The Hen House Chronicles

Grogged

For some reason I have a game of find the lady going on with the three pots... Which one has the lemon tree? 😂
I don't know what you do, but could you keep it ticking over until school age (assumes you need to keep your hand in)?
ATB

MerryHen

teapot2 said:

Morning Merry Hen, that's an amazing amount of credit with your energy company.  I'd definitely be claiming it back and using the money for an OP or saving.  I'd also definitely use a comparison site to check the tariff and switch.  Its worth sending regular meter readings if you can and some companies will send a regular email to remind you to do that.
Your orchard sounds good but lol at your plastic plant

I've managed to get very good at ignoring their emails pleading for readings  daft really because it only takes a minute, I will get better!

Grogged said:

For some reason I have a game of find the lady going on with the three pots... Which one has the lemon tree? 😂
I don't know what you do, but could you keep it ticking over until school age (assumes you need to keep your hand in)?
ATB

😂 And now it's looking like the Lily needs a bigger pot too, will it ever end?!

I could keep work ticking over until school age but I've reached a point where I'm not sure I really I want to, I would quite like to do something completely different. I'll keep at it for now to help towards building the savings up to where we need them for the house stuff.

MerryHen

Backyard transformation step 1- weed control and leveling- is complete!

I laid weed membrane this morning before DH started work (so he could have DD), the gravel was delivered just before lunchtime and I used DD's naptime (1hr 20 mins!) this afternoon to put it down. I worked out we'd need about half a tonne of gravel to cover the area to the recommended 5cm depth but used more levelling off the slope, the remainder I wheel around to the front of the house to top up the front path. We don't have any vehicular access to the house, it wasn't necessary in the 1800s, and according to the exercise app on my phone I clocked up 4km wheeling gravel from the main road where it was delivered to, to the backyard and front path. All the shovelling, wheel barrowing and spreading gravel was quite a good work out. I'm quite happy with how it's coming along, just three weeks ago it was a jungle and now it's looking quite smart.

Next step: measure up for decking.

In money and saving news I requested a credit refund from the utility company and within a day had £985.92 in our bank account (credit minus one month's payment) I wasn't expecting it to be that quick! £500 has gone to the mortgage and the rest to house savings. Next up is to check out tariffs and see if we could save money by switching.

Car insurance renewal documents also came through this week, £374.90 to renew with the same company. One quick online comparison later and I'd got another policy for £263.20. The most difficult part of the whole thing was trying to get through the old insurance company's automated phone system, and slowly losing the will to live, to tell them I wouldn't be renewing with them. Worth it to save £111.70 though

Sistergold

Wow Merryhen that’s a nice amount of money there! Yes better get it back! 

Oh watering a plastic plant! 😅

MerryHen

I've just moved our savings into an NS&I account. It comes with a 1.16% interest rate so a little better than the 0.05% our NW savings account had plummeted to. I like that I can access it online and it has no penalties for withdrawing money which will be good for when we start on the house work. We had £500 sitting in a holiday savings account earning no interest so that's been added to the house and car savings plus a few pence from the current account to round it up to a nice £22,300 total which should earn a bit more now.

Holiday wise we're hoping to get to rent a cottage by the coast for DS's birthday in October so we can visit him at his burial site, but haven't booked anything yet what with the uncertainty around travel but I'll start looking into holiday rentals soon, it's been really horrible not being able to visit him, necessary I know, but still rubbish. Thankfully we've already had our main holiday this year so aren't missing out on a summer break. We spent four weeks in New Zealand in Feb/March just in the nick of time before there was too much covid-disruption. We arrived in NZ in February before they had any confirmed cases, therefore avoiding the retrospective quarantine the NZ govt put in place, watched from afar as the seriousness of covid unfolded, were in NZ when their lockdown started and arrived back to an eerily quiet UK at the end of March, it was all very odd.

Right, time to go take over from DH. He has DD for a bit in the morning while I work, then I take over during the day so he can work, then he takes over again at supper time so I can decompress, before I do bedtime and then catch up with my hours in the evening. We've been awake since 5.30 because that's now DD's wake up time, I don't actually mind too much (so long as I've slept okay) because it's good getting work done earlier in the day and not leaving it all until evening. The rain in pretty torrential here this morning, I'm hoping we get a bit of a break in the weather later or else I foresee a soggy walk in near future, DD has already insisted on taking DH out to play in the rain this morning

Have a good Friday everyone!

wh_em

Wow your NZ trip was very lucky timing indeed, it must have felt apocalyptic arriving home to a very quiet UK!

