Thursday 13th August - What small DFW things will you do today?

DawnW

Morning all
Thanks for the start Ziggy
Hope you feel better soon Greensalad, and that Tyrone Black gets good news through the post

List for today:
So far:
Done a small Lidl shop, including stuff for OH to take away with him. They borrow a friend's cottage so take food with them. The good news is that we didn't have to spend that much as there is a lot in my stash that he can take Having said that, quite a large proportion of the spend was on beer.........

He also filled up his truck with diesel, so quite a big spend there :eek:

Picked French beans -OH can take this lot away with him

Used an over-ripe peach with my yogurt and cereal this morning (small things, right? Not sure if this does much to counteract the big things above, but thought I would mention it anyway )

Done today's tasks for postal survey

Still to do:
Check banks Done
HM meals - I will make a frittata for this evening, to use up some of the eggs from our chickens Done, also used up a left over cooked potato, a bendy spring onion and a lurking red pepper :T
Pick more lettuce and radishes Done
Stick to diet Done
Finish off housework bits that I didn't get to yesterday Hmm not really
Any surveys that are available Done
Help OH to pack everything he needs to take with him In progress
Check garden pots to see if they need watering later (though we are supposed to be getting heavy rain....) Well, not much rain here, so I will need to do this in a minute

I am sure there is more, but I can't think of it at the moment.....

maria3104

Hi All

A NSD here. Lots to do here at work and still no internet at home. REally need this sorting!

Speak tomorrow.

Maria

crazy_cat_lady

allydowd wrote: »

There's some great How To Fix videos on YouTube...;)

Thanks Ally - that's what I had been doing but the whole brake cable needed replacing and that was a bit beyond my remit. I can manage a lot of household repairs but am clueless with bikes and cars etc. Given that I hate cycling that should be no big deal.
Anyway - it was only £9 in Halfords and it was all done and dusted in about 5 mins. Better than the hour and a quarter and missing top of my thumb when I had a go myself on Sunday night.:rotfl: That can be his treat if he finally makes it to the dentist without hassle tonight.

Get better soon greensalad. I hate those days when things seem to go wrong...

Bobarella

Well. The torrential rain has really messed me up today. Currently £33 off my self imposed target for the day, & only 2 customers here. I did have a flurry earlier but none of my normal mum's with buggies are about as they'd be drowned rats if they were 1 hour 45 to make a difference. So frustrating when it's not my fault....

Although to bring a laugh to the gloom there was a funny moment earlier when someone smelled a 'bad nappy' & there were about 6 likely culprits in site. Queue much mummy scurrying and lifting to sniff small people....

FatVonD

Twiggy, I read somewhere once that making up the pint of blood you have donated uses 2,000 calories so fill your boots on those free biscuits!

My today started with the alarm clock being suspiciously quiet and the realisation that the electric had tripped in the night. Spookily I woke at exactly 7am which was when the alarm was set for :T I thought it might be the tumble drier which has been making funny noises but I turned it off at the wall and the switch was still tripping so I think DS has fallen asleep with his window open and the plug socket near the wall has got wet which has happened before. It's a pain in the butt though as the cooker won't work until the clock is reset so I'll have to dig out the instructions :mad:

In better news, I have got a pay rise and a £750 bonus! :T I did see a company email about it and, thus far, they have treated me exactly as an employee (I am on a one year contract) but I didn't want to count my chickens before I knew for sure and it did say it was discretionary. I won't see any of it as it'll be swallowed by my overdraft but it'll give me a bit more wiggle room. The pay rise is backdated to last month as well. Happy, happy, happy

Lunch today is cup a soup and some crisps from my work store drawer. I hope it;s somebodies birthday today so we get cake later :cool: I didn't tell anyone when it was mine as I hate being the centre of attention but if all else fails I could pretend it's today :rotfl:

