Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

Blackcats

Thank you for the cat update.  Glad they are both doing well.  I'm sure they were both pleased to get home (as was MrF)
as a young cat BC always looked pitifully thin but his weight was fine.  He's definitely filled out a bit now.  Last night he managed to break into a large bag of dreamies that hadn't been locked away.  I can only think he must have gorged himself as he was in no rush for breakfast this morning.

foxgloves

They are holy terrors, aren't they, @Blackcats? 
F

foxgloves

Hello Daffodils,
Busy morning, but I am pretty much in pottering about mode now, as I intend doing a bit of cooking while listening to my audiobook, then enjoying some sofa time with my other book. Progress hampered by Soot this morning.....what happened was that Ash ate the remaining breakfast which he'd left earlier & Soot obviously got an enticing whiff of fish-breath & thought Ash had been given early lunch & that he'd been forgotten. This was at 9.45am for pity's sake, but he launched into lunch-biscuit pester which persisted all morning & was around my ankles constantly, keeping up a steady stream of hard-done-by meows. Despite his best efforts, I have managed some budget-friendly stuff today:
*Home care two hours (to make up for yesterday's attack of cba-ness - Vacuumed entire house, cleaned bathroom, emptied bins, changed bed & household linens. Made up a strong soda crystal solution for bathroom basin as it has been running more slowly than I'd like, which is usually a warning sign. Usual minimal products & washable cloths, anyway.
*Made dough for a batch of rolls - just on 2nd proving ready to bake once I've signed out of here.
*Picked a colander of cavolo nero - it has been re-sprouting since Christmas so it's nice to be able to have some free organic greens. Need to get it finished very soon though as I can tell it's ready to bolt.
*Tonight's nosebag will be the tamale pie I swapped with pasta last night. It's a Patrick Holford recipe & a good way of stretching 100g mince to make a tasty filling meal for two. Pepper looks too big, so intend to dice the other half of it & freeze for the veggie bulghur I have on next week's meal plans. Will also freeze the surplus half a jar of bottled tomatoes & tin of butterbeans as these can go towards the base of a veggie crumble at some point. Love it when ingredient can be rolled over as it means fewer things to buy. Intend to stir-fry the kale with some garlic tonight  to get a bit more veg. 
*Did a couple of very minor financials, but I am enjoying really being 'on it' atm, I think because we both want to have made a difference to those Savings Pots when we come to evaluate Project Surbiton at next January's Money Summit Meeting.
*No PA surveys for me today, or at least not while I was online, but I did get on a roll with Ips*s today & now only need 21 points to reach next cash-out. All cash-outs from this site are always sent to Savings Pots, so it's another little boost for them if I can maximise doing as many of their surveys as possible. 
*Entered 2 competitions.
*Wrote cards for March birthdays. One requires a letter, so I shall aim to write that soon.
Oh & finally, a reminder about why it is important to be aware of exactly what is in one's toiletries stash....we are planning a city centre trip at the end of next week so I started a shopping list with 'Body butter', as I am down to the last 1/4 of my current one. Then I had a rummage in my stash basket for a new hand cream & found not just A body butter, but the double-size 400ml one which I bought after Christmas & had completely forgotten about. Now crossed off list!
Right, off I go to do a few bit of veg chopping while attempting to solve audiobook crime.
Keep it in your purse now, it doesn't leap out by itself!
F x

Suffolk_lass

foxgloves said:

@PennysIntoPounds - Yes, he can't have been a local lorry driver. The teeny-tiny bridge, which is pretty much one car at a time, is on a very rural road (& by 'road' I mean about 4 miles of potholes joined together with a few just about discernible fragments of actual tarmac) & requires a sharp right-angled turn to access. Mr Artic the Lorry had thus got himself in a pickle with his cab on the bridge & the rest of him barely able to move more than a mm at a time. Mr F said irate drivers were shaking their fists & other assorted hand gestures. It's a real downside of sat-navs. 
F

We used to have problems with Artic lorries in one of the village quiet lanes. All single track with a right angle bens between the B road through the village and the major trunk road, it had resulted in needing to open farm gates to facilitate lorries making 10mm turns within their 171point turns. We got the Parish Clerk to contact an organisation that arranged for the route to be removed from all the HGV versions of Sat Navs.

