Mortgage free in Forever Home :-)

Cheery_Daff

Merry Christmas to you too KK! 😊

CCW007

Merry Christmas KK, hope you have a lovely day x

Twolabsandacat

Merry Christmas KK and all your lovely followers x

skint_spice

Merry Christmas kk x

redofromstart

What I really want to know is if the ultrasonic jewellery cleaner is in use yet? Hope you are having a lovely day.

Four_Seasons

Merry Christmas KK hope you are having a great day xx

KajiKita

redofromstart said:

What I really want to know is if the ultrasonic jewellery cleaner is in use yet? Hope you are having a lovely day.

Not quite yet!! 😂 I’ve been cooking all morning, eating a huge lunch, washing up and just got back in from a walk. Ringing my mum at 3pm (yes, I have an appointment!). Might. E tomorrow before I have the energy …

The tapestry is everything I hoped for 😊 and Mr KK has bought me enough posh gardening gloves to last me two years! 🤩❤️

In turn he liked his ‘surprise’ present of a F1tbit 😊

KK

KajiKita

Rang my parents. My mum didn’t realise I had knitted the blankets!! 😳🙄 She said she liked her dark brown one - hello it’s PURPLE! 😂
My dad was loquacious! Talked about his research both collations and individual, selling liquid helium, the health services of the US, the UK and Slovenia … 

Remind me how I am descended from these two?? 😂😉

They were both in quite good spirits, which was nice 😊 

KK

KajiKita

KK’s 2024 Review:

 

Work / professional:

-          Helped support the Parish Council through two new Chairs and a new (hopeless) clerk … 🙄

-          Co-ordinated and physically helped with the village Defib installation. 😊

-          Boss and I went our separate ways at the end of September – MSE’rs started saying I needed to look for a new job in July. Reading back over this diary I am still not really clear what it was I did wrong / failed at. My boss seems to have kept shifting the goal posts with increasing rapidity throughout the year from January onwards. His behaviour towards the end was dreadful – d’you remember the bit where he said I had to go because I wasn’t the right person for the job and then a week later asked me to prep slides for him to present 2 days after I had left, about successes we had had in my area ….? 😳😂 Sheesh ….

 

House stuff:

-          Started looking at how to reorganise the kitchen. Had a few false starts at this but made some good progress – the rearranged cupboard for the baking trays and chopping boards is excellent and I also CS’d a heap of unused large frying pans.

-          New bathroom – went over budget by quite a bit but a useful learning exercise, especially for Mr KK who tends to underestimate how much other trades will cost us. 🤔

-          New monoblock kitchen tap, TV and integrated fridge for the kitchen.

-          Mr KK got the conservatory professionally cleaned – it is still looking good ❤️

-          Got the rendering done around the outside of the patio, the wall where we changed the bathroom window and the area where the new fireplace was put in in the lounge. Oh Yee Gods! that man was a lazy, work shy, untidy pain. We are still not on great terms with him – we don’t speak – not a great loss tbh. This all needs painting next spring.

-          Sorted the kitchen ‘Drawer of Doom’, cleaned kitchen cupboard fronts and open spice shelves, thinned manuals and organised light bulbs and batteries! 💪👏

 

MSE Things:

-          Halved our broad band costs by moving to fibre after a 3 week battle to actually get the installation done.

-          Secured a new 5 year mortgage deal at 3.85%. More than we were paying before but nowhere near as bad as some have ended up with. Had to pay a £999 fee but should get £250 cashback to offset that … come to think of it, I haven’t seen that yet … 🤔

-          Coached a colleague’s son in English from January to end of March – never again! Remind me of this …  😉

-          Payrise in March less than half that of inflation / rest of Mgt team thanks to boss losing faith in me. This was supposed to incentivise me, apparently … 🙄

-          Intermittent fault with my car that I tried for months to fix, led to it dying on me in the midst of rush hour traffic in the centre of London! 😱 Enough!! I bought a new to me car … cash.

-          Sold my scrap silver jewellery for £63 to use as an OP. 👏

-          Hemmed the curtains behind the front door that Chloe was using as a mouse pocket! 🐁 😂

-          Pensions review with an independent IFA – found it quite reassuring. Up my contribution to the company pension so I could max the matched contribution to 10% - managed to do this for 6 months before I had to leave. This needs revisiting now I am in a new NEST pension with very low matched amounts …

-          New deal with energy supplier. C. 50% increase – again it could have been much worse!

