Cherry takes the reins

Honeysucklelou2

It's good that the stove has been fitted so quickly after deciding on the model. Enjoy the warmth!

Onebrokelady

Cherryfudge wrote: »

DS is convinced it will take an impossible amount of time to get on bank (that's just how he thinks). It's his final year so I wish he would get his name down even if he only gets a very small amount of work, and hopefully that will give him more experience as well as income.
On the other hand I do see his point that he needs to be able to study as much as possible.
I won't get on my high horse about funding to train nurses, suffice it to say the word 'short-sighted' comes into it somewhere.

He is possibly right depending on the trust,DD was lucky to get on ours straightaway becasue she already worked there full time,she joined just before she left to go to uni,I know people who have applied who have waited a while,I also think it depends on what stage of the financial year they are in, where I am they tend to take people on at the beginning of the financial year when the budget is more robust then it fails off as the year goes by,once you are on ours though the work availability is really good as we are always short staffed
DDs placement is Monday to Friday 8.30 until 4.30 plus she has study to do as well,in her first year she also had to do a mandatory volunteer job too :eek: she actually loved her volunteering and was intending to carry on with it this year but she just hasn't got the time

Mind you he has nothing to lose by putting his name down

HairyHandofDartmoor

Cherryfudge wrote: »

Ah... that will be while, then

I meant when the mess the builders made is gone :rotfl:

Cherryfudge

I haven't posted for a few days: lots of work and a terrible cold. I'm not over the cold yet but I have a couple of days off and it's high time I caught up. Hopefully I can remember everything.

The stove is amazing. I came in the other night to find the house heated far hotter than we ever have it with central heating! Then of course the weather got milder again so we didn't light it at all yesterday. We did have a bit of a disaster the day before, though - a kitchen cupboard fell down! Some of you may remember this has happened to us before - we haven't entirely solved what happened this time but lots of photos have been sent to the company that supplied the cupboard. We even weightd the contents in case they were a factor but it was mostly teas and coffees - not even tins. We salvaged the door as that was hte most expensive part but the rest has gone to the tip. Thankfully no one was hurt - DH literally caught it as it descended! It did break the kettle which may have been revenge - DH has a theory that steam from the kettle had weakened the cupboard, though I can't see that that would account for it breaking at the top (a big splinter pulled out but the brackets on the wall are still up).

I also think the pale grey and teal look for the lounge will have to be reconsidered. The flagstones, brickwork and oak beam that we chose to go with the stove are lovely but not in keeping with the colours we had in mind before we embarked on this makeover. I don't know what modern colour schemes there are that would work with it, so all suggestions welcome.

Spending:

3/11/18
NSD from my wages
£2325 from the other account - balance for stove and some building work that had to be done to make the chimney stack useable.
4/11/18
Housekeeping £3.78
5/11/18
Medication £1.50
Housekeeping £6.53
6/11/18
Toiletries £10.00
Housekeeping £3.25

There was some money saving in there: I shopped around when I noticed there were different offers in different places for my favourite hair products. I think I got the best offer for me, which was £10 for 3 instead of £2.75 each with a more limited range - there are three products I use in that range and the cheapest shop only does two of them. Anyway I have the largest size bottles, so they should last me a while. And if you're wondering what happened to the bar of shampoo, I still have it but I don't want to be drying the vinegar rinses indoors! So it will have to wait for warmer weather.

There were also a few yellow-stickered items, particularly eggs. Note to readers, unless you are either feeling very poorly or very relaxed, don't let the family try to drag you into an explanation of buying two dozen eggs when your throat and ears are doing strange and painful things and movement sets them off. Furthermore, the sight of a bowl of tinned apricots alongside said boxes of eggs will lead to jokes about eating raw eggs and great hilarity at your expense, when all you feel able to do is prop your head on your hands and smile weakly though you would normally give as good as you get. Even today, all the explanation I can come up with is 'They were on offer'. No witticisms, no pithy comments, no deadpan sarcasm. I am not my usual self.

That said, I made it to the doctor's where a super nurse gave me an extension to my sick note for another month. Just as well, job-wise, as the other day I entirely failed to depress the pump top of some fabric conditioner with the affected hand - so I'm certainly not ready to handle people (not that I depress anyone's head). Just when I thought I was doing well: being able to open doors and similar advanced useful skills, and not even having to think about things like folding bedding, which were once a bit much. I confess here and now to not having done my physio exercises properly recently, but there has been so much going on.

I should be phoning about some work on Mum's old house but I hate making phone calls and have the perfect excuse as I can't make myself heard! So there are some advantages to the common cold.

HairyHandofDartmoor

Glad you love the stove Cherry and I hope your cold gets better soon.

