Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

Thanks, Purplefairy. Interesting idea. It also occurred to me that there is a cafe in town which provides a weekly very low cost meal for local people in need, so another option could be offering them a free box of veg. I'll see how I get on with glut management over the next week.
F x

crazy_cat_lady

I wish I lived next door to you foxgloves... might have to have a visit to the family down south...

foxgloves

Lol, CCL, You'd probably want to give this place a wide berth......it has climbed up onto the government's list of 'areas of Covid concern' & we are really hoping we don't find ourselves facing a local lockdown.
F x

foxgloves

Hello Diary Readers,
I don't think I got round to putting a proper post on yesterday so this is sort of a weekend post. Pleased to report it's been a useful weekend chez Foxgloves & not too spendy. We went into town to get our weekly fruit & veg from the local market plus a new bulb for my sewing machine but we didn't buy our usual coffee & cake out this time. Instead I baked one when we got home & we had a wodge of that on the 'coffee bench' in our garden. That was a few quid saved, anyway. 
Saturday's garden pickings: about a kilo windfall apples, 1.2 kg courgettes & a little bunch of mint.
We spent the afternoon making a batch of brown sauce, so that used a nice lot of apples & we have 9 jars to add to our new pantry, as this is one of the jobs the builders will be doing when they arrive next week. Started another mitten in the evening. They are useful knitting up  the dk yarn in my stash & I'm sure a charity will be able to make use of them for autumn/winter fundraising.
Well this morning, Mr F went out early for a newspaper & came back with bacon so as to test out the newly made brown sauce. So I had a gentle start to the day as he appeared with a big cup of coffee & bacon roll & treated me to breakfast in bed! I took the opportunity to finish reading the final 2 chapters of my book, so can choose another one from my big library pile later.
Today's garden pickings: 2 cucumbers & a mug of blackberries, which I've added to my container in the freezer.
We have had a very productive afternoon. I had made a small start on the kitchen cupboards - basically, we need to empty the entire contents of the big understairs cupboard we use as a pantry as it is being rebuilt into a proper pantry imminently, so all our food needs storing in other cupboards, which were full. Well, they're not any more! We have absolutely blitzed them, decluttered heaps of stuff & taken the opportunity to change the purpose of some cupboards so as to make better use of storage capacity. We have managed to empty a whole cupboard ready for temporary food storage, so as Mr F is off work tomorrow, he is going to give me a hand as he is equipped with arms like a gibbon & can reach right into the old pantry, whereas I would have to get both the steps & the grabber to do that. I've also started emptying the small cloakroom which is going to be turned into small utility room, which provided another chance to declutter quite a bit of stuff.
I just want to eat some food & put my feet up now! I shall knit, watch TV & aim for a not-too-late night.
Hope everyone has managed a decent weekend.
F x

Onebrokelady

foxgloves said:

Thanks, Bailey'sBabe for posting a link.

Four_Seasons - Hi & welcome. All contributions welcome on here. I think there's so much online about bullet diaries (they were a big trend 2 or 3 years ago) that it is probably easiest for you to have a look at some. I think the concept has been developed by individiuals so as to end up with a diary which contains as much life organisation as possible. I used mine for a year but at the end of that year, I knew I had no intention of spending ages ruling up, dating & numbering pages again. So my current diary is a conventional one - A5 - but I do use it for notes, grocery budget tracking, meal planning, as well as all the usual stuff like appointments, birthdays, anniversaries, etc. It hasn't been a rigorously adhered to this year, of course, because of Lockdown. I always used to write my daily task list into my bullet journal but I've stopped doing that simply because I found I was doing really well on doing essential everyday stuff & keeping everything organised, but that this adherence to lists often seemed to get in the way of some of the more creative stuff I want to do or just waking up on the day & feeling it'd be a good day to do something different. I still include lists of particular things I might need to do by a deadline though - i.e Jobs before we go camping, things I need to do before Christmas, etc, etc,

OBL - I do sympathise as we both wilt in the heat too, particularly in this humid, muggy heat. We actually have a fan! It lives in the loft. It last had an outing one very hot summer when bizarrely I came back from a June camping trip with flu! Whenever we have a heatwave, I always suggest Mr F fetches the fan down from the loft. He absolutely hates boiling hot weather (even more than me!), so I always think he'd be so much more comfortable sitting near the fan. It is a floor standing one so can make a big difference to a room. He always says the same thing "I could do.....I'll see how I go" & the fan stays up in the loft while he moans his ears off about melting in the heat! You can't help some people! 
F x

😀😀we do the same thing when the fan goes back in the loft,it's only down now because we had that early hot spell at the beginning of lockdown, it's cooled down slightly here and we have had some rain,it's still not cool enough though at night 

