Moving on

Cherryfudge

DH had a day off: very unusual for a Wednesday and somewhat disorientating but they schedule him according to service needs so we have to roll with it.

I've managed half an hour or so in the garden, replacing some cardboard mulch and smoothing down a bit more of the old path so I can cover it with cardboard and gravel. There's a bit of a battle with brambles rejuvenating themselves after being chopped down. I've got some roots out but they are very tricky. I also found bluebells so I'm saving those to go somewhere nice.

We had dinner at lunch time: I had more of the dhal and DH had a rogan josh ready meal. We watched Bakeoff... gorgeous enriched dough breads, so now I feel like baking.

In the afternoon I went for coffee with one of my team. We went to the favoured coffee place and sat outside but int he hour we were there, some big grey clouds came along, the temperature dropped and everyone else either went indoors or home. Still, it was nice to meet up and have a chat.

On the way home I dropped my glasses off for the new lenses and an assistant spent quite a while sorting out the spare pair. I'd been really dizzy when I wore them. It turns out the (brand new) frame had warped so one lens was at a funny angle, but that wasn't immediately apparent when they were looked at. She's fixed it though: I wore them for work and had no problems. Phew.

Three hours at work this evening, and DH went to the event at church. He said it was really good, but I don't think it's been recorded so can't hear it for myself. So far, I don't have any work today or tomorrow so perhaps I'll go then.

Expenditure:
Entertainment £6.90
Housekeeping £9.44 - I kept an eye on the reduced food listing on Olio and got some blueberries from Iceland for 50p, and while I was there, spotted eggs for 88p too. Then in Lidl I had 15% off plain flour so I got several bags - that us sorted till spring, LOL.

Sun_Addict

Some good bargains there from Iceland. When Lidl send me the 15% off vouchers on things I regularly buy I stock up too. 

Cherryfudge

Sun_Addict said:

Some good bargains there from Iceland. When Lidl send me the 15% off vouchers on things I regularly buy I stock up too. 

The Lidl one meant 1.5kg of flour for 59p, so of course I got several! I also picked up a catering-sized coffee tin that the canteen were throwing out last night: very good for storing flour that won't be used for some time (and free).

Since I found that Iceland put their reductions on Olio (this may just be local to us), I've got a bit hooked on checking for good reductions. I find they are a bit expensive for the sort of foods I like but their reductions are always worth a look. Unfortunately the over-60s discount happens on a Tuesday when I'm doing child care, and the shop is shut when I finish work so I don't get to benefit from late evening reductions either.

Today started off misty but that soon burned off - but despite putting the heating on low, I'm not quite warm enough and am struggling to get things done. All I've managed is a load of laundry and a couple of messages (my niece has been bitten by a cat and is unwell but that's all I know so I've messaged her and her Mum, and checked something for the cleaning team and WhatsApped a couple of groups for Sunday morning).

What I really want to do is the garden, but I've got to make myself get out there.

rtandon27

Our Iceyland is also posting on 0li0 now so I think it must be a nation-wide thing!  The down side to that though is that now when we pop in for our bargain hunt, there is nothing left to buy.  I'm glad stuff is getting bought up and not wasted, but sad for us as it was a fun little activity iyswim!

Cherryfudge

rtandon27 said:

Our Iceyland is also posting on 0li0 now so I think it must be a nation-wide thing!  The down side to that though is that now when we pop in for our bargain hunt, there is nothing left to buy.  I'm glad stuff is getting bought up and not wasted, but sad for us as it was a fun little activity iyswim!

I'm glad they are posting so things don't go to waste, but it's a shame if that means others get there when you could have benefitted. Could you work out if they have a regular time to post and check asap after that? I found some things like chicken go quickly but things like bread usually have some left - but I suppose that's exactly how it works when things are put out in the shop anyway. If yours is like ours, the discounted items are still put on display for anyone to buy.

In fact, I had a couple more Iceland Olios today - a litre of orange juice for £1 and milk for 88p. The milk lasts till tomorrow and I can use any leftover for yogurt, so I don't need to have it all tonight. I also decided to try their 1kg bag of frozen chicken fillets (£5). There were about seven bits in the bag: not identical sizes. It's actually only 82% chicken, the rest is water, salt and goodness-knows-what chemicals. It was okay but quite salty. I don't buy chicken all that often nowadays, having had a shock at the price increases and scruples about animal welfare, but it's okay once in a while.

Cherryfudge

Once I got moving, I got a fair amount done, mostly in the garden. I can now proudly say I have finished that first square meter (for now). I started it in June, removing lots of accumulated junk and brambles before the builders came, and since then have been going over it in meticulous detail to get rid of all the contaminants. Today I found various bits of old paint: green, white and a very bright yellow. I imagine one day in the 1950s, a child came home from school and said 'Dad! That colour is so embarrassing! I can't bring my friends round with that on the house!' So a bit of decades old sunshine came to light (briefly) today.

