Champagne Lifestyle on a Lemonade Budget.

phoebe1989seb

What a pain, Candygirl Hope it's just a glitch/his life got in the way and if not,, that you find someone else in time! Even though DH does property maintenance and garden landscaping, we've had to employ several specialist trades here and know how difficult it can be to find a good, reliable one

LL, not strange or contrary at all - we had friends who did the same

Mrs_slapshot, we paid ours off almost twelve years ago - different house/area and we've bought/sold three times since - and it's so wonderfully liberating!!!

mrs_slapshot

ska_lover wrote: »

This was me, a few weeks ago - enjoy. It is great time - and so rare to have two weeks of glorious alone time to do as you please

Totally enjoyed mine. Loving my new job also too now I am started

Enjoy your break and good luck in the new job when you start x

It really is fabulous to have time to yourself - I am very lucky! As it means I'm unpaid for about 4 weeks I do have to tighten my belt but well worth it! Glad you're happy in your job - that's so important.

mrs_slapshot

I am so determined to have no mortgage! Congratulations all of you who have paid theirs off! LL - I completely understand why you took out a small mortgage - I would have done exactly the same. And bloomin well done on the size 10 skirt!! :j

lessonlearned

Good morning everyone.....

Had a lovely evening at the family BBQ. Lots of fun flirting with my grandson. He has developed a thing for mobile phones so I bought him a baby one .....he loved it. He also has a baby "iPad" and I will now get him a baby TV remote. At least it will stop him grabbing the grown up tech. :rotfl:

Candy......what rotten bad luck with your builder. You really are having a run of bad stuff at the moment. Hang in there girl. Even bad times have to come to an end sooner or later. Nothing lasts forever. Neither good nor bad. Sometimes all we can do is hold on and ride it out. Not long now till your holiday. It will do you the power of good just to get away from it all for a while.

What with the anniversary, the expense with my car and then all the bad weather last week I was feeling a bit grim and I was very tempted to book a holiday. I just wanted to run away. :rotfl: thankfully the sun is back for now and I feel a lot brighter now that the anniversary is behind me.

Re the mortgage......I am hoping to start overpaying soon. I have rejigged my finances again, switched energy suppliers etc and I think I might be able to start throwing a bit of money at it. (Or I could save for a nice big holiday........:D).

The master plan is to live here for another 4 years and then maybe downsize to an apartment in the city centre. Hopefully make a bit of profit on the renovations. At any rate at that point I will be able to dispense with a mortgage. I will be around 72 ish then, so a good time to move. If I leave it too long I may not be able to face it. :rotfl: my parents made that mistake. I begged them to move into something easier to maintain and closer to good transport links and more amenities but they refused. They left it too late.

I still maintain that if they had moved earlier we might have been able to spare mum having to go into a nursing home. Having cared for my husband and watching my parents struggle I am now very conscious of the need to live in age appropriate housing that can meet our changing needs.

But hopefully......not yet.:rotfl:

Going to enjoy the sunshine today.

Wednesday2000

candygirl wrote: »

Omg Girls, as if I've not got enough to deal with at the mo, my builder's gone AWOL, as in not answering calls, n even his fb business page has been taken off:eek:
I'm gonna struggle to find someone else for Nov now:(

:mad::( How frustrating for you.

sugarbaby125

My Champagne moment yesterday was going dancing for the night.

I wore a new Kaleidoscope pink empire line dress with no sleeves, vertical ruffles on the front and back of the dress and with pleating and padding for the bust and a long tied in a bow ribbon to emphasise the empire line. I used to own this dress in size 16, but when I lost weight I bought another identical dress on eBay in size 14. I donated the size 16 to a local charity shop

I wore my new Van Dal black leather sandals with black suede fringing and gold trim on the block heels and gold buckles. My daughter was coveting these sandals, but I would not even let her try them on. :rotfl: It gives you an idea of how gorgeous they are when my daughter who is 30 years younger than me would love to own them.

I wore make up of black mascara, gold eye shadow, gold eye liner and clear lip gloss with clear nail polish on my fingernails and gold nail polish on my toe nails. I layered my perfume with the matching body powder and body lotion.

It was a very inexpensive night out for me as I only had to pay 75p bus fare each way and I bought 2 bottles of water in the pub for £2 each.

Even though I was having a great night out, I left the pub early at 12.15am when I would normally leave at 2am, but I was bearing in mind that I am off dancing again tonight.

sugarbaby125

My Champagne moment yesterday was going to a local wine bar to dance the night away again

I wore my sleeveless cerise pink Kaleidoscope empire line dress with a v neck. I wore my black Van Dal patent leather sling backs with gold cutouts, a black cardigan and my lightweight black hooded coat with gold lining. I was carrying my black patent and gold trim and clasp Osprey bag.

I wore black mascara, shimmering brown eye shadow, gold eyeliner and clear lip gloss. I layered my perfume with the matching body lotion.

I wore solid gold jewellery with my gold plated Tissot watch.

I had another really fun night out dancing even though I had to do a lot of my dancing sitting down.

lessonlearned

Wow. SUgarbaby. Lots of dancing fun. And nice glamorous outfits too. Go you.

Well I knocked a metal garden table over and it landed on my foot. Ouch. It doesn't half hurt. :rotfl: So that's my day cancelled because I'm struggling to weight bear and although I was scheduled to go out tonight driving will be a problem so I'll have to give it a miss.

Never mind - gives me an excuse to loll on the sofa with a book and some catch up TV or a nice film. :rotfl:

I might do a bit of online shopping if I can spot any bargains.

phoebe1989seb

Ooh, painful LL....hope you're back to full strength very soon! Agree that it's a good excuse for chilling on the sofa, though DH dropped a rather heavy antique sofa on my big toe last year - blooming hurt, although he once broke a big toe when a work colleague managed to drop a bowling ball on it :eek:

Champagne moments yesterday were finding a brilliant plant nursery with some surprisingly inexpensive large plants - lots needed here to fill the space as our previous owners appear to have planted zilch during their tenure. I guess some people are just not gardening types! Anyway, although they didn't have what we actually wanted (4 x Yew topiary cones) we stuffed the landy with several other treasures including a Forest Pansy tree - as their prices were too good to resist!

Back home when it started getting dark we sat out in our walled courtyard - the first part of the garden we tackled after moving in last year - with the fairy lights on and candles lit with a glass of wine..... bliss

Today DH was supposed to be starting his home, but after taking receipt of our oil delivery this morning he went on an errand of mercy to do some gardening for a young disabled customer. So to compensate, tonight we're having beef brisket in brioche buns with roast potatoes, more wine and more GOT :T

lessonlearned

Had a lovely evening......after a rest my foot felt a lot better so I set to and did some sorting. Now that the worst of the plaster dust has cleared I have moved my cd player and some CDs back into the kitchen diner.

I do like to have music whilst I'm pottering about. You can't beat a good bop round the kitchen. So whilst I couldn't go out tonight I did do a bit of dancing.......:rotfl:

I also dug out some language CDs .

Hoping to get stuck in and brush up my linguistic skills. :rotfl: