Mortgage free in Forever Home :-)

KajiKita

Thanks @beanielou, @PennysIntoPounds, @Brewerspride 😊

debtfreewannabe321 said:

KajiKita said:

skint_spice said:

I hope the frog family settle in well 💗

Amphibians of various types seem to do quite well here. We have frogs, toads (though they live here, they never spawn here 🤷‍♀️) and newts 😊

KK

We had all these in our second but last house. I made a bucket pond for wildlife as a bit of a lockdown experiment with the kids and didn't expect much to come from it (was literally a huge bucket about 60cm or so across and a couple of ft deep) but we had frogs, toads, newts and dragonflies all in the first summer 🤩 and we got tadpoles too, the kids were so excited! I want to do the same here too as I realised they don't need a massive home, some are happy with a flat (bucket) instead of the mansion (lake) 🤣. 

I remember you saying about this. Nature loves a niche … 😊❤️🤩

We had a fabulous meal out last night. Really good food and we enjoyed each other’s company too ❤️

Trundled over to Hay today and we both bought books, but I was quite restrained, my pile is on the right …



I really focused on books that would be useful (that I could learn more about succession veg growing from, vegetarian cooking) or books that would bring me pleasure (a couple of children’s books - the secret garden and the house and in the woods and on the prairies books as I want to reread both of them). I deliberately left books that ‘would be good for me’ that I typically buy … I end up not reading them and they make me feel guilty … I am slowly thinning them out of my collection too. 

Mr KK wants a chippy tea, as lunch today was okay but didn’t feel like a treat to him. That’s fine, less cooking for me! 😉

Just waiting on the Toscos delivery and then I can do the run out to the chippy and we can curl up in front of the fire tonight 😊

KK

KajiKita

While we were in Hay, we popped into the crystals shop at the top of the main car park and I chose these for my birthday present from Mr KK 😊 They are Charoite and said to be good for spiritual growth, emotional healing and physical well being, which is something that is surfacing as my primary focus for 2026. (I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately, about how I want my life to be and how I might act to change it.)

The chippy tea tonight will be the last of my birthday ‘celebrations’ as my ‘friend’ with the uncanny valley, ‘ironed allotment’ wants to come over tomorrow and I have offered to feed her lunch. This might sound brutal, but I will be watching this interaction with her, to see how it makes me feel. She may become another friend I disconnect from…

KK

debtfreewannabe321

Gorgeous crystals!
I love purple ones, fluorite and amethyst are my go tos...I've not heard of your one I will look it up. 
I also watched an interaction with my friend the last time I saw her, I literally felt like I was the observer in the room 🤣 she always lets me down/ makes snarky backhanded compliments/ suggestions or comments and I feel down after every meeting with her. DP made me aware of that and so I observed to see what he meant - he was right..she left happy and uplifted and it took me two days to recover from her draining me. I didn't see here again...when she made excuses I just never followed up. 😁 I felt better for not seeing her which is very telling.

Humdinger1

Yes, beware of blood-sucking ghouls!  Quite right to cut them out.  Love Humdinger xx 

Greying_Pilgrim

Vegetarian Kitchen was my very first veggie cookbook - Sarah Brown is the author I think?  Someone who knew DH through his work, worked in a veggie cafe, and thought I might find it useful.  I passed it on some time ago, but when it was written, much like Rose Elliot, veggie cookbooks were in a minority.  It certainly got me started, and helped me to be a little more adventurous.

Is the vegetarian cafe/restaurant still in Hay?  I can't remember the name, but I think it's been there a long time.  It's been many years since I've visited, but I think DH and I had something to eat there...... is it the Granary?  Or am I making that up?

Greying X

KajiKita

Greying_Pilgrim said:

Vegetarian Kitchen was my very first veggie cookbook - Sarah Brown is the author I think?  Someone who knew DH through his work, worked in a veggie cafe, and thought I might find it useful.  I passed it on some time ago, but when it was written, much like Rose Elliot, veggie cookbooks were in a minority.  It certainly got me started, and helped me to be a little more adventurous.

Is the vegetarian cafe/restaurant still in Hay?  I can't remember the name, but I think it's been there a long time.  It's been many years since I've visited, but I think DH and I had something to eat there...... is it the Granary?  Or am I making that up?

Greying X

The Granary is still there but it’s not purely vegetarian any more, but it’s a good compromise option between myself and Mr KK (omnivore). He keeps wanting to ‘try somewhere else’ so we ended up in a place called the cosy cafe - it was okay but incredibly noisy and the food was not Mr KK’s style at all! 😂😂

There’s another purely vegetarian place that has opened up but Mr KK strode past it vigorously! 😂😂 If I’d been there in my own I’d have gone there 😊😉

KK

skint_spice

Sorry I seem to have missed your birthday! Belated birthday wishes and I love that jewellery 💗

Viking_mfw

Sarah Brown's Vegetarian Kitchen was a staple of my childhood and still the best carrot cake recipe I know!

KajiKita

@debtfreewannabe321, @Humdinger1, she is currently running an hour and 15 minutes late … 

Thanks @skint_spice 😊

Oooh, interesting @Viking_mfw, I will have to look at that one. I do find the older veggie recipe books have food more to my taste … 😉😂

Well the fact that my visitor is running so late has given me time to get washing on the line (the sun is quite warm so I am hopeful! 🌞😊) and do all my financial updates including setting up a new month on my YNAB sheet. 

Moved £50 eom excess after paying off CC to savings to help offset the firewood cost. 

Totted up my OPs for the month:
- £69.59 cashback (thank you aa! 😊) 
- £1.84 TTs
- £5.17 surveys (slightly better but still dire …)
- £18 eom excess in house EF after return of octopods balance (I am submitting regular readings to the new provider and we seem to be staying inside their expect usage / cost and building a small reserve okay atm …)
- £110 regular planned OP 🥳🎉🎊🤩😊
TOTAL: £249.43
Target was £181.81, which we would have missed without the aa cashback. Need to get better at surveys again …

Right, better do some more food prep …

KK

KajiKita

My friend was then delayed a bit more …! So I used the time to dead-leaf all my house plants, water a couple of them and dust the TV stand! 👏💪

My friend turned up at the door with her dog! 🙄 I had to say he couldn’t come in due to Chloe. She said ‘did you forget I had a dog?’ - I felt like saying ‘did you forget we have a cat?!’ I restrained myself and said that I thought she was staying locally and she would have left him there … Anyway, she put him in the van and we took him out for a walk later on, which was nice in the sunshine. 😊

Lunch was okay but way too small a portion - no waaaay that was enough for four! I have annotated the hard copy of the recipe accordingly. My friend is a bit gluten sensitive so I skipped the toasted pittas the recipe suggested and did roasted, in HG rosemary, baby potatoes which worked really well 😊

Mr KK loaded up the dishwasher and cleared down the kitchen for me (Hero Husband - I emptied the dishwasher later 😊) and then went out in the garden to do some bramble removal.

It was okay, but I forgotten quite how LOUD she is. I don’t think she’s deaf, but she’s enthusiastic and the volume she uses had both of us wincing at times … 😉

Its been a strange weekend, but because of that it’s felt like a long one 😊

KK