Mostly, it's been a battle with bramble and ivy, which were small but had long roots that I've had to cut off as far down as possible. Then I levelled that bit of ground, threw the cleaned up soil in a potato bag, put down a layer of cardboard, added reclaimed gravel and topped it with pots of plants. It won't win competitions but it's come a long way.

And oh, the satisfaction of getting a bucket of gravel onto the surface, even if it's not rain-washed nearly as much as the stuff that's been on the path for a while. I now have the empty bucket (actually a solid-walled hanging basket) ready of the next lot of reclaiming - The Plan is working!

I found a cache of bluebell bulbs squashed into a very small space and pushing themselves downwards because they didn't have much choice. They filled a small plant pot so I decided to use a large pot and grow them there until I have  proper place for them. That wasn't nearly big enough, so tomorrow I need to look out a matching pot and repeat till they are all rehomed.

Other than that, I bought a Kindle copy of Jane Eyre last night. It was being advertised at £1 so I looked further and found it for 22p. Last of the big spenders. Then I ordered a gift for DH's birthday - he will be getting a ridiculous amount if I'm not careful as I've already got some other things. His sponge bag is disintegrating and I'd suggested he put it on his birthday suggestions list, upon which he said 'But I like my sponge bag!' Then he admitted he finds sponge bags boring and would rather ask for something interesting! Fair enough, and I know he has gifts coming that will be interesting, so I'm getting him one anyway. I'd seen nice ones in TKM but there was nothing there today that caught my fancy, though I was interested to find some reduced from £230! I mean, £230?! I looked elsewhere and ordered a leather one for under £20 and I still think that's quite a lot for a non-essential item. Perhaps I'm getting out of touch.  

Other than that, I did some shopping as mentioned earlier though I forgot to say some discounted Belgian buns and cinnamon buns also found their way into my purchases. Dinner was chicken, peas and a mixture of vegetables tossed in oil and garam masala and roasted (potato, sweet potato, swede and carrots). Those were a success and will go in our repertoire as we're trying to increase the spices in our meals to help DH stay off medication (amazingly after over two weeks he is still well, so he rang the clinic to nudge them to have something prepared in case this doesn't last, only to find they'd forgotten to discuss his case! At least he's back on the list now).

After dinner we went to the evening session at church, and that's about it for today.

Expenditure:
Housekeeping £13.66
Book 22p
Gift £16.90

Cherryfudge

I got up before DH left for work this morning, had breakfast, got beaten at Wordle by DH and set a load of washing to run. Then I couldn't get properly awake so I went back to sleep and woke up about eleven, refreshed and ready to start again!

I had to wait in for a parcel (due 12-2, arrived 10 past 5) so I got four hours of gardening done. Further progress on the old path across the house: I reckon it used to be a gravel path, long since overgrown and covered at some point with brick chipping 'gravel'. The little sieves I bought have been brilliant for sifting through this: I sift out the soil over a potato bag (it comes out friable and great for plant pots), then I can easily pick out the brick and throw it in the appropriate bucket, ditto any bits of roots. The rest is either rubbish for the bin or gravel, with which I'm now backfilling as a foundation layer to go under the next mulch and brick chippings.

I've also spent time wrestling weeds and irises in the front garden. Progress here is different as there are so many roots and a new set of issues to think through. I was very happy to find a baby centaurea, as I thought mine was destroyed when the path was made. I've yet to make enough progress to put in any new plants.

The parcel eventually arrived after DH got home from work, bringing me some of the give-away sandwiches from the canteen, which I've frozen. Dinner was the rest of the dhal for me and a piece of Southern fried chicken for DH, then we decided to go for a walk to get some exercise. One the way we spotted a lot of apples fallen into the grounds of a substation so some came home with us, but not before we'd gone to the supermarket to buy bread and fish.  This involved going through the middle of L1dl, where DH bought a set of screwdrivers and I bought sewing threads and a sewing awl. £19.60 spent and no bread bought, but we like our new toys, though the sewing thread isn't particularly good. I tried some out and it's snarled up a few times. The spend means I'm eligible for the free vegetable over the next week, though.

We had an excited message from D (that's DS2, who has been making a pond). He sent a photo of a couple of tiny frog eyes looking out of the water - not bad for a hole with no liner yet. Eventually he found four frogs had taken up residence, but he's moved them elsewhere in the garden so he can carry on working to make them a more permanent habitat.

