Bricks Not Books

VintageHistorian

Total OP for February was £67.32, which was helped along by part of the council tax budget (we're on the 10 month version so paid it all off in December). That won't be happening in March as the cycle has started again!

This month we've dropped under £150k!! :T :j It'll go back up at the end of the month once the interest is added but it's so lovely to see it at £149k. If we hadn't been overpaying since taking out the mortgage then this would only have happened in September this year!

I've also managed to get my emergency fund up to £2k. Ideally I'd like to at least double that, but it's making progress so I'm happy with it.

Not much happened in February. I did book a rental car for our holiday in April, and paid extra for it to be dropped off and picked back up again. DH doesn't drive so we'd have needed a taxi anyway.

I've had four days off work this week which has been very nice. Sadly DH came down with a cold and refused to take a sick day to help get over it. I did eventually persuade him to book yesterday off work using some of his Flexi and he does sound and feel a lot better today. But it meant that during the week I was dealing with catarrh-based snoring :eek: It was loud.

Despite lack of sleep though I did get things done. Went to Ipswich on Tuesday and got some charity shop buys, plus had a lovely cheese scone in a cafe above a jewellery shop. Wednesday was a lazy day. Thursday I did some work on my history website. And yesterday I left DH in bed and did the food shopping in the morning so we're restocked for the week.

Sadly Thursday wasn't as productive as I wanted in the afternoon as I ended up in a bad mood. Me and DH found a lovely shoebench on an independent website. It was nearly £300 but it's a lovely classic look and we figured it would last us for many years so was worth the money. It had 3 wicker baskets in the bottom for shoes and then three drawers along the top for small items. You couldn't pick a delivery date (which always annoys me) so we ordered it so it would arrive while I've been off this week.

It arrived on Thursday and on unwrapping it I found one of the corners had been seriously bashed in I was so disappointed as we've been talking about getting this for a while and it's meant to be our first "proper" purchase (i.e. not a piece of cheap furniture we've got from Argos or Ikea). On further inspection the drawers aren't on runners so they're difficult to pull out and push back in, and they haven't been completely painted. It looks lovely in the photos but in reality it looks and feels a bit cheap, and if we'd seen it in a shop I'm not sure we would have paid £300 for it.

I sent a photo of the damage to the company along with a snotty email and they've apologised, and said they'll arrange a courier to come and pick it up and give us a full refund. So now I've got to source another shoebench, and DH has to take another day off next week to be in for it to be collected. I've found a bench on Next that's quite nice but just has lid, no baskets or anything. However it is £50 cheaper. I might look for a Next Homewares shop around here so we can see if we can take a look in person before buying it. Me and DH still need to repack the other bench, I ripped the box open to get it out as I was so excited for it.

Aaand that's pretty much it for things going on in the VH household! Dinner tonight is chicken breasts wrapped in parma ham and I'm going to do homemade potato wedges with them. Have a good weekend everyone!

Fortune_Smiles

What a shame about the shoe bench VH. Have you tried the Cotswold Company. I know they have some and I've always found the quality of their stuff very good.

Fortune x

savingwannabe

Again, like Fortune, I am sorry about the shoe bench. I think Fortune Smiles is right you should take your time and shop around. There could be sales in the summer and maybe John Lewis or Marks's will have something if the Cotswold Company don't. I bet they will as they are marvellous though.

Well done on the OP and the fact that your mortgage is less than £150 is to be applauded. :beer::beer::beer::j:money: (That's applause Vintage Historian - like in Pretty in Pink, lol ).

I hope the days off have been great and the weather is ok by you. It is so changeable here. Roll on summer. I can't wait.

VintageHistorian

Thank you for the suggestions Fortune and SW! We ended up going in Chelmsford to look at both the Cotswold Company and John Lewis, and after some deliberation bought a shoe bench from the Cotswold Company. Could have spent a lot more money in there if we had the funds :rotfl:

But we don't, so it was just the shoe bench. Got it delivered the weekend after we visited and it has now been sitting in our hallway for several weeks. It's amazing how much more space you have under the stairs when your shoes are all tidied away neatly! I just have to remember to put my flats back in it after I've driven to get DH from the station.

March got away from me a bit. Had my lovely week off but the payoff was that the following two weeks at work were extremely busy. I'm only now just feeling like I've got a grip on things again. So I only ended up with an OP of £40.03 as all I was doing was balancing my food budget at weekends, everything else went out the window.

Still I've just sat down and done the money shuffle and sent an OP of £40.73, so we're already £0.70 ahead on March! And I still have £13 in loose change that I need to pay in to my account. Will try to do that next Saturday, DH is working so the world will be my oyster. If I have the energy then I'll go in to town, pay in the money and have a charity shop browse. If I don't have the energy then I will stay in and feed lots of paper in to the shredder :rotfl: Some of it has been sitting around for months and months and I need to get it all binned.

Not much else going on in the VH household. Have a good week everyone!

savingwannabe

I'm glad that you had some time off and also about the OP!

