And now we go again...

LadyWithAPlan

Taste of London - June at Regents Park is an amazing food show and one of the highlights of my summers in London - you can often win tix on Insta for it ... but always so much great food, drink to try, great atmosphere , great cooking classes you can sign up for .. They do have all the high end restaurants serving their special dishes but I generally avoid that as it gets expensive but its lots of new suppliers you can trial plus things like cooking by Belazu and great offers for 3 for £6 on their jars etc

They do a winter one but not as good.. largely cos being in Regents Park in the sunshine
They do two sessions a day - afternoon then an evening one so you wouldnt have to stay overnight 

EssexHebridean

That's good info LaPlan, thank you. June is a funny month for us - as we are usually right in the middle of the most hectic time for our voluntary role, but depending on when it might well be something we'd be able to look at doing at some stage. 

savingholmes

Sounds like things are going well overall. Good luck with finishing the Christmas stuff.

EssexHebridean

Thanks SH - I still feel completely disinclined to do anything much about it - but experience tells me it will all come together somehow! 

It's gone proper cold here again today - there was a thick frost at home this morning. Thankfully it was MrEH's driving day so he dealt with scraping, and was also then the poor devil who had to do the TWO HOUR commute we endured. I really have had enough of it now - it just seems to get worse each day. I ended up getting in an hour late, although that was only just after madam boss who had even worse traffic than we did! 

MSE Stuff:
- Banks checked and all good.
- A bit of credit card shuffling done - I need to sit and properly go through the rest line by line - it's that time of year. 
- Jamie-the-Gas-man is booked to come to us tomorrow and fit the bathroom radiator which I have to confess will be REALLY welcome and well worth its cost.
- Did the Octopus savings session last night but I got delayed on the way home so got back just after 6 to find that by "yes, of course I turned things off" MrEH actually meant that he had turned off the sky box and TV in the living room, and not anything else. As a result, I think we may even have used slightly MORE than we would have done on a regular evening that we were just out at that time. Sigh. 
- Nothing on PBs this month, although that's not surprising considering our disproportionate run of luck earlier in the year. 
- FD Reg saver is still showing as a reg saver but paying a disappointing level of interest. Hopefully it will start showing as something else tomorrow so I can open a new reg saver and the £300 in my current account can stop sitting there doing nothing! (And if not then I may just use the £300 to pay Jamie!) 
- Food is mostly under control although as I said on the reverse meal planning thread, I absolutely have to get the freezer sorted now. And that is actually get some space created, not just keep talking about it... 

Spendiness:
- Got to pay both Jamie and the chimney sweep this week - £160 plus the boiler service for Jamie and I think the chimney sweep was £60 which I assume might be plus vat. On this occasion both will come from the long term savings although in the future we'll be aiming to cover chimney sweeping from the household pot. That's still settling down after the move though. 
- Played diesel roulette with my car yesterday - thankfully won and filled up at lunchtime at the suspiciously cheap petrol station near work. The car is still running so presumably they don't do anything too nasty to the diesel to be able to sell it at that price! 
- MrEH reckoned he'd have to feed his oyster today. He didn't do it this morning, so I suspect that will be this evening. That should be the last feeding of that before christmas though, with any luck, unless he has to travel in to London for any extra days. 

Christmas prep -
I have ordered some more little charms and embellishments that might enable me to make some more of the little crocheted baubles as they are quite sweet and very quick to turn out.
Crocheted one of those for part of a pal's present last night in fact - and made it in to an RAF Roundel type design with the colours used and some little mini red sparkly pom poms for the centres.
Also ordered a christmas present for MrEH, and one for Mum too, so gradually getting there. 
Need to start planning what food we intend making, and when Mum will come over for a pre christmas tea - something we used to do years ago and have decided it might be nice to reinstate now we're in the house. 

I'm sure there was more stuff I intended mentioning, although it has clearly escaped me now. 

milann

Pleased you won the diesel roulette. 

Your crocheted bits sound lovely.

