And now we go again...

joedenise

You've done well there EH on Prolific, I've only got to £22.xx with £6.xx pending.  Would really like to get to £30 before cashing out - still a few days to go so fingers crossed I get there!

badmemory

The timber sounds like a win for both of you.

lucielle

Well done on the timber decluttering. Weekend sounds like you had fun. 

L

jwil

Great result on PA and also on the timber.

redofromstart

I just spotted that MrT has the finest gammon on offer at 5.50/kg on the App, although I didn't see any in store this morning. I know you wait for this too. 

LadyWithAPlan

Well done on the prolific.

Sorry to hear about the fall and hope you are healing well.

EssexHebridean

Morning lovely visitors - thanks for popping by, sorry you found the lights off and the kettle cold! 

A busy-ish weekend - various bits of running around on Friday with the Opticians visit (ouch and ouch again - says my bank account), shopping etc. Saturday we were in Birmingham at a meeting related to our voluntary role, followed by exploring a new-to-us pub and then an old favourite pub, recently reopened! Yesterday was general pottering, picking up the last bits of shopping needed, and just recharging a bit from a quite full-on day the day before! 

MSE stuff:
- saved some travel costs by walking into town for the opticians on Friday, and made sure I walked straight back again rather than looking round shops. 
- My personal EF will pick up the tab for the glasses - thank goodness for it, as well, as even with the footwear related chemist's latest offer, 2 pairs of varifocals and a pair of standard single vision prescription sunglasses are costing me pennies under £600. I have considered a home ins claim,  but allowing I'd only be able to claim for a single pair and I suspect that overall the hit to future years premiums would probably be greater than the saving. 
- Octopods have provided the amounts for their next bill, although not yet the detail. Total of £108, a full £15 saving on the electric costs over the month thanks to being on Agile, and all in all a bill that is substantially lower than November 2023's one, in spite of this year being a colder month I think. interestingly in spite of a couple of days using electric for heating thanks to Agile plunge pricing, we still used slightly less electric last month than November 2023, too. 
- shopping came in at £15.xx from last month's budget and then a further £11.xx spent yesterday, although that could nominally be allocated against the December spend anyway. If I account both of those against November, then that will be about our squeakiest month to date, and a possible need to increase the budget will be discussed during our next financial summit - over Christmas. 
- A saving was made yesterday as we were going to buy mince pies, but ALL Lil's posh regular ones this year contain ruby port, which MrEH can't have. I did look at the crumble topped ones which looked delicious but are also apparently £3.49 a box - had I strayed into Fortnums, I might have felt that was justified, as I hadn't though, they were returned to the shelf.
- that little lump of pastry came to the rescue, and that and the final scrapings from the jar of mincemeat that has been lurking in the fridge were turned into home made mince pies instead, with just about every scrap of pastry being used up by doing a patchwork affair for the tops. Utterly delicious, and we've agreed we might simply knock up a batch here and there through the month rather than looking to buy them - we have masses of mincemeat as we bought three jars of T's finest version post-christmas last year at a bargainous price. 
- Saturday's fun and games were covered from personal spends of course - there was a nice big stomach-lining breakfast first, and was intended to be some food later too, but that bit sort of got forgotten - oops! 
- Free cuppa on the train thanks to the code I got when I booked the tickets - annoyingly the Octopod ones had all gone, so MrEH had to buy his own!
- Prolific is up to £11.xx payable with £7.79 pending - need to keep working on that, I'd like another £40 minimum this month but I know that might be a challenge as it tends to drop off as Christmas approaches
- annoyingly my tech pot is about to take a hit as the renewal for my photo storage and management set-up has just come due. I did make a small saving there though by buying a 2 year package at a discount. 
- There will be the annual disproving of "no such thing as a free lunch" later in the month as we'll be doing our usual teeny tiny office christmas lunch - just the two of us now, sadly. 
- Managed to get some washing at least partly dry outside on Friday, which was a win. Sadly it was just too chilly to completely dry though. 
- final load of bedding went through the WM last night on some reasonably low Agile slots 
-  the dehumidifier ran overnight on those same slots, as well as having run for part of the day yesterday as we had a fully loaded airer! 

Plans for this week include an online meeting (just for me, on this occasion, as it involves an aspect of the event where MrEH has a conflict of interest) tomorrow night, we are also now at the time when we need to start putting in some regular time on our voluntary role, so we'll do an hour on that tonight I think.  We're off to a beer festival on Friday - our annual trip to "Pigs Ear" in London where we'll be meeting friends as well. Ahead of that we also need to go and collect some logs and smokeless fuel from the local H0m3fire depot - I need to call them about that though as we still can't  make click & collect work, and I want to be sure we can get the special price on the logs! 

Food wise we do have a plan, and it does involve using stuff we have, starting with tonight using roasted home grown toms from the freezer, one of the final packs of the well-priced ambient gnocchi, and probably the last of the creme fraiche and the chorizo from the fridge. The remainder of last week's mushrooms will probably go in there as well. 

EssexHebridean

Oh - I forgot, so far the "nice things in December" tally includes

1st - Baileys, and home made mince pies
2nd - wearing a pretty pair of earrings I made years ago and can't recall the last time they saw the light of day! 

Greying_Pilgrim

Thanks EH I just got to the bit in your post where you talked about Friday's laundry - looked out the window and noticed it had just started to mizzle here!  As forecast, but today's washing was still out.  I dashed and got it in.  Most certainly not bone dry, but good enough for this time of year!  

I recall visiting two Brum pubs (seems like a whole lifetime ago now), who would have been in "the Guide".  They both allowed you to take your own food in  to eat.  One was named after  'outdoor footwear' and I can't remember the name of the other one - but I'm pretty sure you had to go downstairs to it?  Was it located in an old bank or PO????  Anyway, I'm reminiscing about me youth - sorry to bore 🤣

Greying X

EssexHebridean

That will be the Wellington and the Post office Vaults, then! I can't cope with the POV a lot of the time - it just gets too packed, but the Welly is one of my favourites, we missed out on a visit this time but would usually have made sure we popped in! Both are still going strong, anyway, which is the main thing! 

Glad to have been of service on the weather front too - so annoying when you get washing to a "not as wet as it is dry" state and then it gets rained on!

I used my lunchbreak productively to get the order placed for the logs and smokeless fuel we need, we can collect those on Friday so best hope we can fit them all in the car now! A nice saving too as there is currently £5 off a big bag of logs, and the lovely lass on the phone also knocked a bit off the smokeless over and above the standard click & collect price, too! 

Also sorted out getting my waiting "Morrison's Fiver" downloaded onto my card so I can use it - as they insist on sending a code via email when you want to release it to the card, and I can't pick that up while I'm out and about!