Champagne Lifestyle on a Lemonade Budget - 2021

sugarbaby125

Phoebe everything is lovely, but my favourite is the lamp. It is so gorgeous. 

sugarbaby125

My Champagne moment today was using my 3 Groupons for the local Big Town restaurant. My daughter, my son and I enjoyed the meal even though the plantain was burnt! This is the only local restaurant that is offering Groupons. It was lovely to dine out again for lunch. 

My meal: Piri Piri grilled quarter of chicken, fried plantain and fried vegetable rice with a side salad. 

phoebe1989seb

Thank you, Sugarbaby 😄

Your meal looks delicious...so colourful and healthy too 😋

Today's champagne moment - it's a gorgeous, sunny (if chilly!) day 😀

helensbiggestfan

Good Morning my lovely friends.  

Well a mixed bag this week. Chamoagne mkments have all been of the quiet domestic variety.  My eldest grandson has had mild covid I'd so i have been isolating just in case.  So far I'm all clear. 

A fibro  flare up meant I have been forced to rest quite a bit.  I'm not very good at pacing myself, I'm afraid I'm very much an all or nothing oerson,  either full of beans and all bull at a gate, or collapsed on the sofa in a state of exhausted inertia.  Throw in the fibro and the arthritis for good measure......😂.  

Actually I have been using my resting time quite productively, sorting out paperwork and watching lots of you tube.  Found some new interior design blogs so have been catching up and getting lots of ideas.  Also song endless hours trawling right move and getting thoroughly cheesed off.  Why is it the properties I really like are always just a tempting 10 to 20% more than I want to pay.  

Im supposed to be downsizing .....but maybe I might be tempted to take on just one more project.  Just make sure I delegate more next time.  

SUgarbaby.  That meal looks lush as well as healthy.  I'm back in my sort of WW/Paleo now.  I really need to shift some weight, it would help with my fibro and arthritis.  

Phoebe you are making great progress.  Maybe you will love the mill when it's all finished.  If not, well you know what to too. 😂🤣.   

Funnily enough as I see the progress I have made here I'm falling in love with my house again. My friends, family and even the EA tell me how pretty it's looking.  They're right, it is a pretty house, i think it should sell. Just a few more jobs to go.  Now it's looking so good I don't feel in such a rush.  I was aiming an Easter launch but if it's not ready to go I'm happy to wait until September.  

As my husband used to say...."there's nothing spoiling". I don't need to half kill myself rushing to get it market ready.  

My youngest son is popping in later.  Always champagne moments when he's around.  

Beautiful sunny day here but oh my, what a bitterly cold wind.  Never mind spring is on its way, the garden is starting to come back to life. 

MrsPorridge

Today is St. Piran's Day (patron saint of Cornwall).  To celebrate DH and I had a pasty for lunch - would have been rude not to

Humdinger1

Just binge-read 40 pages and am now up to date!  Lovely to catch up with everyone, even virtually love Humdinger xx 

sugarbaby125

Wow Humdinger1, what an achievement reading 40 pages of this thread 

Humdinger1

@sugarbaby125 it is riveting; it's just finding the time that was the issue.  Always loved this thread.  Did you come out of debt to a place where you could give your family so much help, if you don't mind me asking? @helensbiggestfan and @phoebe1989seb fascinating to read about your house plans xx

sugarbaby125

Hello Humdinger1 

I have been debt free since 2014. I have always been a saver, regardless of how much income I have. We never know when we will be in financial need. I never spend what I can not afford. I try to help my family whenever they need me to. Usually it is just the odd £10 or £20 gift of money.  The party for my Great-grandson was a one off. 

phoebe1989seb

Crikey, Humdinger.... that's some binge reading 😁

Well, my weekend wasn't exactly bursting with champagne moments 🙁 Firstly, the guy DH had hoped would come to help lift the chest of drawers upstairs went AWOL with a bad back (he was actually supposed to be working for DH last Thursday/Friday but didn't show up or let him know why till late Fri pm and low and behold, this morning he absented himself again - this time claiming his kids had been sent home from school 🙄)

Therefore the guest room remains incomplete and I'm stuck with a blooming great piece of furniture in the way where I need to be clearing the snug ahead of us starting the building work 😡

Looks like we'll be trying to get it shifted ourselves. Hopefully the trusty sack truck will help!

Then, DH thought he'd take advantage of the gorgeous, spring-like weather and use his new chainsaw to remove the rest of the overgrown laurels and other saplings on our front boundary (the ones I'd been attempting to take down with a saw 😉). Some are 25' high but originally must have started out as a hedge. Anyway, he was making great progress - with me standing in the lane, warning of approaching vehicles, clearing the debris etc - when after only an hour, the flipping chainsaw just stopped working.....grrrr! It'll be going back today 😡

To crown it all, I did a head count of purple alliums appearing in the rose beds - out of 60+ planted over the past couple of years, only about six are currently visible. I know it's early days, but if the ones planted elsewhere in the garden are anything to go by, I fear they've either rotted or been munched by something squirrel-like 😠

On the positive side, we managed to discuss the planned garden building and DH has given my revised - and rather left field - idea the 👍 which means we should be able to utilise all those free gothic windows and possibly one of the doors we have 😀

And...in the white bed, the Mount Everest alliums appear to be doing ok 😉

Today's champagne moment - the weather is lovely again with wall-to-wall blue skies, so I've been sitting outside for a while, pondering our plans 😃