22 Foxhole East

f0xh0les

Just booked DS1 on to the NCS week away, which has dropped in price from £50 to £35 since I last looked. So himself and 2 mates will have a week away at the end of July for a week, allegedly learning how to be a human being. Something to look forward to anyway.
Step-gran is ill in bed with this chesty cough, and her landline is not working - which means there is no signal for her panic button!! It has not been working for a whole week. No wonder she had gone quiet. Also her hearing aids have broken.

M-i-l wants to come and visit the kids at half term in February, even though DS1 is going to be going to extra study sessions all week, she still wants to come. She does not respond well to being told 'no'. She also asked DH what dates I was going over to step-gran at Easter. I am not going over at Easter, I did last year, because I got guilted into it by step-Gran, and the year before because I won a free ferry crossing + car + 5 passengers that had to be used before June. This was not supposed to be a yearly event! I was hoping DS1 and his many study sessions and exams was going to get me a free pass, but it seems the over 70's maf-ia is out to get me. I will resist!! strenuously!!!
We have snow forecast for this evening, so I am glad I should be finished with picking up kids at 4.30. Vegetable stew made and ready to be reheated, dumplings prepped, part baked bread ready to be heated, strawberries ready to be heated and made into a sauce for ice cream. So I am pretty ahead of myself at the moment.

Which is good as I managed to smash 4 wine glasses this morning with a thermos flask which decided to try and commit suicide from a high shelf. It took ages to clear up, as it was in the pantry and I had to move 2 push bikes out of there because they have somehow found a home in there.

Boiler Bob is coming on Friday to service the boiler. Friday is February already and it cannot come soon enough. Budgets are running out - less than £50 until Thursday and I am probably going to need petrol before then. Hooray for short February, with its child benefit payments and 26 days between paydays. Half term when the weather is horrid and nobody really wants to go anywhere, but stay in the warm and dry (revision sessions excluded).
So, coming up to the end of January, with lots of little jobs having been done. Lots of things crossed off the list. Fewer things going back onto those lists, but all the big expensive jobs are still there, looking at me, mocking my tiny £350 budget. Oh well, from little acorns.... and all that.

f0xh0les

and it is bl0ddy freezing!

greenbee

I'm lovely and warm, as I've had a temporary door put on between the utility room and the kitchen

The utility room is freezing. I expect outside is too...

Little jobs taking priority on my list too. They're generally more annoying than the major jobs, so can make you feel a lot better as they are ticked off the list!

apple_muncher

Just thinking that your ds1's decision to aim for straight 9s is pretty awesome. Nowt like self-motivation! Go ds1!

chumpy45

Love the bikes in the pantry image. I have a front porch full of well, basically junk. No matter how many times I tidy it, somehow things just find their way back there. They are not things that belong to anyone in this house apparently. Just magic things, like shoes and sports kits, and coats which just ... appear !

f0xh0les

Happy February! Payday yesterday, all bills gone out this morning. £800 left. Child benefit in on Monday.

Boiler Bob coming round this morning to service the boiler. Fingers crossed it lives and comes in under £100.
Two school weeks left until the half term.

In-laws still threatening to descend. Studying be damned. At least DS1 will be able to escape, and when I get a date for their appearance, I will have a deadline and can start to get another lot of niggly annoying jobs off the list.

I shall invent Fix-It February, and get me drill out.

Brexit has started to become a topic at the school gates! Who would have thought it, after all this time, apparently people have noticed. Finally..

Off to a very quick coffee morning at school - we got the letter yesterday at 3pm for the 8.40 start today. But Bob will come at 10.00 and I will nip in and out quickly. Show my face and leg it.

Time to start the day....

f0xh0les

Luckily the PTA are so badly organised, they were not ready at 5 minutes past when the coffee morning was supposed to occur, so I legged it and saved the donation.

BoilerBob turned up 20 mins late and I am waiting for his invoice. There are two things which will need replaced soon. Oh well!
Walked into Mr M's shopping emporium as I had to get petrol anyway (£40 full tank) and walked out with a load of ys bargains - massive £6 sack of unwashed spuds, down to £1.50, cherry tomatoes for 25p and apples for 38p, and then back to pick up the smalls from football practice, and home to make a dinosaur birthday cake for DS3 ready for today. It is not professional, it is not perfect, I am not an artist, I am not a modeller, I am not a cake decorator, but you can tell it is either a dragon or a dinosaur, it has scales and humps and legs and arms and a head and a tail and a body and eyes, nostrils and ridges. It is also green. All made from stuff I had in the house anyway.

Presents have now been opened, he is a happy little chappie, well he is 11 so not so small, wish he would act like it. Secondary school this year! All change!

S&M sent me a £2 voucher to spend in store - cheers!

Doing the frugal feb challenge - it is only 28 days so seems much shorter than the evil 31 day challenges.

Tuesday 5th is Chinese New Year - so I have tofu in the fridge and ys wontons in the freezer and we can bypass the 'shall we get a takeaway?' scenario. Going to hit the soups over the next few weeks. Favourites in our house are tomato and red pepper, sweetcorn and butterbean chowder, broccoli and cheese, veg soup with dried pulse soup mix (or fridge-bottom soup as the kids call it), and carrot and cumin - we have 3 people in our house with the coriander-leaf-tastes-like-fairy-liquid gene, so we have changed to cumin and that way we can all eat it. Want to experiment with a tomato, chilli, and desecrated coconut soup I had once, somewhere or other, a decade ago, and it was lovely. Will investigate recipe sites to find something similar and make that.

I think I can get away with a ten item shopping list this week - mostly stuff for lunchboxes, so the shopping budget will be tiny as I am sure the boiler bits will no doubt eat up all my spare cash.

Right, on with the weekend!

mark55man

that looks like a lovely super cheap menu, especially the desecrated coconut - what did it do wrong!


love the dinosaur cake - very ingenious

f0xh0les

And drum-roll please.... I have the figures for January!


Daily interest down to £4.35 (one pence a day saving on last month )
Monthly interest down to £135.08 (£1.06 down on last month)
I made an overpayment of £106.95 so that brings it down at the start of February to a nice round:

£99,500.00

f0xh0les

I can find all sorts of red lentil, tomato, coconut, chili soups, but I remember the dried coconut in it being fab, and I think I must have been at some anarcho-syndicalist community people's cafe project somewhere that just took inspiration from the recipe and lobbed other stuff in.

Desecrated coconut is something the kids revile, they say they hate it, until it appears on top of a cake with a chocolate hard topping, or in a flapjack, and then they love it, but if you suggest they eat it in something, they look at you like you suggested they might fancy licking your feet for you.