Back to basics with pavlovs_dog: the £6k sprint

cookie9

Hi Pavlov glad the new classes suit you and good luck on getting a good work/life balance.

A_Frayed_Knot

Hope you had a lovely day - Happy Birthday !!!

pavlovs_dog

thanks a frayed knot - I had a lovey week of celebrations. Colleagues pulled out all the stops to make the day special despite being in work. I feel truly blessed to have such wonderful people in my life. 2 weeks in to my 30s and everything seems to work about as well as it ever did No grey hairs yet either!

Weekends remain a hive of productivity, the payoff being that I am away for all of October half term and will do nothing but soak up the sun and eat gelatto that week :j 3 weeks to go! Work has been reasonable so far, helped by the fact that I am ensuring I get a minimum of 7 hours sleep a night. My new student teacher started last week, and she has made a good first impression. I am looking forward to mentoring her.

The financials look fairly healthy. Our first mortgage payment and OP have gone out. Static OP of £310 a month at the mo until school sort out my payrise. Our paying ourselves first kitty has almost £2k in it. We need to have some work done on the car and then decide where to begin with our list of jobs around the house.

FlacosFloozie

Hi Pavlov's,
Really impressed with how productive you're being. I may have to check out that booke

pavlovs_dog

I've had a marathon sleep and relaxed morning to fight off the end-of-term-itus that was threatening to develop. 8 week terms are a killer. OH made me tea and toast for breakfast, and after a lazy start to the morning it is time to get my bottom in gear.

I MUST finish marking my coursework this weekend so that I can take the half term holidays off guilt free. Also looking forward to the Wales vs Australia match with some trepidation.

We believe we have a field mouse in residence (last seen in the study, he is clearly a scholarly fellow ) so that's an added kick up the bum to tidy up in there before he decides to build a nest out of my holiday euros or bank statements!

I've gone back to running swagbucks in the background now that I am spending more time on the laptop. It is a small passive income but it all helps. Need to decide whether to cash out in ama$on vouchers towards Christmas shopping, or Paypal and OP the cash.

smallholdingsister

Morning Pavlovs!
I marked mine before the hols...except for those kids who went on holiday. Grrr.

pavlovs_dog

Home safe and sound from Sorrento. It was a real tonic to have a week of enforced rest and a bit of sunshine. The variable weather enforced a slower pace than we might otherwise have adopted, and with hindsight I can say that I do feel better for striking a sensible balance between day trips and relaxing.

Getting the house tidy is the order of the day. I'm going back into the easier week of my timetable, so as a result I can get by with doing virtual no school work today. I can safely say that in 7 years, this is the first half term where I have done no work at all. I'm finally getting the hang of this work/life balance malarky!

I've decided to start tracking food and petrol spends for the next few weeks, so that I have some accurate figures when I review our budgets in the Christmas holidays.

Food £19.89 (+£2 on Xmas treats that I've put away)
This was mostly fruit, veg and restocking the fridge with perishables.

I want to use up a lot of our freezer stock. Unfortunately OH has yet to get the hang of labeling the leftovers he freezes, which makes meal planning a challenge. Planned meals:

* Bean enchilladas, rice & corn cobs
* Roast using up my YS haggis from ages ago
* baked potato (simple supper & pud night)
* lentil bolognaise & garlic bread
* curry, rice & bhajis
* steak slice & chips

I also need to make a crustless quiche/frittata to use up a box of eggs, and some kind of soup to use up my pumpkin. I should have enough veg to make some minestrone soup for work lunches too.

Petrol £34.37
Filling the tank means that I only have to top up fortnightly during term time. This seems to be more than enough for my commute to school and occasional weekend run arounds.

smallholdingsister

Welcome home. Glad you had a rest. X

pavlovs_dog

Evening all,

I had feedback today from a lesson obs with the deputy head. He moonlights as a deatheater, so to be praised by him felt like a genuine achievement. When teachers as a profession are constantly berated for all of society's ills praise can be hard to come by. It is reassuring and reaffirming to be told that you're actually quite good at what you do. It seems like there is hope for my charges yet!

In other news, reading the KM thread over on old style has got me back in to my decluttering. I don't feel like I have the time or the energy to commit to a specific part of the house so I'm playing the 'mins game' whereby you try and clear the number of items corresponding with that day's date (1 on the 1st, 2 on the second etc). By 'forcing' myself to go looking for items to meet my target, I am getting back to the more decisive decluttering ways I begun to adopt in the summer. If I can keep at it, it would see 400+ items leave the house over the course of a month. In decluttering terms it is November 6th for me. Off for another 10 minute potter to see what else I can unearth.

pavlovs_dog

Almost mid November already. How did that happen?!

Just a quick one from me:
* my decluttering game is ticking along nicely. I'm almost at the 100 item mark for November alone.
* I continue to v-e-r-y slowly downsize myself. The past few weeks I've just about managed to lose a pound a week simply by eating less crap. I am fitting back into clothes that I haven't been able to wear for longer than I care to admit.
* Got a bargain on a cast iron fire from Gumtree. We were quoted £1k for a fire suite for our dining room for something that will be purely decorative. Needless to say that won't be happening. On the look out for a nicer mantle and tiles and we need a hearth stone. Worse case scenario I expect £500 spend by the time I'm done.
* food spends remain very low. If I buy all of the school milk for the week with my weekly shop, I don't pop in to A$da midweek and leave with £10 of 'bargains' that I suddenly developed a need for. Who'd have thunk it?!

I got up early this morning to do some work for school and cannot find my USB. I am praying to every available deity that I left it in school last night. If it has gone walkies I'm handing in my notice, life won't be worth living!