Riding the wave

Keep_Buggering_On

Well that was a good couple of finds! Went into Asda at lunchtime and they had a lot of the gardening stuff down to half price or better- picked up a watering can for £1.24 and a pair of secateurs for £2.08. My existing watering can is a galvanised metal one I found under a bush when I was a kid and is 100 years old if its a day, unsurprisingly it leaks all over my feet so the new watering can is something of an upgrade! My existing secateurs have lost the spring between the arms so every time I use it, I have to manually open it between each cut so my nice new shiny ones will be much better!

Keep_Buggering_On

The end of another week and looking forward to the weekend now. I hope the weather cools a little, but stays dry as I have a long list of jobs I want to get done outside, but if its too hot I will have to retreat indoors. The front of my garden slopes up sharply to the road and where the flower bed hits this slope I am building a dry stone wall that I will back fill with soil to level off the slope and give me a raised bed. I have trawled the garden and found a lot of bits of sandstone and every time I go out around the village I am keeping my eyes open for small bits of stone dumped at the edges of the footpaths to help build it up. I have probably got it about half the height I want now (about 8” high so far), the next big issue is the soil to back fill it with, but there is a sloped area behind the office at the other end of the garden that needs to be levelled, so my plan is to strip off the brambles and weeds, then dig it out and use the stones for the wall and the soil to fill the flower bed. It’s a bit of a project, but hopefully will cost nothing more than my sweat and hard work! I have lived in this house for 17 years and I have never really done much with the garden until this year, but I am really starting to enjoy getting out and making progress, even if most of the time I haven’t a clue what I am doing.

It’s the kids last week at school next week and DD’s final week at primary school. So far she has a circus skills workshop, foam party and disco in the diary for next week- bit different from when I was a kid and someone’s mum organised a barbeque in their garden to mark the end of primary school and that was it! It will also be DD’s last week at Cubs as she turns 11 over the summer and she has decided she doesn't want to carry on to Scouts, so big changes afoot.

Not much to report on the money saving front, however I did get four massive share bags of Sweet Chilli crisps in the chuck out of B&Ms yesterday for 33p each- they are usually about £2 each in Asda. Me and OH often share a bag of crisps as a treat on a Saturday night, so they have gone in the cupboard and will be much appreciated over the coming weeks. I have also booked us a table at the lovely Italian restaurant in the village for September and arranged for a friend's eldest to come over and stay with the kids for the evening- we have been going out 20 years in September and married for 16 so we need to mark the occasion. Not money saving, but important! I look back at us when we were 21 and 22 and first going out, can't believe its been nearly half our lives now! I can't be that annoying to be with after all…

Keep_Buggering_On

DD’s last day at primary school today and I have the afternoon off work to go down to her leaver’s assembly. It feels a little strange as both the kids went to the school and its been part of our life for ten years now. Both kids are ready for their summer holidays now and hopefully the weather will be good for them so they can enjoy their break. DD finally got her SATS back yesterday and did better than we expected. The benchmark is 100 and she got 98 in two and 107 in the third, so although below average, for DD we felt this was a good result, she is not an academic and is dyslexic so although she tries really hard, she is more practically minded. She is also the youngest in her class by a long way as she is not even 11 until next month and some of the other children are a good 11 months older than her so we are proud of her achievements as they mean a lot for her and show the effort she put in. I think they pass the results on to high school, so hopefully that will allow them to give her the extra support if they feel she needs it.

My plan this weekend is clearing a huge pile of scrap wood dumped around the garden. One of our neighbours had a massive shed taken down and I claimed the wood so its currently dumped behind my office waiting to be cut up. I am feeling much happier about the fuel status now for the coming winter as I think I now have enough to last us through although much of it needs to be cut up. I also have seven bags of smokeless coal left in the bunker- I use a shovel a day to bed the fire in so that should take us through the winter months as well.

Had to do some rejigging of the meal plan for the coming week yesterday- I had got it all planned out then checked in the freezer and realised I had used up the chicken thighs I thought were in there and we were out of sausages, so had to come up with an alternative menu to make use of what we did have. OH doesn’t get paid until Wednesday so it’s a case of adapt, overcome, survive! We are certainly not going to starve as I have about three months of food in my store cupboards for emergencies and when the month is longer than the pay! OH laughs at me for having emergency loo roll in the shed, but a couple of times we have run out of the big packet with a week to go and the little packs of four rolls in my store have rolled us over until we can restock with the big one!

