Building The Burrow!

Pearla*Merle

I'm back, I'm back. :j ....and currently trying to ignore the mountain of things that need doing. Had mild panicky moment earlier but am trying to drill in the old 'one thing at a time!' thoughts.

Mr M & I did well with our train journeys, eating & drinking a lot of our ticket price back (free booze & hot meals in first class! Had several rounds. :rotfl:). We had a nice time away with family & friends, nice walks, a few drinks & meals out, saw some (spectacular) live music, wandered around quaint villages and did lots of lounging about. Not much money spent really, so a successful little trip away.

Popped to Ald! upon our return, have filled up the fridge (mostly veg & fruit) for just £19 - super pleased with that. I can report that the pork schnitzels are delish (had them for tea tonight). Have also discovered that the Sainsbobs Own fiery ginger beer (we had the cans, v. cheap) is gorgeous & beautifully warming (no bitterness etc), what a find. Mr M popped to the market and picked up 12 free range eggs for £1.50! Also picked up some golden beetroot which I can't wait to use.

Tried to tidy today but it's so hard to know where to put things, or rather, what to get rid of so there's space to put those things. So that battle continues. I'm going to keep reading minimalist blogs until it's drilled into me that I Do Not Need This Stuff.

Not so good money news: water's going up £9 a month in April Don't think the leak we had helped with that one, hope we can chat to them and get it down again asap.


:www: MFW Wonderment: 5p found at train station, £60 added to the pot as well (huzzah!). Over half way there with 1Poll.

:coffee: Simple Pleasures: A sparkly clean bathroom!

:heartsmil Burrow Building: Lovely chat with our neighbour, who dropped by today with some mini gourmet ice cream tubs for us! How lovely

apple_muncher

Welcome back Pearla! Your holiday sounds wonderful; hope you can keep the 'glow' going for a while.

And hope the decluttering doesn't swamp you! Congrats on finding silver roadkill - v rare for that to happen to me! And a question: were the mini gourmet ice cream tubs full or empty ones?

have a lovely day!

Pearla*Merle

:rotfl: Thankfully the ice cream tubs were full, and came with very decadent little wooden spoons... which I'm tempted to keep & use for a future Posh Picnic day.

I seem to have done quite well with silver roadkill this year, apple muncher. It's mostly been 5ps I've found, very much hope it continues thus!

Habibiboo

Pearla*Merle wrote: »

Not so good money news: water's going up £9 a month in April Don't think the leak we had helped with that one, hope we can chat to them and get it down again asap.

:wave:

What madness is this P*M? Don't they realise there's more water around than ever at the moment? Good luck talking them around it.

We've had a letter telling us our road is going to be water metered this year - not sure what that will do to our bills at all.

Glad you had a good break, hope this week's not too much of a shock to the system!

Crumpets

Welcome back Pearla, sounds like you had a wonderful break. I must walk around with my eyes closed because I never find road kill, silver or otherwise!

Ice cream sounds yum, you must have lovely neighbours

Pearla*Merle

Crumpets, we do - best neighbours ever. I want to take them wherever we go next. They have a modest amount of belongings, I'm sure I could make them fit somewhere. :think:

Habibiboo wrote: »

What madness is this P*M? Don't they realise there's more water around than ever at the moment? Good luck talking them around it.

:rotfl: You raise an excellent point, Hbbb!

We've had a letter telling us our road is going to be water metered this year - not sure what that will do to our bills at all.

Is it individual houses being metered, or the whole street? Mostly I've found it ok, at least I know I can do things to bring it down and they've not just stuck us on some high rate.

Pearla*Merle

I've had a super productive day! :T I've been singing Manic Monday in my head all day and then I realised it was Wednesday, talk about result! Am so happy it's only two days until the weekend.

Got up at a decent hour this morning, whipped through some work stuff so ahead of the game there, dealt with another awkward work thing which was stressing me out but that's pretty much done & dusted (forever - hurrah!) now and then caught up with loads of correspondence. It's strange feeling normal again. Though now I realise there was no way I could have done all this over the past few weeks so I feel a little more forgiving with myself now.

Polished the afternoon off with vacuuming the house and doing lots of other domesticky duties. Even got my meditation in (sat outside in the gorgeous sunshine for it, must make more of habit of that), and then back on track with an hour of exercise. Literally don't know what came over me. I'll probably be comatose tomorrow. :rotfl:

Had my red wine (somewhat experimental) sausage stew from the freezer for tea, 'twas very rich but thankfully edible. Crumble from the freezer for pudding. I do love just chucking something into a bowl for an instant feast.


:www: MFW Wonderment: health coming together & work things done today which should free things up and allow me to concentrate on future grand money-making schemes. Also did some business account sorting, slowly sorting out some straggling bits with that.

:coffee: Simple Pleasures: skipping every time I noticed our neatly vacuumed floors (have been living with a layer of dust for some time)

:heartsmil Burrow Building: banished excess mugs to the back of a cupboard, and along with some other tidying & decluttering actions the house is becoming a lot more shipshape and cosy.

Pearla*Merle

Oh well, that plan lasted long. Have just bought a keyboard for my iPad (this one - click here - has just gone down to £13.99). Better than paying £60 for one I guess...!

I was just thinking earlier this afternoon that I should get into the habit of having my morning tea out on the balcony with my iPad and doing some, I hesitate to say work, maybe I should say dream/goal-related work, out there so maybe this was just the universe saying Go Do It?! Feels that way.

It's on the 0% card anyway, so I think tomorrow will be about kicking some other little plans into action to bring in some extra pennies to cover it when the time comes.

Pearla*Merle

Today has definitely been less frantic. I mostly pottered, but in that sort of way that actually got a lot of things done. No exercise today but I was decluttering a-go-go so I daresay it's evened out.

Have been reading Carol Klein's Life in a Cottage Garden, it's so dreamy. Beautiful pictures and it gives me a much-needed gardening fix, ha! I think it's one to go on the wishlist, I can imagine flicking through it again and again.

Beautiful lasagne for tea, bulked out with finely grated carrot that worked wonderfully (extra serving into the freezer to boot), and the rest of the mince will go into a cottage pie tomorrow. Also decluttered a rice pudding from the cupboards, shall do some menu planning soon to see what else we can use up in there.


:www: MFW Wonderment: 26p added to the kittybank. Mr M's discovered that new 1/3 off railcards are coming out for couples! At long last! :j You can get them with a friends as well, how fab. Am so glad the train companies are finally being sensible about this. Even better, Mr M has a few days off next month so looks like we'll be able to head off somewhere fun.

:coffee: Simple Pleasures: Mr M brought me back a bunch of daffodils today. They're now sitting prettily in a little white jug in the living room.

:heartsmil Burrow Building: decluttering & organising continuing apace. Spent a good few hours clearing out bags & boxes of random 'bits' that had somehow collected themselves into corners. Also sorted out the bathroom cupboard where I a) discovered I have lots of luxurious bath things to use up, yay and b) threw out a fair few medicines that I hardly needed to use, double yay. The only time I don't mind getting rid of unused stuff.

Pearla*Merle

Oh my word - if you're anywhere north of Norwich get yourself to a window and look outside to the northern horizon, you can see the northern lights! Goes on til at least midnight apparently. We saw some shimmers down here, about to go off on an impromptu jaunt to the countryside to see if we can get a better view! :j :j