Staffordia

I'm impatiently waiting for my FD RS to become available. I  don't really understand why it takes so long, interest is added and it reverts to a normal saver on maturity day. It should be transferable 24 hrs max.

savingholmes

Crocheted baubles sound very interesting Any photos?

beanielou

Keep me posted on how long the FD thing. 

I am hoping no more than 48 hours. 

Mine is next week. 

PennysIntoPounds

MrEH can walk into London rather than paying for oyster to make up for not switching things off!

EssexHebridean

PennysIntoPounds said:

MrEH can walk into London rather than paying for oyster to make up for not switching things off!

Now THERE is a thought PiP - I like your thinking! 

Beanie - mine officially matured last Friday and was the option to apply for a new one was accessible to me today so it looks like the 5 working days is pretty spot on. whether you can withdraw from the old one ahead of that time I have no idea - I didn't try, although had it occurred to me I may well have done. 

Staffordia - I agree that it's a ludicrously long time - I wonder whether it is engineered towards ensuring that people always "lose" a month each time as it prevents you "back-to-back"ing the RS accounts. For the past few years with my C0v3ntry ones I have always immediately opened a new one at maturity and used £500 of the old one to fund the new one - far easier. 

SH - I've not got pics of my baubles currently, but the pattern is This one: https://attic24.typepad.com/weblog/bauble-decoration.html - I've not converted any of mine into stars as yet though! Milann they are really sweet little things - they will definitely make cute little tiny gifts for folk too - more of a little gesture than an actual gift really, and they are ludicrously quick to make! I did make something slightly fiddlier as well but it's going to go to my Mum at Christmas and so I don't want to mention it on here as she may stumble across it! 

Current crochet project is a scarf, although I'm using charity shop yarn so it may prove I've not got enough without adding a different coloured insert in the middle of it - easily done if I think I need to though! 

MSE Stuff:
- FD Reg Saver has finally all processed through as I mentioned above, so that has been shifted to somewhere paying better interest while we discuss what to do with it.
- I retained a small amount from that money to top up the joint account where MrEH has taken the payment for the boiler service/radiator fitting out of it. 
- New FD Reg Saver now opened too - it should take the opening payment direct from the 1st account where it is currently sitting, and I need to keep an eye to be sure that future payments continue to come out on the 1st of the month I think. 
- Other banking checked and all good - two pending payments on the joint account, one to Big River which I'll need to transfer money in to cover, and the other for MrEH's Oyster feeding which did indeed take place last night.
- I have checked the Lils app to see if there are any useful coupons added this week
- Also played the C0-0ps christmas game and nabbed 25p of our next shop so we may swing in there tomorrow while out for a walk - there is also a 50p off marmite so that might be worth combining the two and getting a cheap jar of that! 
- Last night's rice dish involving chunks of pork from the weekend was delicious - a definite hit and may well get repeated I think. 
- A job for tomorrow needs to be to drag stuff out of the freezer and actually make a proper meal plan for the next couple of weeks (notwithstanding Christmas getting in the way) and to ensure that anything that has been overlooked as it has disappeared into the bottom of the sections now gets used. 
- WM has run first thing this morning with bedding, and MrEH will set it to run again with rugby kit during the peak period later - thus improving our situation for future Savings Sessions. He'll run the DW later at the same time too. 
- I'm starting to feel a little narked with the Octopods as in spite of almost everyone else I know having had their SS results from the one last Wednesday, mine is still processing. They need to get their tentacles moving a little faster! 

MrEH is using his final day of holiday for the year tomorrow - they have been told that they can't carry over this year so he was determined to make sure he used it! I was originally intending to head up to Lincoln tomorrow for some photo stuff involving small whizzy red jets, but thankfully checked in with someone and it turns out there aren't flying! (As he said "bet you're glad you checked!" - yes, yes I am! I'll re-plan that for next Friday instead - the weather might even be better then too! Aside from the chimney sweeping I think we will use it as a day of just generally getting odd tasks done.