Dakota_Rose

Congratulations to your DD 👏🏻

I like your pro-active approach to storing fuel for the winter. Future you will be grateful!

AntoMac

Your resourcefulness is commendable. You must have saved a significant amount with your foraging and general handy skills.

Well done to your daughter for her school achievements 💪

Keep_Buggering_On

I have had a productive week in the garden- I tidied up the garden and moved all the uncut firewood to behind the office where it can't be seen. I have fitted edging to the flower beds- I had a load of six inch wide flagstones left over from another project a few years back and they have been fitted on edge to make an edge, with some gravel I had left from something else at the bottom to help them sit nicely. The raised bed dry stone wall is nearly finished and I used the soil I dug out to fit the edging to help fill up the bed. Lots of good projects completed and the only expenditure was my hard work. I was very pleased to jump in the shower when I had done though as I was very dirty and every muscle in my body is protesting!

Considering I know nothing about gardening, I am quite proud of myself as it actually looks tidy and we even have some flowers out!

lucielle

That looks great. Well done

L

beanielou

Wow. Well done.

Keep_Buggering_On

It has been far too long since I last updated, mainly because I have been ashamed at how badly I have fallen off the wagon this summer! We had a lovely holiday in London and although we made as many savings as we could, it has wiped us out financially and in combination with some impulse buys I really shouldn’t have bought things have gone from ‘oh dear’ to ‘oh sh*t’. Currently both credit cards are maxed out and I have a £200 overdraft, with only the Help to Save account looking positive (and I am not going to touch that). I have worked everything out and I can hang on until payday and then start trying to get back on my feet. The overdraft will be the first to go, together with making some payments on the two credit cards and putting a bit of savings to one side. Currently we have £25 for the shopping next week (OH gets her UC through on the 21st) and £100 aside to go to Leeds for the kids school shoes on Saturday. I am hoping we have some change out of that as I want to pop into the market in Leeds and stock up at the out of date discount food store, but we do need two pairs of school shoes and two pairs of trainers so we shall see!

I have had last week and this off and after recovering from London, I have got a few (free!) jobs done around the house:

• Put up a couple of shelves for OH for her anime figurines- the brackets were scavenged from something else and the shelves were made from a bit of old pallet I had in my store.
• Put a new micro SD card in the security camera so it actually records rather than just sending things in real time to OH’s phone. The SD card was one we found in DD’s old Kiddizoom camera she hasn’t used in years. A quick reformat and its gone in the security camera.
• Stoned and chopped a massive bag of plums Dad gave me out of their garden. They have gone in the freezer and will make a couple of plum crumbles later in the year.
• Made DD’s birthday cake for tomorrow. She is massively into Squishmallows, so I made her a cake in the shape of the cat one. Its not as fancy as the ones on Instagram, but I am pleased with it and more importantly so is DD. It’s the first birthday cake I’ve made since I did one for OH’s 22nd birthday, which is 19 years ago now (ignore the Christmas cake board- its the only one I have)!

Despite having no money, we do have some fun things lined up. For DD’s birthday tomorrow, I have been given a strict menu she wants (pancakes for breakfast, cheesy chips for lunch and a roast lamb dinner for tea). We have booked and paid for a trip to the Harry Potter themed crazy golf in town on Saturday after shoe shopping for DD’s birthday treat so that should be fun. Finally me and DD are going to the local Bus Museum’s reopening open day in a weeks time- it will cost me £6 to get there, DD has free bus travel this month and entry is free, so it should be a fun day out with minimal expenditure- I might even rustle up a fiver to spend on a book or two at the stalls. With this lovely weather, we are having a fantastic summer, even if we have no money at all!

Blackcats

Don't ever feel too ashamed to come and post updates - heck - we've all been there and done that. Just limp through til payday and then re-set. Just a thought, could the school shoes wait til after payday?

That's a brilliant cake! I hope DD has a fabulous birthday.