I hope you have a good week and that it is warm by you. Happy shredding! :j

teapot2

I like the Cotswold Company furniture too, can't afford anything from there now but did buy a few bits back in the day

VintageHistorian

Me and DH have had our lovely anniversary holiday in the Cotswolds. Used Cirencester as a base (the Premier Inn we stayed in was very nice, clean, comfortable and quiet) and drove all over the place. Ticked off two cathedrals (Gloucester and Worcester), two abbeys (Bath and Tewkesbury), a castle (Sudeley) and two Roman features (Chedworth villa, and Corinium museum).

Had a bit of a palaver with the hire car as the company demanded I take my paperwork to the office, otherwise they wouldn't deliver the car the next day. Had to leave work early to sort it out. When I queried why they'd left it until less than 24 hours before giving me the car, they said that not only do all new customers have to do this, but they normally do it on the morning you're due to get the rental! What's the point of paying extra to have the car delivered then? Have absolutely slated them in their feedback survey as I'm still furious about it. Next time I'll use my car. I just haven't put enough miles on it for it to have it's next service, and it's quite old and I've put a lot on it in recent years. Hopefully next year I'll be able to get it serviced before our holiday and then we can take it with us.

Anyway, Cotswolds was lovely. Back to work tomorrow, feel like I need another holiday already :rotfl:

Only problem with the holiday was over spending a bit. But we had a lovely time so it was all worth it. I'm going to try to be a bit stricter in May. Need to buy some plants for the garden so will do that next weekend (am going to try my hand at "grow your own" again this year), and then I shouldn't need to get much else.

Despite over spending I've just gone and sent a TT of £3.58 as an OP, if only to make myself feel a bit better

Have a good week everyone!

savingwannabe

Hurrah for the lovely holiday to the Cotswolds very romantic and a good choice of location. I have been to some of these places and they are very picturesque and are steeped in history.

The hire car company do not sound particularly customer friendly well done you in telling them what you thought of them.

As to plant buying- if you buy perennials it is an investment as they come back year after year. I can say that as I have just spent a fair bit on clematis plants! lol.

VintageHistorian

That's a good idea with the plants SW, I just get a bit bored of having the same colours and types all the time, even if that's not very MSE.

Total OP for April was a measly £44.31, so I'm determined to hit the £60 target this month at least! I've written how much I have left to hit that this month (just over £14) to actually remind me to do something about it.

We've got a very expensive few months coming up. We've decided to get our windows replaced. The double glazing we have at the moment is very old, one of the windows at the back is misted up as the seal as popped, one is very difficult to close properly, and the other opens and closes but a metal bit has snapped off, which isn't good. Overall they're due for replacement so we got a local company to come out and replace them. It comes in just under £3000, including VAT and all installing and making good costs, for a total of 6 windows. So we're going to go with that and book it in for September when I have annual leave anyway. But it means savings over the coming months so my share doesn't completely drain my emergency savings pot.

We will also need to get the boiler serviced in autumn, and the tree in our back garden could really do with a top trim again. It grows so bloody quickly, but it cost £500 to do last time, and that was only 2 years ago! Our neighbour got a different company to do their tree last year so I might ask her if she recommends them and get a quote from them to compare.

But at least we don't have holidays to save for at the moment, and a bit of belt tightening will be good for me, it will hopefully make me a bit more creative with what we have.

My audition to be a WI speaker is on Friday! :eek: I wrote my presentation and then timed it, it was 47 minutes long!! The audition is only 30 minutes long, so I chopped it down and retimed it, it came in at 37 minutes, so I need to cut out another princess and try not to waffle the introduction. Will give it another shot tomorrow night, and then practice it every night for the rest of the week. If I'm accepted then I've put my fee as £25 plus petrol over a certain distance from home. Don't need to get a ton of bookings, just a few a year would be nice!

Not sure if anyone else here is a fan of Rammstein, but their new album came out on Friday and hit my doormat on Saturday. I'm really enjoying it. Poor hubby had to put up with me singing along to bits of it in the car on the way to my parents :rotfl: The term "singing" ignores the fact that A) I don't speak German and I can't sing!

Have a good week everyone!

VintageHistorian

I'm officially a paid speaker for the Essex WIs! :T Audition went well, and one of the people watching it has already booked me for her WI for next year! She's asked for some information on the different talks I can give, so I'm making a PDF with a summary of each one that I can send her, and other enquirers. I've set my fee at £25, and then I can look at bumping it up a bit in a few years time once I'm established A lot of WIs are very small, so I didn't want to charge too much when a lot of them won't be able to afford it.

And in other good news I have been very well behaved with money this month, so I did a big TT of £16.91 to push me over the £60 for this month. I also splurged on Amazon and bought some bits of Christmas shoeboxes, and some nice but rather expensive black ink pens for myself. I used to use them in my old job and they have a lovely smooth way of writing. I hope I've bought the right ones!

Have taken a look at the budget for the coming months and I'm fairly sure that I can save the £250 a month needed for my share of the window costs. Hopefully without living like a complete hermit!

Have a good week everyone!