Bricks Not Books

savingwannabe

It sounds crazy but great. You are in and doing so well. Really really well done. It is mad but all falling into place. Make sure you are having some rest though as it is sooooo stressful. Really proud of both of you and your family for being so cooperative and helpful. Congratulations and have a fab Sunday. :j:beer:

VintageHistorian

We have had a lovely relaxing weekend. Had a bit of disappointing news on Tuesday, I'd been interviewing for another job (sadly not particularly closer to home but more interesting), and got a phonecall on Tuesday morning to say I was unsuccessful. But the guy was very nice about it and the upside is that they may hire me to do some freelance work for them in the future, which would be good to do. Also my current place have been working on changing my job around a bit (including getting a payrise) so this has helped me negotiate some bits of that to incorporate the stuff I found interesting with this other role.

The other bonus was that my boss let me work from home on Friday. Very productive day, I'm looking forward to showing her the things I sorted out tomorrow, and assess where to go from here. They've offered to let me work from home once a week and Friday is always a horrid day for commuting so if I can get that as a WFH day then that would make things much easier :T

This weekend me and OH went in to Colchester to open a joint account. We were unsuccessful, sadly, as there were "no appointments available" (never had to make an appointment to open a bank account before) but we had a lovely walk around the city in the sunshine, and had lunch, and popped in to Wilko for some cleaning bits for OH to use (I do the cooking, he does the cleaning) before we went off to do food shopping. My best intentions for cooking have gone out the window a bit now that I've been doing the commute :rotfl: But still managed to do mostly homecooked stuff, I just need to get some more batch cooking done for the freezer to make things a bit quicker/simpler.

Phoned my Mum earlier to wish her a Happy Mother's Day. She only has two out of her four children at home now, luckily my brother managed to remember it without any prompting from me. She and my Dad had had a nice morning out and she was planning on spending the rest of the day watching movies. I've spent most of it reading in bed XD

Looking forward to sending off my OP on Wednesday, over £100 this month! :T

Dinner tonight was homemade toad in the hole with roast potatoes. Leftover toad for tomorrow, possibly with more spuds. Other meals planned this week include a chicken pasta dish!

Have a lovely week everyone!

savingwannabe

I am sorry about the interview. It is hopeful that they want to use you for freelance though. Glad that work are are letting you WFH. Hopefully you will get a pay rise and they will make your job more interesting. Peculiar that you had to make an appointment for a bank account. I wonder if they will use the opportunity to upsell? I am so used to doing everything on the computer now I forget.

Well done on cooking. I work 20mins from home and I hate cooking but it is where I waste money. Well done in settling in. Have a good week.

VintageHistorian

Oh I didn't think about upselling savingwannabe, you could be right. We've already got a mortgage with them but I'm sure that wouldn't stop them trying to get us to sign up to a credit card or a large overdraft (neither of which we need or want). I definitely think having a meal plan has been helping with the cooking, although some times it does go out the window ("I've had a crap journey home - instead of pasta it's going to be scrambled eggs on toast" XD)

Mainly popped on to announce that this month's OP has been paid in - £129.50! Break down of the sources is;

Standard OP - £30
Prolific - £21.55
Quidco - £50.11
Expenses - £25.03
Rounding up - £2.81

April's OP is already going to be over £60 as I had to specially order some envelopes for the office online - £30!! So that combined with the standard payment will be a good start. I've also got another payout pending on Quidco but I can't remember how much it is.

May not save much more than that though as me and Mr VH are getting married at the end of April. Then we're off on our honeymoon in Yorkshire! I must remember to take my online banking stuff with me so I can make the OP while we're away.

Working from home tomorrow, can't wait to have a little lie-in!

VintageHistorian

Is it really only 3pm??

OH is working today so he was up at 5:20 and out the door by 5:40. I managed to get back to sleep but the sunshine woke me up at 7:30. A half hour doze wasn't enough to get me to nod back off so I gave up and got up. But all the bath towels and teatowels in the washing machine, had some scrambled eggs on toast for breakfast, put the towels out to dry in the garden, did the food shopping, put it all away, did another load of laundry, hoovered, and changed the sheets on the bed. There's now a batch of chilli cooking, that can go in the freezer once it's done. I'm going to spend the rest of the afternoon with a book and another cup of tea before picking OH up from the train station after 7pm. Tomorrow he can clean the bathroom and kitchen and do his ironing. We had an agreement when we moved in that I would sort out all the cooking and he would do the cleaning, and while I'm happy to do bits of it when he's working (like the hoovering), we both know there's no point in me cleaning the bathroom since it won't be done to his standard :rotfl:

I've also realised that our wedding date is rushing closer so I should really send some emails this afternoon as well. Need to go back over my notes from meeting the venue team the other week, I know there's stuff I need to send them.

Dinner tonight is pizza, tomorrow will be roast pork belly. Overspent on grocery shopping by around £10 again, this time I got suckered in to the Mr W "Italian dinner for £10" offer, got 2 lasagnes, potato croquettes (no idea how they're Italian), garlic dough balls and a pack of salad, put it all in the freezer when I got home except for the salad. I'm not feeling too annoyed about it though as we need to stock up the freezer a bit more, by May or June we should be able to go for a week or two with only buying fresh items as everything else can be got out the freezer.

No OP news to report, other than that I had to buy a box of teabags for the office in the shopping, so that's more money on the expenses claim! :T

Have a nice weekend everyone!

savingwannabe

Well done on doing so much. I love marketing- Italian potato croquettes lol. Still a good price for a nice meal from Mr W.