-          EF at start of 2024 = £17.3K, EF at end of 2024 £35.4K not unhappy with this considering the new car and the spends on the house. A lot of this is the settlement I got of course. 

-          OPs: 69 in total, smallest = 12p, largest = £421, total value = £2075 – wish it could have been more. 🤷‍♀️

 

Energy saving things:

-          Bought an air fryer - use it a lot. 

-          Replaced 4 x blown double glazed units. Think these have made quite a bit of difference. 

-          Bought a draft excluder for the bottom of the front door. This made an immediate difference! 😊

-          Stopped the cats using the conservatory cat flap so the door from the kitchen to conservatory stays closed in winter.

 

Garden:

-          Tried growing Yacon – never again. My guts really didn’t appreciate them and they had pretty much no taste. Quite a bit of work for very little return.

-          The east facing courtyard looked really pretty this summer with begonias and lobelia in pots – definitely one to repeat and I have saved the tubers 💐😊

-          The cutting garden did quite well this year – sweet peas, cosmos, zinnias and Tithonia though the dahlias were an absolute bust all over the garden and most of them rotted off.

-          Sit spot border had moments of looking beautiful this year. Osteospermums and primulas like growing here.❤️

-          Kept on top of border edgings throughout the garden – made a big difference – to be repeated.❤️

-          Managed to remove the huge clumps of persicaria that were dominating the plantings by the pond, with an axe! 👏💪

-          Grew Helianthus ‘Sun Queen’ from seed and put 4 plants of it around my garden. Hopefully they should come back year after year.❤️

-          Fantastic peas crop – I have saved seed for 2025 as well  😊❤️

-          Runner beans useless – partly because I put them in far too late as I was waiting for the broad beans to finish.🤷‍♀️

-          In the greenhouse the tomatoes did pretty well, the cucumbers and the aubergine – might as have not bothered!

-          Reasonable qtys of potatoes especially Pink Fir Apple. No scab, so I obviously need to water a lot more in my thin soil on a sloping site!

-          Don’t remember wasting as many plants for not having anywhere to put them. This is a big win and habit change for me, that I am rather proud of ❤️

-          Overall, my garden had more flowers than the year before … ❤️

 

Personal things:

-          Started the year at 600 days streak in January, now at 952! Doing a mix of French and maths. The latter I am finding quite hard but I suspect is very good for me … 😉

-          Restarted and finally finished my mum’s lap blanket. ❤️

-          Made pizza dough and pizzas completely from scratch using yeast for the first time ever. Mr KK loved them. I still think this is one of the highlights from my year. Also, stewed plums for the first time ever – Mr KK appreciative.

-          Revisited Tai Chi for a few weeks when looking for work, started W@lkFit, found a 1 mile loop from my house, had physio on a started to recover function in my shoulder, lost 8lbs. All stalled or reversed when I went back to work. Need to find a way to make this work in 2025.

-          Eye test (first time in 5 years??) – 3 new pairs of glasses. New YNAB budget line established

-          Cooked food, from scratch, for me for Christmas dinner. It worked really well 😊

Heart things:

o   FiL diagnosed as terminal in January – his death process put us all under pressure.

o   Flower, my gorgeous, loving, funny little cat died suddenly in early March. 😢

o   Aunt died in April, I did a reading, which you all helped me find.

o   Also in April, FiL died. I prepared and delivered his eulogy.

o   George and Chloe joined us on Easter Sunday. George got run over at the end of November.

 

Overall:

It has been a hard year. I would like 2025 to be less intense, preferably with no funerals or dead cats to deal with, definitely no readings or eulogies!!

I would like more fun, better health and fitness and a few more flowers than last year  I will also do some more structured goals …

KK

Brie

Wow - you make me feel quite lazy in comparison.  I don't think I am really but just not as good as being as reflective as you.  Quite agree with the fact you had a hard year and join you in hoping for a year with less on the funereal side of any sort.  

Did enjoy a slight misread towards the end although at first I was a bit mystified by you wanting some more structured goats.  Proof of how bad my eyes are at times!!