And now we go again...

EssexHebridean

Morning all, and thank you for the congratulations on the ow-key mortgage neutrality! 😁

SA I had seen that Lil’s had introduced a £10 level but not what the reward was - I did wonder if that would bump the next level up to 75 or £100 but hopefully not - £50 is a pretty solid level I can reach fairly easily, and like you I do appreciate my free loaf! Haha SG “Terminator of Plants” made me chuckle! My basil is now repotted into something a little bigger and sitting looking floppy on the windowsill - from experience I know it will gradually stand itself more upright once it gets used to no longer being in a plastic sleeve!

Final day of the month then - MrEH has been paid, I haven’t yet but MadamBoss is pretty good and may even have done that by the time I get to the office. I am posting from a wet M11 as MrEH drives us into London -  very much not looking forward to getting out and walking as it’s soggy out there! 

Lots achieved over the weekend though - it felt like a really productive one. MrEH’s Mum is now home from hospital - she was discharged on Friday so he took the decision not to head down as once she was home there was less benefit to doing so - and his presence would probably have prevented her from getting the rest she needed. The right decision, but that didn’t stop SIL-from-hell trying to guilt trip him about it and asking if he could still go down as they were “finding it a bit tricky to juggle things…”…how she thinks it’s reasonable I have no idea, we are 250 miles away from MIL’s house, she and MrEH’s brother are 2.4 miles from it… 🤦🏻‍♀️ As a measure of how far removed from reality she is, she said this at 4pm - including a comment that if he drove down “we will feed you dinner” - but it’s a 7 hour journey from us on a Friday evening…! It’s very frustrating - when it was explained to her the reasons why no, he would not now be travelling down as it was going to be the best thing for MIL anyway, she basically went into a sulk…😂

Anyway - stuff achieved:
- niggly job - we have a number of lights on PIR sensors which have either been staying on for too long or not long enough - so those have all finally been adjusted and are now working far better for us. There maybe a little bit of tweaking needed but it’s already lots better. 

- A picture which has been waiting for hanging was dealt with and is now up. 

- masses of garden clearing and sorting - almost all tomato plants are now stripped and the plants thrown in the garden waste - their compost has been transferred to our planned new growing area out the back.
- potato sack emptied - not the best of crops in there but a few meals worth and it was the spare seed tatties anyway. Compost from that added to our main veg bed
- cucumber growbag empties into a bad for further use, the two tomato ones have been tipped onto the new growing area out back. 
- MrEH had a good old sawing session yesterday afternoon, filled the second kindling bucket and has also dealt with most of the annoying bits of wood leaning around the shed waiting for cutting down. 

- while he did that I made a big pot of blackbean chilli - that will feed us tonight and the balance will be portioned up and frozen
- We combined heading for a walk on Saturday with both visiting a hardware shop across town to get some bits we needed and foraging for rose hips 
- MrEH made rose hip syrup last night, that is bottled and cooled overnight ready for labelling and storing tonight
- garden nursery visit for a few plants for both front and back - £11 spent which got us 3 Cyclamen, 2 primroses, 6 pansies/viola, and a couple of other bits - really good value.
- I roasted a half lamb shoulder yesterday which was delicious - that will go with couscous tomorrow as well
More stuff I’ve probably forgotten too!

Not bad at all! I will probably be back a little later but for now we are close to the point where I jump out of the car when traffic is bad! 

beanielou

Blooming families. 

Seasidegal58

EssexHebridean said:

Haha SG “Terminator of Plants” made me chuckle! My basil is now repotted into something a little bigger and sitting looking floppy on the windowsill - from experience I know it will gradually stand itself more upright once it gets used to no longer being in a plastic sleeve!

 

If you would like another chuckle EH, owing to my Not-Able-To-Keep-Plants-Alive impediment, some months ago I bought a very realistic looking fern for my kitchen windowsill. It is so realistic that whilst I was away my friend who popped into my flat to check all was well decided it needed a drink so filled the kitchen sink with some water and plunked it in!  It was sitting there when I got home!😂

Oh - and I agree with @beanielou - blooming families - they can be a nightmare sometimes!

Blackcats

Families can be very ...... (insert adjective of choice)
you made the right decision about visiting over the weekend.  Far better for his mum to settle back into her own home and rest.  

