Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

Joedenise - There are recipes for sauces in various books. The one I use is from the Good Housekeeping 'Preserves' book. I use that book a lot. I've never had a bad result from it. It's a nice quite fruity brown sauce made from apples.

foxgloves

Thanks CCL. Much appreciated x

foxgloves

A busy day today. More chutney making took care of another 1kg of our apples & I had a useful session at my desk this afternoon wrestling different budget pots into shape after our little trip away in the tent. All looking fine except for one annoying thing. When I carefully crafted September's budget & announced I was prepared to make it a tight one in order to get both CCs paid in full, I forgot one thing........I neglected to budget for cattery fees. Grrrrr! But the Beasticle had his 'mini-break' while we went on ours, & so I needed to perform a few tweaks this afternoon for that. What a plum! I double & triple checked that budget too, to make sure I hadn't missed anything. Never mind, it's sorted out now & I've flagged his next cattery visit up so I don't make the same mistake again.
Grocery shopping is at £46 a week for the next 2 weeks. Should be fine as we have lots of food in the freezer & still picking stuff from the garden - pears & sweetcorn will be next.
F x

joedenise

Thanks Foxgloves.

Cattery fees are the sort of thing that are easily overlooked as they aren't at a set interval. Much easier to remember when things are monthly, quarterly etc. But at least you managed to rearrange your budget without going into debt to pay it.

Denise

foxgloves

Morning Debtbusters,
I'd got jam-making on the agenda for this morning, but it is absolutely chucking it down with rain & I don't fancy squidging around in the mud gathering another bucketful of apples. Think I will tackle the ironing (one of my worst jobs) & see if the rain stops.
Am going to make apple & ginger jam. Apples are homegrown & I have sugar, lemons & ginger in stores. I also have some crystallised ginger which I bought for something else, so this will be a nice autumn jam which goes lovely on toast on chilly mornings. The crystallised ginger takes it up a notch, so it makes a nice gift too. But.no sign of rain stopping just yet, so am off to get the ironing board out.
Wishing everyone a calm, productive day.
F x

Onebrokelady

Sorry to hear your mum is still poorly Foxgloves,it's so stressful when family members are ill,I'm glad you still went on your camping trip,I bet it did you good
Well done on not spending in the seaside shops,I was looking round my living room at the fripperies I've bought while in such places when
I was reading your post,I did have a little chuckle to myself
Your coat sounds lush and what a bargain,I've seen a few bits in charity shops over the last few weeks but sadly not in my size
I love the smell of homemade chutney being cooked,my friends mum used to make it every year and we would sit in the kitchen breathing in the fumes:)

foxgloves

Thanks OBL - yes, it's very stressful, especially living over 70 miles away. I don't entirely want to lose hope, but I really can't see my Mum being well enough to leave hospital. Sad as it makes me feel, I think this may be the end of the road for her. Keeping busy is how I deal with stress, hence all the preserving that's going on here atm. 9 jars of apple & ginger jam today. The recipe said 'Makes 9 lbs' so I reduced everything by a third as I only wanted 6lbs......& it still made 9lbs! Or maybe my metric size jars weren't quite a lb size.....probably shrinkflation again. Anyway, have just written pretty labels (free, as had a Lakeland voucher) & stuck them on 9 jars. Chutney & jam making does make the house smell inviting, I agree, but mostly I enjoy seeing our pantry shelves filling up at this time of year.
Re seasidey shops - oh yes, I've bought some silly overpriced stuff in the past, but not any more. I bought a Christmas present for my B-in-L, some nice handcream to take in to Mum & a couple of postcards, no arty-farty hanging doo-dahs at all!
F x

Onebrokelady

:grouphug:

foxgloves wrote: »

Thanks OBL - yes, it's very stressful, especially living over 70 miles away. I don't entirely want to lose hope, but I really can't see my Mum being well enough to leave hospital. Sad as it makes me feel, I think this may be the end of the road for her. Keeping busy is how I deal with stress, hence all the preserving that's going on here atm. 9 jars of apple & ginger jam today. The recipe said 'Makes 9 lbs' so I reduced everything by a third as I only wanted 6lbs......& it still made 9lbs! Or maybe my metric size jars weren't quite a lb size.....probably shrinkflation again. Anyway, have just written pretty labels (free, as had a Lakeland voucher) & stuck them on 9 jars. Chutney & jam making does make the house smell inviting, I agree, but mostly I enjoy seeing our pantry shelves filling up at this time of year.
Re seasidey shops - oh yes, I've bought some silly overpriced stuff in the past, but not any more. I bought a Christmas present for my B-in-L, some nice handcream to take in to Mum & a couple of postcards, no arty-farty hanging doo-dahs at all!
F x

:grouphug: xx

foxgloves

Our car's 1st ever MOT this morning & it bloody well failed!!
Mr f texted me this cheery gem (not!) from the garage & I stomped around for a bit thinking 'So much for all that budgeting I did yesterday'. Then he managed to ring me properly to say he was as stunned as me that it had failed. It was on some or other cable on which the coating was damaged. The mechanic thought something may have flung up from the road & caused the damage. But the good news (thankfully there was some) is that the repair will be free because the car is still within warranty. MOT fee already covered by our service plan & so we will only need to pay £54 for 3-yearly brake fluid changing. I can easily cover that from our Car Piggy, so I calmed down. That Car Piggy has been so useful. Back in the Spendy Decades, I never put any money away for car maintenance, so every repair (& there were many) went on credit. Nowadays, even if I don't have sufficient in the Car Piggy for an entire repair bill, even being able to chuck £100 or £150 at it helps enormously. So while I'm still shocked that an October 2015 car got a 'Fail', the billing side of things doesn't look to be as cr*p as I feared. Thank goodness!
It's defo 'bum on sofa' time now. Looking forward to 'Bake-off', though I get a bit lively shouting at contestants that they're doing it wrong!

Kantankrus_Mare

Enjoying Bake off here as well (my smiley faces dont seem to be working)

So sorry re your Mum.........must be hard living so far away as well. Feels like being in Limbo.

Been to the allotment on way from home and picked a fair few elderberries. They will go with my brambles in the freezer to make a batch of bramble and elderberry wine. What else do you do with your elderberries? Needless to say I havent picked them off stalks yet. They will keep till tomorrow night.