Five OS Pleasures in your day today

slowandsteady_2

I am new to OS but have been watching the pennies for a while after some financial problems and dh getting made redundant.

I am enjoying many different ways of living including cooking from (nearly) scratch, we very rarely have processed food, shopping on a budget i see as a challenge, have joined June GC but am finding the first month hard but its a learning curve.

Most of all i am able to put a few pounds away, working out my available money to the day and any nsd the equivalent days 'spends' gets transferred to internet savings accounts,iykwim, that makes me feel really good.

Am learning and loving it:D

louisewh123

watching pennies to pay off debt!! Become a game for me - how can i make extra money today? What can i cook from a gone off carrot, a tomatoe and herbs ( soup by the way! ) Even our 5 yr has his own sealed pot challenge - we made our own piggy banks!! I love living OS!!

louisewh123

ate first harvest of home grown food ( i have a window garden )
used leftovers in freezer that were yummy!
played bingo as earned cash back so worked out i made £10 ( and i won £57 he he)
watched film borrowed from Mom
did some cross stitch

mineallmine

Evening all,

Ollie - it's the local recylcing scheme I "compost" our peelings for. I have quite a bit again this week. So give it a try. Do you have the recipe for Spicy Turkey Casserole (sounds healthy).

Reverbe - just read about you having mackerel and rocket for lunch, how healthy! I love mackerel. So do the cats... On the friends front, I can see you love the library, are there any events coming up that you could attend, or how about an evening class on literature or history? Or how about voluntary work?

emmie1234 - well done on reducing your gas cards spend. I lived in a place using these cards and found them so expensive, so you've done really well to make such a quick impact. Maybe put some of the money you're saving away for the winter months? I just need to crack our electricity bill, it's just too big!

Hi to everyone else, lurkers and newbies. I'm not as clever as Ollie who can respond to everyone (I barely remember my own name some days!).

Here's mine:
1.Having a sort out with clothes. Another 2 bags for the local charity shop.
2.Seeing a hedgehog in the garden last night.
3.Doing bacon on the George Foreman grill thing (I am so late to these, but minus a grill on my oven, this is making up for it). Also did some peppers on it.
4.Trying asparagus for the first time (I must get out more) - bought as part of the M&S offer dine in for £10 - then bought some more for Sunday roast yesterday. It was the only British veg I could find in the supermarket, so buy British, buy asparagus (or grown your own of course!)
5.The evening sunshine.

:A

Patchwork_Quilt

1) Wearing the latest charity shop find - a long linen skirt by Kaliko. It just feels like quality but it was only £5
2) The offer of being able to borrow a friend's washing machine, as ours needs some new brushes
3) Chicken for tea and some stock simmering on the hob afterwards
4) Compliments for my HM cake - apricot jam in the middle and orange icing on the top - with everyone asking for seconds
5) Someone else saying I could keep the huge plant pot they brought something in - just the right size for some lettuce if filled with compost from the neglected end of the garden

Reverbe

mineallmine wrote: »

Reverbe - just read about you having mackerel and rocket for lunch, how healthy! I love mackerel. So do the cats... On the friends front, I can see you love the library, are there any events coming up that you could attend, or how about an evening class on literature or history? Or how about voluntary work?


:A

Our library doesn't do events. Only for kids in the holidays and half term etc.I have been in their monthly book club for about 2 years or so but the people there either change a lot or the ones that do come over and over - a lot of them seem to know each other outside from work n things and tho I have tried to get us to do things together like go for a drink or coffee etc like for example at Christmas, they are just not interested. I have found over the years that unlike me who thinks you can never have too many friends, a lot of people are not very open to making more or new friends and just tend to stick with the ones they already have.

There isnt a lot going in my area re voluntary work either. I am not religious but even asked at our local church and they had nothing.I did do some for Cafedirect in London which was fun but not really conducive to making friends by the nature of the tasks.

I think I will just have to become more used to it.I am generally on my own but I think after over a year of not seeing my only friend combined with the recession and getting older has lead to me feeling lonely a lot.My flatmate who I don't really get on with used to be around more which was at least someone else being around but now he has his own business he tends to be out from 6 am to about 8 pm every day including weekends.Meanwhile I am just sitting in with nothing to do.:rolleyes:

tudorfan22

Good morning all, been busy for a few days so my five today is a compliation – a greatest hits – of the last few days!!!