MerryHen

wh_em said:

Wow your NZ trip was very lucky timing indeed, it must have felt apocalyptic arriving home to a very quiet UK!

Standing in an almost empty King's Cross station during rush hour surrounded by covid-19 alerts did feel quite post-apocalyptic. 

MerryHen

This afternoon's fun with the toddler was foraging for elderflowers around the woods. I was worried the flowers might be a bit past it now we're in mid-June but we got a good haul and they're now steeping in sugar water ready to be turned into cordial tomorrow 😃

Backyard plans are progressing. I've drawn a scale plan for the decking, worked out exactly what's needed, ordered everything from the local timber yard and also collected some broken paving slabs from someone nearby to raise the subframe where necessary. There's a two week wait on deliveries from the timber yard (a lot of us qre building decking at the moment) so building will start end of June/start of July.

My vision for the back yard is to turn it into a green haven (but in a contained, manageable way and not the jungle that was previously there) with potted plants, climbing plants and maybe trailing ones. I quite like the idea of a vertical garden to grow herbs and possibly even veg but want to avoid drilling into the house. I'm sure there's a way, some sort of free standing structure that doesn't take up much space. It is a very small space, I've been looking for inspiration from balcony gardens because searches for "small garden" and even "tiny garden" return photos of gardens that are still far bigger than what we have . Time to get my thinking hat on.

Not much to report money wise. Work availability continues to be patchy, I'm glad we don't rely on my income.

I'm keeping track of food and general 'stuff' spending this month to get a better idea of what they're like, they are two things I've really taken my eye off these past few years.

My Am@zon habit is bad, really really bad. The availability of virtually anything at the click of a single button is not good for my spending. I don't usually set new year resolutions but set one this year to stop buying from them, which was going great until lockdown. I am trying. Our grocery shopping costs have been higher recently but without the cost of eating out I think our total food spending might be less overall than it was pre-lockdown.

I've started meal planning again and we're one week into a three week plan using just what we have in. We seldom waste food and I think we're usually good at buying good quality/good value food but do get a bit flappy each mealtime trying to decide what to eat, the plan is helping with that. It's also helping with finding a good balance between cooking meals fresh, batch cooking and eating previously batch-cooked frozen meals so that it doesn't feel like I'm constantly preparing food, I must admit I'm missing being able to go out for lunch when I don't feel like cooking. The meal plan and batch cooking are my friends.

Speaking of food, yay for rhubarb season! We've bought a kilo in each of the last two food shops so have been enjoying the rhubarby delights of rhubarb crumble, rhubarb cake, rhubarb and apple crumble, rhubarb and apple flapjack and rhubarb puff-pastry tarts here in chez Henhouse. The flapjack has been my favourite so far. After spotting the brewing gear down in the cellar earlier when fetching bottles for the cordial I'm now wondering if rhubarb wine could be any good... Food for thought (literally.)

Grogged

You can get free standing vertical gardens - frame is a bit like a magazine stand.
Your backyard plans sound exciting, will the hanging garden be for herbs etc, flowers or a mix?
We only go food shopping once a fortnight now, so find that helps with budgeting and meal planning.
Have you thought about freezing your card to help make online shopping that but harder? Bit extreme I know.
My parents used to make their own wine, their orange and rhubarb always seemed to be sherry or whisky like as I (dimly) recall...

MerryHen

Grogged said:

Have you thought about freezing your card

I initially read that as literally putting the card in the freezer 😅❄️ putting my phone in the freezer might actually help but as a less extreme first step I've removed the Am@zon app. Out of necessity I used to be good at not buying loads and thinking through everything I did buy, finding things second hand or on offer so I know I'm capable of it, I just need to form the habit again. 

The plan on the plant front is to grow a mix of edibles and non-edibles. Probably whatever will grow, it's quite shaded out there, but certainly herbs if I can.

We have a bottle of gin from yonks back, pre kids so at least three years (neither of us are big drinkers) so rhubarb gin is next on my hit list 😄