Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

Makingabobor2

Well at least I am not the only one who manages to trip over things....lol.  Seriously though, hope you didn't hurt yourself too much. 
Hope Ash's dental treatment is ok, and he's not too starving by the time he comes round. 

Enjoy the scrambled eggs, its one of my favourite things, especially with tomato ketchup on...although I know that's not too healthy.  They say as long as you have eggs, potatoes and bread, you will always have a meal. 

Suffolk_lass

You see, now I feel as though I have missed out on velvet cloaks! I have got a 1980s suede jacket in a slightly more blouson look than ideal. Think sleeves pushed up towards elbows and that look. I didn't ever do that, by the way. It was an etsy purchase after looking for years for a shirt style

ladyholly

I have always wanted a long Scottish widows type black velvet coat with a kingfisher blue lining. I am not sure when I would use it now but would still love to own it. I love the feel of velvet and had a velvet wedding dress as did dd although hers was purple. 

PennysIntoPounds

Glad you're okay (and still speaking to Mr F 😁), I frequently suffer from dratted furniture, doors, walls sneakily moving so I wallop into them, so my sympathies that your coffee table is having a rebellious phase.
Hope all goes okay with the vets

 ladyholly said:

I have always wanted a long Scottish widows type black velvet coat with a kingfisher blue lining. I am not sure when I would use it now but would still love to own it. I love the feel of velvet and had a velvet wedding dress as did dd although hers was purple. 

The inheritance money is saying do it @ladyholly
If Mr LH gets a classic car, you absolutely can get a beautiful cape you've always wanted 

Sun_Addict

Hope all goes smoothly for Ash's dental treatment today. My older cat had her teeth cleaned about 4/5 years ago and recovered very quickly. 

foxgloves

Thanks, @Sun_Addict. He's just on his way home now. Will include him in tomorrow's update.
F

foxgloves

@ladyholly - I think treating yourself to a velvet cloak would be a lovely treat. You could maybe wear it for your theatre visits in the cooler months? Not that I'm trying to tell you how to spend your inheritance money of course, but it would be more of a personal gift to yourself (the equivalent of Mr LH having a 'new' vintage car to play with?)
My sister made mine, so it was probably cheaper than buying one. 

@PennysIntoPounds - I am not feeling as sore today but I do have quite an impressive bruise to the side of my rib cage where the corner of a bookcase broke my fall by jabbing me hard as I crashed to the floor. 
F

foxgloves

Hello Diary Readers,
I think I shall do 2 posts today, starting with Ash's vet trip yesterday. He needed a full dental so had grumpily done the 'no food from midnight' thing & was dropped off early by Mr F, who remembered to ask for an estimate of the cost. Well, when he came home & relayed what he'd been told...... "We can't exactly say until we have done the teeth scaling & can see what else needs to be done in terms of extractions, etc, but it could be around £800". Oh my life! I thought I was going to need to send out for the village defibrillator!! £800 for a dental! Mr F said he was so shocked, he even momentarily considered taking Ash home & not going through with it, but I know he'd never have done that, as we had been told his teeth needed attention & we 'd also recently spotted him chewing his fishy chunks a bit oddly, so we wouldn't have put money before our animal's wellbeing.............but £800!! Now, I knew the dental was coming up this Autumn, so when the Meow Pot reached its usual agreed maximum of £600 (both cats are insured for emergencies), I actually carried on & stuffed an extra £100 in. We are also carrying a larger buffer zone on our current account atm (the last bit of the money I inherited from our elderly relative) so there wasn't a problem paying the bill, it was just that it seemed so enormous for a dental. I convinced myself it must be something to do with Ash having asthma & having a general anaesthetic. We did agree to their recommended pre-anaesthetic blood test for cats of 7+ years as although we think Ash is 7 next year, we don't actually know because he was a feral & his age estimated when we adopted him, but we knew the cost of this test only accounted for £40 of the estimated £800. 
You can imagine the stress was 2-fold at Hagstones Manor yesterday - firstly Ash having a GA with his asthma & secondly that looming bill to pay. 
Mr F rang at 3pm as instructed for an update but Ash was only just going into surgery due to 2 emergencies coming in & obviously needing to take priority. He was finally collected at 5.30pm & as he was the last surgical patient of the day, he was still absolutely smacked up to the eyeballs on anaesthetic, wobbled out of his carrier & flopped onto a blanket for the next few hours. He required 4 extractions so has painkiller medicine & I'm pleased to say seems to be recovering well today.  But here's a thing about the bill.........
It was £365.00. Nowhere NEAR the estimated £800. Mr F commented that this was way under the huge amount he'd been quoted earlier that day & was told that they prefer to estimate the upper end - we got the impression that this is so people are prepared for what could happen, as if they estimate only the lower end, it can come as a shock when it's a lot higher. I can understand that entirely, but did feel we'd spent a lot of time discussing HOW it could be £800 & working out the best way to pay for it (me). I want to add that I did feel very grateful that we do have the ability to pay, even if they HAD found £800's worth of problems. Thank goodness for Savings Pots! Though I shall need to build the Meow Fund back up again, it was a relief knowing that it was there & was more than able to cover the bill.
So that's an update on Ash & his blimmin' teeth! A much less stressful day today, I'm pleased to say.
F x

