Bricks Not Books

savingwannabe

Hurrah for Friendship Club!!! Being paid to speak about something you love. Heaven:beer::beer:!!!!

I rather like the compliment about your voice. Elocution lessons clearly not required - go girl!!!!!!!!:rotfl:

Well done on Christmas present planning so far.

Blimey how big is the tree? :eek::eek: My mum, dad and kind neighbours chopped some of my trees down for free but they weren't huge thank goodness.

Good luck on sink repairs, car MOT and also with central heating which sounds like it is on the mend. Well done on bargain haircut!

Enjoy your birthday we share the same birth month. I hope you are a Sagittarius like me but you might be a Scorpio??? Either way we get on. Several of my friends are historical authors. It makes for interesting lunches as i always learn something.

I hope the rest of the month is as good. :j

VintageHistorian

I'm a Scorpio I'm afraid SW! Birthday is next week, so I'm now done with work for a week! :dance:

Rough start this morning. DH was working today so up before dawn. His train was cancelled due to over running engineering works. He doesn't drive, so it was up to me to get up a 5:15 this morning, pull a pair of jeans and a coat on over my PJs, and drive him to the station in town. Luckily I managed to get back to sleep again, but the house was cold and my hot water bottle was barely lukewarm.

Still, at least I'm not the one working on a Saturday!

Had a relaxing morning reading "Country Living" in bed with a cup of tea and scrambled eggs on toast. I then stripped the bed and put the pillowcases and huge duvet cover in the washing machine. But on going to make it up with fresh sheets discovered we don't have a clean fitted sheet, as the other one was sitting forgotten at the bottom of the washing basket So now both sheets are rolling around the washing machine. The duvet and pillowcases are outside on the clotheshorse, one fitted sheet will go in the airing cupboard and the other will go on the radiator, and we'll see which one dries before bed time!

I've also sat down and done a Christmas present order on the Hotel Chocolat website. Went through Quidco for the cashback and paid 95p for Click and Collect, so I'll pick them up from the shop during the week. They have also given me a £5 voucher for my birthday, as I'm a VIP (loyalty card) member, so I'll try to remember to buy something for myself when I'm in there.

Car has it's MOT on Monday. It's so old I always dread it. I don't mind advisories, I just don't want it to fail. I've also asked for the battery to be replaced as I think it's on the way out. My Dad commented that it was replaced just over 3 years ago and it should have lasted longer than that. Admittedly I mostly do short journeys nowadays, but it does definitely struggle to start after several days of frost, and the car alarm randomly set itself off at 4am during the last heatwave, so clearly it's not great. Better replace it now than have it die on me.

Going to have some soup for lunch. Dinner tonight is southern friend chicken, with homemade wedges, baked beans, and corn on the cob. One of DH's favourites so hopefully the thought of it will keep him going through the day at work.

VintageHistorian

Had a lovely birthday week. Car passed the MOT with two advisories, so it's booked to get the work done in early January and the money will come out of the standard car account (still need to set up the "saving for a new car" account!)

DH and I had a nice trip to a castle and lunch at Pizza Express. On my actual birthday all the Christmas shoeboxes were collected (120 of them!), and DH's parents came round to fix the bathroom sink. The metal bit of the drain had snapped, looks like the piece was extremely poor quality. DH and his Dad fixed it while me and MIL drank tea and had a natter, and then we had a late lunch in a local pub. And then Friday my parents drove over and we had another lunch in a different local pub, and another natter! Also got a pile of books and some digital kitchen scales as gifts from my parents. Scales are already proving to be very useful, and I've started on the book pile. I also remembered to use my Hotel Chocolate birthday £5 code, so only paid 95p towards a little pot of chocolate drops and a packet of their lemon cheesecake chocolates.

Was back at work this week, so slogged through my inbox and got it looking much tidier. I can always feel the difference after a week off, I approach things much more positively, even when I'm having to decline a request from someone. After a couple of weeks I'll be getting quite cross with it all again, but by then it'll be Christmas.

DH's recently Delay Repay claims finally paid out. £15.90 from the train company went with a £5.43 TT to push us just over the £60 OP mark for the month, so happy with that. Will probably push another TT towards it before the end of the month if I remember to log in to online banking.

Yesterday was the WI trip to Bury St Edmunds Christmas market. Had a very nice time but was very tired by the end. I managed to get two presents for my Mum, and one for DH, as well as a little treat of salted caramel fudge for both me and DH, and also bought DH a little homemade cherry pie from a local butchers shop in the town. Got home just before 6 and promptly put pizza in the oven for dinner. The place was so busy yesterday I had a very early lunch at 12:15 as I wasn't sure I'd find a seat anywhere come 1pm, but it meant my tummy was rumbling on the bus home.

Plans today are laundry, a shower, and baking chocolate chip cupcakes for packed lunches. Dinner tonight is gammon, egg, and homemade potato wedges.

Have a good week everyone!

VintageHistorian

Total OP for November was £63.60!

And December has already broken the £60 target thanks to Quidco paying out the cashback on my car insurance from August :T

Christmas shopping has been finished. DH's gifts are wrapped up as he's been home this week and while I trust him to not deliberately snoop it is also hard to hide things in this house. Rest of the gifts for my family are still waiting to be wrapped.

Haven't bought a tree yet, really need to get on with it! Doesn't help that decorations are all still in the loft and I'm a bit dependent on DH to get them down for me.

