Bricks Not Books

Good point SW, the whole process was really stressful and I don't think I've managed to properly relax since we bought the place, I keep expecting some new disaster to lurk around the corner.

Speaking of disaster...we finally looked in our garage today...

Okay so maybe "disaster" is the wrong word, but I certainly turned the air blue :rotfl: It turns out that the garage was never emptied by the house clearance company the lettings agency hired. Among the things we found in it were a mattress, small fridge, a microwave, a box of pots and pans, the box for an iron, a bicycle, some chairs, and a few posters that suggested that it was being used at one point by a bloke :rotfl: Oh and a pile of "To Let" signs from the lettings agents who had clearly been using the garage to dump their own rubbish in the past.

So we may need to hire a second skip at some point to get rid of it all. There's a company in the village that has recently been asking around for donations of old white goods that they can refurbish and donate to social housing projects, we were going to offer them the old tumble dryer but I might also send them a photograph of the stuff in the garage and ask if they think they can use anything there. We have no idea how long any of it has been there, it might even have been left by the previous owners (8 years ago :eek:)

We now need to get the lock changed on the garage as the mattress made me really worried that someone had been living there. It would be very cold in winter, but I really wouldn't put it past the landlords turning a blind eye to it in the summer if it meant they got some extra cash.

On the other hand we finally picked some curtain material so MIL is going to make those for us for the next few weeks, and FIL is coming by on Thursday to supervise the delivery of the flooring for the living room and hallway, to get a quote for laying it from a local floor company! We might actually have a living room we can use by the end of May! :T

Apologies for disappearing, the last few weeks were very busy as last Sunday me and the OH got married! :j He's now officially MrVH, while I need to sort out getting my name changed on lots of important documents XD Tesco Clubcard already updated, so one down and lots to go!

We've returned this afternoon from our honeymoon adventure in Yorkshire. Visited lots of lovely places from our AirBnB base, still got more places we'd like to visit there in the future! (We didn't get anywhere near the coast, for example), and generally had a very nice time even though the weather wasn't very kind to us. This afternoon we've set the house to rights (including finding homes for our wedding gifts as our guests very kindly bought us some bits and pieces for the house), and now we're sitting waiting for an acceptable time for us to pop round the corner to get a takeaway for dinner.

As if that wasn't exciting enough, we overpaid £206.26 this month!! :T A massive chunk (£100) came from the cashback we got from Quidco for signing up for BT internet with them. There was also another large expenses payment from work, and another Quidco payout for some other shopping I did before Christmas.

Onwards to May, we're getting the flooring put down in our living room, once that's done we can get some bookcases from Ikea and finally start to unpack properly!

Total OP for 2017 - £490.88

Oh dear, where did May go!? :huh: Can't believe I haven't even looked at this diary all month!

I blame the fact that I decided to start a little blog. Nothing fancy, just on Blogger. I had one on there a few years ago and ended up dropping it as I became too busy. But it had Adsense enabled on it and I discovered recently that I had £3 waiting in the account that I'd earned from adverts on that blog. I can't cashout until I hit £60 (cheers Google you greedy !!!!!!s) but if I don't have an active blog then that £60 will be even more difficult to hit. So I started a new blog with the same adsense account (perfectly fine as they're all under one email address) and have been posting on there.

But that does mean that I neglect this place Which I shouldn't do as it keeps me focused.

This month has been me and Mr VH settling in to married life. So far, much the same as when we were dating, which may be because we've been acting like an old married couple for two or three years now :rotfl: Name changes are getting there, still need to the DVLA for my driving licence and my car registration. That'll be the first time I have to actually post off our marriage certificate so I've delayed it a bit as I don't want it to get lost Also had to make two trips to Barclays as the person who changed my name managed to screw it up, so I ended up with my online account in "Miss Married Name" and my new bank card and cheque book in "Miss Maiden Name". Luckily it got sorted out second time round, so I now have valid ID for things in the future.

Also been quite an expensive month. DH had a few days off at the beginning of May so we got the floor laid in the hallway and living room. Beautiful dark hardwood, looks so much nicer than the poor quality laminate and old carpet that was there before. No more delays with getting the house up to scratch now, so we've bought the paint for the hallway and I started painting yesterday, and last weekend we got 3 bookcases delivered from Ikea which DH assembled. We've now got all our history books unpacked and sorted in to chronological order. Unfortunately they took up all three bookcases, so we need more for my fiction and our combined comic book collections, and DH's theology stuff as well! We need to buy a bigger house :rotfl:

I've also had to spend money on my car, it ticked over the 40k miles mark back in April and as I drive it a lot and it's an old car (2003 plate, it was my Nan's hence the tiny mileage) I decided to get it serviced. £250 and they discovered the suspension brushes are wearing thin. The car has been making a horrid squeaking noise when going over speedbumps and the like in recent weeks, but I didn't mention it to the garage as I wanted check if they could find anything without it being pointed out (come across as decent and honest but you can never tell), an earlier Google of "car squeaks going over bumps" had suggested the suspension brushes being a possibility, so I think it's safe to say they're on the ball. They said it wasn't an urgent fix, but I'd like to get it done, so that will be a bit more money next month, and I've decided to bite the bullet and get the cambelt changed, which will be about £300 :eek: But I'm so dependent on that car that I need to see it as an investment. I also had to get the windscreen replaced this afternoon after a blow from a rogue stone a few weeks ago (which hit the windscreen near the wipes so I couldn't see the enormous chip it left), led to a huge horizontal crack along the bottom. Only spotted it when the horizontal crack then started sprouting vertical ones too! It's clearly been getting worse in the heat this week, so had to be done, but my poor bank account is feeling the burn.

My eye has been off the OP ball so it's only just over the £60 target, but I can't have £200 overpayments every month so never mind. Onwards and upwards to next month when my expenses claim form should be a little bigger!

Tomorrow we're off to a castle and taking a picnic with us! They've having a medieval day including jousting and a jester, so we'll hopefully have a nice day out! :j

Had a quiet time indoors this weekend. Originally planned to get more hallway painting done on Saturday, but DH woke up Saturday morning with a headache and a cough. After doing the food shopping he wasn't feeling much better, so he heated up some soup, ate that, and then felt very tired so he curled up on the bed and dozed for the whole afternoon. I didn't want to disturb him (or catch his germs) so I decamped downstairs. But since I needed his help for the painting (mainly reaching the bits I can't and dismantling bits on the walls) I didn't get the painting done. I eventually went up with a cup of tea, and did pizza for both of us for dinner, but he left a slice and a half of his. Shows how ill he was feeling, I've never known him to leave food before!

He's feeling a lot better today though, so the point where he did the cleaning this afternoon. I've cooked a big batch of bolognese and put it all in the freezer, and then did roast pork for dinner, which was very tasty. DH proved how much better he felt by devouring a huge portion of green veggies with his dinner, although he's still looking a bit tired and has a bit of a cough. Can't persuade him to take a day off work though as he hates going sick.

No much money saving to report, just cashed out £10 from Quidco for this month's OP. Expenses claim was just over £20 again, which still isn't much, just haven't had a great deal to buy for the office really.

Got four days off in July and I'm really looking forward to it. Need a bit of time off to just relax around the house. End of June is going to be exceptionally busy as work is holding a conference, so it'll be all hands on deck soon.

Well, back to another week at the coal face!