• Still buzzing from the weekend – went to see 20/20 cricket at lords, saw England lose by 1 run L but the game was so tense and exciting!! Got to see gorgeous Kevin Pietersen close up and screamed my lungs out – was quite an expensive day out but I had such a fantastic time and haven’t come back down yet – I am now officially part of the barmy army!!!
• saw wicked at the weekend with a bunch of hens on a hen day – never met most of them but they really took to me and we were patying away like we’d been mates forever which was really cool!
• my friend went on a day trip to paris last week and were meeting up for lunch today and she will tell me all about it!! I love paris and im so pleased she had a good time
• this is my ‘main’ happiness – we got a call from the battery hen charity on Sunday asking if we had space to rehomed 4 very poorly, very malnourished hens who had been rescued from a battery farm – we have 4 ex batts already and were going to get 4 more eventually, but I couldn’t resist the chance to rescue and recover these poorly darlings!
• not at all DFW but am buying a new coop for all my hens – its very swish
• again not DFW but to make room for the new coop we are demolishing the pig-ugly huge vandalised wendy house we inherited when we moved in – ive hated it from day one, but its been storing our junk for years and my DH wont demolish it – now we have to if were gonna fit a big chicken coop in!!! just means hiring a skip – how much???!!!
• seeing my nan at the weekend to show her my wedding pictures – shes lovely and she’ll be really chuffed to see them! Must make up a set of pictures for her though!
• going to Calais in 2 weeks for a trip to the hypermarket there – it’s a once a year do organised on the cheap by the social club at work, but my sister and best mate are coming which is awesome – my sister only has 1 week afterwards on her passport but the FCO said that’s ok
• my insurance claim for my engagement ring is finally completed after 5 weeks, finally I get to feel my precious engagement ring back on my finger – felt naked without it!

these make my life sound very exciting, but it’s a spurt and then it’ll be calm for the next 6 months, I guess as long as I appreciate it all when it happens and make some happy memories for when im bored, that’s the main thing!!

NoahsPennilessMummy

Reverbe

Just wanted to send you a hug as I really feel for you being lonely.
It is awful to be lonely like that.....when ex DH left me and DS on our own I knew no one around here at all and have no family here.
I can remember how I would pick DS up from nursery every week on the Friday lunchtime and would not see or speak to anyone else till I went to work on Mon morning...it was terrible.
I gradually made a few friends...I think it is easier when you have children as you can go to toddler groups etc and meet other mums....it is hard to infiltrate groups though when they all know each other.
I can`t think of any other ways for you to meet people apart from evening classes or sports groups etc.....if I think of any more will let you know.

Chin up love, am sure it wont last forever
xx

ampersand

reverbe - DO count as a Great Pleasure the fact that you are not having to decipher my left-handed hand-writing....pm awaits.

Are you near any parks or gardens?

This is a sort of catch-up, also triggered by this from bellaquidsin:

2. Getting cheap sugar in Poundland in readiness for the elderflower cordial I hope to make at the weekend.

- ......as I have done same and also recommend Poundland's 1.5kg of Whitworth's sugar to anyone I can bore about it.
2nd batch of cordial and 1st of champagne sitting now.

- Finding a village plant stall owner at home, on my 4th attempt to leave correct change owed from last week. Discover her to be a wonderful 'in my 90's' lady of similar art/pottery taste. We chattered for ages together, shared stories of Loved Things, then I rtn'd with my remaining Bernard Leach pots for her to see and feel...as did I with her super piece, blvd to be Norah Braden. We happily 'storytold' of various loved things and events relating to them and lucky finds. She'd dug and planted a new oval bed in her beautiful garden that morning. She also has a marvellous name, which I can't put here. All in all, her take on Life is superb because she simply doesn't reckon up her years in numbers, which are, we agreed, an irrelevance and a Human construct. She had just sent £60 from her stall to the Macmillan nurses. Another Maud....as I somewhat am to A as Harold.

- Made v.g. walnut/seedy bread. All my breadmaking is Hands Only, no machine.

- Salvaged 2 GYO salad plug baskets in Mr T, reduced to 25p each. They seem to be holding on, planted out in 4 troughs in rain over w/e, now under cloche. About 30 cut and come again plants of my faves if they continue - mâche, radicchio et al.

- At last speaking to mumoftwins this morning[phone glitsches of late] and 'keeping watch' with her throughout today, as i-t has his operation, probably continuing as I write this.

- Seeing :mad: half my FIRST strawberry I was watching ripen, detached and left on ground, with clear beaky gouges. Monsieur and Madame Merle - j'accuse and only one baby to feed this year, too. Shame on you! But it's still a pleasure of sorts and prompts me now to construct defences with net curtaining&canes....

- At Charity yesterday linking an unexpected, normally unsaleable because incomplete, object to a person who I remembered wanting just this. It was terrific.

- Knowing that i-player, DAB and Skype, so new to me, are indeed THERE, despite my loathing of the latest DAB schedule and lamenting the dire content/standard of the children's programmes, which now intrude in a previously enjoyed slot. Children's listening and imagination should be fed with all that's best.....don't start me.

- Being astounded by a rank Tory's defence of Gordon Brown and what's happening in a lucid and structured polemic of perceptive assurance.

- Just now being called on by B, who will come and finish sorting fence demain. Will now go and quickly paint the remaining panel he's brought before more rain. We also just found freshly dead little shrew at edge of the spring wheat - all part of the cycle, including my strawberry....

-Closing now, thinking out loud on this Good Thread, of reverbe and i-t.
knowing it will be read and echoed by others.

Bless you all.
-

ampersand

Can add, mumoftwins reporting i-t is safely through operation.

Will also add seeing Gäel Monfils at Queen's on computer.