Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

Cheery_Daff

We used to get a lot of calls at our old house as Mr C had previously had a business listed in the yellow pages, operating from home. I accidentally discovered the 'are you the homeowner?' people could be very easily fobbed off by saying 'no, I rent a room' and said that to everyone after that 😂 

Don't even have the phone plugged in at the new house. The only reason we had a landlines at all was to still have a phone if there's a power cut (came in VERY handy a few years ago in a 4 day power cut (so no phone charging) AND the mobile mast went down 😬

Sadly we've been switched over to the new system, with the landlines needing to be plugged into the modem, meaning it doesn't work during a power cut, rendering it entirely useless. So we do own one, but it's not plugged in. On the plus side, very few scam calls! 😂

foxgloves

Hello Readers,
Such a busy day....I got my daily minimum steps without needing to do any marching up the garden or additional activity. In fact, if I had, had time to go out for a walk, I'd have done around 10k. So, what has been achieved on the budget-friendly front?
*Not a no-spend day as I did need to order some deodorant refills, but this is not a very regular purchase as I find they last a fair while & I do like being able to compost the cardboard.
*Garden pickings: Pear, grapes, courgettes. french beans, 1.5 kg tomatoes, carrots, blackberries.
*Made a veg crumble for tonight's meal, which took care of various veg. Shall serve it with courgettes stir-fried with garlic.
*Did a thorough triage of the courgettes in our veg basket & turned 1kg of them into courgette, potato & cheddar soup - a recipe I found online a couple of years ago - BBC Good Food, I think. It made 5 portions, one of which I ate for my lunch & the other 4 are in the freezer.
*Used the tomatoes I picked today to make pasta sauce - Carluccio's recipe - a basic one which can be used in its own right or as a base for other dishes such as lasagne, etc. Just cooling ready to freeze.
*Made tomorrow's packed lunch & breakfast.
*Did my usual Monday morning budget updates. Moved a few bits & bobs of money around & generally got things straight for tomorrow's belated Mid-Month Budget Check-In.
*Checked my credit card account just to make sure that the crim who phoned me hadn't managed to do anything in the last couple of days.....though the card for which he has details is now blocked.
*Changed bed linen & added it to the Monday laundry pile - 3 loads done, all pegged out for free drying, which was fine, despite 2 or 3 spells of silly drizzle.
*Did a couple of surveys. My earnings this month will be truly pitiful if I don't get back to tackling surveys on a consistent basis. 
*Tweaked this week's meal plans to make better use of our fresh produce. 
TV quiz night tonight so we will be competing against each other on those. I don't intend to do any more jobs today, that's for sure, but I do have more kitchen witchery lined up for tomorrow.
Oh, & I would dearly like to begin tomorrow morning without a half a rodent to deal with! I strongly suspect that Soot took it down then left it to be eaten by a magpie as after I'd moved the sorry remains off the lawn, I noticed that a magpie flew down & seemed to be searching the area where it had been. Soot also caught a red admiral this afternoon. Thankfully I saw him do it & managed to rescue it & it flew off without any damage. For an 11-year old cat who had never even been outside until he came to live with us, he can certainly hunt. While I am happy for him to control rodent numbers, as we have had annual mouse problems here over several years, I do keep an eye on what he's getting up to so that any other creatures can be saved. He doesn't seem too bothered about going out at night, which is a help.
Right, I shall say goodbye for now & wish you all a pleasant evening.
F x

Sun_Addict

Thank goodness you were able to spot the scammer. It’s scary how these crooks can get hold of sufficient information to sound almost plausible. 

Fingers crossed no part rodents to deal with tomorrow.