It took a few years but we no longer have this issue, just the replacement issue of two lorries passing on the proper junction slip road, forcing one over the kerb (which now sits like a foot high wall because it has been compromised so many times); we have had two or three tip over into the hedge. That makes for a quiet afternoon as it closes the road!

ladyholly

Modern lorries are simply too big for many country roads and villages. One of our local villages regularly has problems where the road is very narrow, has a bend, a junction and a hill as it goes through the village. There is a bypass being built which will hopefully solve at least some of the problem. This is the bypass that was first propose in the very early 1900s.

foxgloves

Morning Sunbeams,
Productive morning underway here. I'm just hardboiling a pan of eggs while waiting for the laundry to finish. Not a no-spend day. Turned out that when Mr F took the car for its appt for 2 new tyres, only one tyre of the correct size had been supplied, so he's back there atm getting the job finished, grrrrr.
*Mr F popping into supermarket on way back from tyre place as he has a £6 off a £30 spend voucher which we are using to reduce the price on a couple of big boxes of persian queen.
*Laundry done so as to make the most of pegging-out weather for towels & bed linen.
*Divvied up last night's chicken leftovers - enough for tonight's meal & tomorrow's packed lunch.
*Mixed up a sourdough for baking tomorrow morning.
Then it will be garden tasks:
*A little more clearing...esp baddies for the garden wheelie bin which is due for collection this week.
*Pot up scotch bonnet chilli babies & transfer to upstairs 'chilli nursery' windowsill.
*Sow remaining tomatoes & cavolo nero.
*Chat through our diaries so we know what we're doing this coming week.
*Might sort out containers required for growing our carrots, spring onions, radishes & rocket. This will depend how far I get with tidying jobs in my hslf of the shed.
Also intend to read, do the crossword, knit & have a luvverly hot bubble bath. 
Went out to local (ish) gorge yesterday for a fab sunny walk. Breakfast on their cafe veranda (Personal Spends) & gift shop temptation resisted except for a nice arty Easter card for my sis & family.
Ok, boots going on as I sally forth into the garden. 
Love F x

foxgloves

Hello Diary Readers,
Fairly productive day on the whole, though enjoyed taking an hour to finish reading my book over a coffee.
Budget-friendly offerings:
*Did 2 laundry loads to make the most of what was supposed to be a day of light cloud & sunshine, before pegging out in the reality of cold wind & fog. Must go & fetch it all in shortly - almost certainly going to need some heated airer time.
*A bit of free fitness trotting swiftly down to the postbox with a birthday card in time for today's collection.
*Wrote to a friend - printed it out in a fetching shade of green to make the very low black ink cartridge last a little longer.
*Did a survey.
*Checked veggie seedlings. First of the tomatoes defo starting to pop up.
*Baked the sourdough I made yesterday.
*Home care hour: Aforementioned laundry, tidying & vacuumed all of downstairs.
*Free resources: Surplus post-it notes which Mr F acquired from a recent training course. Also buttons salvaged from an old shirt destined for the bin - now in my button jar.
*Did my regular Monday morning budget updates. Mostly grocery budget & Personal Spends. Paid the car tyres transaction off credit card. Our £50 PB winnings had landed so I sent that to the Presents Pot, which has been looking pretty feeble following Christmas & all the winter birthdays.
I'd intended an hour in the garden this afternoon, but it took me longer than intended to write my letter - it's nice to send a decent-length missive when it's my only contact with someone & only twice a year - & also, it's so blimmin' chilly out there today, I didn't fancy faffing around getting togged up in warmer gear. Hopefully there will at least be some sunshine tomorrow, even though it is going to be cold.
Hope everyone's managed at least a reasonably decent start to the week,
F x

Suffolk_lass

I was like you with the weather, and avoided working outside by resorting to making up frames (brood, for my hives) in preparation for the new beekeeping year - in the kitchen! (on newspaper). Enough for two nucleus boxes, with five frames for each plus a sixth shallow frame of drone comb for each. Fortunately, a friend interrupted; he popped round to check on Mr Sl (an excuse, I think, as) he brought me 5 bee-suits from the teaching apiary for me to wash (I offered, but he alluded to one or two), so they were done on 90c overnight (!!) when the unit price is 13p, not 34p. At least three loads of washing today, including several sweatshirts and pairs of jeans (I seem to have reverted to the dribble phase!).

