Giving every £ a job

lucielle

Love the secret Santa haul!  

L

Sun_Addict

My first serious boyfriend, at age 12, bought me that particular Christmas single for our first (and only) Christmas together 🤣 Used to love them back in the day. 

PennysIntoPounds

Love Mr BC's hotel purloinment as part of the gift 😂
Both secret santas sound fab, what a good thing you both happened to be randomly chosen to get for the other 😁

Blackcats

Feeling nicely mellow this evening and I've not even been on the sauce.
This afternoon, I enjoyed listening to my 3rd Christmas themed book - the Christmas Jigsaw Murders - whilst drinking tea and continuing to wrap presents.  I'm now dealing with birthday gifts. Who would be so inconsiderate as to have a child on New Year's Day and then that child to have their own child on 2nd January?!

like most of us I'm thinking ahead to 2025 and using corporate gobbledegook I'm identifying ideas for "continuous improvement as part of an iterative growth and development cycle".  Anyhow I think that @foxgloves' mantra of being organised and planning ahead is definitely something that will help us avoid unnecessary frittering.  On that basis I made a big pot of bolognese for tonight and tomorrow's dinner.  It used up some red pepper, last of the mushrooms, grated wrinkly carrots and is very tasty.  We are meeting friends at the local pub tomorrow for a couple of hours for a drink and I know that without having dinner prepped we would wander over the road to the chippy or the kebab shop and spend £20 ish.  I don't intend to stop being spontaneous but actually I would rather have a wholesome home cooked meal tomorrow ahead of the Christmas Day/Boxing Day over eating fest.

lucielle

Sounds like you’ve had a great day. Enjoy the pub. 

L

Blackcats

thanks Lucielle.  The pub was very nice, not too busy but a good atmosphere.  The ready made spaghetti bol worked very well when we got home.

veggies prepped for tomorrow, milk infusing for bread pudding, MrBC weighing turkey breast and busy calculating cooking time.

..... and relax with some crochet and Die Hard and some chocolate and a cup of tea.

happy Christmas Eve!

Sun_Addict

I must be a very inconsiderate person to give birth to one child 5 days before Christmas and another one less than 2 weeks into the New Year giving her the same birthday as my mum 😆 DS said recently that he would’ve preferred to have been born around May/June time. Well sorry about that because you weren’t even planned mate so you’re lucky to be here at all 🤣

badmemory

My mother told me (a lot of years ago obviously) that if I planned on having a child it had better not be born in one particular month which was already too expensive.  Her lifelong best friend, two of her children & the two of us.  By some fluke I obliged giving her a 6 month break.

Blackcats

@Sun_Addict - funny that your DS would like a May/June birthday.  My DD is a May birthday but said she would prefer September because the birthstone is nicer 🙃.   @badmemory - you are very considerate!  As a family we only have birthday free months in June and August.  We have 2 in November, 5 in December and 3 in January 🙀

really enjoyed Christmas Day - the highlight was watching my dad tuck into his Christmas lunch.  He can be a bit curmudgeonly at times but yesterday he was really cheerful.  Highlight today was having a lovely walk with eldest grandson.  I invited him along without really expecting him to want to join us, but he was ready and waiting when we went to collect him.  A long walk and a chat with a stop at a very pretty spot for home made sandwiches. I even got a hug when I dropped him back home.

will work out a plan to avoid wasting food and minimising the need to go shopping and spend money.  I've lost track a bit of grocery spends but it appears there is still money left in that pot.  I'd like to skim a surplus over to savings at the start of January if possible.

PennysIntoPounds

Smiling at you and your dad both having a lovely Christmas

A little meal plan till January sounds a good idea, always more manageable when there's a surplus funds motivation! We really need to defrost our freezer but it's mostly bread in there and even I'm not mean enough to make us have sandwiches for dinner for the next week or so... ... ... 😁 ...