Colour scheme wise it's a very personal thing; grey should go with everything I would have thought, but not sure about teal. We always paint our walls a neutral shade and add colour with accessories. Do you have carpet or a wooden floor? I'd love a wooden floor as wood goes with everything.

Cherryfudge

We do have a wooden floor, Hairy, but there would be problems with showing it as the recent work revealed a stone-edged tiled hearth - the tiles are a lovely shade of red but quite damaged so we've gone with the original plan to have a stone hearth, and the red tiles stick out a bit as we've gained floor space by using the depth of the chimney rather than having a wider hearth.

I suppose we could laminate over it but I think carpet will win as the house tends to drafts and poorly-finished skirting!

I had seen grey, bright white and dark teal on Pinterest and it looked great, but somehow I can't imagine those with the soft colours of the wood and stone. I had an idea this afternoon - pale sage green. I might get a sample pot and try it, but DH is now set on terracotta, which to me is early 90s. We had a terracotta room when the kids were small.

It also needs to go with the two little chairs I inherited, which are a blond wood... so now I'm thinking a feature wall and chair cushions in dark sage green and the rest of the walls in pale sage green. At the moment it's a complete hotch potch of autumnal colours, bare walls with differently-coloured plaster (!) and a blue carpet, so no wonder it's hard to picture a new look!

HairyHandofDartmoor

I agree that terracotta seems a bit early 90s. Our living room had terracotta walls in the early 90s and our dining room had a dark yellow stippled effect; it was very fashionable at the time . When we moved into this house in the early 2000s we painted everything off white and have never changed it since. I dream of wooden floors as I love the minimal scandinavian look.

Sage green sounds like it would go with everything .

Cherryfudge

And an update on today: My physio appointment went okay despite my lack of practice, but she made it clear I need to put in time regularly. It was so nice out that I went for a walk afterwards (I seem to be a lot better this afternoon, though still silent, which some people may think is also an improvement). After my walk I had a run-through of my exercises before I forget them. I'm sure I'll ache in a couple of days but I can feel the benefit in better movement now it's been worked on.

I popped to the shops for milk and came out with socks... it's a tradition once the Christmas footwear goes on display, so it's a pair each for the resident next generation. Oh, and cheap biscuits which was almost certainly me falling for marketing but Mr T has a promotion for cardboard-boxed biscuits at 29.9p / 100g which is less than half the general price.

I've also paid the milk for 2 months as he's sorted out the discrepancy from our last bill.

A is filling a hole in the ceiling where the old pipework went, then the stove is going on again. Got to keep in practice!

Spending:
Housekeeping 3.84 + 3.25 + 18.64 (milk) = 25.73 (so that's definitely blown the food budget this week)
Toiletries £10.00
Gifts £5.00
MS:
Promotion on hair products
Promotion on Christmas socks
Cheap biscuits
Mild day so the heating stayed off and the fire has just now gone on, meaning not a lot of wood to be used tonight.
10th coin savings 10p
Checked my account and found the £2 bonus for having however many DDs and paying money in, has gone through.
Checked the mortgage and now that there's only one subaccount left, the interest per month is twenty-something pounds which feels like a new horizon!
Confessions:
Socks and biscuits were an extravagance and so is the fire, though we'll be glad of it by bed time.
Decluttering:
Nothing yet and my list of exercises from previous physion has gone missingso tomorrow, if I continue to feel better, I will have to make some progress. Trawling Pinterest doesn't count.

Honeysucklelou2

Can't beat a fire when it drops colder!

Well done for meeting and beating your mortgage target ( in your signature).

Cherryfudge

Today looked like non-stop rain from the forecast but actually it's mild, windy and mostly dry so I've had washing on the line. Now it's gone very grey out of doors so perhaps I should have done some shopping while it was fine!
I'm trying to get caught up on various tasks today - batteries needed for a couple of gadgets, cooking from scratch to save money, making a dent on the clutter - you know the sort of thing. It's all so time-consuming though!
So far, apart from the washing, I've made a double batch of soup which is now cooling, and been online trying to trouble-shoot my poor Kindle. The chap on the assistance seems to think a factory re-set might solve it. I have my doubts but my next task is going to be to list all my apps and books so I can restore them after the reset, then try to back it all up to my computer. I've already spent quite some time on it without actually achieving anything. There is also a growing list on my whiteboard of things I want to get done today. Really wish my Bullet Journal would resurface... ditto the finances notebook I made a few months ago. I think DH has tidied both up without knowing he did it and with just such a lot in the house, they haven't come to the surface again.
I need to get to the shops unless I unexpectedly find a tin of pineapple for the curry (to me that makes it perfect ) but the rain is heavy right now so I may end up asking DH to collect some on his way home. That gives me no excuse to avoid the jobs I don't want to get down to!