foxgloves

Hello Frugal Friends,
Rum sort of day today. Woke early so decided to get up at 5.45 & make a start on my day. My money saving small things for today are:
*Watered greenhouse veggies. Hope we will get some of these promised storms to water the rest of the garden. The forecast map looked hopeful but so far, we've only had a few little spits & spots of raindrops. Rubbish! (Except for Bob.....who might have had a better day's takings if it was dry in London).
*Picked a colander of big ripe tomatoes, also lettuce, basil & courgettes.
*Made a loaf in the bread maker.
*Made dough for tonight's pizza & some bread rolls. (Next job is shaping it).
*Did lots of surveys. I'd got a bit snarled up with them so decided to make a coffee & blitz a few. Now here's a thing: One of the surveys included a question about our household debt levels excluding mortgage. I had to tick the box which reflected our current debt level. There were 17 boxes from Box 1 = No debt apart from mortgage up to Box 17, which was a whole shed-load of debt. I was so proud to be able to tick Box 1.......but out of interest, I looked at which box I'd have been ticking at the height of The Spendy Decades......& it would have been, ahem......Box 13. Scary thought.
*Usual little energy-saving measures.
*Had a lovely email from the online knitting store about my payment problem yesterday. She explained why it had happened & said that I definitely wouldn't be charged as had not completed the order, so that's ok. Replied to thank her for getting back to me. It's been a good business to use in the past & I'll definitely use them again.
*Updated grocery budget. We've been fine so far with having £50 less (top-sliced for Car Fund).
*Did meal plans, including a few things to come out of the freezer. I'm sure the Ice Gremlin is even bigger today, I can barely shut one of the drawers.....roll on defrosting time.
*Wrote shopping list.
*Finished last of the cleanse & polish cleanser tube which I cut in half. As suspected there was another 2 weeks' worth of cleanser in there. Am also using a cut-down hand cream tube at the moment & the last of a lipstick (using a lip brush).
*Painted toenails a rather fetching irridescent pale blue.....think I have sufficient nail varnishes & related gubbins to do a pedicure every day until I'm drawing my pension. I seem to have every colour of the rainbow left over from the Spendy Years, & if they go a bit thick, they only need a tiny drop of nail varnish remover to thin them down again (tip from yesteryear, courtesy of 'Jackie' magazine......)
OK, am off to pound that bread dough now. Oh....& the rain seems to have arrived. Should have guessed as Cat appeared looking grumpy & trying it on for an early dinner).
Bye for now,
F x
P.S - Ziggy - Glad you enjoyed your aquarobics. Yes, it's odd about anxiety, isn't it? The 'thing' the anxiety was focused on is so rarely anywhere near as bad as our fears. I often divide stressful things up into 4 different segments, so Segment 1 might be say 'Getting there', then once I've made the journey & am successfully there, I mentally cross that bit off & say 'Only 3 to go', & so on. This works really well for me. I only have flashes of anxiety now. Several years ago, an unrelated health problem brought on about 2 years of anxiety syndrome & I was signed off work for several months. It's such a disabling condition at its worst, especially if you've always been a confident outgoing person, so I do sympathise with people struggling with it. Give my method of dividing a stressful activity up into 4 sections a go. You might find it helps. Sometimes, by the time I've got past Section 2, I've forgotten I'm even counting them!
f x

Bobarella

FVD - bravo on your awesome bonus & pay rise amazing stuff!!! :j sorry about the electrics issue.

Tyrone - fingers crossed on the PPI!

Maria - Glad you had a NSD.

Twiggy - thank you for being a blood donor. We need more like you. My OH does it as much as he can and I used to but can't at the moment.

GreenSalad - it's such a ball ache when things happen like that. Hugs to you. And hope you feel better soon.

Foxgloves - well done for being a Box 1 ticker!!

Determined - you sound like you put so much into activities for DGD. You win today's lovely granny award

Dawn - why am I not surprised about the beer spends thing? :rotfl:

Crazy Cat Lady - Have you ever tried buying up lots of YS bread and freezing it? Sometimes you can get 5 loaves for the price of 1 regular loaf. Or also have you checked on Checkoutsmart when you buy them as there are lots that are either free or have good cashback values on there or on Shoptize.

Hope I haven't missed anyone. Despite trade being a flop (in the end £21.55 less than I'd hoped for) I managed to:
1) Find a £1 coin on my cycle home.
2) Earned 10p loading 2 reciepts into COS
3) Had the jammy luck of finding 50p in change in the self service till change draw
4) Came home to my The Orchard vouchers from Mr T which this time are for fine cheeses. I am going to take my £3 voucher up to Mr T in a moment as we need cheddar! If I buy the right one it has a 50p value on shoptize too! Plus 5p for the reciept.
5) First Utility have loaded on our bill. We spent £53 combined for gas and electric for the last month. We now only owe £47 due to the deficit so next time our £105 direct debit goes out we should be quits. I will definately be asking them to put the DD down after that. 1 month!!
6) worked out how much I've saved on buying YS food and paid £22 off the CC as a zero sum game thing.
7) Have come home to Mr and son both still in pj's! Lazy so and sos have decided to take a duvet day but the upside is that they've not spent a penny today.
8) Cycled all journies as per usual.
9) YS mince for the 3rd night in a row. This time in the guise of a shepards pie. I will also be using up a half bag of kale that has woken me in a panic one morning this week. What a ridiculous thing to worry about as you wake up in the morning! Food waste nazi that I am.
10) 30p to reach the payout on COS then can pay another £5 off The Debt.

Bob

foxgloves

Bob - the amount of coins you find is unbelievable. I reckon there must be Coin Gnomes going around London sprinkling the pavements liberally with loose change! I honestly can't remember the last time I found so much as a penny!
Right, must get the goat's cheese onto these pizzas & get them in the oven. mr f has got in early & looks fit to eat a scabby ox.
f x

Bobarella

Foxgloves - I'm sorry to inspire such roadkill envy. I won't tell you about the 2p I nobbled on the way back from Mr T just now

I'm sure we've had these discussions before but I put it down to a lot of teenage kids roaming around who have no respect for coppers, 5ps or anything else unuseful in their myopic eyes

Then there are the Mcdonalds losers who I have actually seen with my own eyes leave 1p behind when it's 99p something. Unbelievable.

I also have seen beggars cherry pick what they will take with them at the end of a 'shift' my then 2 year old was delighted to find a stack of coppers in the middle of peckham high street once and loaded up his purse as the locals looked on aghast.

It's a mentality thing. Like seeing 1p left on the floor in the bank for 2 days before someone ( me) picked it up. Looking at the state of some of the people that go into my bank they need it more than me, but some how wouldn't stoop so low....

DawnW

I hardly ever find coins either. I think there must be a lot of MSE-ers around here, as it is extremely rare to even find a penny