Bricks Not Books

savingwannabe

Hello hurrah to the speaker role at the WI!!!! Marvellous news! A chance to share your interest with others and very MSE to boot. Here's to many bookings:beer:

Window saving is sounding promising and an investment in your home. I love good pens- writing is a joy and they do add to it.

Hope you had a great bank holiday and the weather is good by you. Well done on another great month. :j:j:money:

debtfreeoneday

Popping in for the first time. I put perennials in our garden and then just buy a few flowers each year to put into pots to give me a different view. I do like to see my old trusty favourites popping up each year.

Well done on the OPs.

VintageHistorian

This diary went very quiet again

OPing has had to go out the window a bit because we ended up spending lots of money last month. Our front door broke and we couldn't get it open! :eek: Luckily we have a back door and a gate from the back garden, but to get out you have to walk around the back of several houses and then loop back around to get to the front of our house. It got very inconvenient very quickly.

Luckily the company who are doing our windows also do doors, so they came straight back out for a second quote, with all the paperwork in hand for me to sign, and I paid the deposit for both the door and the windows. 3 weeks later we had a lovely new door which has really improved the whole look of the front of the house.

Unfortunately because it was a lovely composite door it was also expensive. Just over £1k, so that was a chunk of money from the window fund gone So I've been in a bit of a funk since then. I can save up fine, but I'm having to trim the sails a bit, and that includes just the standard OPs and very few TTs on top.

I have been keeping track of them though so I'll sit down and actually tally them up soon, and then I can feel like I'm back on track.

We're also getting our electrical sockets replaced as most don't have rocker switches, which will be another couple of hundred pounds. And my eldest little sister has her graduation in September so I've just booked myself a Premier Inn room for the night before so I don't have to do a 3 hour drive there and a 3 hour drive home all on the same day. But again, more money.

However I looked in my purse this evening and I've been careful with the cash this month, so if I can end with a note or some coins I'll be satisfied. My loose change jar has been looking very low recently. I've also got a few clothing bits that I really need to list on eBay, if I can find some motivation then I'd like to get that done before the end of this month.

Have a good week everyone!

savingwannabe

Well done on actually having the money to pay for the door and windows and the electrics. Most people would have panicked and not been able to but you managed it which is fab. Now it is complete your house is even better and you can continue to save.

It's great that your sister will be graduating in September and something to look forward to. Good luck ebaying your things. I am planning to have a carboot - it is cathartic. lol

Have a good month and enjoy the good weather:j.

VintageHistorian

Right, a quick pop on while my lunch (chicken mugshot) is 'cooking'.

May OP total - £63.55 (yay!)
June OP total - £41.52 (quieter yay!)

So that means so far this year I've been over the £60 target 3 times, and under it 3 times. That's not as bad as I had feared.

This month was going to be very under target. But DH has had some absolutely awful train journeys the past 2 weeks. I'd fallen out of the habit of claiming for him (and using the money to OP) as he swapped to a top-up card for his season ticket and did it all online. But on Wednesday I persuaded him to send me his email receipt for this month and photographed his card so I had the number, and then put in four delay repay claims for him. Had just over £11 paid out and suspect we're looking at another £11 for the two pending ones. The money goes to my Paypal account so I'll withdraw it once it's all paid and then shove that at the mortgage, and that should get us very close to £60 for July.

I've absolutely hated the past week. I don't like humid weather and I don't like extremely hot weather. It's much cooler today so I've opened windows and the back door and I'm now enjoying the living room. I've had several really bad nights sleep due to feeling so uncomfortable and I've now got a headache from it all DX So a productive morning of laundry and gardening can now descend in to an afternoon of TV until it's time to start dinner and get DH from the station.

As for the gardening - This month I have harvested two large cucumbers (one from each plant) and two radishes (I planted 10 seeds, I think they're mostly dead). So this morning I've planted out more radish seeds in the hopes they'll be more successful. If not I'll just have to buy more seeds for next year (my fault for leaving them out in the rain in May). My tomato plants are also covered in tomatoes but they're taking a very long time to turn red!

Right, time for lunch and then a lazy afternoon! Have a nice weekend everyone!

savingwannabe

Well done on claiming the train money. Every penny helps!

I understand about the heat. On the v warmest day I kept falling asleep so glad not to be at proper work at the moment.

Hurrah for your lovely gardening. Good luck with all veg. My radishes grew last month v well however, cucumbers are not producing yet and tomatoes are nowhere near ready! lol. I wish you well you seem to be way ahead of me.

Have a good weekend.

zcrat41

Your garden sounds v productive. I seem to have a lot less tomatoes than last year!

VintageHistorian

savingwannabe wrote: »

Hurrah for your lovely gardening. Good luck with all veg. My radishes grew last month v well however, cucumbers are not producing yet and tomatoes are nowhere near ready! lol. I wish you well you seem to be way ahead of me.

zcrat41 wrote: »

Your garden sounds v productive. I seem to have a lot less tomatoes than last year!

You both say that but my tomatoes are really struggling to turn red I've got 4 that have finally ripened this week, but there's still a ton of green ones across the three plants.

Looks like those radish seeds are completely dead too, only one of the ten or eleven I planted has started to sprout, so I've binned the packet and will buy some more (and a proper storage box for the packets) next time I'm in a shop.

Looks like one of the cucumber plants might be growing a second fruit though! So that might be one success. I've tried watering the plants in the morning rather than early evening, so we'll see if that makes any difference.

VintageHistorian

Bloody Greater Anglia took over a week to pay out the rest of the claims I made for DH. So July's OP total ended up being £59.89 - so close! If I'd spotted that sooner I would have done a tiny TT.

But August is a new month and now all the claims have been paid out, so I've moved £27.60 out of Paypal and will chuck that at the mortgage with the rest of the standard OPs tomorrow.

Electrician came round and did our plugs yesterday, paid out £255 for the convenience. It's lovely to have it all done and dealt with and isn't something we will need to think about again (unless one of them stops working XD).

This morning I have baked some lemon cupcakes to use up the lemon I bought for tonight's dinner. I'm making chicken and parma ham pasta, the sauce for which requires "a squeeze of lemon" towards the end. That's only a small bit of lemon juice, so it's an excuse to do a bit of baking and have cake in our packed lunches this week

Have a lovely week everyone!

VintageHistorian

Sat down to pay food money back in to my account and used the opportunity for a TT of £2.99!

DH is working today. I've done the laundry and hung it outside to dry as there's a breeze and patchy cloud, but so far it hasn't rained today. And I've run the hoover around downstairs, had some cheese on toast for lunch, and now I'm going to play Animal Crossing on the Nintendo DS for an hour. I've also got to sort out a pile of letters (mostly bank statements) that have been sitting on the stairs for a while.

Have got some bits I need to list on eBay so should really do that this weekend.

3 weeks until my next week off! And our windows will be done that week too, assuming the weather is okay.

Dinner tonight, to give DH something to look forward to, is southern fried chicken with homemade potato wedges and corn on the cob.

Oh and my cherry tomatoes are FINALLY starting to ripen on all 3 plants!