Getting shot of the mortgage sooner than 2049!

KajiKita

Oooh, I’m tracking NSDs and books read but not hours outside …. I shall add that one 😊 Probably 5 hours so far, with the gardening I have managed to get in 😊

Bravo on the cooking, I’ve done two batches over the last two days. Can I rob some of the flapjack ….? Always my favourite! 😉

KK

Bluegreen143

It was more like a cereal bar @kajikita as I subbed half the oats for rice crispies. Very nice and held together well!

Last day of freedom today 😭😭😭 mainly a quiet day at home, but I took the kids to the local park for 1.5 hours. In the rain, no less (ok intermittent drizzle 😅). 

Never fear, they were clad in all over waterproofs and nobody melted from getting a bit wet. In fact they spent a lot of time gleefully rolling down grassy hills so I can’t say the rain bothered them too much. Bambi only complained twice about having tired legs which is nothing short of miraculous.

Frugal wins

1. Found a portion of bolognaise sauce in the freezer which wasn’t big enough for us all. Added a tin of tomatoes and a tin of green/brown lentils and made a lovely big lasagne for dinner tonight 😁

2. Amazing wife that I am, I made Red two lots of ham sandwiches for work lunches (generally he fends for himself)

3. I bought a big pack of chicken breasts in the Tesco shop today so chopped it all and split into two - half marinaded in spices for tomorrow’s fajitas and half marinaded in herbs & garlic and frozen.

4. I had leftover pesto pasta for breakfast, and the kids and I all had leftover lentil soup for lunch followed by some of the flapjack I didn’t freeze 😇 I’m completely determined to tackle our food waste and make sure that leftovers are eaten the next day wherever possible. There was one bowlful of soup left so that’s my lunch for tomorrow. 

Stats for 2023

Books read: 3

Hours outdoors: 4.5

Emergency fund: £2,284.88 / £7,200

Craft projects complete: 0

Average daily phone use (this week): 3hr 12 min (eek!)

Spending today

£25.89 Life insurance 

£528.86 Mortgage 

£100.14 Tesco
Rough breakdown: £38 cleaning stuff/toiletries monthly stock up | £59 food | around £3.50 to be refunded due to breakage

£13.25 TV license  

£7.90 eBay
Red bought a new TV remote as our old one vanished a week ago and we just can’t find it 🤷‍♀️ total mystery as our house is neither particularly large nor overly cluttered and we’ve pulled out all the furniture etc. While we can use the fire stick using its own remote, we can’t use live TV or easily adjust the volume without the TV remote.

Bluegreen143

Morning all! Eating my leftover soup for breakfast so thought I’d pop on here. 

I’m aiming to do the 10 hour time restricted eating for the next few week (eat 3 meals in a 10 hr window, mine will be 9am-7pm, no snacking or calorific/sweetened/alcoholic drinks outwith these times). So having breakfast once I get back from the school run. 

Also really focused on eating all leftovers hence the soup for breakfast! As I also have leftover lasagne, for lunch, and don’t want either to go to waste. 

Already had an involuntary frugal win as my car is still in the garage so we walked the morning school run. As it was all dark and drizzly I would definitely have driven, but actually once we were out it was fine and it didn’t rain that much. So a good move for health and for reducing petrol costs and I must remember to walk as much as possible even when I do have the car back. 

Now that the kids are back at school I will try to keep on top of the heating again and not put it on all day 😳

Cheery_Daff

Excellent work there, loving your tracking lists (very impressed at your eating soup for breakfast 😱) Nice that you can see walking to school is a reasonable option too 😊 It all adds up i suppose! 😊

Bluegreen143

Haha thanks @Cheery_Daff! I actually do have soup for breakfast from time to time, I quite like it 😂

Thirty day list (updated 04/01)

New trainers (for me) - 31/12
Shower screen - 31/12
More glass tupperwares - 31/12
Travel booster car seat for Bambi - 31/12
Rhubarb crowns for the garden - 04/01
Strawberry runners for the garden - 04/01
Second book in the ACOTAR fantasy series (for me) 04/01

themadvix

It might be worth asking on your freecycle/Freegle/Olio/buy nothing group about rhubarb crowns - it’s the time of year when people lift and split them.

Bluegreen143

@themadvix - good tip! I did check out Olio ages ago and there didn’t seem to be anything worthwhile on it locally at all. Maybe it’s gotten busier?!

I don’t have Facebook and annoyingly one of the downsides is not having access to a lot of groups which all seem to only exist on Facebook now. May get Red to ask on the local bartering site which we used to use a bit before the pandemic.

Bluegreen143

Lovely day today! Quite relaxed at work but only cos I’ve not yet had catch up meetings with most of the people I work with. By next week it will be mad 😆

I had to go get the children on foot and had forgotten that when we went this morning so I’d let Monkey take his bike. Normally if we don’t have the car for pick up I make him take his scooter as it folds small to go on the bus home. 

However not getting the bus was a positive as I’m very impressed that Bambi managed the entire walk home, including 10 minutes of play at the playpark first, without even one complaint about sore legs, even though it was after a full day at nursery when she was tired. 

It’s only about 0.8 of a mile but it’s steeply uphill the whole way home (which is why we often walk TO nursery, but never home from it!), and while Monkey can manage it fine, and Bambi has done it before under duress, this is the first time she has ever achieved it without whining 👏 she chose to ride her balance bike for any flatter bits and walk holding my hand for the rest. It’s so lovely to see progress like this as of course, the further they can walk, the easier your life becomes! 

