With a whizz and a bang, here comes Bonfire Night to herald your 50 day warning! Countdown to Christmas, thread 8

[NoWordForFluffy]

Here goes!

Thread 8 already; wonder how many we will get to before Christmas?!

I have one pair of joggers for DD, and an eGift card for DS1, there was just too much expense in October and the beginning of November. 1 thing a week now until Christmas. I can do it! 🎄🎅

Well done on the shopping! I definitely need an audit.

I’ve made the puddings today! We went on a lovely quiet walk in the woods and then home for baking. They are on to steam now and slowly beginning to smell them. So excited!!!

Fiddle that looks awesome!

Man crazy Good job! I've not even STARTED Christmas shopping and I'm kind of worried we won't have enough money this year. It's making me kind of nervous

Fork Those puddings look fantastic!

Acey That cot is GORGEOUS! For my last child I splurged and bought a round cot. It was so cool

Firefly I keep considering setting up some bird feeders. I'd love to see what kind of birds we can get in these parts. We have some great big windows so I think we could definitely watch the birdies.

Thanksgiving is coming up on Thursday so I've decided to give my kids the week off school this week. The public school kids are off too and I'm like 'Meh I don't want to be your teacher this week so break it is' lol

So do you guys have trailers or mobile homes like we do? We live in a mobile home park and it's not looking like anyone here decorates for anything. Halloween was a bust and I was asking our not nosy neighbor about Christmas decorations and he said people don't really decorate in our community! So I've decided I have to go all out and decorate like crazy to make up for it! I'm going to the store with y husband later to pick up some lights and start the outside decorating. I was the only house in our community decorated for Halloween! I did attach some photos of our Halloween decorations lol

Oh! That first photo is just my little trees from where I slept in my recliner. I thought they looked pretty all lit up in the dark

Wheelchair, there are some places that are static caravan type parks which are quite often lived in by older folks. But I only came across them when I moved here; they're not common place.

Static caravans are more for holidays here in general :) our development is full of young families so decorates well :)

Saw my first tree in a house today!

Yeah, these are technically holiday parks, but you can live on them for most of the year. I think you have to rent it out for the weeks you can't live there. But they're way cheaper to buy than a house, so I suppose some people find them cost-efficient and bugger off on holiday / stay with relatives when they're renting it out!

Interesting! They are full time living structures here. I think because we don't have housing like you guys do. We have a low income housing but the wait list has been closed for 15 years. So it's much cheaper to live in one of these places full time. lol I love mine because it's vintage with lots of storage space! We bought out home for about $5,000 which is about 3,894 GBP

Plus we own it outright and don't have to pay payments which gives us more money to use for other things.

I'm now planning how to go overboard with outdoor decorations. Are you all going to want photos of that too? LOL

Wow that's amazingly cheap. We could never afford to buy here or private rent 😓 we're in the south east though. Even the newer council houses here are £800 a month to rent.

Had hunter's chicken with paprika potatoes for supper, DS2 will go to bed at 7.35, DD will go at 7.55. 😋🍗😴

wreck yeah that sounds similar to here. Before we bought this place in August we were in a very small 2 bedroom apartment that cost us about $780 a month. It was the cheapest we could find too. So when this house was being sold by my cousin we were like We'll take it!

Philomena Good luck getting the kids asleep! Sounds like a good dinner to me. We are having a roast for dinner tonight. It's been in the crockpot for about 2 1/1 hours lol It's about 2:20 pm here right now. Lots to do today still. My husband is off to work at 3.

Evening!
Haven’t had a chance to catch up yet as today’s been absolutely manic.
Had to go shopping and get a whole new wardrobe of maternity clothes, as much to my grandad’s amusement; none of my clothes fit any more and I can’t do up any of my jackets or work shirts. 😂

Just having dinner, forgot how much I love cooking 😁 then i’ll Have a bath and catch up

PSB worrying about money in the run up to Christmas is rubbish isn't it? But I'm sure you can organise it, so done clever bargain hunting and spread the costs.

Fur I'm jealous of the smell that must be throughout your house right now!

Wheelie do you have many to buy for at Christmas? We seem to have loads, and as everyone is having children the numbers go up every year! Am desperately trying to cut it down this year though.

As PP said, we don't really have homes like yours to live in here, more for holidays. You had a bargain though - DH & I looked at one here a few years ago and it was £10000!!

Love your pics. Shame the neighbours don't decorate much (ours just do some basics) but I turn my house into a grotto

Oh and YES, we want lots of photos of your outdoor decs too please!

Wreck those rent prices are nuts! It's around £500 a month here.
Do you currently rent? We do and the housing ladder looks further and further away whenever I look into it unfortunately.

Acey make sure you put your feet up. Shopping is exhausting, I can back you up on that!

I'm currently taking a crochet break because I can barely keep my eyes open. I got in from shopping to see the last 10 mins of the rugby (Wales), went out for food with DH and am now home while he watched the Ireland game 🙄

Yes we rent. We are lucky(?!) enough to have a housing association one and as it's an old one (two up two down) it's only £500 a month. But dd and ds share a room so we will need to move at some point. A 3 bed semi near us went for £650k recently. We will never be able to buy, even if we had saved all the money we've spent on holiday 😁 we still wouldn't be able to afford the repayments. I've looked at part rent part buy but again you're looking at £1300+ a month for mortgage and rent and we just can't afford it even if we were debt free.

