Put away your purse & become debt-averse

HairyHandofDartmoor

What a bargain for the wine glasses. I went to a Christmas tree festival in a church yesterday which I enjoyed. They must be a popular thing at the moment. Good you've got your new laptop and well done for waiting a day so you could save £20.

I'm glad you didn't complete the hat trick and throw yourself on top of the wine glasses or down the stairs in the car park :rotfl:.

Dottles1

That sounds like a lovely day Foxgloves, the sort that leaves you feeling thankful. The glasses sound fab, I used to have a set of 4 Indian tea glasses which were different colours with gold pattern on them. I loved them but one by one they got broken. I love coloured glass.

foxgloves

HHoD - Yes, I think Christmas Tree Festivals are getting quite popular. The big church in our town has had one for a few years now, but this is the first time we've been. We enjoyed it, as it sort of made us feel part of the community, so we will put it on our festive calendar for future years now.

Dottles - Yes, I've never owned any of those pretty tea glasses, but there is something so attractive about coloured glasses, isn't there? These ones are probably not that old, but I really like the fact that all seven of them are different colours, but have plain stems, so they do still look very much like a set. I also bought a tiny single green glass, which I think was probably a survivor from the donor's old set of sherry glasses. It was just pence, so I decided to buy it to use as a shot glass for my home made fruit liqueurs. - I've made gingerbread gin and blackberry & pear gin this year, all bottled, labelled & ready for festive action!
F x

Onebrokelady

Love the sound of your wine glasses,I need some new glass tumblers for juice or whiskey:) I did buy some new ones last year that I fell in love with but they quickly became very annoying because of their odd shape as I couldn't stack them up in the cupboard,I joked to DD2 that we would have to "accidentally " break them before I would buy anymore and since I said that we have broke all but one of them, be careful what you wish for eh :rotfl:

foxgloves

Hello Sunday Savers,
I'm thinking that makes you all sound a bit like bus tickets. I will start again with....
Dear Diary Readers,
A thoroughly frugal day today, I'm pleased to say. We'd talked about going to a park about 16 miles away for a winter walk, but when I thought about the other stuff I'd earmarked for today, we couldn't really make the timings work, so we've stayed home & I've had a useful day in the kitchen with Christmas CDs playing. I've chopped all the Christmas cake fruit & it's now soaking in white rum ready for cake making tomorrow. I've greased & lined the tin ready, too. I've also made my annual festive red cabbage half of it in the slow cooker & the other half in the oven and there's some for tonight & plenty to freeze. I've also made a rice pudding with some dried fruit & winter spices in it, baked a wholemeal loaf, loaded the washer on timer for an Economy 7 tariff wash in the early hours tomorrow and made Monday's packed lunch. Apart from synchronising my diary with Mr F's so that we feel organised for the week ahead, that's my jobs all done for today. I can read & knit now, as it's not my cooking night.
I had a bit of extra sleep today. I've been a shocking insomniac most of my adult life, but am thankful that I usually wake nowadays between 5 & 5.30 a.m instead of the horribly knackering 3.15 a.m every day, which was invariably my sleep pattern while I was working. Today I didn't wake until almost 7 a.m, which is very unusual. I did have some very vivid dreams though, in that intervening couple of hours. One involved me coming into the house & finding water spouting through the ceiling of a room we don't actually have. I found the business card of our local plumber & was just phoning him to see if he could get over to us asap, when the dream completely & utterly changed (weirdo alert!) & instead of dealing rationally with a plumbing emergency, I was now a professional Pig Warden & my job was sorting out naughty pigs. My special warden's pager had just beeped to inform me that a large pig had escaped, was running riot & heading for town. I was just about to start getting my naughty pig paraphernalia together, when I woke up........& naturally spent the next 5 minutes wondering if I'm losing the plot! Mr F was already awake. I said 'You'd never guess what new job I had in this daft dream I've just woken from?' I told him about it & he said "That's even worse than the one where you opened the front door & found a jack russell detective hunting through all your flowerpots, looking for clues". Then he said "I wouldn't want to be in your head". Lol, I'm not sure I do, sometimes!
Am hoping to have a nice productive week ahead, with more festive prep, sensible meal plans & not wasting money. See you there m'ducks!
F x

HairyHandofDartmoor

I'm loving your dream scenarios Foxgloves, I wonder what a psychiatrist would make of them :rotfl:. I'm glad you don't wake up at 3.15am any more, although 5-5.30am still sounds early to me :eek:.