Yesterday we had our Christmas trip in to London. John Lewis first so I can check out laptops. Then lunch in Starbucks. Went to an exhibition in the British Museum (aiming to make this a Christmas tradition), and then had dinner in Cote. Sadly the service was really slow, we ended up in there for two and a half hours :eek: So got home well after 10pm last night. Will probably need an afternoon nap later on.

Laundry is in the washing machine. Lemon cupcakes have been baked. I'm baking a roll for tomorrow's work lunch. DH has another week off so no need to make lunch for him. At the end of this week the tree in our garden is getting a haircut, so that will be £400 gone (although at least I'm splitting it 50/50 with DH so my share will be £200).

Dinner tonight is chicken and parma ham pasta, one of my absolute favourites.

Have a good week everyone!

savingwannabe

Great news that you have managed an OP and Christmas shopping too. I haven't been to the British Museum in years, it sounds like you enjoyed it despite the long day.

I hope the tree enjoys his seasonal haircut and you have a good week. It is v stormy here. Your food sounds lovely.

VintageHistorian

We haven't had a storm yet SW but the rain has almost been non-stop! Woke up yesterday to blue skies and a weird big yellow ball in the sky, couldn't work out what it was XD

Christmas tree went up a few weeks ago and appears to be dropping fewer needles than last years one. I've also booked for it to be taken away in January. A local hospice does a Christmas tree collection in return for a donation, and then they work with the council to make sure the trees all get recycled properly. All we'll need to do is put the tree outside at the front of the house on the morning of the collection.

I slept in until 10:45 yesterday morning! Unheard of for me! But I've been feeling quite tired for the past two weeks so I must have needed it. And then I had plenty of energy for the rest of the day so I did the laundry, finished wrapping the Christmas presents, sorted out the pile of letters and magazines that had piled up on the stairs, and also packed up the political leaflets we received in the run up to the GE (don't get me started on the result) to post to the Bodleian as they have a collection of "printed ephemera" there that includes political leaflets printed during elections and referendums. I spotted them appealing for people to send stuff in on Twitter so we just collected everything in one pile and it can now go out on Monday. Oh and our tree has had it's haircut so I've paid the tree surgeon.

I finish work on Monday and then I'm not back in the office until 6 January. Going to be spending time with family and Mr VH over the festive period. And then at some point I can sit down and start planning and budgeting for 2020. First thing to do in the new year is open a regular saver so I can start putting money aside for the New Car Fund.

No real plans for today after being productive yesterday. Dinner tonight is nice and easy pizzas in the oven.

If I don't see you all before the 25th, then I hope you have Merry Christmas (or just a lovely holiday if you don't celebrate).

Moneyfordreams

Merry Christmas Vintage Historian

savingwannabe

I am pleased you have managed to have a rest and it sounds like a lovely tree. This rain is yucky.

I feel like you about the election:(:(. I am aware that work is taking place so people realise about the oligarchic control of the media. Hopefully the next election will be immune to biased reporting. :T

Hurrah to a long break from work and pizzas. To you both stay warm and have the merriest of Christmases.

VintageHistorian

Sadly SW I can guarantee that there will still be massively biased reporting next election. It's not a problem that will die swiftly or easily.

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas! Me and DH went to my parents for a few days and had a lovely time. A lot of delicious food was eaten, we brought back some leftovers which we've mostly eaten. I then popped back the day after we returned as my parents had given DH some cheeses as a gift, which were then forgotten in the fridge! So I drove back to get them for a nice suprise for DH as he was working Friday.

Yesterday we had a lovely lazy day on the sofa with some DVDs (old and new). We watched the Disney movie "Christopher Robin", which was lovely and made me cry a few times (I do love Winnie the Pooh), then we put on Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were Rabbit, and finished it off with the Simpsons movie. We've still got some superhero movie DVDs leftover from my birthday so I might suggest we watch those over the next few days. Today was much more productive, I did laundry and DH cleaned upstairs. I also wrote a long history blog post ready for Wednesday, and edited some photos of stock to stick up on the website.

One of my gifts my parents gave me as a lovely Circle Planner, my Mum bought one for herself earlier in the year and loves it so she got one each for me and my sisters. The paper quality is gorgeous and the layout is lovely. I spent sometime getting it set up with the dates for all my talks next year, plus DHs late shifts and working Saturdays, and some annual leave we've both booked. It has a "financial goals" section in the front so I've put three aims for the year: Reach a total of £3k in my emergency fund, save £1700 in the new car fund, and OP £1000.

I've also stuck in some January actions to do for a few sidehustles. Things like photographing my receipts on Shoppix, and adding new bits to the shop or sticking things up on eBay. Don't want to get too carried away and do February now as I might want to change some plans over the coming month, but hopefully I'll remember to plan ahead in January itself!

Chucked a TT of £8.40 at the mortgage this evening. So my December total is £72.18! However DH still owes me his half of the tree surgeon money so if he sends that tomorrow I might get another OP done between now and then. We shall see.

If I don't post again before 2020 - Happy New Year everyone!

savingwannabe

This circle planner sounds like it is very useful and quite personal which means it is meaningful. I am glad you are both resting a bit and watching fun films. It is great to have a break from the rat race as you work so hard.

I love the side hustles. I should think of some too but can't think of anything at the moment other than getting rid of handbags in my spare room. I am also going to try to keep a diary of my spending which I do every year but it doesn't last for long:rotfl::rotfl:. lol.

Ps Happy New Year Dear Friend.