Time to Face The Music

RelievedSheff

We had budgeted for a new tree and some new decorations but not until December. Figured we might not get to go again before Christmas so we may as well get them now while they are on offer and it is a quality tree that will last a long time.

alt80

@RelievedSheff glad to hear he is spoilt now. Love my dog, always there no matter what, no judgements. Probably more like always there for a treat tbf haha.

I probably know the Dobbies - when my son was a bit smaller he was obsessed with aquariums and wife used to regularly take him to garden centres all over Notts / Leicester / Lincoln / Derbyshire - madness lol. He used to love the Dobbies just off Junction 30 M1 because there was a massive pond with a load of koi carp that he could feed for £1. Every now and again my wife used to drag me up there lol. Walked out spending about £3k on garden furniture one weekend but didn’t know the coffee is free, we always used to get a Starbucks on the way back ha. 

Half relieved we are concentrating on lowering the debt - my wife’s Christmas spends are usually horrific, new decorations etc each year. I like Christmas but not to the same extent as she does lol. She’s agreed to reuse the lot apart from having the tree delivered this year so max spend of £60-80ish.

RelievedSheff

It is the same Dobbies at Barlborough 😄

The fish are still there. Our dog is obsessed with them. You get a couple of free coffee's a month if you sign up to the Dobbies card which is £10 a year. Also get discounts off various items.

Doesn't stop you buying other stuff though 🙃

Well chuffed with what we got though. We have decided that we will buy a few nice decorations each year and build up our collection that way. And now we have a quality tree that should last us many years as well. 

RelievedSheff

It will be a bit of a spendy day today. 

We have a Tesco delivery coming this morning and I am ordering the last of the Christmas presents as well. By the end of the week we home to have Christmas sorted out and all the presents wrapped and ready to distribute.

Breakfast, lunch and dinner will be from stores. Breakfast was a bacon butty, the other half has taken his packed lunch to work, I will rustle some lunch up from the fridge and we have a pork chilli and rice tonight to use up the left over roast pork from yesterdays roast dinner.

Today's jobs include:

• working from home
• putting away home shopping delivery
• vacuuming the house
• load of washing which will hopefully dry today
• walking the dog x 2

RelievedSheff

Finally got my herb garden sorted out yesterday. Only been saying for 18 months that I want some!!


The garden is still very much a work in progress but we hope to get more done this winter. We want to extend the patio further, get a shed base built at the bottom of the garden behind the garage to accept an 8x8ft shed, get the shed, build the shed without killing each other, and then pebble a strip along the garage down to the shed.

enthusiasticsaver

Looks great. I love the wall hanging pots. We are having new patios and paths laid in our garden  this week and it has taken us over 5 years to get that sorted. 

RelievedSheff

enthusiasticsaver said:

Looks great. I love the wall hanging pots. We are having new patios and paths laid in our garden  this week and it has taken us over 5 years to get that sorted. 

Thanks. We were going to get another scaffold plank and make another shelf but decided to go for the wall hanging pots instead.

I'm sure the garden will evolve as we do more too it. It's a pretty blank canvas at the minute. It is literally just a square of grass surrounded by four yellow brick walls at the moment!

warby68

I love that too. 
Love your diary too - seems like you've really found your 'balance'
Garden centres really are the worst - can't think of a single thing you need or want other than the coffee when you go in but can easily come out looking like the Generation Game winner.

RelievedSheff

warby68 said:

I love that too. 
Love your diary too - seems like you've really found your 'balance'
Garden centres really are the worst - can't think of a single thing you need or want other than the coffee when you go in but can easily come out looking like the Generation Game winner.

Thanks. I think we have found a happy medium of paying down our debts but still enjoying life. I think the house move last year really helped with that. Not money wise of course, moving house it always expensive and in some ways that has contributed to our credit card debt. But the move was worth it for our own sanity and mental well being. We hated where we lived before and it was grinding us down. We love it where we are now 

enthusiasticsaver

You cant put a price on being happy where you live (within reason of course).  We stretched ourselves to buy this house 32 years ago then interest rates crept up to 15% in the late 80s, early 90s. I had to return to work after having our daughters who were just 1 and 3 at the time so we did at least have that option of getting more income to be able to afford the mortgage although two thirds of my income went on childcare .  We still love the house now though and cannot imagine moving from it.