Pixiehouse55

Hi Foxgloves and Gang, sorry I've not been around, we had respite for a week and at last the work in the lounge has been finished!!!!! YES. Furniture comes back on Thursday.  We went out for lunch yesterday with my ex SIL and her husband.  We've always got on well. It was so good to go out for a change. Ordered the new flooring for kitchen and hallway ( we saved up for it).  That's arriving 8th September, we will be ready for it by then.
Hope you are all OK and continuing to keep safe. Right, off to do the ironing.
Bye for now 

foxgloves

OBL - Yes, we've finally had a couple of downpours this afternoon. I was getting really envious of other people's rain!
Pixiehouse55 - Oooh, it sounds as though that new flooring is really imminent now. It'll be lovely to have it all finished at last.
F x

foxgloves

Evening m'dears,
Oh my giddy trousers, what a day! Nothing dramatic or even interesting, just in case you were getting excited, just very busy. A quick summary before I get to the budget.....
Went into town first thing to drop off a big charity shop bag from yesterday's kitchen declutterings plus a dress which is just bloody depressing so utterly unable am I to fit into it. Had a quick half-price coffee. Dealt with today's pickings - 800g beans. Emptied out the current not-a-proper-pantry & went through every item for dates, condition, etc, before putting them into their temporary cupboard while the new pantry is being constructed. Topped up a few jars, did a bit of a stock take & re-covered a few jars of preserves which looked a bit dusty. Then dealt with Grimsby fish box which arrived during cupboard shennanigans & Mr F performed NVQ Level 5 Freezer Tetris so we could fit it in. Rounded up laundry & set timer for overnight wash, made tomorrow's packed lunch & then took myself up to Foxgloves HQ to do my mid-month budget check-in. There was such a lot of updating & moving various funds about but I finally got myself in a position to check what our August budget looks like at this stage in the month.........& discovered that we appear to have £400 more than we should have..... or £447.20 if you want to be precise about it. Obviously this is an accounting error of some magnitude & it probably stems from the double accounting I'm currently doing to manage the lump sum ring-fenced for our home improvements. I want to find out how the error has occurred but couldn't face it tonight. I think I will wait until Thursday when I need to update my home improvements budget with a deposit to the builder & see if I can spot where I have made the error. At least it's an error in our favour, as it is horrible when it goes the other way, isn't it? 
Last day of my 30-day steps challenge tomorrow so I think my day will have to feature walking & doing things with tomatoes & courgettes, as I have heaps of both.
Bum on sofa time now. 
And we are just finishing the last of the gingerbread gin. Oh yes, nom. 
Be careful m'ducks, 
F x

savingmore

foxgloves said:

Evening m'dears,
Oh my giddy trousers, what a day! Nothing dramatic or even interesting, just in case you were getting excited, just very busy. A quick summary before I get to the budget.....
Went into town first thing to drop off a big charity shop bag from yesterday's kitchen declutterings plus a dress which is just bloody depressing so utterly unable am I to fit into it. Had a quick half-price coffee. Dealt with today's pickings - 800g beans. Emptied out the current not-a-proper-pantry & went through every item for dates, condition, etc, before putting them into their temporary cupboard while the new pantry is being constructed. Topped up a few jars, did a bit of a stock take & re-covered a few jars of preserves which looked a bit dusty. Then dealt with Grimsby fish box which arrived during cupboard shennanigans & Mr F performed NVQ Level 5 Freezer Tetris so we could fit it in. Rounded up laundry & set timer for overnight wash, made tomorrow's packed lunch & then took myself up to Foxgloves HQ to do my mid-month budget check-in. There was such a lot of updating & moving various funds about but I finally got myself in a position to check what our August budget looks like at this stage in the month.........& discovered that we appear to have £400 more than we should have..... or £447.20 if you want to be precise about it. Obviously this is an accounting error of some magnitude & it probably stems from the double accounting I'm currently doing to manage the lump sum ring-fenced for our home improvements. I want to find out how the error has occurred but couldn't face it tonight. I think I will wait until Thursday when I need to update my home improvements budget with a deposit to the builder & see if I can spot where I have made the error. At least it's an error in our favour, as it is horrible when it goes the other way, isn't it? 
Last day of my 30-day steps challenge tomorrow so I think my day will have to feature walking & doing things with tomatoes & courgettes, as I have heaps of both.
Bum on sofa time now. 
And we are just finishing the last of the gingerbread gin. Oh yes, nom. 
Be careful m'ducks, 
F x

i was in a little danger of nodding off as it’s late, then my eyes read gingerbread gin, and somewhere deep inside I woke up big time.....oh gosh, gingerbread gin, I have seriously missed any postings of this ....  do you make it?  Sounds divine.

foxgloves

Yes, Savingmore, I did make it. Very Christmassy indeed. We found the last little bit of it while we were clearing out our big cupboard. 
F x