A new royal start

South_coast

Radish definitely works on pizza 👍 Kale too, if you have some

QueenJess

South_coast said:

Radish definitely works on pizza 👍 Kale too, if you have some

Ooh - thanks.  I'm nearly at the bottom of the never ending spinach, but I do have a whole bag of kale to get through, so that will definitely go on there later!

QueenJess

Whoops... it's been ages, but work went crazy at the same time I was trying to organise myself for holiday.  We got back on Saturday and the weather was so mild that the kids even ventured into the sea a few times!  Sadly DD was ill with a sniffy cold/cough most of the holiday and so she was utterly exhausted each day.  So we mainly cooked in so we could get her to bed early.  We did get ourselves some really nice meals to cook, but still cheaper than eating out.  Lots of fun had by everyone and we visited lots of places without breaking the budget!

Back to reality now (although I am dreading what awaits me at work tomorrow!) and given my job finishes in 3 weeks I really need to get the budget under control.  I still need to keep a very close eye on grocery spends, but now am looking at the other "stuff" where money leaks away and is probably my fault.  I don't buy tons of things, but I do think I buy more things than I need to generally and I just need to stop and not get carried away looking for the perfect thing online that probably exists somewhere.  I will be using things up, mending and not buying unless there's no other choice.  Hoping that will reduce our spending as the next 8-9 months will be the tightest with DD still at nursery and no ability to reduce our mortgage monthly amount.  DD will be at school in September, which will be a relief to the funds and then our mortgage comes up for renewal about May 2026 when hopefully it will go down a bit from interest rate falls and some minor overpayments.

The thing I missed most on holiday was baking.  I do like making things and seeing the kids enjoy them.  I did a massive shop this morning to stock us up.  I intend to skip my usual Weds food shop next week and so it was for 10 days.  I spent £135, but did stock up on a number of things for the month.  Hoping to keep it under control this month, but at the same time need to consider stocking up a few bits and pieces each week so that xmas isn't so much of a hit.  Mainly thinking about meat as organic is often out of stock so makes sense to have some in hand as well as less interesting things like toilet roll.

I made porridge this morning for DS to try.  He used to love it as a baby, then hated it and refused to have anything to do with it since then.  Happily (and possibly with the influence of the Harry Potter books he's reading), he loved it, so am hoping I can have some more cheap breakfasts.  Lunch was cheese and tomato toasties with grapes (clementines for me) and dinner is currently pending as DD still isn't right and DS is just eating at a birthday party right now.  So probably an easy pesto pasta with some vegetables thrown at it for the adults and we have rock cakes for dessert.  I also am waiting for the cinder toffee to cool so I can dip it in chocolate.  Never made it before, but it looks ok and thought it would be fun for fireworks night!

Right, better run as DD still needs some looking after.

QueenJess

Just in case you were wondering, the cinder toffee is amazing. I have 2 jars of it though, so am giving some to a neighbour across the road as I’m not sure if we will get through it all! DS absolutely loves it..

QueenJess

A quiet day today just catching up on some home stuff... washing, tidying, chores I've generally put off.  I now have 3 weeks left at work and am starting to think about how I would like to spend my time.  Obviously baking is high up the list, but thinking of getting into a bit of a routine during the week so I don't feel slightly lost.  Also the start of being as frugal as I can now as we will be going down to a single salary for a bit and our outgoings are high with the mortgage and nursery fees.  I will also be looking for a new short term job, but am not really in a big rush tbh.

Today I am on my second load of washing, finally put all the huge pile of clean clothes away, tidying up around the house and am trying a new recipe for chocolate chip brioche as a treat for breakfast tomorrow.  Fingers crossed it turns out ok (it's currently proving) as I've never made brioche before.  I've also packaged up two gift bags for a joint bday party DD is going to at the weekend.  I find birthday parties so stressful and finding presents etc - you'd think I would be better at it by now!  I racked my brains, but couldn't think of anything I had in the house, so went to a shop next to work and got them stickers, a child bath bomb and some chocolates (DD would love all those and these are 4 yo girls).  Packed up in matching gift bags (reused from home, but in perfect condition), tissue paper my mum gave me and some hm tags (I love my tag punch I got as a birthday present last year!).

