our forever patch challenge

sammy70

Day 4 of healthy eating, and we have again stuck to our calorie plan, so hopefully when I get weighed in the morning I will have lost a bit of xmas blubber

2nd mortgage payment went out Tuesday, and the balance has updated, now £243,570.55 :eek:

couldnt resist an account tidy, and made a overpayment of £17.61, our first overpayment of 2017 :j

I had NSD too !

chumpy45

Wow, really well done on the healthy eating. I have woken up with good intentions every day this week after reading my new book about cutting out sugar. I then worked my way through a box of After Eights and some chocolate biscuits :rotfl: Will try again (very hard) next week !

sammy70

thanks chumpy!

Day 5, first Friday weigh in, and ive lost 5lb!!:j I will be happy from now on if I can manage 2lb a week, the 5lb was probably just caused by the dramatic reduction from about 3000 calories a day with all the xmas excess, to the 1300 I'm currently having :rotfl:

a spend today of £3 on lottery, but hopefully this will lead to a return, though I'm not holding my breath!

We finally found out monthly payment for council tax, and itsgood news, £60 a month less than we had estimated off the council website, though electric will be higher and coal over the winter, so I'm going to pay a little extra anyway into the bill account to take this into account.

I'm really feeling positive about making savings that in turn lead to making overpayments, even £10 a week saved on groceries soon adds up , and I love the satisfaction of seeing that extra monthly mortgage balance reduction

sammy70

Ive just got back from Aldi, £65.95 spent, enough meat , fruit, veg, yoghurts and makings for pack lunches for hubby and I for a week, and £27.99 of that was for a new kingsize duck feather duvet that they had on offer. Ive been after one for ages, and they are a lot more than that usually, so a bargain :j

I'm aiming for £70-£75 a week on groceries max, and anything saved from this goes into savings, so I'm really watching the spend on food, as well as watching calories

I shall get stuck into house cleaning and tidying now for a couple of hours, then its date night for hubby and I , and our treat night, a dessert, and two drinks, lovely !:j

sammy70

After a lovely weekend with hubby, out in the country air, and pottering doing jobs at home together its back to work today

We have been good at the weekend, no bingeing

I have set meal plan for this week, and I'm determined to stick to my daily calorie allowance. We both agree losing the weight will make us feel a lot better, and as we both think, its no use having our lovely cottage and land, if we aren't healthy enough to enjoy it due to preventable weight related health problem in later life.

Ive had a NSD day, feeling positive about weight loss, and getting stuck into overpayments.

We have a lot of work, and paying out to get our land fenced securely for animals, and repairing workshop, building a stable , land clearing, building chicken house, etc etc, but its all for a good cause, this is the life we wanted, and working hard to pay for it is so worth it We have short and longer term savings goals to get everything as we want it, we love a challenge!

This summer will be lots of land clearing, a lot of our land is overgrown, lots of blackberry bushes, overgrown trees, ivy, etc, plenty to keep us busy!
I'm going to get quotes for some of the fencing next week, hopefully to start in spring

sammy70

another NSD, and stuck to calorie allowance:j
Had a bit of a nightmare this morning, thought our range heater/cooker had blown, all plates went with a bang1 was quite scary first thing of a morning :eek:

After speaking to previous owner, and heating guy, it appears because id been piling fuel on first thing, then putting draw on full blast, it had caused gasses to build then ignite, hence explosion of plates, from now on I will follow the instructions to get draw on, and wood burning before adding fuel, whilst keeping draw open, to prevent gas build up in the flue.. you live and learn..:o

I must admit, I thought we would be shelling out for new heating system til I had taken advice, I still feel a bit in shock of bang/thought of having to spend £1000s on new heating..

sammy70

£2.94 mini overpayment made, couldn't resist rounding the balance

Its addictive , even making the small payment make us feel positive, and every little really does help ! :j

sammy70

Checked all accounts, and unless any unexpected cash comes our way, we wont be making any overpayments now until our paydays

Keeping fingers crossed I don't wake up to deep snow, we do live in a remote rural area , and its is on the edge of the pennines, so we do get the extreme weather up here :eek:

As a precaution I did our grocery shop today instead of Saturday, in case the weather does get bad as predicted, we can at least hunker down with plenty of food, and we have enough fuel now to last the winter out, which I supplement with pallets that work allow me to take, so pennies saved there

We ordered and collected a woodburner lookalike electric stove hubby and I clubbed all our xmas money to buy yesterday, its all set up and looks lovely in our sitting room, and if anything goes wrong with our range, we can at least warm one room while we get it sorted. it has reallooking burning logs and smoke, its lovely, gives room a cosy feel too

Grocery shop came in on budget, and I managed to get the 2nd to last of some really snuggly throws from aldi, £34.99, and cushion to match, £8.99, when I got the kingsize feather duvetlast week, I vowed id get the throw this week if there were any left
I wont be buying anything else for a while, I only buy things we need, and the warm bedding/throw will keep us snuggly warm in winter here

pink_poppy

Did you get snow?! :snow_grin

We had some overnight but it's pretty much disappeared already. Good idea for you to do your shopping early, just in case.

The electric stove sounds interesting, have you got a link?? I don't think I can be bothered with getting a woodburner installed in this house (we don't have a chimney and it would be tricky finding a place for it to go anyway).

sammy70

Hi Poppy! we didn't have snow overnight, just hard frost. It did snow here after id left for work, an inch or so is on the yard, its freezing over, so will be interesting walking in the morning, I'm so glad ive not got to drive to the supermarket in the morning !:eek:

not sure how to add a link, but you can google it, its a dimplex Oakhurst stove, its really realistic looking flames, smoke etc, I'm really glad we got it as emergency back up if the range is out of action , though as the range also heats our water, we couldn't manage for long without it!

The new feather duvet, and snuggly throw on our bed is so cosy! even hubby said how snuggly and cosy he found it after his night shift bless him

Made a £8.28 overpayment tonight from account tidy , new outstanding balance= £243,541.72.. I can feel a tidy up coming as soon as any more pennies free