Cherry takes the reins

Cherryfudge · 8 October 2018 at 11:25PM

Well, I had a super day out with a caf! lunch, gentle walk and ice cream. There was a stall selling cooking apples so I got 4 large ones for £1 which is sooooo much less than in the supermarket. They look nice ripe ones too. As I'd been to a work event for an hour before and had to go to Mr T for groceries afterwards, I'm tired now.

Spending:
Groceries £7.39 (possibly - lost receipt)
Entertainment (lunch out & ice cream) £13.20
MS:
Beautiful cheap cooking apples
accidentally forgot the chorizo for tonight's tea so saved a couple of pounds

resisted nice things in gift shops
Decluttering:
Very little, just a few bits of paper but that's better than nothing (also resisted gift shops so didn't bring more clutter in).

Cherryfudge · 9 October 2018 at 1:43PM

I forgot a couple of MS things yesterday:
Wombled 27p
10th coin savings 25p

Every little counts, as they say

.

I'm thinking about what TOPM said about using extra time to cook in batches. My daughter gave me a lovely recipe the other day which I want to make for work meals for next week but I feel I ought to use up some odds and ends from the freezer first so tonight may be pie of some sort, or curry.

Meanwhile I have made myself a long list of all the things I 'ought' to be doing and have so far done all the handwashing, a load of dark washing, a phone call about getting a lock mended and a text about the stove we want to buy. I've disposed of some papers and found the quotation I was given for a loft hatch. I've emptied the kitchen bin and taken the recycling out, and filled a bag with holly trimmings that I'd struggle to compost. I've tidied under the sink and run the dishwasher (hope to run it again with cleaner and top up the salt later). It's a beautiful day so perhaps I should give in to instincts and get some sunshine while it's available.

HairyHandofDartmoor · 9 October 2018 at 4:33PM

I think a modern stove in an old house will look fine. People naturally add modern things to update old houses over the years. It's when you add an old thing to a new house that it looks all wrong. This is the advantage of an old house to my mind, traditional looks good and so does modern

.

Cherryfudge · 9 October 2018 at 11:13PM

HairyHandofDartmoor wrote: »

I think a modern stove in an old house will look fine. People naturally add modern things to update old houses over the years. It's when you add an old thing to a new house that it looks all wrong. This is the advantage of an old house to my mind, traditional looks good and so does modern .

That's a very good point, thanks. I think simple lines suit our house, and the big 'window' on a modern stove would also give us more of a view of the fire. We won't go for a convector stove after all as the person we're dealing with reckons the room would get too hot (it's quite a small room).

Cherryfudge · 9 October 2018 at 11:38PM

I'm rather annoyed with myself: I completely overlooked paying the minimum of my credit card for some reason and have been hit with a £12 fee. Of course I've paid some off now and tomorrow I need to go back into the account and work out exactly what's what, and really I ought to set up a DD to pay the minimum. I'd avoided doing so because different payments come out of different accounts but if it comes out of the wrong one I can always transfer some across.

Other than that I've done the meter readings (need to change suppliers again and that always seems like a massive job to me), trekked to BeeandEm and got some bargains (they do jars of roast peppers for all of £1 whereas out local supermarkets only do the £2.80 ones. In other areas it's £1.40 from the same supermarket but ours isn't good at 'value' lines. The shopping was very heavy so I didn't do much more, then fell asleep when I got home.

It was going to be curry for tea but DH had a meeting so it was hurried pizza instead, then I walked to my friend's and DH picked me up from there later - so I have some steps though not a run. Too tired to run and I have painful feet for some reason. Tomorrow is an early shift and I'm not looking forward to it much. I'm not good at earlies at the best of times and last time I did this run of shifts was immediately before I had my accident, so the associations aren't good, especially as the accident was partly due to my tiredness. Well, we'll see. As I'm not on full duties yet I may be able to make some progress on admin which will be useful as well as giving me a sense of achievement.

Spends:
(Yesterday) Late payment fee £12.00

Groceries £11.69
Household £2.99
Gift £1.00
MS:
Wombled £1.04
Assorted bargains at BeeandEm: worth a bit of a walk.
10th coin savings £1.40
Confession time:
That late payment fee! :eek:
Bought a not-very-necessary reed diffuser. A small indulgence.

Only £2.99, unlike some lovely ones I've seen costing over £40!
Decluttering:
A bag of holly ready to go to recycling instead of filling the glass recycling box

A handful of papers gone

Treadingonplaymobil · 10 October 2018 at 5:25AM

How annoying re the £12 charge! I get so cross when I do things like that, even if they're smallish in the grand scheme of things. Well done on all the little gains, at least you know it won't take long to 'earn' back the £12 in other little savings with wombling and bothering to get cheaper jars of food etc.

We have decided against getting a wood burner as our sitting room (and house!) is just so tiny, but when we were looking I felt a modern one could work really well in a more old fashioned setting.

Cherryfudge · 10 October 2018 at 11:12PM

I'm not going to beat myself up about the late payment fees: I've confessed to DH (who smiled at me and said 'Don't worry, I've done that at least twice'

) and set up a DD for the minimum amount - plus I've paid off a couple more August items, but these are already in the accounts somewhere so they won't be coming off today's spending.

Today's shift was unexpectedly good, possibly because I managed to be gainfully employed but not exhausted. Nevertheless as I have another early tomorrow I'd better be off to bed soon. It was unseasonably warm and sunny, an absolute delight, but the tiredness caught up with me and I got all gloomy and decided I wanted a dog as I miss having pets around. We still have a few non-furry ones but it's not the same. I don't think I'm going to get one, at least not for some time, but I do miss the company of an animal.