Picked up a couple of bits for Addie earlier; a gorgeous blanket with her name on and a very cute, fabulous flamingo outfit 😁

Just about to run a bath, I’m exhausted and just want to sleep! Hope maverick doesn’t wake me up at 4am again 😫

P.s. sorry if my constant talk about Addie is annoying you all; I’m just so excited

Wreck that's nuts isn't it? Around here the prices are more reasonable - can get a 3 bed semi in nice area with a garden for £150k (maybe £135k if you're willing to do some work), but that still means you have to pay £500 rent plus bills and find a way to save £15k for a deposit. Obviously jobs aren't paid as well either.
We've opted to throw all spare money at debts and think about buying a house this time next year. Every person I know who owns did it either through inheritance or parental help.

We've had some very lean years where it was a struggle to buy token gifts for Christmas. Worst was when I was made redundant then become too ill to get a new job (but not ill enough to have any help). We were only young, had no savings and DHs wage from 2 jobs paid the bills and nothing else. I remember getting in a tizz and crying to my mum that we couldn't buy anyone anything.
Thankfully things have improved since then but I stress every year because something always breaks or costs lots in either December or January (we've had washing machine, fridge, 2 cars, a sick dog over the years).

Anyway, on to nicer things. You have Lapland to think / plan for. Does your dc know that you're going?

My grandad said it looks like a flamingoes died in my bath; for fuck sake 😂

Still haven’t caught up; I’m not being ignorant 😂

Yes they do know. Ds is more excited about his birthday as 'Lapland is ages away' and dd isn't really excited about much right now. I think it'll be better once I can (hopefully) show them some snow on the webcams and when it gets a bit closer

Wheelie DS2 was asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow, DD must have been quite quick, she borrowed our emergency torch to read by and fell asleep before she could bring it back! 😂

I'm not really worried Crazy, just buying one thing a week. I hope not to still be buying on Christmas eve! 😂

It does rather Acey! I agree with your grandad! Either that or Professor Umbridge died in it! 😂

crazy I've made a lot of gifts for family but we my family celebrate chanukah so I've got to come up with 8 gifts for each of my two children. And then Santa clause gifts and then gifts for my three nieces and my nephew lol I'll be able to do it because we do a lot of small gifts but it will stress me out until we have everything we need lol

wreck that's how we were. Without this place we wouldn't have ever been able to but. As I'm pretty disabled and on disability it's only about $750 a month. (584 in your currency) I'm paying all our bills and such. My husband is working yes but he had to cut hours to help care for me. :/ kind of a mess honestly lol But needs must. Thankfully both of my kids asked for a lot of books this year!

acey Not annoying at all!! I adore all the little things you are buying her!! That outfit is adorable! And I love the pink bathwater from murdered flamingo lol

Philomena I'm glad they are alseep and all is good! Only about 5 pm here so we've got a while to go yet lol.

I ramble here a lot and I have some more but I'm curious. I collect vintage pyrex and glass and such and I know you guys have some amazing vintage pyrex patterns that we didn't have in the USA but one thing I collect are vintage fairy lamps. I am not sure if it was a thing in the UK? They are glass candle holders that were popular here from 1850-1975. Do you guys know of these? Did they exist there in the UK

Here's what mine look like (Only some of them lit up)

My crazy nosy neighbors are outside hammering and making lots of noise today and I'm a little grumpy at it I admit lol I have a headache and the hammering keeps continuing

37 woohoo! Just over 5 weeks!

Wheel I don't remember seeing anything like your lamps but they could be quite niche.

Nosy questions, feel free to ignore, do you pay ground rent, and are your walls quite thin? That's my least favourite part of holidaying in a caravan, hearing the neighbours cough and everything said by everyone who walks past!

A 3 bed semi near us went for £650k recently Good grief, Wreck! Did it come with an indoor swimming pool and a Butler? That's crazy money! How would you ever even pay that off?!? (Can't you tell I'm from oop North ) We have a 3 bed detached, which admittedly we got a really good deal on, but we paid £160k 5 years ago. We live in a lovely quiet little commuter village, good schools, no crime thankfully because DH and I frequently fail at adulting and have been known to leave the doors unlocked and even open overnight.

Hope you enjoyed your bath, Acey. I read something from you earlier in the week and I thought at first it was your grandad using the bath bombs! I love seeing the clothes you're buying Addie. I don't think I'd get away with putting DS or DNephew in lovely frilly dresses, so I'll have to live vicariously

Crazy it's always the way with things breaking at the worst time. We've just had to replace the dishwasher. I remember many years ago my parents' tv broke during the World Cup warm ups or whatever they call them. Cue a mad dash to Curry's to get a new one

It's closing in on us quick! Still undecorated mostly but our vintage aluminum tree is up. The kid wants to sleep under it as it's 'so shiny!' lol

Firefly We don't hear anything from our neighbors but we have a really nice sized yard. The only reason we heard them today is they were hammering outside to build something. We pay $200 (155 gbp) ground rent a month which includes water so that's fantastic. Really since water is about $100 we only really pay $100 to rent the ground. We have people walk by all hours of the day, because we are a very quiet neighborhood people use it as a safe place to walk because we also have security guards. I don't hear anyone when they walk by though I just see them because my chair is near the window lol. We do have a cute little boy who walks by with his dad and gets excited if the kitties are in the window but he never bothers me lol

Morning! I'm the only one up! 😆

Firefly it's crazy. We can't move though all of our family and jobs are here plus moving costs thousands which we don't have 😬 we often go to bed leaving our keys in the front door 🤭

My best friends daughters birthday party today. I'm not impressed with the dc being up so early

DS2's still asleep, which is a small miracle! 😆