And now we go again...

foxgloves

You're having a better P/A month than me! I think I'm getting too picky, as a few studies recently did seem to require more techy faff than I was prepared to do for the payment on offer.

Re vintage tray cloths - I saw a lovely project in a magazine ages ago which featured someone who had got together a collection of these from family, charity shops & flea fairs and sewn them together to make a tablecloth. The finished result was lovely & I thought how nice it was that the work of all those past amateur embroiderers was put to good use.
F

themadvix

I have made bunting from my Nan's old embroidered tablecloths - quite a bit as I made enough for each of her granddaughters, plus mum and aunt. It looks lovely - I can't take any credit as it's not my efforts that make it lovely!

EssexHebridean

I like both those ideas with the embroidery, although I'm not sure my skill is sufficient to do anything that would do them justice! 

I'm pleasantly surprised at my success with Prolific this month to be honest - it's the best I've done in ages, although that is partly due to being able to squeeze studies in between jobs at work - for a long while our firewall blocked them but something has changed now. That does mean that I can't do anything that requires sound of course, so I have just opted out of those as standard. With payable and pending combined I'm over £30 for the month now - hopefully things will continue to go well for the rest of the month and I'll be able to cash out £40 or so by the end of it. 

CC is back at zero currently - I shifted the new door deposit across from the regular saver feeder account as planned. 

A bit of spendiness this morning as we booked train tickets for an upcoming day trip to Birmingham - not for the food show this time, but for a meeting we want to attend in connection with the beer festival we are involved with organising. This is a "want to attend" rather than a "have to attend" so no expenses to be reclaimed for that, we did a good shop-around for the best prices for the travel though and managed to get it down to just over £40 each including the travel from home into London. The railcard proving its value again to save us a fair bit!

I also joined up to the free "Av@nti Club" having booked the London > Birmingham tickets direct, and that will earn me a free hot drink on the train. We will combine that with nabbing a free hot drink from C@ffe Ner0 via  the Octopods so we benefit from one each. (I'll need to remember to claim that early in the week to avoid the risk of them running out). There's no food at the meeting venue so we'll do a breakfast of some sort on arrival in Brum I suspect.

Food ticks along - the usual couscous last night used up the final sweet potato from a bag I bought ages ago - I confess it had got forgotten about until I spotted it in the veg basket at the weekend! Tonight will be the planned stir fry - I remembered to get the pork out of the freezer to defrost, and that will make use of the remaining cabbage and broccoli and various other veg - I'll need to dispatch MrEH to the garden for some chard! 

Agile pricing has been a bit horrific again today, but it is starting to look better towards the weekend I think, and overall we are still showing a fraction up for the month so I'll take that. Our average unit price since we've been on the tariff is showing as a little over 16p/kWh now - which is certainly not being complained about! 

Greying_Pilgrim

Ay up EH.  I just spotted an article on the beebeecee news page and thought of you as an erstwhile user of a certain northerly boaty macboat company.  I realise that organisations, and "TPTB" oft let customers and service users down, but this story of the actual folk who worked on the boats, who were at the 'coal face' as it where is really quite touching - esp. about the fundraising 😢 And I've heard some tales about 'wrong type of rain, and wrong type of leaves, but 'wrong coffin' is a new one on me 😁  Although, I have to say, it's a jolly good job my hair is already grey, as THAT LAUNCH 😱

Greying X

teaselMay

That's the ferry that I unknowingly sat outside the crew rest quarters/canteen on an early sailing from Islay and my three hounds (who you've met EH) were sporadically fed square sausage by crew as they passed!

EssexHebridean

Oh Greying what a lovely article - thank you! Loving some of those stories - and yes there is no question that regardless what folk might think of the company, the boats themselves are often held in great fondness. I think all regular travellers have their favourite - mine being another of the old stalwarts in the shape of "M.V. Lord of the Isles" - the boat we made our first Outer Isles trip aboard and have made many more since too! I've also done a trip up on the bridge a few years ago, and been on board when she's been empty of all other passengers as a friend of ours was her skipper for a few years. Great times. 

And teaselMay - I've just realised who you are! How fab! That's ace about the hounds getting treated by the crew too - I've no doubt they didn't complain! Hope all is well with you (and them!)? I thought of you when we were up on Berneray earlier in the year - as we parked in a particular spot to sit and eat our pizzas from the bistro! 

Well a weekend with a decent mix of sociable, restful and productive was had. Friday MrEH had the day off work so we pottered about a bit in the morning, a walk, then I went and got the shopping sorted while he went for a haircut, and then we hopped on the bus to go to the beer festival at the brewery in the next big town up the way. organised by the local CAMRA branch, it was only small, but very pleasant indeed, with some cracking beers. Met up with a few pals there too - including a couple we'd not seen since pre-covid which was lovely! Couldn't decide between pizza and nachos from the taproom  menu so ended up with a pizza each and a portion of nachos to share - all absolutely delicious and of course paid for from our personal spends although MrEH popped it on the CC at the time to make life easier so we still need to clear it off. Had originally intended to leave in time to get the final direct bus back home but of course that didn't happen so a walk down the road to the station to pick up the bus from there it was! 