foxgloves

And now for today's post.
I volunteered to be the post-anaesthetic cat observer for the morning so set myself a few target tasks while Mr F (who is on his day off....the compressed working hours he negotiated are working well for us) decided to go & do Week 2's grocery shopping. Have also decompressed from yesterday (neither of us cope well with poorly cats) by having plenty of leisure time too. Anyway, today's budget-friendly bits & bobs as follows:
*Tomorrow's packed lunch & breakfast made.
*Mixed up a sourdough to bake tomorrow morning - now on 2nd proving in its basket.
*Gave my cherry & walnut mincemeat a good final stir & bottled it. I halved the quantity but will still have a spare jar to put in my sister's hamper. As soon as I took the cover off the bowl, the kitchen was filled with a promising waft of sherry & spicy fruit so I think it will be a good batch.
*Sorted all the dry laundry & ironed only what absolutely needed it, which thankfully was only 3 items, as ironing is not a task I find I can perform with good grace because it is so very boring.
*The grocery shopping came in below our target spend, although we shall need a couple of items which didn't have good enough 'use by' dates this morning. All 4 of this week's loyalty money-off vouchers were used as were for things on the shopping list. 
*I had been reading about the new 'Little Treats' member's loyalty card scheme at Waitbl00m, but hadn't realised it had already started. Mr F discovered that we had already spent enough for 2 of November's treats - coincidentally, one of them is an item we were already intending to buy to put in our friends' Christmas hamper, so we will be putting that aside. The other one is a box of rather nice sounding mince pies. Shall stash them in the pantry for us, as I am going to bake mincemeat twigs this year, instead of pies. Both simply need collecting next time we visit. Maximum of 3 treats per month. I'm not sure how often we will qualify for the 3rd one as it goes on spend. It's certainly well within our monthly grocery budget, but we use the eco-refill shop, local butcher & market too so distribution of our monthly grocery budget varies according to what we need. Anyway, always nice to have free treats. Naturally Mr F also availed himself of a free latte while he was there too.
*Speedy nosebag tonight - spag bol using some of the sauce I batch-cooked a few weeks ago. 
Oh, nearly forgot.....another shrinkflation example today. Mr F picked up a brand of yoghurt he likes & said it felt lighter than usual. He checked the weight & it has been reduced by 30g. There really is such a lot of this going on, isn't there? Another version of the same skank is reducing number of items in packs from 6 to 5 or from 4 to 3. I am thinking that's a particularly annoying one for people making up children's packed lunches.
I did decide on a knitting project for a Christmas charity appeal - some red fair-isle wrist warmers with snowmen on. I had all the yarn in my stash for that, so have already cast on & have reached the first snowman's bum (do snowmen have bums? I don't know! Answers on a postcard!)
F x

themadvix

£365 sounds very reasonable Foxgloves - B&W Cat here had a dental and the lower end of the estimate was £800, so that was what we had to pay. We did get a breakdown of the costs on both the estimate and the bill though - perhaps that's something you could request from the vet in future (although I dare say they make the figures up as they go along). It was rather a shock for us too! And of course, as you know, dental work isn't covered by insurance... conveniently. At least the expected £1200 bill for Ginger Cat next week will be covered (to some extent) by insurance - after the excess, the 20% co-pay and the admin fee to the vet for filling the bleeping forms in (which is new). Like you, we'd do anything for their health, but the (extortionate) costs do grate rather.