I've had the worst of times - now for the BEST of times!

Enjoying_life_more

Hope you all is okay with you - hope to see you posting soon

peaceandfreedom

Enjoying_life_more wrote: »

Hope you all is okay with you - hope to see you posting soon

Aww, thanks, EnjoyingLife.

All is well, I've just been away for a while and also frantically busy. Am going away again for the weekend but will get myself sorted out next week and hopefully everything will get back to normal.

Money-wise I am doing OK, could do better and ABSOLUTELY need to raise some extra cash in June, I've been very very bad about that so far.

Good news is I got a cheque from CPP but it was a bit miserly. Still, anything is better than nothing. :T

Be back next week.

DedicatedDFW

Hey p&f - have a lovely hols, i'm looking forward to seeing your posts - i've missed you bit been very busy with assignment and RL stuff x

jwil

Hope you've had a good break P&F

peaceandfreedom

Hi everyone - I'm back at last - humble apologies for the long absence.

I have been very busy with work, with the garden and with generally gadding about the place. But now things should settle down for a couple of months, I have no particular plans for a while. Just to get on with tidying up the garden, tidying up the house and raising some extra cash to replace all the cash I've been spending lately. :eek:

A while ago I closed my only 'spending' credit card (I have another that has a large balance transfer on it) and despite several months of frankly quite big spending, I have managed rather well. It does concentrate the mind, when you can't slap things on a credit card. I am 100% confident that if I still had one, I would have run up a balance of several hundred pounds, simply to save myself the trouble of budgeting properly. I am absolutely the sort of person who should never be given a credit card.

I have recently purchased the YNAB software and after an initial battle to get to grips with it, I now like it a lot. For some reason, it is giving me more of an incentive to keep track of my spending.

I really need to raise some cash (I say that every month but never do it ) to cover a large bill coming out in August. The aim is to raise £600 in July and I will do it like this:

Freelance work ........£265
Bay of E...................£300
Car booty or two......£100
Misc other selling......£100
Misc other income....£50

That makes a grand total of £815 - aiming high so that I at least raise the £600 I need. I will post an update as this money hits my bank account (but not before - a YNAB lesson learned. ). The freelance work is already billable, just not sure when I will get the money. There is more freelance work which will be billable in August.

My Bay of E record is pretty poor but I've lined up some stuff to sell and am determined to do it this time. Have a friend on standby to do a car boot with.

Phew - back again with today's plans.

peaceandfreedom

So plans for this Saturday are:

• Water the greenhouse plants
• Lots of laundry: washing, drying, putting away
• Do a vast quantity of ironing while watching the Ladies Wimbledon final
• Clean the kids' bathroom (currently revolting)
• Clean the kitchen
• Hoover and wash the kitchen floor
• Get DD to hoover and dust the sitting-room
• Get DS to hoover hall, stairs and landing
• Power-wash the trampoline in preparation for selling it
• Make a loaf of bread
• Do July targets list a-la DDFW

That'll do for starters.

peaceandfreedom

Well, I seem to have done most of the jobs - still a couple left to do. Have done my least favourite jobs though, so that's good. :j

• [STRIKE]Water the greenhouse plants[/STRIKE]
• [STRIKE]Lots of laundry: washing, drying, putting away[/STRIKE]
• [STRIKE]Do a vast quantity of ironing while watching the Ladies Wimbledon final[/STRIKE] Though not a vast quantity and the Ladies final was over in less than an hour but did some while watching the Ladies doubles.
• [STRIKE]Clean the kids' bathroom (currently revolting)[/STRIKE] Boy do I hate that job. :eek:
• [STRIKE]Clean the kitchen[/STRIKE]
• [STRIKE]Hoover and wash the kitchen floor[/STRIKE]
• [STRIKE]Get DD to hoover and dust the sitting-room[/STRIKE] DD was snoozing most of the day, so I did it.
• [STRIKE]Get DS to hoover hall, stairs and landing[/STRIKE] DS was out most of the day, came home in time for dinner, so I hoovered the hall myself.
• Power-wash the trampoline in preparation for selling it. NOPE -on the list for tomorrow.
• Make a loaf of bread - about to do this now.
• Do July targets list a-la DDFW - and this.

Also got a few other jobs done in the garden. Everything is doing very nicely, have lots of cucumbers and tomatoes coming on. The first lot of beetroot is almost ready for harvesting. Have loads of salad leaves. Peas and mange tout are abundant, courgettes have little fruits on them, runner beans are doing well, though I planted them very late. The blueberries are almost ripe - I'm looking forward to them!

I made a delicious tea of curried mince and jacked potato, all with ingredients already in stock. DS had 3 helpings. Tomorrow's dinner will be pork and chorizo stew, also made with ingredients already in.

Not a bad day all in all, feeling quite pleased with myself. :A

Sitting-room is now full of giganticly tall young men (how do they suddenly all get so big? and LOUD? ) invited by DS to watch the World Cup quarter-final - come on Costa Rica, send the dutch home.

Cheery_Daff

Hi Peaceandfreedom :hello:

Just popped over from DDFW's diary and wanted to say how FABULOUSLY you are doing, i love your July target and i'm sure you'll smash it to smithereens!

very jealous of your cucumbers - i've sown 2 lots of seeds, one didn't germinate and the other did but were eaten, and also bought plants from the garden centre that keeled over and died! going to try once more with gardencentre ones in a sunnier spot and then give up i think and just buy cucumbers from the shop :rotfl:

peaceandfreedom

Cheery_Daff wrote: »

Hi Peaceandfreedom :hello:

Just popped over from DDFW's diary and wanted to say how FABULOUSLY you are doing, i love your July target and i'm sure you'll smash it to smithereens!

very jealous of your cucumbers - i've sown 2 lots of seeds, one didn't germinate and the other did but were eaten, and also bought plants from the garden centre that keeled over and died! going to try once more with gardencentre ones in a sunnier spot and then give up i think and just buy cucumbers from the shop :rotfl:

Hi CheeryDaff - thanks for popping in. :j

You are not alone with the cucumber seeds. I sowed loads of them and also lots of courgettes - only one single cucumber seed germinated out of all of those.

That one plant though is doing fabulously in the greenhouse. A friend gave me 3 courgettes which are doing well in the veggie plot, and also 2 'cucumbers' which turned out to be butternut squashes! He got his labelling mixed up but I now have some gorgeous little butternut squashes in the greenhouse as well.

I was talking to an elderly gentleman yesterday who is a very experienced gardener and he experienced the same thing this year with his courgettes and cucumbers. Odd isn't it?

I think cucumbers generally do much better if they are in a greenhouse of some sort. Though next year I intend to try more unusual plants and that will include an outdoor cucumber.

Cucumbers only cost 50p for a large one in Asda but like most things, home-grown tastes so much better.

peaceandfreedom

Good afternoon everyone. I started my Sunday some hours ago with a coconut pancake with berries and yogurt, accompanied by lots of coffee with some cream poured in - decadent but delicious. :coffee:

To-do List

From yesterday:

Do July targets
Power-wash the trampoline
Bake a loaf of bread

Today:

Water and feed the tomatoes
Harvest the garlic that's ready and lay it out to dry in the sun
Do more ironing while watching Wimbledon on telly
More laundry (first wash already on the line, second in the machine)
Invoice for the freelance work already done
Plant the remaining sweet peas I'd left behind the greenhouse and forgotten about
Clean the en-suite bathroom
Start another bottle garden
Plant out some lettuce seedlings

Still thinking about the July targets - plan to get them done today.

Off now to get started on my list for today. :T