Getting shot of the mortgage sooner than 2049!

Bluegreen143

Nice to have a two-day working week, as Friday is my start to the weekend! 

Had a fairly relaxed yet productive day 😁 took Monkey to the school bus (on foot), then Bambi and I went straight to Tesco. Got our Friday top up shop for £21 which I think is record cheap for us 😅 even better, Red had mentioned he would be in the area and when I came down the escalator he was waiting for me at the bottom as a surprise (he had the notification on the joint account of the spend so he knew I’d be down the escalator straight away when he parked up 😂🥰 as he had just 5 minutes before finished his job and wouldn’t be able to go to the next one til the afternoon. So he took us home which was nice. 

Did a bunch of chores - food prep (will detail below), tidying, hoovering. Read to Bambi and set out various activities for her. Tidied the playroom which was a mammoth undertaking and is not in fact finished. They got so many toys for Christmas I feared I’d not get out if I spent too long in there…

As Red was back from his second job early too, he kept Bambi home while I walked down to pick up Monkey. 1hr 45 mins outside today which isn’t bad for January!

Dinner was burgers, chips, HM coleslaw and salad. Went down very well with everyone 🙌🏼

Frugal wins

1. This is from last night - but I hung a washing to dry indoors! I never do this, I hang washings outside in the warmer months but I usually use the tumble dryer all winter. 

2. I made a double batch of homemade hummus, chopped/washed a big tub of salad for the fridge as well as making a big tub of coleslaw (some of the latter two for dinner). Some of the hummus is destined to become hummus salad baguettes to take in the car tomorrow and save buying lunch at a service station…

3. Baked a tray each of choc chip cookies and brownies to take to my friend’s - I’ll also take a bottle of champagne I got given for Christmas, I’ve been waiting for someone to share it with as Red isn’t a fan. It’s her birthday next week and we aren’t exchanging birthday gifts anymore but going to go make a card after posting this. 

4. After making the burgers I had 2/3 of the kilo pack of mince left so I made a big pan of spag bol (2x family portions in this) to freeze.

Spending

£21.87 Tesco
Food - such delights as burger buns, fruit, salad veg, milk, mayonnaise, butter, crisps, bacon, cola, a bag of frozen chips (yes I know, Red wanted them for feeding the tiny people while I’m away, despite knowing how to make chips himself!)

Income

£145 Child benefit 
Split between various child related pots 

Stats for 2023

Books read: 3

Hours outdoors: 10hr 15 mins

Emergency fund: £2,294.88 / £7,200

Craft projects complete: 0

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

LadyWithAPlan

Bluegreen143 said:

Good day, fairly slow paced at work and I got three loads of washing away and the place tidied and hoovered. 

Picked up kids as planned (including extra child) and took them to the party which was fun. A good time had by all, children high on sugar 😂 and deposited extra child home before coming home ourselves. 

Dinner was mac & cheese bake (with broccoli and peas in) which Red cleverly made last night ready to pop in the oven for us coming home. He also made the Christmas Eve lasagne and froze it. 

I’ve finished both kids’ PJs! Pics below, though it’s hard to get good pics if they aren’t being worn.

In other exciting news, we’ve discovered £95 of clubcard vouchers! And added to our Christmas delivery to reduce the price. We have added extra alcohol now we know there’s extra money there, but this accounts for about half of the vouchers. The rest we will just allow to offset the delivery which will stop us going over our grocery budget this month.

Have to give credit where it’s due, it was Red who remembered about the clubcard vouchers though he had no idea we had so many.

These look fabulous, so well made and I love the whale fabric.

Bluegreen143

Ahhhhh just back from an amazing night away visiting one of my best friends in her new countryside home (two hours from us).

While I’m sad she moved away, I can totally understand why she and her fiancé felt this was where they want to move (they are hoping to start a family soon). Beautiful huge and quirky old house on the outskirts of a quaint village. Huge gardens, pond, attached woodlands, outbuildings and a stream. Amazing walks all around and the village has a school, village hall, pub, shop etc.

It’s also close to her mum and entire extended family and as my friend works for the family business she was travelling there once or twice a month already both for work and of course to see her mum. So basically she now has a proper idyllic countryside home with land, is close to family, and closer to work for when she needs to visit the office - not many people can tick so many boxes all in one house! Her partner is fully home based in his work so that’s not an issue.

It was so exciting hearing all their plans for growing food in their garden, splitting their own logs for the fire etc. As Red and I want this lifestyle once our kids are grown I found it SO inspiring and motivating to keep at the saving so it becomes achievable. I’m a bit jealous their kids will grow up with this whereas we need to wait til ours are grown but it’s the way things have worked out for us. We feel committed to the education path we’ve chosen plus can’t afford to move to the countryside near us (it’s expensive here) and couldn’t move farther afield due to work. 

