Bricks Not Books

VintageHistorian

Thank you for the seed tips chaps, will have to keep an eye out online and in Lidl when the spring comes around!

So August ended up with a disappointing total of £45.41 OP for the month. Only disappointing in that it was under my £60 target, I know it's still good to OP even if it's only a little bit! In the end the car insurance cost meant that I couldn't even TT towards the end of the month, really needed to focus on keeping a bit of money back so I didn't dip any further in to my savings. I had further car problems as I had to get my wheel alignment fixed, and was going to get the front tyres replaced as they're rather worn. Unfortunately at some point I've lost the wheel lock key, which meant that they couldn't remove the wheels to change tyres! Had to take the car to my local VW dealership and pay £65 to get the locks replaced, they've given me the new key in a little box so it should be harder to lose next time. Luckily my tyres are still legal, but I'll need to get them replaced before the MOT in November, so I've saved £70 this month for one tyre, and I'll use part of my next pay for the other tyre.

Had the last week of August off work, which barring the tyre issue was very nice. I managed to get rid of the armless sofa via Facebook, lovely couple came to pick it up and said they had no sofa as their flat is up some circular stairs, and it's really difficult to get furniture up it! The sofa was lovely and light without arms so hopefully they'll have got it up there fine, they offered to pay us something for it but I declined, the offer was for free and they're a young couple like us, I wouldn't have felt happy asking for money from them. It's hard enough starting out nowadays, we're both just happy that it's gone to a good home and made things a little nicer for someone else.

So far this month we've made our standard £30 OP plus a TT of £1.49, but I'm trying to be more careful as I couldn't save any money last month due to the car insurance, so need to save more this month to make up for it. We needed to get a new duvet as this one is a bit too small for our bed (kingsize bed, standard double duvet), and luckily I managed to get a super kingsize duvet using the 20% code in the MSE newsletter! Slightly over £30 in the end, which is a lovely saving as the one I was looking at on Argos was about £65 :T I was also going to buy some underbed boxes to store our bedsheets in but they can wait for the time being.

The change in weather means that next month we'll need to sort out a tiny tumbledryer for the kitchen as I'm now struggling to get stuff dried outside, it keeps raining when I hang things out! We also need to get a blind for the living room as once the leaves fall off the trees the people in the houses behind ours will be able to see straight in to our living room. We've also got a quote to cut back the enormous field maple in our garden, over £500 :eek: It really has grown out of control so it needs to get done, it's just a lot of money right now. The longer we leave it though the more the cost will go up, so we'll probably just have to bite the bullet in October and get it sorted. Sometimes I really hate our vendors for all the neglect they left this place with :mad:

On the plus side without that neglect we wouldn't have been able to afford the place, and it's really coming together after all the hard work of the past months. Sometimes I look around the living room or our bedroom and remember what a sad, shabby place it was when we bought it, I'm glad we could breathe new life in to it. Our little diamond in the rough is really going to sparkle by the time we're finished!

Dinner tonight is a nice Chinese fakeaway with a veritable YS feast that I've been collecting in the freezer for months, we've got crispy battered pork with sweet chili sauce, battered chicken with lemon sauce, mini Chinese BBQ ribs, the only thing not YS is the crispy duck and pancakes, but that at least was on offer at Tesco yesterday so it was £1.50 off! Going to cook up a few chips to go with it, but I doubt I'll need many of them :rotfl: And tomorrow we're driving over my parents for Sunday lunch, first little sister is back of to university next weekend!

VintageHistorian

Work paid my expenses on Friday, £25.56! Also did a little TT of £1.58 so OPed £27.14 yesterday.

Also did a money shuffle as I need to swap food and petrol money out of my budgets and in to my account. Really need to remember to do this every weekend rather than every other weekend as I got in a muddle about what I had and hadn't moved across But on the plus side I've had a tight hold on my purse strings this month and so far my account is looking okay. Barring any emergency purchases, I might be able to buy the blind for the living room at the end of this month.

