Debts, Diets and DIY.

Have renewed gas and electric. As I thought Zog remained cheapest for gas so that was an easy stick. A few companies were coming in slightly cheaper than Ovo for the electric but their customer service reviews were awful. With the £30 annual discount for all online and the fact that Ovo have got rid of their early exit fee have decided to stick with them for now until I see if GB energy's customer service rating improves. House insurance went down sticking with Aviva but still to sort out car insurance. Really need to do that tomorrow.

DIY - lots of painting done in the kitchen. Needs another coat but it is looking good. There was a single row of white tiles above the sink which we have removed so need to get something to replace them.

Diet - gone completely to pot. Basically need to start from scratch again. Really not happy but have been stuck indoors with workload and just not been getting out and about at all. June is not going to be any better but the workload drops significantly come July so can step away from the PC and get out and about then.

What a month it has been so far. Four out of five of us all came down with a vomiting bug the week of littlest's birthday so that put a dampener on things. I couldn't face cake baking or partying so that was all postponed for a week. He was happy with his pressies though.

The car has needed lots of little things done to it to get through its MOT but all completed for less than £100 plus the cost of the MOT itself so not at all bad considering it is a 13yo car.

The workload for work has relaxed quite a bit now. Shouldn't need to bring any work home for a couple of months. Had requested the first week of July off but already too many off so having to wait until the second week. Not planning on going anywhere other than maybe visit family but still want to get more done in the house. Have been looking at things for the kids to do over summer but most require money or having DH drive me to work so he can have the car to take them places - public transport here all changed last August and now there is no longer a direct service that goes past my work. I would need to leave an hour earlier than I already do and take two buses which because they are different companies means costs also double because the cost into town is the same as the cost used to be to get all the way to work, then the second bus costs the same again to get all the way out again. It's ridiculous. I have to go all the way into town, then all the way out again when there used to be a very popular service that circumnavigated the town altogether and only took 35 minutes in total. So nothing arranged as yet for the kids.

Oh well, the sun has come out so might fill the paddling pool again for littlest. He spent ages in it the day we first pumped it up a couple of weeks ago but the weather turned and it has been too cold again. I so hope we get a decent summer.

So 2016 is not just around the corner but knocking on the door. There is so much that still needs sorted between house, debt and body that I really have to knuckle down.

We have our holiday booked for October and that is the incentive to work on the body - don't want to have whale rescue thinking they need to help me on the beach. So going to give the 5:2 a go but I am being realistic here. I don't expect to start before the 11th Jan. We have loads of food in and two parties to go to between now and then.

DIY - come to a bit of a standstill since August. Still so much needing done. We need to replace a window upstairs, fit skirting boards round the whole of the upstairs - we have the wood, just not the time, the nails or the mitre saw to cut corners. They will also all need painted or oiled depending on how we want to finish them. Our bedroom desperately needs decorated but frightened to strip the wallpaper in case half the walls come with it like what happened in the livingroom. I think the chimney above the bedroom also needs looked at because we keep getting a lot of sand falling into the fireplace.

Debts - we upped our payments to step-change and depending on DH's tax bill might manage to give them another lump sum too. We have managed to reduce our debt free date by two years this year but unfortunately still along way to go. I've mentioned already about adding our emergency payments into our mortgage payments. If we keep managing to do this and the interest rates stay low I've worked out we will pay our mortgage off 3 years early so that will then get added to the DMP payments knocking another 3 or 4 years off that. We are in this for the long haul still.

I've joined some of the challenges on here most of which we did already but if I am logging on to update the challenges I'll hopefully keep up to date with the diary too.

And have just gone and joined the virtual sealed pot challenge too but it is something we already did anyway.

Yesterday was a slob out and relax kind of a day although I did manage to go through some paperwork and bin what was rubbish and also cut mine and eldests hair. When I say cut his hair it was more thin it out. He won't let me shorten it any but it is so thick it desperately needed something done. Also managed to dye mine.

Had homemade steak pie for tea and didn't eat too much chocolate.

DH has taken the kids out shopping. Eldest needs jeans and school trousers, middle wants to spend her xmas money - probably on yet more monster high, and smallboy is just going along to give me peace and quiet. :j

So today I am going to

Do online banking
Update virtual sealed pot
Do meter readings and update online and on graph
Need to find different coloured pens for the graph for 2016
File some of yesterdays papersorting
Charge camera