Frugal wins

1. Made delicious chicken fajitas for dinner - griddled spiced chicken/peppers/onions and also seasoned black beans, along with HM salsa, cheese, yoghurt, salad, hot sauces etc. I deliberately made the seasoned beans so there would be enough chicken left for my lunch, and there was! In fact, there was enough chicken/veg/beans left for two lunches for me once I cooked up some rice to mix it with. I’ll serve with salsa and hot sauce when I eat it. 

2. Had leftover soup for breakfast and leftover lasagne for lunch 😇 

3. The welly glue seems to have worked well on the wellies; there were three splits to mend (over three wellies!). The simplest one is now done. The more awkward splits have been treated again for extra strength. It’s weird stuff, like runny black plastic, but it does seem very strong one hardened. Comes with a gazillion health warnings! 

4. One strap has just about come loose from my faux leather backpack (aka my main handbag!!) so I tried gluing with the welly glue and clamping it on with a peg. Not convinced this will work, if it doesn’t I’ll attempt sewing it. It’s a teal backpack, so the black welly glue might be a bit visible but I don’t overly mind as it’s just for everyday wear.

5. Today is actually a no spend day! I have spends to report below but they actually happened last night after I posted 😜 

Stats for 2023

Books read: 3

Hours outdoors: 7hr 5 min

Emergency fund: £2,294.88 / £7,200

Craft projects complete: 0

Average daily phone use (this week): 4hr 45 min (eek! I’ve been reading the back articles from the Frugalwoods blog on my phone and did that ALL evening yesterday and this afternoon. I don’t have a personal laptop so I use my phone for everything. But this needs to reduce!!)

Spending today

£44.99 eBay 
Single mattress for Bambi (planned spend) 

£9.49 eBay 
Waterproof mattress protector for the new mattress

Do also need to pick up a single sheet as we only have two, for Monkey’s bed. I think three sheets between them would work OK as we don’t necessarily need to change their sheets on the same day. 

beanielou

Well done Miss Bambi 

Bluegreen143

Another car-less day over here. Apparently we aren’t likely to get it back until mid/late next week!

Just as I was about to leave the house for the school run at 2.45pm, smugly thinking of all this extra walking I’m doing, a heavy rain started 😨 extra walking is all well and good, extra walking in drizzle I can get on board with, but walking uphill in the rain with two children is nobody’s idea of a good time. 

I remarked to Red (who’d gotten home from work early; his finish time varies every day) that it was a shame I couldn’t get the bus because it isn’t at the right time for getting there and I’d have both kids’ bikes (which I’d left in the nursery bike rack that morning) on the way home. 

Red, my wonderful husband, came up with the excellent solution of driving me down to nursery in his van and taking the bikes home himself. I still had to come home with the kids solo, as we won’t all fit in the van, but it meant we could get the bus, which conveniently stops at Monkey’s school bus stop 5 minutes after the school bus does.

(Technically Red is not allowed to drive his van for personal use so I’m even more grateful for his help!)

Frugal wins

1. We used Monkey’s child bus pass - the Scottish government allow all under-22s to travel for free on buses 🙌🏼 I actually didn’t pay anything today as Bambi was free as well, obviously, and I buy bus tickets in bundles of 10 using the app on my phone and still have some on there just now. Cheaper than buying them individually. 

2. I think the welly repairs are successful! Still to be tested in water, mind you. 

3. Repairing the strap of my backpack also worked AMAZINGLY. This is my main handbag and I had planned to replace it due to the broken strap. But now I don’t need to 🙌🏼

4. Monkey left his school bag in the park yesterday, which I discovered at 7.55am while barking at him “where is your schoolbag?! We need to go now!”. I popped over there after the morning drop off as it’s across from the bus stop, and happily it was still there. So no new school bag required! 

5. I had my first portion of leftover chicken/black beans with rice & salsa for lunch, SO GOOD. Very happy to have more leftover fajita stuff for tomorrow’s lunch. 

6. I have already made tuna sandwiches for Red tomorrow (and Bambi, as she doesn’t have nursery on Fridays, and I’ll be having the above-mentioned rice thing). Excellent wifing (wife-ing?) yet again. 

7. Before dinner I assessed which fruit & veg were most in need of being eaten fast. I cut up the pepper and tomato to give the kids as a pre-dinner snack (I find this a great way to increase raw veg intake in children!!). Then the grapes were chopped and served after dinner. Voila, no fruit or veg needing binned. And surely counts as serving one’s children a gourmet three course meal?! 

8. We had turkey curry from the freezer for dinner - the last of the Christmas turkey was in there. 

Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever shared eight frugal wins all in one day before! 

Stats for 2023

Books read: 3

Hours outdoors: 8hr 30 mins

Emergency fund: £2,294.88 / £7,200

Craft projects complete: 0

Average daily phone use (this week): 5hr 1 min

Spending

£12.99 Shirt for Red’s birthday
Ebay - he won’t mind it being second hand at all, he often gets my gifts from eBay 

£25.19 Internet 

£4.49 Shorts for Monkey
2x cargo shorts second hand on eBay, trying to be organised for summer so we don’t end up buying all new as usual!