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

rtandon27

Cheery - a cuppa with a friend is definitely not a fail! It's a reason to celebrate & be thankful for companionship!:j:j:j

If we are confessing spends - I bought my new direct report lunch at our cafe today - but it was his first day & I did budget for it. I also later showed him where our fridge & microwave are - which he was very pleased with as he's never worked anywhere that has a little kitchenette!

(btw - saw this recipe & thought of your soup quest!)

Cheery_Daff

Aw, thanks RT :kisses3: you're right, it's not a fail - and as days out go, soup and a cuppa in a nature reserve cafe isn't too bad, right?!

I'd say NO MORE CAFES after this but it seems I arranged to meet someone else in Waitrose cafe on Thursday... :rotfl: I've got my card for a free cuppa though so that should only cost me 25p for a banana to trigger the free thing :j

Thnks for soup link - I LOVE split peas In fact I have 3 bags of split pea soup in the freezer - thinking about it I now have enough soup to take to work the whole of my first week back! :j :j
Although the freezer is now COMPLETELY full :eek: we just have a little compartment after we got rid of the big fridge and it was fine until I started doing all this batch cooking :eek: :rotfl:

Hd home made pizza tonight, it was scrummy :j :j 20p worth of flour, 20p tomatoes, 50p mozarell amd some onion, mushroom and a few oliclves for the top. Most yummy. Probably a few pence more than the shop bought one (although that's gone up to £1.10 now) but it made twice as much pizza and an entire portion of extra dough thats now in the fridge :j

Sadly we ate the extra anyway so it didn't actually save us anything, just added to or waistlines... :rotfl: :rotfl:

Onwards chums! Tomorrow is another day and for various reasons I'm glad to see the back of this one! Still, in the spirit of Greying, today i am grateful for

* a lovely friend, who came to the rescue during a minor meltdown :

* good balance (I've been standing on a variety of ladders and stools today) :eek:

* free workouta on youtube - definitely decided not to renew my gym membership now :j :j

Sleep well lovelies xx

EssexHebridean

You silly sausage Cheery! RT has it spot on - I read through your post several times trying to work out why you'd failed, gave up, and as soon as i saw her post I agreed wholeheartedly!

The Uber-Frugal thing - so far as I can see it's not meant to be about not living your life for a month, it's about consciousness of choice, no? Your mental health is at least as important as your financial health, in fact they pretty much go hand in hand, so that cuppa and natter was worth every penny!

With a bread machine HM pizza is SO easy! I cheat a little on the sauce for the topping and use roughly equal quantities of tomato ketchup and puree mixed together. Sometimes lob in some crushed garlic or some herbs to that too. dead easy, very tasty and costs pennies. I generally shy away from buying shop pizza now as it's never as nice as HM!

Cheery_Daff

Indeed, thank you

Certainly didn't feel like a fail £2.10 for tea and a giant oat cookie thing, and then £3.20 for rarebit for lunch :money: Not bad at all. Entertained by an elderly man who ambled over and told us a load of things about his life, stayed for ages nattering on :rotfl: As we left we realised his wife was on the other side of the cafe and the staff member told us she took him there regularly to have a break... He was a nice chap, had an interesting life and seemed to delight in telling people about it

Had a good walk around the reserve, and a good natter about life and work and things that make you happy :j Most cheery :j

Total spends today:

£5.30 in cafe
£2.89 on plastering paraphernalia in the DIY shop
£1.20 on milk
= £9.39 (although only £5.30 of that counts as my unnecessary spends)

Just having a loaf around for a while then need to pick something off the meal planner for tea :j Vowed to do some plastering too but it's getting late... :eek:

Been making a concerted effort with Sw@gbucks this last couple of weeks and having got a £5 payout just after Christmas, I reached another one yesterday :j :j Also got 68 extra bonus points from last month today :j Can't seem to be able to reach daily goal today though - I refuse to sign up to stupid gambling sites etc so main way of bit points is surveys, and I usually manage at least one, but after 23 minutes of being screened out of things :eek: I gave it up as a bad job :eek: Might try again later...

milasavesmoney

I received a $26 check from Ebates for going through their site to online shop for Christmas. It was a nice surprise in the mail yesterday. Since Christmas and birthdays are usually my only online shopping jaunts it will be awhile before I get another check.

