Returning to MFW, my elusive unicorn!

coldcazzie

Egg maths yesterday involved me using 4 dinky eggs in place of the recipe's "3 eggs weighing roughly 55g each" I made chocolate mousse again, half of which has already gone I also made twice baked potatoes after putting extra potatoes in the oven to bake while it was on the night before. They were yummy. I may have burned my tongue a tiny bit in my eagerness to eat them. I put 5 in the freezer for another day and there's 2 in the fridge for Himself who had a tooth out yesterday so wasn't up for eating them.

Big Small and I are off to a workshop on conservation today, paid for a couple of weeks ago. Going to take snacks/drinks with us as it's a 40 minute drive in each direction, the workshop is 11.30-12.30 and I don't want to buy food while we're there.

Tomorrow Big Small and Small Small have a writing group, also paid for a couple of weeks ago. I'll be looking after the organiser's younger small and I think we'll be going through the hand car wash near where the group is - exciting I usually take the car there about once every couple of months, but I don't think I've had it washed this year yet. I know it's not very MSE, but I refuse to wash it myself - aside from anything else I'm too short! - and if I'm paying for it to be done I'd rather it was done by real people than a machine.

4 eggs this morning, which brings our current number up to 18 eggs. I have scrambled eggs and toast on the menu for tonight, but considering the sizes 18 eggs may not be 'enough' for what we usually have, in which case I will have to make what we have and we'll make up the extra with beans and salad.

Tomorrow's dinner is planned to be brisket done in the slow cooker (from the freezer) with roasters and veg; then turkey and bacon casserole with rice on Saturday (again, everything is in the freezer); and soup on Sunday. Planning to make roast butternut squash and red onion, and the squash I have is huge and only cost me £1 because there wasn't a label on the squash itself or on the shelf so the cashier just put it through as a bag of sweet potatoes this means there will only need to be a bit of crusty bread bought, assuming I cba to make some myself. Himself and I had a slight miscommunication regarding how much milk we had in so there is still 12 unopened pints of milk in the fridge from when I shopped on Tuesday this means we have nothing else going on our CC before the tickover; yesterday was a NSD and today should be too.

the_cross_rabbit

hi I’ve just started to home school our youngest. How long have you been doing it? How much a month do you spend on educational activities?
CRx

the_cross_rabbit

hi I’ve just started to home school our youngest. How long have you been doing it? How much a month do you spend on educational activities?
CRx

coldcazzie

the_cross_rabbit said:

hi I’ve just started to home school our youngest. How long have you been doing it? How much a month do you spend on educational activities?
CRx

Hey CR! How exciting! (Is it exciting, or is it daunting? I've not made it all the way through your diary yet, think I'm at the end of 2018, so not sure what's happened since the planned school change to lead you to this point - but I did wonder if EHE would work for your youngest after you said she was struggling.)

I think on average we probably spend £80-100pcm on home ed stuff. That includes: annual subscriptions to educational websites/resources, weekly/fortnightly/monthly physical groups, one off workshops, workshop courses that last for a few weeks, webinars, etc, averaged out over the year. Some months we spend less, so this last month (12 Feb - 12 Mar) we spent £56 on writing courses/zoology webinars/this workshop we went to today/a ChessKid membership (CC), £18 on bouldering (debit card) and £23 on gymnastics and rollerblading (cash). Next month however, will be a high one as we're renewing the kids maths subscriptions and that's £123, plus they've a dance club for 3 days in the easter hols, plus all our regular stuff. There is 3 of them though, and our eldest is sitting an IGCSE this year which is expensive all by itself. (Not that her going to college in Sept is going to be cheap tbh, the bus fares are gonna cost just short of £50pcm!)

We've been home educating nearly 8 years - we took them out at the end of the summer term in 2012. My suggestions are: join the HEUK fb group as well as the fb group for your local authority/local area (there will be one - there is one set up for every LA). From there you will then be able to get advice and also make connections with other home edders, both nationally and locally, find out about groups, trips out, etc etc. There are also groups you can join in order to access group subscription discounts exclusively for home edders. Every little helps because things soon add up. It is also worth reading the guidelines for parents and local authorities in terms of what your legal requirements are, because it might surprise you just how much freedom you have! 