Saturday was farmers market first thing - a few bits from Peter the lamb man who has a ridiculously long queue - but we went for a "divide and conquer" approach with MrEH queueing there while I went and was the bakers for a sourdough. Peter was worth the queue as he had several packs of liver of the right size for us - two purchased, plus some lamb breast rings and a pack of sausages. Then outside for odds and end from Catherine on the other meat stall - a couple of very thin frying steaks (I've got a mind to set those aside for a Friday night tea with home made mini baguettes, rocket and horseradish mayo...) plus a lump of haslet for sandwiches, and a pack of burgers. All the meat went straight to the freezer when we got home but will be finding its way to the meal plan over the next few weeks. We also got the Christmas turkey ordered from our usual people so that's sorted and I have let Mum know it's arranged. 

MrEH had rugby in the afternoon, and I headed out at the same time he did to walk to the bottom of town for F@rmf00ds - I had  feeling they did the large jars of a certain branded yeast extract - and so they did, and at a price cheaper than two of the smaller ones from elsewhere would have been, so that was  win. Also topped up the chickpea supplies and got a few other bits. While down that end of the town I plodded along to Lil's to nab my free bakery item from the day before's shop too - a nice sticky cinnamon bun which made a lovely treat after my lunch!  Also nipped into my favourite charity shop for books and found 4 - good value for a couple of £! 

Yesterday was very much a "getting stuff done" sort of day - some garden stuff, the final row of potatoes have been dug and are now drying in a trug in the shed ahead of being stored, and some general clearing saw the compost bin and the garden waste getting plentiful additions too. I think next year we have decided that we'll go the route of buying a roll of bags for the garden waste, as it may work out more economically for us than the bin subscription. We get to keep the bin anyway, so that will mean we can still store the full bags in there ahead of them being collected. Also did a bit more sorting of the shed - including a couple of boxes of stuff which we have decided are going to the loft, so those were moved indoors. I emptied another bag of logs onto the shelf, and we've shifted some other bits to the space freed up by moving those boxes too, which should mean when we go and do our next stock up on fuel for the fire we can get 5 bags of logs and a couple of coal, and that in turn might well see us through the winter, with luck! 
Shepherd's pie for lunch (home grown tatties on the top - yum!) then we popped out for a bit of a walk so MrEH could get his paper before we ventured upstairs to get those boxed sorted and repacked - and even persuaded him that there were a few bits in there that could be disposed off as well - miracles! And finally the newly packed smaller (and labelled) boxes were stashed in the loft along with a few other odds and ends that had been waiting to go up there. In turn, a few empty boxes which had been stashed there in case there were problems with the items they originally held have now gone to the recycling, and a brand new barely worn pair of wellies which are slightly too tight in the calf for me will head to the charity shop! 

Prolific now at £33 payable which I am very pleased with - although it seems to have gone a bit quiet today! 

teaselMay

Ah 'our' little quiet corner, we've not made it up there this year. We're all good thanks. Discovered we have to move next year and a few months later that I might be able to shared ownership buy, so frantically saving at the mo - hence joining here, but all good and we'll either end up with our own house or a small but useful pile of savings in 6 months or so. No van trips in the interim but it's worth it.

PennysIntoPounds

Lots of productivity there, but did you find your small tin of useful little bits in the shed?! 😁

Sun_Addict

Another great weekend was had by the sounds of it. Reading your diary always makes me wish I liked beer 😆 Not been in F@rmf00ds for ages, mainly because my freezer is chockablock, I forgot they sell other stuff too. 

EssexHebridean

Haha SA I never buy anything frozen in FF's because I'm usually on foot when I go in - I almost forget that is their primary business! 

PiP - we have a couple of those, and delightfully I know precisely where they are to be found! (Mostly because they were containers of useful things we kept around when we moved and made sure we knew where they went when we moved in and they've not moved from there since! 

Ahh teaselMay I had a feeling you'd not been up - I nipped in to a certain lovely little shop when we were up - I asked E how you were and she mentioned you'd not made it up for a while. Hopefully once your saving pays off you'll be able to reinstate more frequent visits. We're down to a single trip a year ourselves at the moment - partly due to being back to having a mortgage, and partly as it just doesn't work for us to head up in the winter at the moment. (Not least as our lovely little winter lodging at Stinky Bay was sold a year or two back and as far as we know no longer does holiday lets) 

We are now at the mostly "ticking along" point in the month - with DDs having gone out.
- Hopefully we will get both cars through the month with no more diesel.
- MrEH will feed his Oyster tomorrow and I am hopeful that too might get him through the month now.
- Final payment to a reg saver has gone
- notification from the C0v3ntry that their interest rates are dropping, both the relevant accounts will still "do" but need keeping an eye on.
- Food under control and I am continuing to add to an ongoing list of meal ideas as I think of them, in order to have a reference document to shake up the meal plan a bit. A few bits have already been added to next week's plan and I expect "ooh - we've not had this in a while" from MrEH when they appear!

Nudged my boss to confirm the christmas arrangements for the office and she has very kindly said that although she intends working through until the 23rd, there is no need for me to come in that day which means a finish on the Thursday before, for me, and best part of a full fortnight off as a result. Marvellous! Might now see if MrEH fancies taking the 23rd as well, as he has spare holiday time to use and was already intending to WFH that day anyway.

I'm guessing the heating costs will increase from today as it was flipping freezing this morning - it was sleeting at home when I left, turned to heavy-ish snow part way along the motorway, and is generally wet and cold in London, too!