Changing digs and coming out of my cave... for a wee while atleast :)

elantan

Miz I haven't heard of it at all ... What is it ?

Well I'm shattered, done in shattered, But I have two nights left to go, so that's keeping me sane:)

My house is still a mess and it's causing friction with Mr El, I am going out this weekend to order some new book cases so that should help with some Of the mess, and then we have to get the place ready for the fires to get fitted,

Money wise, no Tilly tidies sadly, but we have been eating frugally still so that's good and all going towards the main goal of clearing the visa and sorting the mortgage

Habibiboo

elantan wrote: »

Have started using the wipe board for money spent as well so that I can update and keep an eye on things

:wave:

Welcome to the wipe-board club! I have two large ones taking up most of one wall in our workroom ... all things, work, financial, daft messages, post-its, you name it!
One's a month to view format, which I love ... it has 5 weeks on it so all my deadlines go on there and finances at the side!

Wipe boards are so much better than pin boards because you can't lose notes by things getting put on top and it's soooo satisfying having a rubbing off moment!

Don't spend a fortune on dry-wipe pens either £Land have them every so often, I always stock up from there!

Hope you feel more rested soon. Having to stay resolved can be more exhausting than you think, take care of you!

elantan

I do love my wipe board so far, I've found it very handy for keeping a note of things, planning and organising my month Have asked Mr El to stick up my other one so that we can get the food planning organised as well

Tonight's dinner was reduced (25p for two) pork steaks with sweet potatoes and spring greens lovely dinner an once again very cheap, that's me on my last night shift, this weekends plans are order the bookcases, chop more wood ( we have so much left to chop... Mr El keeps finding more ) organise the garage ( again) so that we can get out the wheelbarrow should we need it to get some road salt, hopefully ( fingers crossed) spend some glory time in the garden and make soup ... Oh soup soup soup how much I miss home made soup

Mr El gets paid tomorrow so it's gonna be a quick bill pay/ pass money through accounts time then back to the waiting till I get paid, there seems to be a flurry when wages come in, then a lull followed by waiting till wages day again, it's hard to try and keep the focus going, but all these wee things ( collecting, cutting wood etc) are all aimed at helping us get there that wee bit faster

Have been taking my master tonic faithfully and so far it's been working, will need to keep it up, think I need to make some more soonish as well

Hope everyone is good

Karmacat

Thats a great reduction for the steaks! And lovely to have wood chopped for the fire

mizmir

Morning El. Nice find on the steaks - always taste better when you know they were such a bargain don't you think? Good luck with the chopping - it is so reassuring to have a full store for the fire. Our log store is stuffed full of the old shed (now in manageable bits ) and we have a couple of pallets and some old fencing still to chop - if it ever stops raining! But the good news is the home made log store is water tight and the wood in there has dried out beautifully. We will be warm even if the power goes off and the gas is disconnected!

elantan

Miz your log store looks great, much better than ours

well what have i been up to? It's been a crazily busy week tbh, we started building the store sheds but ran out of wood, so bought more and they will be built this weekend, we chopped All the wood that needed chopping, sawed most of the wood that needed sawing ( about 6 pallets left to go) Mr El however has also brought more wood in for chopping since, but it was good to clear the decks for a few days lol.

We have stripped some of the wall paper off the walls, one wall was great, the other wall kinda started collapsing, so we need to plaster that wall again , we got the mantle piece home and have oiled it several times ready for going up, we cleared the downstairs ready for the fires, built up the bookcases and tidied up a lot of that mess ... the rest cant really be touched until the fires are fitted.

It was a very exhausting ( in a good way ) week, i so enjoyed my time away from work and my time spent at home doing stuff for us

Money wise we paid £250 towards the visa, we paid money towards the mortgage and we have transferred money towards a wee savings account.

Our finance discussions have been going really well, i did have to sit down and work out what was right for us though, i had noticed Mr El was finding finance discussions stressful before, so what i have done is once a week ask him what he wants to talk about ( generally nothing) then i bring up one subject per week, rather than a general review, i do a basic yeah we have £X in the bank and £X coming out etc ... but i make that very basic and short and sweet, i have found that by talking just about one thing he seems to find it less daunting, for example last week we discussed our "fun" money, we only have £50 a month just now for fun, but i am not sure if that is enough, so our discussions were about monitoring the situation better and to see how much exactly we should have and what we class as good value for money, this week it was about the savings that we have been using up towards getting this work done, these chats can last anywhere from 20 mins to 45 mins but i try not to make them too long as Mr El's stress levels are high just now, he has been very depressed recently and i need to be aware of it.

we saw swan lake this week also, it was wonderful, i have never saw a ballet before and thoroughly enjoyed it

mizmir

Wow! Exhausted reading about it let alone living it! Sounds like you've made some real progress. Sounds like a good way to proceed with the chats. We are similar in that OH is very busy at work and dealing with some rubbish stuff - so I deal with the detail and we discuss the main priorities. Was it Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake? Saw his Sleeping Beauty on TV around Christmas and it was brilliant. Glad you enjoyed it.

ZTD

elantan wrote: »

Our finance discussions have been going really well, i did have to sit down and work out what was right for us though, i had noticed Mr El was finding finance discussions stressful before,

Why does he find it stressful?

Is is the usual man thing of "A 'Talk'...problem...must fix...now..." - or something else?

elantan

yep it was the Mathew Bourne one i dont really have anything to compare it too tbh, but it was a great story with fantastic dancing

elantan

ZTD wrote: »

Why does he find it stressful?

Is is the usual man thing of "A 'Talk'...problem...must fix...now..." - or something else?

hey handsome was thinking of texting you ... but didnt want to appear like a stalker lol

i think tbh its more that he panics about money, he doesnt really deal with money at all, it scares him, kinda like how some people feel holding a new baby or something, he also wasn't very good with doing adding and subtracting, so has taken classes to learn the basics, this has helped him somewhat but he still feels scared