Breakfast today was porridge, cinnamon and apple.  Lunch will be hm potato and leek soup that I made on Monday with hm bread and dinner will be hm pizzas with carrot sticks.  I have goats cheese in the fridge, so may put that on the pizza with sundried tomatoes and peppers.  We have rock cakes for dessert today (yesterday we had hot chocolate with hm cinder toffee, which was amazing!).

Only spend today was ordering some more yeast as I'm nearly out and I don't like the supermarket one that has emulsifiers in.  I order it in bulk and 500g should last a while, but the £20 cost is quite high.  I think I calculated it would last around 5-6 months though depending on how many pizzas and bread gets consumed.  Maybe I should finally make a start on making sourdough once I finish work as it's been on the list to try for years...

I also have to decide what size of supermarket gift card I should buy before I leave work (5.5% discount); I was thinking of getting enough for the end of December and then I also have another discount card I should make use of before they take it back.  Might be an expensive month for stocking up and I can never rely on a cheap Jan/Feb as I have lots of annual bills Dec/Jan/Feb as well as 3 family birthdays to deal with!

TallGirl

Your productivity is just amazing all that food makes me hungry. I agree about the yeast I grew up with only using fresh yeast once I go back to Denmark that is what I shall be using. I would love to try sourdough too my friend does it the break is so good. 

Do take some time out and look after you for a bit. I am sure another contract will come up but have a think before you jump on the next opportunity this one sounds like it really worked for you. 

QueenJess

It feels weird to have no job to go to and I am thinking about trying to save money where we can.  My phone cable has got a small crack in the plastic coating (I must have had it since whenever Apple changed their charging system), but it works fine still.  I've covered it with electrical tape so it should last years yet.  

Our heating is still only part on - we have underfloor heating downstairs (heat pump system), which filters the heat upstairs.  However, when it gets seriously cold we put the bathroom towel rails on upstairs to help and particularly the individual one in our bedroom since we are over the garage and have 3 external walls so it's much colder in here.  We are nowhere near needing that yet and I've not been too cold working upstairs yet.  Should be less cold for me when I'm not working as I'll probably be doing more baking and moving around.  I'm hoping we won't need extra heating on until Jan/Feb now.

I did pay the odd amount on the mortgage again from savings, so we now owe £124,000.  I also decided to get a fair amount of gift cards for the food shopping to last Dec and possibly Jan too depending on how much xmas costs (we host and DH's family eat a huge amount of food).

Although I've been monitoring the joint account quite closely, I've not monitored my personal account for a long time.  I use my personal account for all my car costs (petrol, insurances, repairs/maintenance, servicing, tax etc), anything I buy for myself (e.g. clothes) as well as odd things like news subscriptions and charity donations.  I have a feeling these add up to much more than I think, so my plan is to set up a budget for my personal account to reflect all the current costs I have coming out and show them monthly.  Then I can more easily see how far my savings will stretch for.  I'm also hoping I can find something to save money on, although I will not be cancelling my charity DD's unless I get desperate for cash.  I have been checking things as they come up for renewal, but I've not found anything cheaper yet.  I am hoping to offset some of these costs with some survey cash.  I have yet to discuss with DH about xmas/birthday presents as I usually renew subscriptions for him.  His birthday one (Jan) is particularly expensive, so I may need to forgo that this year.  Will discuss that with him at some point.

Dinner today will be a massive tofu stir fry (I have a lot of veg at the moment!) and then I've just taken an apple and blackberry crumble out of the oven (thought I should use up the huge amount of blackberries I picked!) to go with hm vanilla ice cream.

LadyWithAPlan

Have you thought about getting some electric throws _ they are a game changer

QueenJess

LadyWithAPlan said:

Have you thought about getting some electric throws _ they are a game changer

I think what will happen is when it gets too cold, I will have to put the towel rails on in the bathrooms anyway as having a shower/bathing the kids will be too cold and they will start being too cold in their rooms. I can’t remember now from last year, but I think it all happens at the same time. I do have a blanket on my bed, but only on my side as DH doesn’t seem to feel the cold.

What I need to do is to get more people round as another body really heats the house up as it’s super insulated. We usually put the heating way down at Xmas when there are lots of people round to avoid us getting too hot!

South_coast

Possibly cheaper to put the heating on though 🤣!