Champagne Lifestyle on a Lemonade Budget - 2021

Wednesday2000

candygirl said:

WEDNESDAY, so glad you're feeling a bit better hun, n ooh I love the Nine Inch Nails too 😍

I haven't seen them in years! Looking forward to it. Just hoping it doesn't get postponed!

(Thanks Sugarbaby - glad you had a nice day yesterday.)

helensbiggestfan

Good morning  my lovely friends.  

Good to read all your doings.  I have been somewhat remiss in posting lately, life just seems to have overtaken me. The days race by and I have been so busy.  I have been making the most of the glorious weather, making a start on the outside jobs,  nearly broken the back of it,  unfortunately it's nearly broken me.😱.   Time for a rest.  Having said that I am very gratified with what I have managed to get done, so a real sense of pride and achievement,    

So most of my champagne moments have been standing back and admiring my handiwork.  I have managed some socialising with friends and familly so it's not been all work and no play.  That would make "Jill" a very dull girl.😂🤣. 

MrsPorridge

Champagne moment yesterday was DH putting new handles on the bathroom cabinets - the old ones had corroded.  The new ones shouldn't corrode.  It's a small thing, but has made a huge difference.

phoebe1989seb

My recent champagne moments include....

Moving some logs from the chopped down *hedge* into the larger log store. There's still loads (and even more loads 🙄) to cut up - I reckon there will be about two years' worth altogether - so this will save us £££ once they're seasoned ready to burn.

We don't use our (oil-fired) central heating often - no more than five times this winter - but rely heavily on the wood burning stoves, so it's good that we're self sufficient when it comes to firewood!

I've been making the most of the warm, sunny weather (which lasted longer than forecast as it's only clouded over in the last half hour 🌞), by creating a new path and getting some planting done.

Yesterday I dug up between 30-40 Tellima perennials (one of only a few things planted by the PO who definitely wasn't a gardener) that were in the way of the path and am relocating these amongst the bluebells and primroses. We'd intended buying new plants for there so have saved loads by reusing stuff we already had 😁

I was tempted by some Vinca Minor Gertrude Jekyll in Been & Queued on Sunday, and have got those into the white bed today. However, at a local independent garden centre I resisted the temptation to buy some stunning orange Fritillaries for the hot bed as I've not finished clearing the area in readiness yet.

Last year's eBay purchase, Brunnera Betty Bowring in the white bed (and a few of my bargain daffodils in the background)......

sugarbaby125

Lovely photograph Phoebe. 

My Champagne moment today was going to watch the film Dream Horse at my local Odeon. It was a silver screen ticket so it only cost me £3.50 and I got a free cup of tea and free lotus biscoff biscuits (they are individually sealed). 

I absolutely loved this film. It is such a heart warming story.  It brought out so many emotions in me, but there were some lovely laugh out loud moments. It is based on a true story. It was a 9.5/10 for me.      

sugarbaby125

My Champagne moments yesterday were going to the discussion group at Blackfriars Settlement and then going to watch the play A Dozen Things I'd Rather Be at Streatham Space Project in the evening. I got an early bird ticket for the play a few weeks ago so rather than paying £15, I only had to pay £4.50 including the 50p online booking fee.

The play was really good, the audience was less than half full, so I had my choice of seats. I was really pleased that I could have my pick of a seat and not have anyone else too near me, as they are not asking the audience to wear masks any more. 

phoebe1989seb

Thanks, Sugarbaby 😄

My champagne moments continue to be garden-based - the perennials I dug up from the *lawn* to make way for a path turned out to be 67 plants, way more than I'd originally estimated! Goodness knows what they'd have cost if we'd had to purchase them 😁

I've revitalised a small flowerbed by transplanting twelve hostas from the white bed where they weren't really the right colour (being the pale mauve type, which wasn't evident when purchased last year) and taking their place in the white bed are the Vincas, which are the right colour!

Somehow I succeeded in planting 84 perennials on Tuesday 😀

Its another lovely sunny day here - no snow, thankfully - and there's loads of stuff springing up all over the garden - astilbes, gunnera, eremurus, reums, persicarias, geums, tiarellas, Solomon's seal to name but a few. I absolutely love this time in the garden 😊

I'm now looking at how much stone we have for edging the proposed pond and - taking into account it's currently in various locations around the garden so hard to guage exactly what we've got - I think we might have enough!

phoebe1989seb

Hi everyone! It's very quiet here - hopefully because there are lots of champagne moments happening and not as a result of the horrible energy price hikes???

I'm so glad we have plenty of our own wood for the stoves (even though it means having to find time to chop and transport barrowloads of logs which at the very least is good exercise, I guess 🙄 before thoroughly seasoning it for a year or two) and that we are used to economising on the oil front, barely using our central heating even in the depths of winter 😀 (Last 500L of oil lasted us two years!!!)

Whilst we still have lots of ongoing work and house-related issues, I'm trying to squeeze a few champagne moments out - firstly, by *shopping my home* I've managed a few tweaks in the guest room without spending any money! I've used a stunning, sunny yellow/pink hand-printed cotton tablecloth as a bed throw which, coupled with a pair of vintage yellow art nouveau euro pillows I was going to sell, have transformed the bed into boho heaven 😁

Don't think I'm going to bother with making the dress into pillowcases now.

DH and I spent the weekend taking up (mostly) rotten decking laid by the POs in the partially open outbuilding. We were expecting to find evidence of rats/mice, but apart from a long-abandoned nest that contained a pair of my gardening gloves (badly chewed!), there was nothing.

Any salvageable decking will get reused elsewhere, the rest will be burned in the firepit on chilly evenings. In addition there were a few random bits of flat stone which - added to that already accumulated from around the garden - we transported by sack truck to the proposed pond area. There's almost enough to edge the pond and will be once we've added a few bits from the courtyard 😉

The new outbuilding floor is something else we won't have to purchase as we already have in excess of 12 sqm of stone flags we got for a bargain price back in 2019 😉

Other news is less champagne-worthy - the sawmill where the snug ceiling beams are coming from have covid, so we're still awaiting delivery of those (it's now six months since we originally propped up the ceiling with acrows!) and, having begun taking up the snug floor, we are none the wiser as to where the water ingress is from. However, we did discover a random, badly bodged and buried cut-off pipe in the almost adjacent outbuilding (different floor levels) which we hope to investigate with a drain camera just in case that's the cause....

This afternoon I'm hoping to transform a small table in the kitchen with some pink paint I found in the outbuilding 😄

sugarbaby125

My Champagne moments yesterday:

I went to Blackfriars Settlement yesterday morning for the discussion group. I used £10 of my Nectar points in the Blackfriars Sainsburys Local to get a few food items on my way home.    I still have just over £37 of Nectar points to spend. 

Neighbourhood Voices had our 1st Masterclass with Kwame Kwei-Armah the Artistic Director for The Young Vic. It was such a productive zoom meeting for me. I took so many notes, as we were all getting invaluable advice from Kwame. I turned my hand written notes into a 4 page word document, as that will make the notes easier for me to read. 

I love that being a part of the Neighbourhood Voices programme has given me the incentive that I needed to get writing again. 

sugarbaby125

My Champagne moment today is receiving my 60+ Oyster card. It is going to save me a fortune for the next 7 years as I travel around London and beyond.