This was also a VERY frugal roadtrip. As I spent exactly £0 😮 

1. I tried to give the driver petrol money but she wouldn’t accept as she said she’d have been going anyway. But I did make the car picnic for all three of us which they seemed to enjoy so hoping that counts as me doing my bit. This also meant not needing to buy food or drinks en route.

2. We didn’t go out, we ate lovely food cooked by my friend’s fiancé and drank delicious cocktails instead! I did bring brownies, cookies and champagne but I had all the ingredients and the wine already. 

3. Instead of doing anything expensive when there we went for two walks instead. Such a lovely place to go walking! 

So I have no spending to report today 😇 Red was very frugal while I was away too and just pottered about at home with the kids and went for walks. 

Stats for 2023

Books read: 3

Hours outdoors: 12hr 15 mins

Emergency fund: £2,294.88 / £7,200

Craft projects complete: 0

Average daily phone use (this week): 4hr 9 min

greenbee

Splitting your own logs isn't as much fun as it sounds @Bluegreen143. Feel free to come and give it a go anytime (I'm currently waiting for it to be dry enough to get the log splitter out and do the next batch). 

Bluegreen143

Haha I’ll be getting Red to do that, don’t you worry! 😂 

Bluegreen143

Just a quick note of spending as my lovely husband wants me to watch some TV with him!

Today’s spending

£8.85 Pub
My spends - Had an hour to kill while Monkey was at Beavers, because of not having a car so it wasn’t worth it to get home! So bought myself and another mum (a good friend) a cider at the local pub.

£7.35 ebay
Children’s clothes - Monkey wants a fluffy hooded all in one because Bambi got one for Christmas 😂 I found a second hand one on eBay 

£6.15 Amazon
Gifts - children’s book I bought for a baby shower gift  

sashybo

Just dropping by to say hello Bluegreen, reading through your diary and you have had a lot of frugal wins recently.  👏  

Walking to school/nursery is something I need to try and do a bit more often as I refuse to walk home up steep hills with a whinging exhausted-from-nursery 3 year old. Did it for the first time in ages last Thursday and it was actually fine apart from said 3 year old falling, getting a hole in her leggings and bruising and grazing both knees.  🤦‍♀️  So not that fine actually. 🤔 😂 

Bluegreen143

Haha @sashybo I can relate!!! Bambi isn’t always the best at walking either. She is amazing on her balance bike so the kids take their bikes rather than walk, it’s all downhill there, we leave the bikes in the nursery bike shelter then I have the big hill to get up home 😅 I usually drive the pick up, she’s surprisingly managed ok this past week though some of the days I’ve walked down then jumped on a bus home with the kids. So again I’m doing the walking but not necessarily them 😅

Bluegreen143

Still car free! It’s definitely helping my outdoor hours, but I’m missing being able to go anywhere that’s not local 😂 I want to use my new national trust membership!!

School was closed today due to strike action, but nursery was open, so it wasn’t too hard to work.

Managed to give Red a big list of days to book off for annual leave this year so that’s a mental load type job done. Still need to sort some of the sunmer but the rest is sorted. Red’s work are giving those who worked during the festive period this year, first dibs on getting it off next year on a first-come first-served basis which is why we started looking at annual leave to start with! 

Also booked a kids’ photoshoot I’d got a voucher for for my birthday. Today was the last day you could redeem it 🙈😂 annoyingly I had to give a £35 “refundable deposit” to hold the booking date. As the session is already paid for it seems overkill to also take a deposit (surely if I didn’t turn up I’d lose the chance to book again?).

Apparently I get it back on the day, or can use it as credit towards purchases. As usual with these things you only get prints of one image included and inevitably they are all lovely and you get sucked into buying a few 😂 will try to be strong and not spend too much! 

My plan going forward is to keep an eye out for a second hand tripod. I take decent pics of the kids tbh and if I got us all scrubbed up and the light was good I reckon I could do a decent family photoshoot myself. 

Frugal wins 

1. Forgot to put this yesterday, but I did a washing and hung to dry inside instead of tumble drying.

2. Monkey and I had leftover soup for lunch

3. Made and froze flapjacks for Monkey’s school snacks 

4. Yet again, have used no petrol given I have no car 😂

5. Made Red sandwiches up for work lunches the next two days 

Spending

£2.99 HP printer subscription
I’ve checked and it appears cheaper than buying the ink ad hoc

£35 Deposit for photographer
As mentioned above 

themadvix

If it’s the same company as I recently used (and the deposit is the same, so likely), then the prices are extortionate! Be stronger than me and stick with the free print! (I spent £250! 🙄😬 and worse still, they were the sort of photo one doesn’t display for all to see!)