EH - Keeping on track. (AKA focus Woman! FOCUS!)

mooomin

I'll take a cup of tea

Pippilongstocking

gin or brandy in that.

Or one of her favourite beers?

Erm I meant milk or sugar in yer tea.

Greying_Pilgrim

Pippilongstocking wrote: »

And you two up there ^^ get off her nasturtiums and stop jumping up and down.

Oh, oh well then why not but lets not make a mess and no beer for me thank you.

Pips - you're an ace friend to EH - not only are you looking after her flowers, you're worrying about her anti-macassars getting mussed up too :rotfl:

Greying

EssexHebridean

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl: Oh you lot!

Yes I'm still alive, no I didn't run off with a Red...or a Blue come to that.

Potted history of the last 16 months then... LOTS of photos taken. LOTS of airshows attended. My groundcrew project with the Reds took off (haha!) astonishingly well and got me noticed in rather a lot of places, to my surprise. Shots from the project got used at the team's End of Season dinner along with some others - first time they've used non-professional shots for anything like that. *gulp*. Anyway all that gave me the impetus to carry on and I've done the same project again this year - including being given LOTS of behind the scenes access which was a real treat and VERY unexpected surprise. In the last little while I've also been asked to submit photos to be used in the team's official calendars for 2016 - and got one being used - and just last week was tipped off to go along to shoot the Flypast they did for the Indian Prime Minister over Parliament - with two of those shots being uploaded alongside the Team's official photographer's shots for use by the media. *Double gulp* I'm spending a LOT of my time just now pinching myself as none of this feels like the sort of thing that should EVER be happening to me.

On a more "everyday" front, life continues to run reasonably to plan. I learned my lesson during the 2014 airshow season ending up without a penny to my name, essentially, and planned a lot more carefully for this year - putting money aside over the winter etc. As a result I managed to carry on saving at least *something* each month all season. Joint finances are ticking over OK also - the mortgage continues to get kicked into touch - the full 10% overpayment was made at the beginning of the year this year, and since then we've been paying the contractual amount and stashing the excess into the ISA. We also won our battle with Virgin Money (Can't actually remember if that was before I last posted on here or not? After I *think*) to get them to reinstate us back onto the correct terms & conditions for the mortgage - they also had to accept several backdated OP's, AND adjust the interest, in fact the Ombudsman looked into it in far more detail than we expected and we got a couple of extra bits we didn't expect - including them being told they had to pay up the £100 compensation they had originally offered to try to make us go away! :rotfl: Goes to show it was well worth taking that path.

I need to set myself some targets/aims for here I think...will be back with those later/tomorrow/next year...

EssexHebridean

OK - while things aren't exactly "out of control", with my summers now being quite so busy, I'm going to try to use the winter months to make sure that things are as they should be, and to get back into the habit of the sort of small MSE things that have made the difference to date. So, some "stuff" - some just silly things, others more important:

Cut price cereal: I like the Dorset Cereals muesli and granola but they're not very MSE - however on their website they have three little games you can play to win "tokens" - 20 tokens = £1 off a box of cereal. The aim is to ensure that I never buy a box at full price.

Electricity Use: Get batteries back in the monitor and start checking it again.

Electricity Use: Read the meter fortnightly and submit a reading when they ask me to!

Meal planning: Get back into the habit!

Travel: We have some planned for the New Year - so get the stuff that needs sorting listed out and booked while it's still at a cheap price!

One Poll: Currently at £7.95 - let's see if I can get that to £14 by the end of this month, shall we?

That's a start - there will be more!

starnac

Yay welcome back my lovely. We have missed you. Bet you haven't missed us with all your excitement though

Nice to have you back xx

EssexHebridean

Well I haven't missed you mostly because we've been in touch elsewhere, to be honest! :rotfl: Hee hee - always feels a bit odd to come back - sort of like poking your head round the edge of a door to see who's in a room before you commit to entering!

Reached the 20 token level on the Dorset Cereals site this morning so printed off a voucher and popped in my bag - nick of time too - I need to pop to Tesco on the way home tonight to get a new box!

Meals are planned right through this week - just need to remember to get things out of the freezer at the right time, and that I have to cook Friday evening's curry on Thursday so it can just be heated up when we get home on Friday as we'll be late.

OnePoll - when I logged in yesterday there were MASSES of surveys waiting for me and unusually I barely got screened out of any of them (this was why I drifted away from doing them - fed up with logging in and finding I got screened out of everything) so it's now up to over £10. Great start to that challenge!

Currently have nothing in my purse, so had better visit the cashpoint at some stage. No plans this week until Friday when I'm heading over to Bristol to meet a friend for the day - Megatrain tickets, cost me £12.50 return I think if I remember rightly. There will be lunch while I'm there, and probably a coffee or two, and travel into and out of central London for the train although I have money on my Oyster card for that. Will probably try to take enough cash out to cover everything I think. We're thinking maybe Pizza Express for lunch - I need to see if there are any deals on!

EssexHebridean

Moooooorning! Well it was a bit on the breezy side round us last night - even by Pippi's standards that would have been classified as "windy" - makes a nice change actually having some "proper" weather down south!

Couple of "sort of" MSE things - 20 Dorset cereals tokens exchanged yesterday for £1 off a box of my favourite granola, and three more of them earned this morning towards the next voucher.
Also spent £6 on a £12 HungryHouse voucher - I know takeaways aren't exactly moneysaving but we'll be having one at some stage in the next month so it seems as easy to order it via the App and save £6 on it.

One survey done for the rather excellent site that pays £3 a time last night - and a nice quick one too. OnePoll on the other hand is not playing in the slightest - that's two days now with no new stuff on there.

Fajitas for dinner tonight - and a "50% extra free" pack - so half the tortillas will be frozen for future use. Need to remember to get the goat meat out of the freezer to defrost ready for curry making tomorrow evening too - discovered a great Rick Stein recipe which basically says "chuck all the ingredients into a pot and cook for two hours" - sounds like my sort of mid week cooking so will happily give that a go!

starnac

That sounds like my kind of cooking too.

Goat meat sounds interesting. What does it taste like?

EssexHebridean

Hmmm....goat is sort of like lamb, but a bit more robust if you know what I mean. Suits similar sort of cooking to diced mutton, or stewing beef, so a nice two hour curry will suit it down to the ground.