Cheery's buttling diary: tea in one hand, plant pot in the other, running shoes on

Cheery_Daff

Tis easy to sound bouyant on the internet RT Just throw in a few smileys and you're all set :rotfl: :rotfl:

Ooh, being nice to each other on purpose sounds like a great start :j Mr Cheery has just surfaced (or rather descended some rather precarious steps) so I might attempt something similar

Also need to find something to eat that isn't cake - even my normally-robust stomach is objecting and my daily weight app thing is currently predicting I'll be obese by July if I carry on like this ... :rotfl: :rotfl:

Cheery_Daff

Evening chums :hello:

We are home from our wanderings and the house is FREEZING :eek: One day I'll have (and VERY much appreciate) a heating system with a timer :rotfl: :rotfl: In the meantime I am extremely grateful for any heating system at all, and I'm sure we'll thaw out eventually with liberal applications of tea and hot water bottles

Spent some of this morning plotting my schemes for this coming year :j There are quite a lot of them :eek: as usual :rotfl: Shan't bore you with the entire list but in terms of MSE-related ones, they go something like this...


* participate in Uber Frugal January
* put £1000 towards house fund :eek: Hoping Uber Frugal January will help with this but really we have no excuses :eek: Remember there are two of us and we currently have no rent/mortgage...
* make £15 extra (sw@gbucks, cashback for house insurance etc) - minor goal but just an experiment

Not sure if either of those last two are possible but... you don't know til you try, right?! :j

Just eating up the last of the picnic and cake friends sent us home with Really not sure I'm going to be able to eat much for the next few days, I'm so stuffed :eek: MSE, I suppose... :money:

So a mini plan for this evening:

* YNAB/banks
* finish sw@gbucks daily goal (couldn't do this morning as no surveys available at all!)
* make meal plan
* write shopping list - we WILL do some organised shopping and cooking this year, we will!
* kettlebells exercises (free exercise )

Planning to curl up with Sherlock at 8.30 so got just under 2 hours. Ready, steady... GO!

Cheery_Daff

[QUOTE=Cheery Daff;71851841
So a mini plan for this evening:

[STRIKE]* YNAB/banks[/STRIKE]
* finish sw@gbucks daily goal (couldn't do this morning as no surveys available at all!) - tried but still no surveys and I'm not signing up to something so I'll have to miss it for today
[STRIKE]* make meal plan[/STRIKE]
[STRIKE]* write shopping list - we WILL do some organised shopping and cooking this year, we will![/STRIKE]
[STRIKE]* kettlebells exercises (free exercise )[/STRIKE]ten minutes counts, right?!
[/QUOTE]

Not too shabby at all! :j Not really done meal planning before but we've had a go

Breakfasts:
We're pretty dull and both always just eat porridge (made with water) and sultanas

Dinners:
We're both at home all week so we're going with
- various soups
- eggs on toast

Teas:
Not allocating days, will just make whatever takes fancy on the day and see how we get on
- mushroom risotto
- broth and dumplings
- home made pizza
- sausage, mash and green beans
- potatoes and dhal
- stir fry and rice
- shepherds pie
- pancakes (with whatever leftovers we end up with )

Things will get more interesting/complicated when I go back to work next week, but for now this feels doable :j Shopping list is made, and I'll pop out and get stuff at some point tomorrow :j

Right - 20 mins to Sherlock - enough time to refill hot water bottle, get roasted veg out of oven (ready for soup tomorrow) and put the blankets back on the sofa :j

Bobarella

Nice meal plan recognised you from the Small things thread so thought I'd pop in

Cheery_Daff

Hi Bobarella :hello: jolly nice to see you

Cant believe I've never done meal planning before always had an aversion to it for some reason but no longer!

Cheery_Daff

Afternoon chums :hello:

Uber Frugal January going well so far :j :j

Sun 1st Jan = £0
Mon 2nd = £24.50 (food - not planning to buy anything other than milk and loo roll (which I forgot) this week)



Been for a run this morning, tried to collect parcel but depot was closed, went food shopping to @ldi, and now I'm just finishing off painting the awkward bits on the kitchen walls so I can do a full second coat in the daylight first thing tomorrow.

Mr Cheery made soup and I made bread for lunch today :j Most tasty. Not sure what I'm going to make for tea, but I'll make a start once this wall is done, and then I'll get some plastering done in the spare room this evening... :j

EssexHebridean

Morning! (Well no, afternoon actually...!)

Congtratulations on becoming a meal-planner! I confess to feeling slightly lost when I don't have one now...and yours starting with mushrooms is definitely a good thing!

Looking forward to seeing how your uber-frugal January pans out. we've agreed to do a sort of pared down version of it - more a consciousness on what we're spending, and why. I'm aiming to diminish my personal account as little as I can manage too - anything spare in there over the month can go into airshow savings! :T

Cheery_Daff

Thanks EH Not sure what we're having tonight as I have to clear out of the kitchen between 6 and 7 so need to think what I can prepare before that and eat after Might knock up a pizza...

Made parsnip soup for lunch, and there's enough for a couple of portions for the freezer :j Trying to stock up for my lunches for next week Also had some of the bread rolls I made yesterday - certainly wouldn't feed them to anyone else but they did nicely as dumplings in the soup :rotfl:

Had to nip out today so a couple of mini spends

Tues 3rd = £17.28 (paint for kitchen, sieve (how do you lose a sieve?!), earplugs, loo roll, and 33p for a small out of date chocolatey treat as we were grumpy and in need of one)

Also (because we were still in need of cheering up) we broke into my Dad's Christmas present and started eating it :rotfl: fortunately it's a fancy tin with chocolates off the market and (obviously) we didn't eat the tin so it won't cost much to replace :rotfl:

Right, painting!

Cheery_Daff

Painting done :j and kitchen (near enough) put back together :j

Just about to bung some pizza dough into the bread machine, prep the toppings for later, and then get upstairs and plaster the hole in the spare room wall.

No rest for the cheery!

Cheery_Daff

Hmm, I have committed my first Uber Frugal Month fail :eek:

Meeting a friend tomorrow who I've not seen for ages. Explained about the challenge, and offered to go to his house, but as he lives 45 miles away we figured the extra diesel would cost as much as a cuppa anyway so we're meeting in the middle at a nature reserve with a cafe

Bless him, he offered to buy me a cuppa :rotfl: Needless to say I refused - uber frugal month is not about friends subsidising my cafe trips! :eek: :rotfl:

This will be the first bit of my own unnecessary spending this month - I managed a whole 3.5 days :rotfl:

Could Do Better, I think :rotfl: