julicorn's journey

JennyP

I am planning to do some art this weekend for first time in ages! Well, a collage.



Sounds like you already have a rather lovely life! I love staying at home with hubby and getting bits done! Pottering about. Can't beat it!

julicorn

Sounds like you already have a rather lovely life! I love staying at home with hubby and getting bits done! Pottering about. Can't beat it!

Definitely! :j

julicorn

The Pride parade yesterday was lovely as always. We had such a good time! We went and had burgers as well, which felt like a nice treat (and it's the beginning of the month, so there's still plenty of money in our eating out budget).

I've listed a few more things for sale as well, and it seems to be going well! I've finally bit the bullet and am selling one of my poles as well (pole dancing/fitness poles - I've got one cheaper one and one that's spinny, and always had a bit of a hope that I'd eventually have enough space to put them both up. But realistically, the cheaper one has just been gathering dust for the last 3 years!). If the girl picks it up this afternoon, then I'll have another £100 to pay towards the mortgage :j

I've also made a 'mortgage milestones' addition to the mother of all mortgage spreadsheets. It includes goals based on amount paid off (balance reduction only), % paid off, remaining balance and years ahead. If anyone has any other goal ideas, please let me know This month, we're on track to hit 3 goals, which is pretty awesome motivation! Those goals as "£10,000 paid off", "5% of starting balance paid off" and "getting 1 year ahead of ourselves", i.e. reaching a balance in August 2018 which without overpayments we would have only reached in August 2019. :j I've clearly added that milestones overview in the right month :rotfl:

Anyway, this afternoon I'm prepping lunch for the week (burrito samosas, yum!), and cooking dinner for tonight and tomorrow night. I already made some vegan cheese this morning, and went shopping. Oh yeah, shopping - I've blown my self-imposed spending goals for both shopping trips so far, but have also bought soooo much food that I feel like we can't always be buying this much? I don't know, the jury's still out on this one, and we'll see what the grocery spending looks like at the end of the month.

Have a lovely Sunday, everyone! :heart2:

katsoocam

I massively sympathise with you about the food shopping - I always think my hub spends loads, then whenever I go I spend more :rotfl: Do you batch cook? This makes a massive difference for me. I did loads on mat leave pre baby (plus our parents did a load for us) and even allowing for nappies and cotton wool (a LOT of nappies and cotton wool ) our grocery budget should be less than £80 this month, while the big batch cook shop was about £50, though did get lucky with some yellow sticker bits.
Re goals: we have yet to reach any mortgage milestones but I do little certificates for things - when we were saving for our wedding/honeymoon/house deposit for example. It helped motivate hub who is not so keen on the moneysaving as I am. '10% deposit saved' '15% saved' etc.

newgirly

Congratulations hitting those three goals already-fantastic :T

julicorn

Haha, yes, katsoocam, I'm starting to think my husband has a point :rotfl: I'm still determined to make it work though! We'll see whether it's actually possible without having to live off rice and beans in the last week.
We don't do much batch cooking, partially because we have a tiny freezer. We always cook ahead a bit though, prepare lunches for 2-3 days at once, cook enough dinner to last for another meal or two, that sort of thing. At the moment I'm trying to just buy less oven food in order to force us to cook every day, which seems to be working. (I'm also cooking more, normally Mr Julicorn does 90% of the cooking...)
Those certificates sound pretty awesome! Did you actually print out/draw ones,or how did that work?

Thank you newgirly :j

beanielou

Great milestones :j :j

Hope the pole was picked up.

katsoocam

julicorn wrote: »

Haha, yes, katsoocam, I'm starting to think my husband has a point :rotfl: I'm still determined to make it work though! We'll see whether it's actually possible without having to live off rice and beans in the last week.
We don't do much batch cooking, partially because we have a tiny freezer. We always cook ahead a bit though, prepare lunches for 2-3 days at once, cook enough dinner to last for another meal or two, that sort of thing. At the moment I'm trying to just buy less oven food in order to force us to cook every day, which seems to be working. (I'm also cooking more, normally Mr Julicorn does 90% of the cooking...)
Those certificates sound pretty awesome! Did you actually print out/draw ones,or how did that work?

Thank you newgirly :j

I actually just made them, but they are not very decorative- just text and a date and an image from google search that is appropriate for whatever the certificate is for!

julicorn

beanielou wrote: »

Great milestones :j :j
Hope the pole was picked up.

ThankIt was actually, so that means that I got to do another OP of £100! :j Also, some stuff I listed in a Facebook group sold as well, so I'm already quite close to my third £100 OP this month :eek: Clearly got a good run at the moment.

katsoocam wrote: »

I actually just made them, but they are not very decorative- just text and a date and an image from google search that is appropriate for whatever the certificate is for!

That sounds really nice. I'm a sucker for visual representations of progress, definitely. I might have to share a picture of my cross stitch with you all in the future, it's just still a little bare atm :rotfl:

katsoocam

julicorn wrote: »

That sounds really nice. I'm a sucker for visual representations of progress, definitely. I might have to share a picture of my cross stitch with you all in the future, it's just still a little bare atm :rotfl:

Would love to see it, I'm a crafty soul so I appreciate it two ways!
We also have two jars of marbles - jar A is all our house purchase price we have paid, the other is the remaining balance. One marble per £1000. When we pay £1000 off the balance a marble moves jars!