This month we've ended up buying lots of little things for the house, which I think is helping me be quite firm with costs. The duvet I bought with the MSE code arrived and feels lovely and soft, just need to actually put a cover on it and stick it on our bed. DH bought a bookcase and a wall hanging shelf for the living room from IKEA which got delivered today, and then my Mum picked up a hallway storage shelf when she took my sister to IKEA the other week, so DH is having an IKEA assemblage day today. We've also received my Nan's old TV, which my Dad picked up the other week, so I gave my small one to my sister to take to university as it has a built-in DVD player, and I bought a cheap DVD player from Tesco on Friday. Overall a bit of a swap around, but I'm pleased we're getting close to finishing off the living room and now making progress on the hallway. Just need a shoe storage bench next!

Me and DH had a chat about the tree and decided to split the cost 50/50, so that'll be done next month. Just need to email the company to see how long it'll take and when they can book us in, if it'll take longer than a day then we'll need to ask the in-laws to come round and let the tree surgeons in for us.

Work is getting back to normal after the summer quiet. Had a couple of bad journeys in over the past few weeks, working from home on Fridays is an absolute godsend.

Dinner tonight is pork and chorizo casserole, going to start cooking it around 3:30 and then it can sit on the cooker on the lowest heat for a couple of hours. Will serve with crispy cubed potatoes, and some steamed broccoli and green beans. Love that autumn is now here, I find it a lot easier to cook in colder weather.

VintageHistorian

Been paid and me and DH spent the money shuffling our money around, I've paid the EDF and council tax bills and he's sent over his half of them, plus his share of the food and mortgage payments, and I've moved the basics in to my savings account, won't move much else until the mortgage payment has gone.

September's total OP ended up being £70.96, quite happy with that as my savings are also looking a little bit better too. My final spend of the month was some gorgeous new dark grey velvet cushions for the living room, we only have one cushion on the sofa at the moment and I keep stealing it from DH so this should prevent future theft XD

This month is going to be expensive but at least it's mostly planned spends. £500 to get the tree under control, the company is booked in to do the work on the 20th. Also need to get my tyres replaced, saved the £70 from last month for one tyre so just need £70 from this month, and the time to get it done! Also need to buy a blind for the living room and a tumble dryer for the kitchen, but again I've known the costs of these for a while so it's not going to be a shock. Just a nuisance.

Yesterday me and DH drove over to Halstead and had lunch in Prezzo before going to for a walk around the town and a little nosy in the church. I've driven through it quite a bit but never stopped so it was nice to have a look around. The walk was in my "50 walks in Essex" book, which has got several other walks in the area that I'd like to do in October and November, if only to encourage us to get out of the house at weekends.

Right, time for some lunch. Dinner tonight is chicken breasts wrapped in parma ham, served with crispy cubed potatoes, steamed baby corn, green beans and little broccoli (for DH as I'm terrible with my veggies).

VintageHistorian

One of the things I love about this house is just how peaceful it is on a Sunday morning. Woke up well before DH so crept downstairs with the laptop and my book and spent a few hours in the living room with the window open slightly and several cups of tea. Bliss.

I keep looking around the living room and the hallway and our bedroom, remembering how sad and empty and neglected the place was when we bought it. Now it's slowly coming together and looking more like a home, I'm glad we saw the potential in it when we had our first viewing.

Unfortunately some parts of it are going to have to wait a bit longer to get done. I had to get my front tyres replaced on Friday and ended up going for Goodyears as I do so much driving I need something solid and reliable. They were a step up from the ones I'd originally enquired about, so that's £192 of rubber now on the front wheels :eek: That combined with the cost of cutting back the tree means no blinds for the living room, and no tumble dryer just yet either. Luckily Friday was a nice sunny day so the laundry dried outside. I fear there will be fewer sunny days in the coming weeks so a dryer will be a necessity by November.

It also means this will probably be another month of frugal OPs. Sent off £30.42 yesterday (the 0.42 is a TT). Handed in my expenses claim form last week so can expect just over £24 in around two week's time. Only need to find £6 between then and the end of November. Really need to sort out the wedding china and get some of that up on Facebook.