You've had a very productive day in the kitchen and very frugal too as you say.

foxgloves

HHoD - Yes, 5.00 to 5.50am is early, but back when I was working full time with a 20+ mile commute each way, I'd have absolutely given my eye teeth to sleep all the way through to 5am. If I manage to sleep for a bit longer, that's great, but quite unusual. I'll often sit up & read or if it's 5.30, I'll sometimes get up & start my day. Mr F is also an early riser. I quite like peeping through the curtains & seeing barely any other households are up. I find it quite a peaceful time of day.
F x

foxgloves

Greetings everyone as we all go into a new week!
My Mondays tend to be all about setting us up for a decent week ahead, so I think about what I want to have achieved or at least moved on, by the weekend & that then shapes my activities. I used to write a very detailed 'To do' list every day, but now I tend to note down as bullet points in my diary only those things which if I don't do today, they will impact tomorrow......things like remembering to take something out of the freezer, or post something, etc.
Ages ago, someone mentioned a podcast in their diary about the 'Slow Home' approach - it may have been OBL, & I listened to a few episodes. One of them included a discussion about task lists. I noted that this person only put three things on her daily 'To do' list. I've sometimes use the '3 things only' list method, when the potential length of a job list has been so off-putting & overwhelming, that the '3 things' method where you can only add another job once you've crossed one off, can really help with motivation. That's different. What these two women were discussing on the podcast was just having 3 things on their daily list that they wanted to achieve or progress. And they were not the sort of things which used to make up the vast bulk of my own lists. I'm a very organised person & so pretty much every task I would be doing that day would be on my 'To do' list. My diary is A5 size with narrow lines, so one of my daily lists could fill a whole page & sometimes I'd be squeezing extra tasks in at the sides. I love a list. Or rather, I like crossing stuff off a list. So I'd be working through all my jobs & crossing them off & by the end of the list, it would look as though I'd achieved a huge amount. And I suppose I had..........of fairly small domestic, financial, horticultural, crafty stuff. The realisation that this podcast sparked in me was that my 'To do' lists can easily fill a whole day. It's all stuff which needs doing, but was pretty much task-led. This approach has been great for keeping our household running smoothly, budgeting & all manner of important frugal & 'green' behaviour, but not so good at facilitating some of the bigger, less task-driven projects I would dearly like to progress, such as finishing my novel, overhauling parts of the house & all sorts of other things. So in more recent months, I've been trying to transition to spending no longer than an agreed time on my regular daily tasks (which are important to me) & then using a block of time (usually in the afternoon) to progress something bigger.
I have to say that I am feeling happier with it. I'm playing the piano again, I've taken up a language again which I haven't studied since I was 16, I'm researching a couple of history projects & have started planning some home improvements. In the new year, I am strongly considering volunteering locally, so will be looking into that too.
I will also aim to listen to a little more of the podcast. I like audio media & always have an audiobook on the go when I am busy in the kitchen as it means I get through twice as many books!
Well, I've noticed the sun is already moving into place between the houses opposite, where it will soon set - we are almost at shortest day again - so I will pop down the garden to fetch the laundry in. I was just about to put it on the heated airer first thing when I noticed how windy it was outside, so I thought I'd peg out & save a few pence!
Wrap up in this cold wind, Frugalistas!
F x

Kantankrus_Mare

I must admit I work better with a list and should do one each day as it would annoy me if everything wasnt scribbled out by the end of the day.

I dont envy you your sleep pattern. Im usually a good sleeper but last night, I barely slept. Think it was a combination of a cup of tea after 4pm and pondering on work problems. This rears its head quite often and I wonder if its time for me to move on.... but apart from this , I am generally happy at work and dont want to be starting again. More difficult to find work as you get older as well. Will have to see how it pans out.

Whats the podcast called? I wouldn't mind a listen.

And now I am going to wrap another present and iron my bedding.

foxgloves

That was one of the things which most kept me awake, Kantankrus. I worked with an impossibly difficult person who Senior Management just couldn't or wouldn't deal with. It stressed several people out big time & lying awake at night is the time when such scenarios, stress, upset & anger percolate into my thoughts & take hold so that I then can't 'switch my head off'. One of the reasons I eventually took VR was my utter lack of respect for a management team for letting people suffer rather then having the guts to sort it out. As we'd got rid of most of our debt by then, we knew we could manage on one salary if we were careful. If not, I'd have had the pressure of finding alternative employment in my mid-forties & it does get more difficult, esp in a sector which has been decimated by the ideological 'austerity' agenda.
Hope you weren't pondering your work issues too much last night.
F x