Light the fire...

woodfired

Hello there try harder, therocket and Downshifterella! Nice to meet you.
Thanks for stopping by, it sometimes feels as though i'm nattering away to myself (first sign of madness apparently) It's lovely to know that somebody is reading my ramblings! :rotfl:

The Esse is an Aga that runs on wood essentially. We are really lucky that DH is a joiner so has lots of dry wood to burn, it keeps us toasty and does occasionally produce baking, although sadly this requires some input from me. It would be nice if it could do this independently every so often Although, on second thoughts, this would not help with goal number 3 (lose weight!!)

Today I am making the most of my day off whilst children at school. We are all off together for half term next week so I am enjoying the peace and quiet. I have one of my twice-yearly visits to the hairdresser later, I LOVE having my hair done and always vow to go every couple of months but somehow 6 months go by before I get round to it again. Thankfully my hair is quite long and I wear it tied back most of the time so it doesn't look to messy and it also means that I am very cheap to run

In MSE news I have paid all the tax bills and accountant's invoice so all straight going forward. Bank accounts are looking a bit sickly now though, definitely need some TLC.
I only spent £45 on shopping this week and had £8.50 vouchers to knock off this plus I banked some change we found when renovating the shop which came to over £25 in old pound coins, grotty small change and even a couple of shillings (I kept these).

I usually spend about £80 per week on the food shop so I will transfer the difference (£43.50) into savings along with the £25 to start my little overpayment fund. I will save this up over the year and pay off as and when I have decent amount as TSB don't seem to have an easy way to make a one-off over-payment. As far as I can tell you have to ring to make a payment, please correct me I i'm wrong?!

Anyways, off to do some money shuffling, enjoy your day all! x

woodfired

Exciting times!!
I rang TSB today and found that I can make ad-hoc overpayments via online banking, I simply set up a new payee and use the mortgage number as the reference. This is sooo exciting! It was my birthday yesterday and alongside flowers, perfume, chocs, prosecco and vouchers I received £150 cash so I have added this to the £68.50 from earlier in the week then rounded up to £250 and paid it off the mortgage! I wonder what my mum would make of me using my birthday money to pay off the mortgage, I have told her I would buy some clothes with it :rotfl:

atypicalblonde

Hello woodfired

I!!!8217;ve enjoyed reading your diary so far, and a big belated welcome to the gang! How old are your kiddies? Ours are 5 and 4.

Online banking OPs rock - I LOVE checking the balance each morning to make sure the previous days OP has been applied, even if it!!!8217;s just a few pennies :rotfl:

Stick around, you!!!8217;re amongst friends here x

ETA - I also OP birthday money x

therocket_2

Haha! Good news about the ease of OP's! May the addiction commence...

woodfired

Oh dear, Rocket this is so true :rotfl: I checked the balance and only £107.60 would make the balance a lovely round £133 500.....oh no, what have I started?!

Thanks for the lovely welcome ATB, it's so nice to have a place where i'm understood, DH thinks i'm crackers most of the time!!! Our two are 8 and 4, growing up too fast.....

woodfired

So I caved and overpaid the £107.67 :shhh: it had been playing on my mind all weekend which is ridiculous :rotfl:.

I then had a play on the calculator, if we could overpay like this every month (£300 regular over payment plus another £350) then we could be mortgage free in 9 years
This would be amazing but is totally unrealistic! I need to be very careful that I don't become addicted and overpay ALL of our money

We have booked our summer holiday this weekend, we went direct to the hotel and then booked flights separately, this saved us over £1200 compared to family who had booked the same hotel through a website so really pleased. The only problem is that this all has to be paid in one go so I have put the flights on my 0% CC which I will pay off monthly at a rate of about £150 per month but the hotel (approx £1250 depending on ex rate) will be paid in one go early next month hence why I cannot start overpaying every penny the council tax free months will help with this though. Looking forward to getting it paid then I can crack on with EF savings (and OPs )

woodfired

I'm loving this dry weather (even if it is very cold!) i've been hanging out lots of washing which makes it feel like spring is on its way. Wednesday was exceptionally warm and dry so I spent a couple of hours tidying the garden and netted off some areas to keep my rabbit off the new shoots (she lives out wild in our garden/church yard next door, has done for about 3 years now and rarely strays much further) as she loves my plants at this time of year. She was quite literally not a happy bunny when I fenced her off my peonies!

There is still a lot to do in the garden and now I've made a start I'm itching to get back out there, the problem is that "the beast from the east" means that its all frozen so I can't get much done until it thaws a bit.

Forgot to add that on Wednesday we also had the utter luxury of totally line dried sheets on the bed, crisp and cool from being outside, they were gorgeous. How sad am I?!

This morning DH is hard at work so I'm catching up with housework and washing (and diaries ) I need to make DH some lunch and pop over with it then I have an @sda delivery this afternoon before picking up kiddies. I have managed to refrain from making any more OPs ( that took some willpower) as we have the holiday to pay for in a couple of weeks and the current accounts have not yet recovered from the shop refurb. Its a bit boring though, waiting for things like this to happen, I'm keeping myself entertained with the OP calculator in the meantime .

Anyway, this housework won't do itself (sadly). Happy Friday everyone.x

FloppyDisk

Enjoy the waiting, especially if it is waiting for a holiday!

woodfired

Feeling very guilty this morning. I was off work Monday/Tuesday due to a sickness bug then my normal day off yesterday. I woke up this morning to snow drifts a foot deep and the roads out of our village totally covered, I fully expected my school to be closed but they have had hardly any snow (18 miles away). So I have had to send cover work again with the promise that I will come in if I can get there, hopefully by break time. I hate being off work, it creates extra work for other people and I always feel so guilty.

In other news, it was payday and mortgage day yesterday, money has shuffled around this accounts automatically this morning. We finished the month slightly better off than expected (probably because it was a short one) but I am resisting the temptation to send some to the mortgage until I have paid the CC in full for our hotel in Portugal in the summer. I am expecting the bill any day (we paid in Euros so it's hard to work out how much it will cost exactly) and will know more that comes in.

I've just braved the weather to go and get some logs from the woodstore, I'm really thankful for reserves like this in this cold weather. We usually burn off-cuts that DH brings home on a daily basis but when we are burning so much the well stocked log store from a large hedge and a couple of conifers that we felled in the garden last year is a great back up. This has also meant that we haven't had any extra central heating on at all either. We have kept the wood burner lit in the front room and the Esse in the kitchen that has kept the hot water tank hot and run the underfloor heating downstairs. We have been lovely and warm all for free. :T I also have a beef stew slow cooking for later and fully stocked cupboards (aside from cat food ) either the cat is sharing ours or I will have to venture to the shop later.

Hopefully everybody else is warm and safe.x

woodfired

Ventured out to our shop for cat food, ended up helping out serving for an hour as it was so busy! The village is virtually snowed in so everybody is relying on us for supplies! Thankfully our main order made it through as did our local butchers with the sausage delivery, however, it's not looking too promising for the bread delivery which is the main thing people want in the snow!

Back home now in the warm, all fed including Puss Cat. No work for me at all today, too dangerous to drive. Contemplating making some bread to dunk in the stew later but do have a large baguette that needs eating plus potatoes and dumplings in the stew so probably ok for carbs :rotfl:. I think its the weather, it makes me want to hunker down and bake/cook and then eat it all......