Feel free to ask me any questions, or pm me if you'd like to I'm very happy to answer questions or virtually hold your hand! I absolutely love home ed and I really hope you do too  

coldcazzie

In other news, this lego set is now at £66 plus post with 2d 16h to go and I'm feeling a bit  

coldcazzie

Made a mistake and failed to get the brisket out of the freezer yesterday. Have got it out this morning but it means switching the meals round. Thankfully the turkey and bacon casserole dump bag has defrosted quickly in some water, and also only takes a few hours to cook, unlike brisket.

Going to pick up Medium Small's new glasses after Creative Writing group today, and call in to Tesc0 for 4 cans of lager for Himself as well as an extra carton of milk to tide us over until Monday. I was going to buy fresh crusty bread for the soup on Sunday, but I think I'll get some part-baked rolls instead, so that we don't have to go back to the sm over the w/e. That and the car wash means today isn't a NSD, but hopefully the weekend days should be:

Car wash - £5 (from the car account, and every 5th wash is free)
Food/booze - around £6-7 I'd imagine
2 new Molke bras - £70 (from the clothing budget. I know this is a lot, but bras are ridiculously expensive. I'm fed up of mainstream bras that don't fit and have hurty underwires, so I'm investing in lovely handmade ones.)

This w/e is currently free, more or less, although I may have some work. The others are planning to play D&D on Sunday, so I imagine I'll have a few uninterrupted hours to pour over this budget some more. I have made some changes which will kick in at the end of the month, and then there will be further changes in April.

Now the bad news: the bedroom ceiling, having dried out, was suddenly wet again yesterday for a handful of days I was imagining, what if we could put off replacing the roof until next year, meaning we could get the new front door in asap and paid for on 0% finance over the next year before having to take out an extra slice of mortgage to pay for the roof/loft conversion. Silly me. Shoulda known it wouldn't be that straightforward  

coldcazzie

coldcazzie said:

Car wash - £5 (from the car account, and every 5th wash is free)
Food/booze - around £6-7 I'd imagine

Car wash: took a tenner out, got to the car wash and discovered my loyalty card was full so it was a free wash anyway! Doh! Seriously considering putting the tenner back!
Food/booze: £8.25 cuz I bought some tomatoes as well as the milk/beer/bread.

Turned out I needed to fill the car up too, so put £40.12 in. Glasses are collected. Medium Small managed to fall over while running a single lap round a small park, because of course he did he's got some pretty big gouges missing out of his palms, plus scrapes up one of his wrists.

coldcazzie

Gah. I made another mistake, this time with the timing of the credit card cut off. The bra purchase slipped past me onto last month's statement - I thought it wouldn't go on until the cut off had happened (which is what will happen with everything else bought yesterday), but it seems I was wrong. Now I don't have enough in the clothing budget to cover it and will have to dip into a different pot and put the money back at the end of April. I really hate doing that le sigh.

Also, apparently today is not a NSD after all as Himself went into town first thing and got some vape juice, a wall mount for his second monitor (his birthday present), and some mouthwash.

Had a phone call this am with a potential client. Seemed to go well. Hopefully will find out next week if she wants to work with me. Cross all your limbs for me!

Gonna go grumble into my brunch now.

Grogged

Bummer about the ceiling/roof... ☹
What's rule 7 from?, tried googling it...
...but as you know from Amex & Lid1, it's not my strong suite...

coldcazzie

Grogged said:

What's rule 7 from?, tried googling it...
...but as you know from Amex & Lid1, it's not my strong suite...

  

You won't have much luck because that is one of my personal rules. Have you watched NCIS? Gibbs has a set of rules which he lives his life by, and (having binge watched seasons 1-13 in the space of about 6 months) I really felt like I needed some too.

I only have ten so far, some are work related and some are personal, and of course some are both. Number 4 has 2 parts lol, because I sometimes have doubt. The next few are probably going to be financial ones!

Rule 7 was one of those where I read the sentence "if you're not changing it, you're choosing it" and had a *woooooaaaahh....*world tilt* moment.