DH and I had tea at our daughter and her partner's then on to church meeting, and chatting to people afterwards was nice so I'm fairly cheered up now. Tea was absolutely delicious!

We did pop into the shops to get a pudding and saw they were selling a certain citrus-shaped chocolate for 75p so I bought some as stocking fillers, DH having thoughtfully checked they are in date till after Christmas. I think it saved about £9 so that was worth doing, though a colleague crept up alongside me and commented on not eating them all at once, so of course I had to explain my cunning plan.

Spending:
Housekeeping £4.25
Gifts £5.25
MS:
10th coin savings 7p
Decluttering:
Some post went into the recycling but not much achieved.

Cherryfudge · 11 October 2018 at 11:29PM

Another quiet day - this being at work lark certainly seems to curtail the spending, though I've paid off a couple off CC bits this evening (already accounted for - three left to sort out thanks largely to DH's birthday

).

Yesterday's blue sky gave way to today's misty dawn - but tomorrow I don't start work till 9 and that feels like a luxury! However, the early starts haven't been nearly as bad as I'd worried they might be, and once again I feel I got a useful lot of work done. the down side is I have a real mood slump when I get home This afternoon I got in a couple of hours of gardening, though, and have lots of bramble bits bagged up ready to go to the recycling centre. I've tucked the bags away between the shed and the bins in the hope they won't blow all over the road when the storm hits over the next two days. DH says he can take them away on Sunday.

That's all the adventures for now. I picked just about the last of the blackberries, and we made a bulked out tikka masala (not with blackberries in) and shared it with A and H, which was nice. Plenty of cheap, healthy curry is always a bonus!

Spends:
Nuffink
MS:
Free blackberries from the garden
Curry sauce supplemented with lots of freezer contents = cheap and tasty meal that was probably good for us too.

10th coin savings 21p
Decluttering:
3 bags of chopped brambles
Assorted freezer bits
A few more bits of paper

Cherryfudge · 12 October 2018 at 11:30PM

I'm quite weary today: too long in front of the computer or with my head buried in files at work, but again quiet a productive day in that I had something to show for it (though not the work I'd intended to do when I went in).

Tea was liver and bacon pie which I invented but probably won't repeat. The liver got overdone which it doesn't if I just do liver and bacon. However, it was tasty, cheap and good for us and used up some pastry that needed using. With the remnants of the pastry I made pear and mincemeat tarts which were definitely a good idea, apart from the calories.
I have been looking for storm stories, but there aren't any which is all to the good. It's been so warm outside this evening that we could have eaten in the garden if it weren't dark and blowing a gale! It's not even been blustery, more a steady stream from the south with more forecast tomorrow, so I doubt we'll be going car-booting. I rather like the idea of staying home and baking instead.
I did a bit of grocery shopping and DS2 has paid me back the £15 he owed me from his Dad's birthday including a £2 coin which will go in my savings pot. Not so down on arriving home from work today but it crept back in a bit later so I need to catch up on sleep.
Spending:
£6.70
MS:
Cheap dinner, plus mincemeat and pear tarts with leftover pastry and cupboard food.
Half the pack of liver frozen for another day.
Made saut!ed kale which I'd had on holiday and is to be recommended, especially when kale is on offer as this was.

Bought a small pumpkin to try baking it.
£2 coin into savings.

Cherryfudge · 14 October 2018 at 11:18PM

That was some windy weather, wasn't it? Thankfully we have no flooding here but some trees have suddenly lost all their leaves.
We got out once the weather subsided yesterday afternoon and had a good look at multi-fuel stoves. It helps to see them in real life and one of the staff was particularly helpful, so I now feel a bit more clued up. Who knew there was so much to stovedom? Anyway we think we have chosen: the one the installer recommended

but it's more our choice now. There was a really nice one for about an extra £400, but I'm not going to try to justify that when I do like the one we're going for and I'm not going to spend hours staring at it (I hope).
I also took advantage of having the car to hand and bought some plants for the wall boxes, and bulbs for spring flowers.
We've made a bit of actual progress on the house, too. I got DH to help me take all the sofa covers off, wash them and get them back on. It was such an amazingly blowy day yesterday that the last couple of loads were left on the line but the first ones were already back on the furniture. This last bit wasn't so clever, though, as it was raining heavily all morning: I rescued the cushions and only the outside seemed wet. They're now all dry and back in place. Other than that we took the garden rubbish to the recycling place so it's all slightly tidier out of doors.
Today there's not much to report. DH persuaded me to go for a run and I managed 3K which isn't too bad when you consider how long I did nothing. Apart from that it's been church, cooking, knitting, telly, reading and computer games - how nice weekends off should be.

Lots of chilling, really.
For some reason I suddenly got swollen glands late in the evening, which woke me up so I'm a bit short of sleep but the glands are better. At the same time DH got a tickly throat which has persisted so I suppose Autumnal lurgies are coming out of hiding.
Back to work tomorrow. I was supposed to get days off on Tuesday and Wednesday but that isn't happening so I'm hoping to talk the management into letting me have Friday instead, so I can be home when DH is recovering from a procedure he has booked.
Nothing else to report on the financial front: there won't be a lot to go off the mortgage this month and I need to think about paying for the stove work in the next couple of months too. There is enough in savings but I don't want to put too much strain on them before my money from Mum's estate is finally sorted (still all waiting on me sorting the rest of her house).
13/10/18 Spending:
Housekeeping £27.92
Garden £14.96
MS:
BOGOF on bulbs for the garden
Decluttering:
Garden waste gone
Tidied some stuff from the bedroom into the loft (okay, no less stuff but bedroom is tidier and this is summer clothing and some of DD's things that went into my room temporarily when DS2 took over her room back in the spring).

Cherry takes the reins

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