Expenditure:
Housekeeping: £8.98
Hobbies 5.48
Household £7.99

Cherryfudge

I'm not quite sure what to make of today: I seem to have spent a lot of it avoiding getting ready for the children's session tomorrow!

I made the four-pint carton of yellow-stickered milk into yogurt so now I have a fridge full of yogurt. I made overnight oats for my tea but that leaves plenty to get through!  

We went to the car boot sale in the morning and DH bought a violin which he hopes to sell on. He doesn't know anything about violins, but I used to play so I was able to point out that it needs more than new strings - everything detachable is gone from it!  He will have fun researching and marketing it, though, and who knows, he may get it back into use. We also bought two lots of cooking apples (£2.50, so much cheaper than the shops) and I bought a primrose for £1, having sadly come to the conclusion that the one I brought from my parents' garden, which was a descendent of some Mum had from her best friend, has succumbed to the summer despite me watering it.

I mentioned to DH that I need to be thinking about what to wear for a wedding at the end of next month. I think it will be the navy blue dress I wore for the bride's sister's wedding a couple of years ago, but that was summer and I accessorised in white. I had a look on Ebay and have ordered a couple of jackets as I liked a mustard/gold one but immediately after seeing it I spotted a dusky pink that I also liked - and pink is easier for me to accessorise. Total was about £18 so a saving on the shops, which helps as I don't like to wear a jacket so whichever I chose may not get much use.

Lunch was chip shop chips with supermarket fish and peas and tomatoes from the neighbour.

DH has spent some time trying to fix a kitchen cupboard door and can't get it absolutely right, though it's near enough unless the cupboard door police come round. Very frustrating for him: it's these complex hinges that don't necessarily align as they were meant to.

I spent the afternoon shopping: a couple of bits to go with DH's birthday present, a Golden Wedding card, a little necklace I liked in a charity shop (which might work with the wedding outfit), a couple of wooden spoons to make a puppet for tomorrow's story (and a spare), then a trip to the supermarket to get mackerel for tomorrow. While there I saw some things that were on my list and made the mistake of trying to hold them all without a basket. I dropped a bottle of oil and it smashed! I offered to pay but they said that as it was inside the shop, the policy is not to charge, and they quite often get people dropping bottles of wine, etc. I didn't try to replace it as I realised by then that I would struggle with the weight.

Back at home, I realised I wanted to carry on with the garden and have spent nearly an hour chopping back a rampant honeysuckle and oddments of other things. Some bits of snowball bush have come in rather than waste them. I had to stop as it went dark!

I've washed my hair as I won't get time in the morning, and have heard back from a couple of nudges I sent out this morning: we now have a Makaton version of our memory verse (nothing is wasted: I had a few words of Makaton from my previous work so it wasn't too hard to pick up on this) and should soon be getting a proper backing track for the song version of it. It does indeed take a village to raise a child. It's such fun getting help from people with different skills.

So all that's left to do is the actual prep for tomorrow... I have looked over it a couple of times but have been avoiding getting down to putting it on paper or gluing the hair on the puppet!

Cherryfudge

I got the prep for the kids done, and got some sleep. The morning session went okay, though we had three visitors and a young baby who I didn't know but who was a sweetie. I'm quite pleased with my wooden spoon puppets: I've learned from making the first one and the second and third looked better. I've dropped them into the resources bag for the next time we do that session.

Dinner was mackerel as we were both busy later on and there's not much time for cooking when I'm doing the children's work. Stop me if you've heard this before - I fell asleep after! I actually only got about half an hour but last night I'd woken up with a painful shoulder and needed to make up some sleep. I'm not aware of having injured it and it's fine when I'm moving about, but it bothers me if I rest.

DH gave me a lift round to friends who are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary, and I had a really nice afternoon. I knew a lot of the people there and it was a 'tea and cake' sort of event: they had the big family celebration yesterday. The cake was superb - their daughter makes gluten and dairy-free cakes on a sort of semi-professional basis and they were better than shop-bought, much as home made is better than shop bought.

I walked home to get some exercise in and noticed my Fitbit is starting to go blank while the battery is still charged. It was passed on by a friend a few years ago so it's had a lot of use. I'll replace it, but not with a branded one. Any recommendations? I want something that tells me basics like step count but I'm not really using a lot of the things it thinks I ought to be interested in.

There was an hour of daylight left and I'm getting possessive about gardening opportunities now the days aren't so long, so I did another hour in the garden, cutting the grass, weeding and tidying up some plant pots. Pleased to see yesterday's work is visible in the form of a less chaotic tangle of honeysuckle. Who knows, I may regain some garden!

Nothing spent today.

Watty1

I was thinking this weekend that the opportunities for garden time are fading fast, and my cold dragging on is meaning I am missing them sadly so I spent 5 mins weeding.