So much to do, so little time, which is even less time now that traffic is back to normal thanks to all the schools going back Oh well, I knew it would be bad when I decided to move so far away from work. Will have to start looking seriously for something closer.

Dinner tonight will be roast beef with potatoes, green beans, broccoli and cauliflower florets. Love roast beef so really looking forward to it.

savingwannabe

Hello VH, it sounds like such a happy home!

I know it is a little frustrating as buying everything is so expensive but you are doing everything correctly and I am sure that it allows you to think carefully about the products you buy which is moneysaving.

Well done on cooking the meal. It sounds yum.

Sorry about the traffic I hope there is a nearby job you can apply for. Driving would drive me nuts!!!!!!(inserted rubbish joke there just as well I'm not a comedian) :rotfl:

VintageHistorian

Well, as predicted this month was especially low on OPs. Just managed to squeeze over the monthly target with;

Monthly budgeted OP - £30
Expenses - £24.08
eBook sales - £1.16 (lots of people bought in September! :T)
TT - £5.42

October total - £60.66! Just falling over the £60 target.

This means that we've now crossed the £900 barrier for this year and will almost certainly OP £1000 this year. We won't quite hit the target of under £155k by the end of the year, but I'm still really happy that we managed to get this far in our first year! :j

Not much else gone on this month. Got the tree cut back. Expensive but it looks much better. 2 metres taken off the bottom and nearly 3 metres taken off the top, and a lot trimmed around the sides as well. We can now see the bottom of the garden! They took away all the cuttings and even cleared up next door's garden after some of it fell over the fence. We've also got a few brownie points with next door as she's very proud of her garden and said she was sick of having to trim the overhanging bits on her side. DH has said that we're lucky to get along with our neighbours and he's not wrong, I think us buying from the rubbish vendors has once again helped with that. As long as we don't have any late night student parties we can't be worse than the past 8 years of occupiers.

Had to have a few days off work the other week as I had some kind of virus that was making me horribly tired. No other symptoms, just felt exhausted. Manager and a colleague at work had something similar so we think it's the first round of a winter bug. Feeling much better now, and I have a week off in 2 weeks time so any lingering germs can be firmly killed off then.

Took my little history shop off to a craft fair yesterday. Only a morning event, we were all packing up by 12:15. Made back my table fee plus a tiny bit on top. DH was relieved as the last time I did one I made two sales and didn't earn my table cost back Got another booked, this time in our town, at the end of November so we'll see how that goes. Had some very nice comments and quite a few people took my business cards because "I know someone who'd love your things, but I don't know what bit of history they like most" so if I get a few other sales that way then it will have been well worth it!

Now that I read back I can see that more has happened than I anticipated :rotfl:

Plan for November is to enjoy my week off. Might need to drive down to Worthing to drop off my Christmas charity shoeboxes as I've only had one person drop a load off and I don't have the 80 required to request a pick-up myself. We'll make a day trip of it if that's the case. Car MOT is due as is a dental check-up (both on the same day, I really know how to enjoy myself). I've started work on my Christmas gift ideas, added a few things to my Amazon basket for my youngest sister. Just need to remember to tell Mum what I'm getting so we don't end up clashing. I'd like to get the bulk of Amazon stuff ordered so I can just click a few buttons before my week off and have it all delivered while I'm in the house, then I can top-up during December.

Also need to buy a tumble dryer at last, been talking about it long enough :rotfl:

Dinner tonight is roast pork belly, with spuds and greens!

Have a lovely week everyone!

savingwannabe

Crumbs you have had a busy month and you still made an overpayment which is great. Well done on making money on your ebooks and also at the stall. That is a big achievement.

It's fab that you get on with your neighbours. It really does make things better.

I hope the virus is over. So far I haven't succumbed and hope I don't. This is not going to be a good winter for the NHS.

