Settling in for the long haul

Dakota_Rose

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82064397#Comment_82064397

I feel the same @Honeysucklelou2. Can’t wait to see her this afternoon!

Dakota_Rose

It’s Friday! I’m still melting but at least I can melt in peace for a couple of days 😂.

Little Miss is home, which is lovely. Both her and her littlest have brought home their end of year school reports which were nice to read.

We’ve got chicken flatbreads to look forward to tonight. Despite the heat, I’m ravenous!

Wishing everyone a happy weekend ahead. Ours is planned to be quiet. Time in the garden or in front of the fan is called for.

Blackcats

have a great weekend - you've earned it!

Dakota_Rose

Just reporting back to say that the curly plaits had definitely been the right advice from visitors on my diary! Little Miss told me last night that her first activity upon arriving was bodyboarding in the sea - they didn’t last 5 minutes 😂.

It’s been an incredibly chilled Saturday morning so far. Woke naturally without the kids beating me to it and have enjoyed cups of tea, a catch up with Mum on the phone and my book. The house feels a lot more comfortable temperature wise this morning so I feel like I can relax a bit more again. I was so past it with the heat yesterday that I felt I could combust.

There’s not much on the agenda today. We’ll just take it as it comes. Probably should pop out for some dinners to see us through the next couple of days.

Dakota_Rose

Gorgeous day has been had. The weather has been perfect - a gentle mix of nicely warm with a breeze. We spent a couple of hours sitting out in the garden and I enjoyed a few chapters of my book. I’ve said it many times now I’m sure, but the garden table, chairs and parasol have been the best buy. We bought them second hand at the end of last summer and we’ve used the garden so much more for relaxing in as a result. Just love it.

We ventured out for an hour to choose some different meals. We’ve been very beige lately and relied on the freezer a lot. I just craved some fresh food. Little Miss requested pie of all things as her welcome home meal so we had pie, new potatoes and tender stem broccoli for dinner, followed by meringue topped with ice cream and strawberries for pud. All bought in M&S for a treat. I have to say we chose carefully and kept to a budget as Aldi is our usual shopping spot and the price difference is significant for most items. It was really delicious though! Tomorrow, we have bacon subs for brunch and a picky bits quiche-salad type dinner planned.

The boys will be watching the football tonight, so I will be enjoying a guilt-free early night.

Blackcats

glad that little miss enjoyed her trip. Sometimes an m n s meal is such a nice treat. We bought a meal from cook last week and it was very tasty, easy and we both enjoyed not having to do any food prep.

Dakota_Rose

Thank you @Blackcats. I’ll need to take a look at that as I haven’t heard of it before!

joedenise

The Cook shops sometimes do tasters which DH and I always take advantage of! The tasters are quite small but it's nice to try some different things. Last one we tried was a Thai yellow curry which was very nice.

We actually have a Cook kitchen in the next town from us but unfortunately no shop we can buy from! Seems daft to me!

Dakota_Rose

@joedenise thats good to know. I had a look on the website last night and the meals were very tempting. We’d need the larger size portions for our big family so it wouldn’t come cheap. But then again, not much does nowadays.

Today’s plans are fairly chilled. We’ve got the menu plan and shopping done, so it’ll just be a visit to Mum’s early afternoon and then prepping for back to work and school tomorrow. 5 more get ups to go! This should feel so exciting, but hand on heart, I was really ready to finish by the end of last week. The heat has just made the days feel like survival rather than enjoyment/productive. At least the longest days are done now and the temperature has dropped to a much more comfortable level.

Just remembered that a leaver’s shirt is on the list to make today. Little Miss shared that her friends had bought theirs from Etsy but she’d really like to make hers with me as a project. May sound angelic, but actually the design she had in mind was very specific and not for sale anywhere 😂. Well, a packet of transfer paper and a visit to ChatGpT later, we have it ready to iron on. It should turn out okay, and it cost less than half the price of a ready made one. (In fact, I think many of the ready made ones are just the transfers sent to you in the post to iron on yourself anyway).

Over the years, I have made many crafts as gifts and then had a little Etsy shop of my own as a result of people asking if they could buy some for friends, and back then I was (more) time rich, cash poor! Before work got too demanding, I really enjoyed it. But I have to say AI would make some of the projects an absolute breeze nowadays. One of the gifts I’d made was a personalised book bag for each of my relatives for Christmas to gift with a book. The designs took ages but the plain totes were cheap to buy in packs. When I think of the hours I spent on those! I’m not a huge advocate of AI, but used sensitively, I can appreciate the benefits. Saying that, my favourite book bags I made, were those where I used fabric pastels to illustrate a children’s book design on, which made beautiful gifts for the children’s early birthdays. I’d never have sold them (copyright for starters) but they were lovely to have.

Well, that went on a tangent! 😂

Dakota_Rose

One down, four to go! As Mondays go, it was okay today. I got home at a reasonable time so feel like I’ve had time to get things done at home tonight before the day is over. Tomorrow’s prep is done, and it’s not my bedtime for littlest tonight so I’ll have time for a chapter before bed! I’m reading The Falls, by Ian Rankin. I can’t think if I’ve read one of Rankin’s books before but I’m quite enjoying this one.

Yesterday I made a (very) little overpayment to both the car loan and mortgage. These are lower priority while we have house renovations to do and a balance on the credit card to clear but I get the itch every now and then to chuck some more at it.

This week, I’m mostly looking forward to our regular saver maturing. This is due on Wednesday or Thursday so that’ll be very nice to allocate to what it’s earmarked for. I’m not sure how much interest will be added, but we have the full amount of £3600 saved in it. I have £1250ish to repay for the child benefit charge and then the rest is ours. I’ve got a college bus ticket for eldest and uniforms for the younger two to buy out of what’s left, which will come to about £1200. The credit card will be cleared, and that will leave around £400 for home improvements and hopefully enough for some premium bonds too. I have the last two CB payments put aside ready to open a new regular saver. I just need to check whether FD are still offering a 7% account. I hope so!

I’ve also chased up the TCB which we are still waiting for from a life insurance policy we took out in January. I’ve been told it’s typically 9 months for this particular company so to be patient. I think waiting 7 months to chase up is patient!

Other than that, we are on the cusp of the summer holidays, which aside from Christmas, is the most expensive time of year for us. I’ve saved as much as we’ll need to cover the cost of our trip 8-day trip to the Lakes and Scotland. (I’m so excited for this!) But there’s more weeks to fill and I’m worse with money when I’m relaxed and feeling carefree! I think the overriding feeling is of trying to cram as much enjoyment in as I can before it’s back to the stress of work.