Have a chilled out day. It is gorgeous here but when sun goes in it becomes chilly and I dive in.

VintageHistorian

Universe gave me a massive nudge this morning! Driving to work, long commute, saw 5 broken down cars on my journey! :shocked: "Hmmm" I thought, "I really should check the water on my car, weather's getting warmer after all".

Forgotten about it by the time I got to work but I finished at 4:30 and remembered just in time. Along with checking the water I grabbed some large tissues as I realised I should also check the oil. Had to scrabble through the manual to work out which was which, water was easy enough and was still very full, happy days.

Tested the oil and it was below the safe minimum :eek: Really quite far below. So I've driven home very carefully, texted my brother asking what oil to use, but his response is that I need to get an oil change as you shouldn't mix oils and we don't know which one got put in my car back in November when I last had it changed.

Luckily I'm off work tomorrow (dentist appointment in London) so I'll need to add an extra 10 minutes on to my walk to the station to stop by the garage and see if they can book it in for Wednesday, and then ask my manager if I can work from home on that day as I don't want to drive it with the oil so low.

So there you go folks, if you drive past 5 broken down cars in one morning it means you really need to check your car!

savingwannabe

Well done. Money, time and hassle saved!!!!

VH you are one smart cookie.:j Take a bow.:beer:

Good luck at dentist.

VintageHistorian

I don't feel like a smart cookie, I feel like a bit of a muppet XD Really should have checked the oil weeks ago, I do so many miles in that car now that I need to be on top of these things a lot better.

Googled "what happens if car runs out of oil" and the result is not good! Really think I had a lucky escape there. Terrified of switching on the car now. Happily the garage is only a few hundred yards away round the corner so I'll hopefully get there without ruining the engine.

Dentist was fine, just a hygienist visit. Mouth feeling a bit sore after having gunk scraped off the edges of my teeth. Only problem was my appointment was at 2:30 and I thought it was 2, and it was quite chilly in London compared to how warm Essex was when I set off, so I showed up at 1:45 thinking I could spend 15 minutes in the warm reception, only to be told I was 45 minutes early! So I went and sat in the park with my hood pulled up, I'd already been in Caffe Nero drinking tea. I also didn't want to eat anything as I didn't want the poor dentist cleaning around bits of food Breakfast seemed very far away by the time my appointment rolled around.

Anyway, clean bill of teeth health and I then got a cheese and bacon pretzel and a pot of potato wedges at the underground station, and then bought a muffin at Costa Coffee to bring home with me. Car is booked in for an oil change tomorrow so I'll take it round first thing in the morning, manager has very kindly agreed to me having an emergency day off (luckily we're quiet at work now so I hopefully won't be missed).

The muffin is now in the fridge will be my reward if I spend the morning getting a few things done around the house. Namely; wash the windows, wash down the dining chairs, hoover the dining table, photo some old DVDs I found so I can put them on Fleabay, send some emails about the wedding, completely a task on Textbroker. Once those things are all done I can have the rest of the afternoon off. Unless it's raining tomorrow, in which case I'll need to find some things to do indoors instead!

VintageHistorian

Had a bad night's sleep last night. Had a cup of tea quite late in the evening, which is always a bad idea but I needed it after a busy day. Fell asleep relatively quickly, but then woke up at one point during the night and took ages to nod off again. I kept feeling really anxious about my car, and worrying about what I would do if just turning the engine on in the morning used up the last of the oil and wrecked the whole engine?

It was a daft worry of course, I've still got some spare money tucked away that I'd be able to spend on a bargain-basement shed of a car to get me to and from work. But I kept worrying about it, which stopped me getting to sleep, and at one point I could feel myself edging towards a bit of a panic attack as my chest was feeling a bit tight. In the end I managed to fall asleep before it came to that, but it'll be interesting to see what OH says when he gets home as we're still getting used to sharing a room permanently and most evenings it's "which one of us snored/fidgeted/talked in their sleep the most last night?" :rotfl:

As you'd expect, there was absolutely no reason to be so worried. Car switched on fine, travelled the few hundred yards to the garage without a problem, and they phoned just before 3pm to say it was all sorted and I could come and collect it. They've also ordered a bottle of the same oil they used so I can top it up myself over the next few months, I always get the oil changed at MOT time anyway so we'll see if the bottle lasts to November!

I then managed to get everything on my list ticked off, except the wedding emails (instead I sorted out the china I've brought so I can take it round to my parent's place and leave it with my Mum). Chairs are now cleaned, table has been hoovered so it's now free of cobwebs, I cleaned the windows (not brilliantly but better than they were), and photographed the DVDs. The Textbroker article proved to be quite easy in the end, once I'd taken some time to think about it, so I got that done and submitted this morning. I don't know if I'll have any time to write more this month, but I figure it's given me a head start for earning some extra money in May.

In OP pot news, I haven't actually sorted out my wages in to the pots yet this month Really must do that this evening. I did, however, complete a new expenses claim form for work - £43.68! I'm having to do them at the start of the month now, rather than towards the end, as it's taking nearly 3 weeks for them to be processed at the moment. But that at least gives me an earlier idea of what I can put towards the OP, and then I can try to top it up a bit more if I'm near a bigger number. I've also cashed out from Quidco again, and I should have £5 coming in from Ciao soon, so if all that pays out I'll have at least £90 when added to the expenses and the standard £30 OP!

Dinner tonight is chilli from the freezer with baked potatoes :beer: Have a lovely evening everyone!