Cheery_Daff

Ooh, that is indeed a nice surprise Mila! :j :j Not heard of Ebates, will investigate. I don't do much online shopping either, and I was so disorganised this Christmas I didn't do any! :rotfl:

Just popping in to do a mini list for tomorrow - need to ease myself back into productivity (vaguely) :eek: So, in a vague order...

* put bread machine on for lunch
* sw@gbucks goal
* ynab/banks
* fit new brakes on bike
* cycle to collect parcel
* meet friend in cafe at 11
* make tasty soup for lunch
* plaster hole in spare room wall
* plaster windowframe in spare room
* make cottage pie for tea
* investigate home insurance quotes (HATE doing this but needs must - renewal quote is £156 but I bet I can do cheaper than that!)
* kettlebells
* yoga
* fill crack on kitchen ceiling (it's just a superficial one but paint won't do it!)
* start sanding cladding in kitchen ready to paint
* blog post
* finish writing letter to friend

That'll probably do for one day! :eek: :rotfl:

Greying_Pilgrim

Cheery - I too was thinking, 'that's not a *fail*' when I read your post. Surely uber-frugal month is about a *reset*; a cutting out of the *mindless* spending. Not curtailing all spending in one fell swoop. Seems to me that you were very mindful in sorting out an affordable meet up with your friend.

So glad you had a nice time.

After all, your aim is not to be the richest hermit in the graveyard!

Enjoy your meet-up with your friend today - first and foremost; and i hope that the 'almost free' cuppa tastes sweet.... (not literally, unless you take sugar in yer tea, but you get my drift..... :rotfl:) Don't forget your mrW card to make it happen!

Greying X

Cheery_Daff

Thank you lovely Greying I do not indeed intend to be the richest hermit in the graveyard :rotfl: :rotfl:

Glad I popped in here - I'd already forgotten I was going to put the bread machine on! Plonker! Must do that in a minute...

Getting slightly fed up with Sw@gbucks this morning Or rather my attitude towards it Was dedicated all over Christmas and got another £5 paid out the other day :j HOWEVER that takes about 45 mins of faffing about in the morning, being screened out of surveys til you find one, clicking on things - and 45 mins x 10 days (probably longer) is about 7.5 hours for £5 - not necessarily a good use of my time! :eek:

So not sure how/whether to continue - I think the problem is that there's a daily goal, and I feel compelled to meet it, even if I don't have to :rotfl: :rotfl: I did get a few extra points for meeting it last month...

But I suspect I would be better off just turning the heating off for an extra hour a day, or forgoing a couple of car trips a week - would probably save me the same and I wouldn't be giving my details out to endless parades of miscreants :eek:

Will ponder... (maybe I'm just annoyed cos I couldn't get to the goal yesterday and it meant I've missed my 7 day streak points :rotfl: )

Greying_Pilgrim

Cheery - I have never done surveys for exactly the reasons you point out. If I was absolutely on my uppers and had no other option, then I would do them, but at present...... Besides which, I am paranoid about my personal data and my attitudes are so last year/century/millenia - I'm not an attractive 'punter'. I suspect having Baby Greying has put me into a more desirable category, but I'm no more interested in having their details set into the ether........

It's amazing what you can do though, when you either focus on it, or set your mind to. Much in the vein of your 'I could save x by doing Y or C instead' I am finding that 5 days into January, a spending diary is already pointing up that my 'non-groceries' budget is not sufficient for what now has to come out of it. Whether it will also show that I am overspending on food - or simply 'subbing' the non-groceries budget, and ergo running out of money for food, remains to be seen. But it's already proved a useful spend of 49p for the notebook!

Greying X

EssexHebridean

I took a look at Swagbucks a while ago and decided it wasn't for me, for exactly the reasons mentioned. it seems like a lot of fiddling about, plus a lot of requirement to supply an email address to various folk who will then want to send me screeds of nonsense emails that I'm not the least interested in...so no. Of the survey sites, Bizarrely OnePoll is a favourite of mine - the surveys always take minutes at most, yes they only pay pennies and it takes ages to get to payout, but the time investment is so small I don't mind that.

COTTAGE PIE!! You're reminded me that this needs to go on our meal plan for next week....except actually it will be Shepherd's pie as it's lamb mince I've got. :T (And yes I realise that technically yours is Gardeners Pie too!) I'll have a sit down with my journal at lunch and maybe get next weeks meals in there.