weather is going to be atrocious but in true British spirit we are carrying on regardless I need to go and get all the food and drink tomorrow, I'm going to make it feel as sunny as possible so we'll be having jugs of pimms and fruit punch, I'm going to whip up some bunting to hang around and we'll have a jolly good time if it kills us:T we have quite a few people coming so I have no idea how much I'll spend on food and drink but hopefully we'll have plenty of leftovers for the rest of the weekend.

Tonight is family film night and I'm fancying a Harry Potter, I think dd has read up to the half blood prince but I'm not sure if the film is too scary for her - I'm a mean mum and I only let her watch the film once she's read the book :rotfl:

Time for dinner now, easy peaty tortellini and garlic bread

Crumpets x

Crumpets

Ooh, I forgot to add that I've been looking at flights for our trip to the US next year and it's going to cost about £5k for the five of us to fly out :eek: I don't think we can afford to op and save that so we have some thinking to do...

Crumpets

Another £4 added to the camping fund thanks to the bay of E :rotfl:

cotswoldaccountant

Crumpets wrote: »

Tonight is family film night and I'm fancying a Harry Potter, I think dd has read up to the half blood prince but I'm not sure if the film is too scary for her - I'm a mean mum and I only let her watch the film once she's read the book :rotfl:

I'm with you on that Crumpets! DS1 adores the Harry Potter books and has read them all loads of times - I had thought he might be skimming some of the trickier bits but I found an online Harry Potter quiz which I thought was pretty difficult, and he knew absolutely everything. So I bought him the box set of DVDs for his 9th birthday, as I had also said he couldn't watch the films until he had read the books!

Hope all well with you. Life has been manic here as ever and am only just finding time to sit down and catch up on a few diaries.

CA

greent

Crumpets wrote: »

The gig was fantastic the other night, it was a very small gig in a 17th C thatched barn, we watched a brilliant Scottish folk band, it's the second time we've seen them now and they're fantastic. The baby sitter got on fine with the kids too so it's great to have some one other than my parents to be able to call upon:T it did add an extra £20 onto the cost of the night out so it isn't something we'll be doing all the time.



We have organised a BBQ for tomorrow and the weather is going to be atrocious but in true British spirit we are carrying on regardless I need to go and get all the food and drink tomorrow, I'm going to make it feel as sunny as possible so we'll be having jugs of pimms and fruit punch, I'm going to whip up some bunting to hang around and we'll have a jolly good time if it kills us:T we have quite a few people coming so I have no idea how much I'll spend on food and drink but hopefully we'll have plenty of leftovers for the rest of the weekend.

Tonight is family film night and I'm fancying a Harry Potter, I think dd has read up to the half blood prince but I'm not sure if the film is too scary for her - I'm a mean mum and I only let her watch the film once she's read the book :rotfl:

Time for dinner now, easy peaty tortellini and garlic bread

Crumpets x

Glad the gig was good - and lovely to have another sitter option, even if it costs - can still sometimes be worth it, though


Typical BH weather will be spoiling a few people's plans... glad you've got the 'carry on regardless' attitude!


I think the HP books get darker after the 3rd one (from memory) The films are lighter (imo) and it's ALWAYS a good idea to have the original source before a film - good comparison as to what has been changed

Crumpets wrote: »

Ooh, I forgot to add that I've been looking at flights for our trip to the US next year and it's going to cost about £5k for the five of us to fly out :eek: I don't think we can afford to op and save that so we have some thinking to do...

It's hard, isn't it? My BestF is in the US for 3 years with work - and we can stay with them if we go out - but flights for the 6 of us would be around £5.5k and where they are there is nothing to do - so it wouldn't be a great holiday for the kids, really - so we've decided not to go out there - hard choice, but I'd rather spend that money on a different style holiday (eg: Portugal in Oct) and OP-ing

Crumpets wrote: »

Another £4 added to the camping fund thanks to the bay of E :rotfl:

It all helps!

SmlSave

Hope the bbq was good fun, I'm sure with enough pims you didn't even notice the rain

Crumpets

Well the barbecue was a fantastic hit and we couldn't have timed it better! The rain stopped just long enough for us to barbecue the food, sit outside and eat it and for the kids to have a little play before the heavens opened again:beer::T everyone had a great time so I'm really glad we carried on regardless I spent about £70 on food and drink though:eek: we had some uncooked food left that has gone into the freezer for the next one as well as plenty of left overs for lunch yesterday and we'll take the rest on our picnic today. The booze should last a while too :T

We watched the Order of the Phoenix on Friday which was really good, I think dd was a bit scared but she did well, she's still reading the half blood prince so that will be on our list to watch in a few weeks.

Dh and I still haven't got round to looking at our finances to see if we can afford our trip to the US, our friends are American so we only get to see them every few years, we went to them 4 years ago and they came here last year so it's our turn. I think in future if we save up over the 4 years between visits it's possible to op and save but obviously I haven't done that this time. Thank goodness they can put us up and we only need to have spending money and flights. Sometimes I feel like home educating the children as to go during term time would knock £2k off the price :mad:

I made another £5.70 on eBay yesterday:T our camping fund is creeping up slowly but surely:T some friends asked us to go camping next weekends but unfortunately we can't go as we have my mil's birthday party, we are camping in her garden for 2 nights though so we'll still get our camping fix - for free too:D

Yesterday was a NSD as we were doing jobs in the house, dh made a worktop for the utility room and it is now a much more organised space. We had everything we needed in the garage for this :T Today we are going to take a picnic to the park and give the children chance to burn off all their energy :-) it will be a LSD as there is a little fair that the children will want to go on but hopefully we won't spend much more than £10.

Happy bank holiday Monday everyone :beer:

Crumpets x

Crumpets

Just a little update on today's spends.

• LSD at the park, we took a picnic with us (we had to eat it in the car due to the rain) then I spent about £7 on ice cream for pudding, not for me though :A good for the £ and the lbs we also spent £9 on children's rides at the fair, so slightly over what I'd hoped to spend but all in all not too bad.

• Made some rhubarb and ginger muffins using rhubarb from the garden...they were delicious
  
• Ordered my mums birthday perfume from fr@gr@nce dir£ct using a 10% off code and TCB:T
  
• Booked my mil on a basket weaving course for her birthday - £90:eek: ( 3 course lunch plus afternoon tea included)- £200 cheaper than the hot air balloon ride we were considering :T

When our new kitchen was finished my parents brought us a l€ crus€t teapot and mugs, this weekend dd1 has smashed a mug and tonight she has broken the tea pot lid:mad::eek: I'm trying very hard not to be cross I did tell my mum not to get me an expensive tea pot though, I usually get them from car boots or charity shops:p

Crumpets x

greent

Save it as a search on ebay, perhaps? - hopefully someone will be selling just the lid? (I seem to remember someone on here having a successful ebay sale for just the lid of something - Watty, perhaps?) x

Crumpets

I've had a look on eBay but no lid at the moment, I'll keep looking though, dh has glued it together so it will do for now

This half term is turning out to be very wet and miserable, yesterday wasn't too bad, we went on the local steam railway with my parents which the children enjoyed. I spent £18 on lunch as I didn't have anything in to make a picnic:mad: I also managed to leave my purse in the cafe and I didn't realise until I got home late afternoon:eek: luckily I drove straight back there and my purse had been handed in...phew

Today is a very grey and wet day, I went to the local garden centre with a friend for a cup of tea whilst the little ones played in the play area, she brought the tea so the only spend was on some sweets for the children. I did have to cough up £5 of pocket money to dd1 though as I hadn't given her any for a couple of weeks :eek: and she immediately spent it on a cuddly toy:eek: as if we haven't got enough of those at home!

It's my mums birthday today so this afternoon I'm going to make her a cake and we'll take that and her cards around to her, she is staying in a holiday cottage about 20 minutes away which is great as I can't just pop round normally unfortunately her perfume hasn't arrived in the post yet so she'll have to have it next week.

I've put an order in for some grocery shopping to be delivered to our holiday cottage when we go in two weeks. There is only one shop that you can order from and by just ordering some basics, tea, biscuits bread and butter etc it came to over £40:eek: I can't imagine we'll do much cooking but it will be nice to take picnics for lunch etc but at these prices I'm not so sure! Still I'm very excited about going

We have my mil's birthday garden party on Saturday and I'm having a bit of a crisis about what to wear, I was just going to wear jeans but it turns out other people are getting a bit more dressed up I might need to go and buy a new outfit, I will do so as frugally as possible though:cool:

Crumpets x