I really dislike family members trying to make us feel guilty.  In our case it's MrBC's family who seem to want a medal for anything they do to care for their relative.  I just deleted and modified my tirade 😡

rtandon27

EH - we are fuming for you! - all families are the same aren't they!?

EssexHebridean

LOL thanks all - yes, I reckon every family has an equivalent of SIL-from-hell. It must be said that there are times that my other SIL (who is lovely!) and I only retain our sanity because we have a whatsapp chap which is largely ranting at the latest entitled nonsense from SiLFH! It does definitely help to vent! 

MSE Stuff:
A "conversation" over the weekend about all things financial seems to have presented me with a new improved MrEH who is being helpful about providing things like savings account balances etc - so we had a useful and productive conversation last night about those, regular savers etc and long may this last!  We currently have 7 "joint money" reg savers on the go, which all mature at varying times. a Pr1nc1pal1ty 6 month one each, a N/W1d3 one each (both brand new) and then I have C0v3ntry, V1rg1n and FD on the go as well. Some are funded straight from the current account, and others are taken from a feeder savings account, so theoretically all a bit complicated, but having everything written down helps keep on  track. 
- We have both been paid - did money shuffling on the way home last night, hurrah for being a passenger!
- Manual transfers done to my Pr1nc & V1rg regulars
- some tidying up of now extinct transfer paths from our main bank
- Set up the automated transfer for my N/W1d3 Reg saver last night so just need to check that goes tomorrow
- Spotted while looking at C0v last night that there is an ISA paying a better rate than my current one with them, so have opened that and done the transfer - a seamless process which took less than 5 minutes end to end. Well done C0v! 
- CC shuffle from the weekend's shopping and oddments of other spending now done.
- £100 sent to the mortgage for the beginning of month OP.
- I need to keep an eye on the Octopods as I have a feeling that the wrangling with the DD may well mean that one doesn't get taken at all this month - if it doesn't I will probably pay it manually as that seems the most sensible way of dealing with things. 

Mortgage balance is now sitting in the £103k's, but not quite so far into them that the interest when it hits won't send the total back over £104k. Ahh well, that's an incentive for the end of month OP isn't it! 

Cheery_Daff

Very impressed with your regular saver discipline! We just have four between us, and one only just matured, but that's quite enough for now! 

EssexHebridean

I'll be impressed with it too if we manage to keep track of them all year Cheery! And yes, I've already said that there won't be as many going forwards - that's until some good deals come along, of course!

Well here we are again at Thursday - or "pub day" as it shall be known round here! The main excitement round here today is that the new Al's opens along the way from work today - that will give T's a run for their money, and not before time! Might have a wander along at lunchtime and see how it looks and whether they have any opening day offers. (Almost certainly not - just long queues probably!) 

Did wordle in 4 yesterday, and am stuck after two attempts today with one letter correct in the right place and another correct but not...Hmmm. 

MSE Stuff:
- Banks all checked - some minor CC shuffling dealt with so that will be back at zero ahead of the weekend. 
- It would appear that the PB's have failed us again - honestly, we keep feeding them, and they keep not winning - they've not got the right idea at ALL!  
- Food under control - thought there was going to need to be a meal plan reshuffle for tonight as couldn't find any of the planned sausages in the freezer, but I staged a full expedition to the very bottom and there they were - upside-down for some reason, not sure why I thought that was a good idea! 
- MrEH found just over £100 in an old bank account when he was doing some housekeeping the other night so has transferred the odd £'s and pennies to the VSP, and said I may as well shift the round £100 to the mortgage...well I wasted no time taking him up on that suggestion I can tell you! We are now a slightly annoying £45.xx away from being rounded off at £104k - we'll see whether I resist the temptation to go all month without rounding that off! 
- Noted a 15% discount on halloumi in the Lil's app so will be making use of that for a stock up - I'm really NOT impressed with the new arrangement on the coupon plus rewards though - the sweet bakery item isn't of much net worth to me, and I'll miss my free bread once a month. will probably go back to splitting the shopping between there and T's depending on which is more convenient now. 

Various jobs in mind for the weekend - some more garden clearing for a start, weather permitting! I'm at Duxford for the final airshow of the season on Saturday as well - ticket bought and I will be budgeting for some food and maybe a cuppa. 

badmemory

Yes it took me 5 today, not one of my better days certainly.

PennysIntoPounds

Five for me as well today