I hope you have a great week off in November I can't believe how much you do. It is all so positive so heres a cheer for more :beer: and a lovely break. Happy November. :j

VintageHistorian

Last day of my week off today, back to work next week. Celebrated turning a year older on Monday, had lunch with my parents on the Sunday and went in to London with DH on Saturday. We went to St Paul's Cathedral, which was free to get in to as it was also the Lord Mayor's Show. We also saw some of the parade but they were marching between me and my burger lunch so I didn't pay them too much attention :rotfl: Overall a lovely couple of days.

Car passed her MOT on Tuesday and my teeth passed their check up on the same day. Then Wednesday I had 192 Christmas shoeboxes for Link to Hope picked up. My first year as an Area Collector went better than I could have anticipated! Only 4 of those shoeboxes were mine, the rest were dropped off by various people, schools and other groups. Glad to get my living room back, they were blocking the books Now I just need to focus on my reverse advent calendar for the local food bank, and then in January the shoebox cycle begins again! Well, for me at any rate as I like to buy things for them throughout the year rather than do it all at the last minute.

Today I'm thinking of driving over to the garden centre as I've heard their Christmas display is now up. Then I need to do the food shopping on the way back. Laundry is currently on so I'll hang that up outside to freeze while I'm out XD

This month's OP is looking very healthy. Made the standard £30 OP the other day with a £1.90 TT, then I'm expecting £77 in work expenses (train ticket for an event in London), and I cashed out a £27 payment from Quidco last night from my car insurance.

Next year I need to start finding a balance between OPing and saving. There's no point OPing all my spare money when my savings are still quite delicate and there are still plenty of things I need to buy for the house. We're also working out where to go on holiday next year for our 1 year anniversary. Current options are Disneyland Paris, Amsterdam, or Northumberland. Surprisingly there's only about £150 difference between them, especially as Northumberland would include hiring a car so I don't put even more miles on my poor little VW.

Breakfast time, have a nice weekend everyone!

savingwannabe

Glad you had a good holiday and visited London. It's great that you helped with Link to Hope. Again you have made an OP which is fab.

I hope you can choose a good value for money holiday. What does it say when it's almost the same cost to go abroad as to stay here?????

Have a good weekend and a gentle weekend at work.

VintageHistorian

I think the holiday here would be cheaper if we weren't hiring a car SW, and the cottage I'm eyeing up on AirBnB is very nice. But then the cost of entrance tickets to places would also add to the cost...ho hum, need to make a decision soon as we'll be going away in April!

So my total OP for November was £137.06! :T It was the work expenses again, helped by a payout from Quidco. This means that we've broken the £1k mark for OPing in 2017! We won't hit our target of falling under £155k by January but I don't mind, over £1000 in overpayments is enough for me! Need to work out our aim for next year, around savings too of course.

Christmas is starting to approach so I completed my Amazon order, and just ordered some stuff from Hotel Chocolat. I can pick it up from the shop on Monday, so that saves postage. I'm also going to use Monday to finish off my Dad's Christmas presents, then Tuesday can be getting Mum's birthday and Christmas things, and I can get a few little bits for DH on Wednesday. After that it will just be my brother (very easy, lots of sweets) and then I need to wrap them up. Oh, and something for my old housemates and their little girls.

I also need to write my Christmas cards tomorrow and post them Monday before the last posting dates for the US and Japan sneak up on me! Oh and wrap up presents for my friend in the Netherlands and get those sent off too. I really should set aside proper time tomorrow to get a lot of this stuff done.

We had a little dusting of snow on Thursday! Was very exciting but made the roads rather hair raising. It also made me realise that the freezer has been looking a little empty recently, we've been eating stuff without replacing it. So along with stocking up on peas and french fries (the essentials :rotfl:) I also bought a YS lamb hotpot ready meal, which has been frozen. I also stocked up on some more pasta and passata as we've got a load of Ikea meatballs that could be cooked up. I just need to find another ready meal or two, and some tins of soup, and then we should be set in case we can't leave the house (highly unlikely but best to be prepared).

Dinner tonight was a lasagne, first time I've cooked on in three years! Didn't make enough cheese sauce but apart from that it was very nice. Tomorrow is a roast pork joint, with spuds and veggies.

Have a lovely rest of the weekend everyone!