Sunny and cold here. I might just revise

foxgloves

It's real March weather atm, isn't it, @Suffolk_lass. It's too warm for my coat while working in the garden one minute, then so cold I can't get my hands warm the next. I hear there may even be some sleet around tomorrow. The Spring bulbs are starting to make everywhere look more colourful though & the seeds popping up on my greenhouse bench are giving me a bit of a mood boost.
F

foxgloves

Hello Diary Readers,
Today is one of those days which seems to have disappeared up its own wot-not. I had intended to get more leisure-based things done & probably would have done, had I not had a blimming mouse to deal with. Thank-you Ash for THAT, I don't think! Anyway, budget-friendly stuff as follows:
*Dinner in slow cooker - very easy one from a book I borrowed from the library back when I first got my slow cooker - Smoky sausages & beans. There'll be sufficient for 2 spare portions too, one of which Mr F might fancy tomorrow instead of planned meal, I'll see. I think we must have bought the biggest red pepper in the shop! It was an absolute beast, so I have only used half of it & diced & froze the rest for another day. I do like to roll ingredients forward if I can as it saves on re-buying them next time.
*Baked a batch of wholemeal rolls for the freezer  - useful having some in there in case my bread baking goes off-schedule & we find ourselves needing to buy a loaf. Added an extra egg to hardboil while I had the pan on to save gas use another day.
*Made tomorrow's packed lunch & breakfast.
*Sorted all the clean laundry & although it looked like there'd be a hideous amount of ironing (NB - For me, that doesn't have to be much!), once I'd put away all the non-iron stuff, there wasn't actually all that much at all, so not much electricity used there.
*Wrote to my sister. I have always enjoyed writing & receiving letters & had several penfriends as a child/teenager. Thought the paper I used looked quite pretty but in fact, it's some decorative pages I cut from a partially-used A4 notebook to add to my stationery stash. Still have some stamps left in my stash from the bulk-buy of 2nd class pretty ones I did last year before the prices went up. Have suggested some dates for a potential family meet-up mid-way between here & London as I will have plants for her & an item for my nephew which is too heavy & unusually-shaped to post easily.
*Sewed in a few more ends on present stash sock. I would have got it finished had Ash not presented me with a damn rodent...........
.....well, yes, there I was calmly weaving in ends & looking forward to turning the sock the right way round to see how all those leftover self-patterning sock yarns from my stash had worked together, when the cat flap sounded, then there was an almighty grey-stripy kerfuffle in the living room doorway, involving 2 forward rolls & some equally crazy pouncing & in came Ash with a large mouse in his mouth. He ran into a hard to reach corner & let it go, where it promptly scarpered behind a book case. Despite his best endeavours to winkle it out with his paw, the mouse was having none of it, so Ash decided the most helpful thing he could do would be to leave it for me to deal with & go to sleep!! I'm afraid that rather than have the poor thing subjected to a mauling from the two beasticles later, I deployed the electronic trap, because it is an instant death. I put it next to the book case & a couple of hours later, noticed that the red 'You have caught a rodent' light was flashing & I was able to take it out into the garden for burial. I've mentioned before that we have had real problems with mice in the past - every Autumn until Soot & Ash came to live with us we had incursions into the house, nesting under the floorboards, chewing stuff in the pantry, etc, but these two do seem to provide a deterrent effect. There are certainly house mice around in the garden & breeding - lots of people on our road put out bird food, there are chickens too, & I'm fine with that. I'm not squeamish about them (or rats for that matter) but I just don't want them in the house  - for hygiene reasons, but also damage as they are shocking chewers. We only had to have pest control out once & the chap who came said that stripped wooden floors mean they can run between adjoined properties (we have a semi-detached) & pop up through really very tiny gaps in boards. I remember him saying that if I can get the end of a pencil in a gap, then a young mouse can get through. 
NOT money saving - our water bill landed today & I am not happy with the increase of 19.74%. This doesn't  reflect current inflation & to my mind is an absolute p*ss-take. There is a little statement at the top of the bill which tells me how they will be "putting around £3000 per household" into their networks up to 2030 for improvements, cleaner rivers & a reliable service. I can't help but think that if sufficient of our payments had gone into infrastructure improvements & less into filling the bank accounts of bosses & shareholders, we would not now be having to make up such a shortfall. Well, I shall have to pay it, but I am not minded to go away & shut up gracefully. IMO this has been the most usurious of all the service industry privatisations & frankly, none of them have exactly emerged covered in fairness & glory. I think our income has increased by about 5% this year & I know that many households won't even see that. I have yet to receive our new Council Tax bill. I shall be less aggrieved by that, as it does at least go to local services, rather than shareholders, but it is certainly going to be another increased figure on the monthly bills spreadsheet.
Well, I shall soon be going out to wave my umbrella if I don't calm down & think about something else, so I shall wish you all a pleasant evening, sign out & go & distribute today's very small number of allowed cat treats. I'm not sure if naughty rodent-bringers actually deserve any, but we like equality in this house & I can't be doing with tragic little cat sad faces if they think they've been left out.
Love F x