Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

Suffolk_lass

And over here, we may have to rummage for a replacement transformer for one string of outside lights. I have two boxes of redundant carp to look through ). I'm also going to bin some that I think are becoming dangerous (they are over 20 years old) as the transparent plastic sleeve the wire is in, is starting to break down, and the whole strip feels too warm for my liking (living, as we do, in a thatched place)

Blackcats

ladyholly said:

foxgloves said:

off to the tip tomorrow. Ditto (oh joy!!!) quite a few items from Mr F's tech graveyard. I reckon @ladyholly will know all about these, as I reckon Mr LH may also have oodles of cables & bits of tech that 'might come in useful' again. 

You know us so well. The funny thing is whenever he needs a cable for something we never seem to have the right one. As for things that "might come in useful". I think he has cornered the market in them.

I'd like to nominate MrBC as the S.East regional representative for piles of useless cables and just in case techy trash.  He has some in our HQ room, some in the garage and some in his shed.  No logic as to which cables are where, just tangled mess in multiple locations.

Happy New Year!

Crazycatlady2

Just wanted to pop in and say I really enjoy reading your diary 

Glad you all had a great Christmas and New year. Good luck with the roof work 

I've just been diagnosed with a large brain tumor and am waiting for more tests and an operation 😢 I am leaving you with a festive pic of one of my cats

Makingabobor2

Crazycatlady2 said:

Just wanted to pop in and say I really enjoy reading your diary 

Glad you all had a great Christmas and New year. Good luck with the roof work 

I've just been diagnosed with a large brain tumor and am waiting for more tests and an operation 😢 I am leaving you with a festive pic of one of my cats

Sending you healing vibes & hugs x

kayannie

Crazycatlady2 said:

Just wanted to pop in and say I really enjoy reading your diary 

Glad you all had a great Christmas and New year. Good luck with the roof work 

I've just been diagnosed with a large brain tumor and am waiting for more tests and an operation 😢 I am leaving you with a festive pic of one of my cats

I hope everything goes well for you.

It took me a while to see the cat! A lovely photo.
KAx

foxgloves

@Crazycatlady2 - What a fabulous photo! Your cat looks to have been posing for the camera. Sorry to hear about your medical news. What a worry for you. I wish you all the best with your further tests & surgery. 
F xx

foxgloves

@Kajikita - Start date should be next Monday, but given the weather this week, I am going to try & confirm this in a day or two when hopefully, there will be more sense of whether or not conditions are going to be viable for roofing work. 

@ladyholly & @Blackcats - I can confirm that the heap of gizmos from the tech graveyard did indeed go to the tip & while the 'Old Techy Stuff Curator' was there, he had a good look around & apparently (stands back in amazement, hair stands on end!!) he is returning there next weekend with an old TV which has been in the loft for so long, I'm surprised it hasn't put down roots! 

@Suffolk_lass - Those cruddy wire coatings sound distinctly suboptimal, especially in a thatched house, so I am recommending a one-way trip to the tip for them! Can't you tell I have the New Year decluttering vibe?

foxgloves

TODAY'S GROCERY BUDGET PUZZLE......
Monday always means a session at my desk doing weekly budget updates. Today, there was over a week's worth of receipts to tackle/allocate as with being out of routines (in a good & festive way), I hadn't actually done any meaningful updating since Dec 28th. I rounded up all the grocery budget receipts & entered the amounts on my January grocery page under Week 1 & as January is a 5-week month (in terms of how we organise our grocery shopping), I wrote headings for Weeks 2 to 5 too. Then, when checking against my diary, I realised that the shopping list I will be writing tomorrow for picking up later this week, will actually be food for Week 3. Eh? What happened to Week 2? Did it fall down a black hole? Was it carried away by goblins? Investigations commenced.
Findings? Well, it was a good thing, actually. When updating from that little pile of receipts this morning, I'd combined Week 1 AND Week 2's grocery purchases under Week 1. Week 1's money more than covered it, so I didn't notice. But because I'd done this, Week 2's grocery spend was showing as a big fat zero, as the coming week is DEFINITELY Week 3. Decided to use this positively by moving a wine stock-up to Week 2 instead of funding it from elsewhere as I initially intended. The C**p had an offer over the festive period in which you buy 4 bottles of wine & the cost of the lowest price one is refunded to your dividend card. We decided to make a 2nd use of this to stock up & when we got to the counter, it turned out that there was also a "3 for £15" offer on wine & both offers could be used concurrently. So that meant we could have 4 bottles for £23 with one of them refunded back to us in dividend/cashback points. With a zero grocery spend for Week 2, it seemed a no-brainer to use some of that week's allocated money for the wine. The rest of it has been split between Weeks 3 to 5, which will give us a little more for other stock-up items. It's a good outcome, but I was baffled as to what had happened to Week 2 - I actually said to Ash, who was warming his stripy tail over the radiator in Foxgloves HQ, "I've lost a week!" It felt like it, but actually, I'd gained Week 2's money!
Various things have contributed to this - I budgeted extra for December & of course all the festive leftovers have stretched into January, with plenty of my turkey batch cooks still in the freezer, bumping meals further into the month because we made meals with leftover ham, cheese, etc, instead. Using odds & ends of festive baking for dessert, all the usual use-it-up behaviour. We also seemed to have quite a few free things come our way - mince pies, chocs, mentioned in previous posts, plus blueberries from MandS for Mr F's birthday month. We also had a free box of eggs from our milkman which we suspect may have been because we are right at the end of his round & he probably found he still had an undelivered box on the truck, so I shall be bunging one of those in tonight's kedgeree & another in Mr F's packed breakfast tomorrow. Also noticed earlier that we are only about 4 stamps away from £10  of free meat on our local butcher loyalty card. These little things all add up, don't they? I have decided against having a fish box this month as we still have quite a bit left from the last one so waiting until next time they are in our area will be a good saving too 9as well as freezer space). 
We woke up to a white world this morning - so pretty, but I was glad I didn't have to drive to work in it. Of course Mr F did, but he pinged me to say that his route north had been well gritted & other drivers seemed to be using their common sense. Soot, who had never set so much as a paw outdoors before he came to live with us at the age of 7, will now go outside in light drizzle but knowing he won't go out in snow, I set up a litter tray first thing while I was still in my nightie. Mr F went out to fetch the blimming thing & I got it all set up on newspapers, tipped in a generous amount of wood pellets, & approximately TWO MINUTES after I had kindly gone to this trouble accompanied by arctic conservatory air blowing around my nethers, I heard the cat flap & there was Soot trotting off down the garden!! You couldn't make it up! He has previously refused even to cross the threshold of the back door if he can see snow. 
Ah well, I have yakked on quite long enough. Time to close the curtains & get the place cosied down for the evening. 
F x

PennysIntoPounds

Hurrah for bargain wine and finding week 2 🥂
Your tale of Soot has made me smile 

foxgloves

He is an absolute monkey, @PennysIntoPounds
His latest obsession is looking in bins for random pieces of cellophane to play with. We confiscate them as we don't want him swallowing plastic, but he doesn't always give them up willingly.