The friendly frugaleers natter on through November...

[blueteapot]

Hope you dont mind me starting a shiny new thread

Good luck collie.

I'm having a slightly frazzly time here trying to manage among the building work, and the broken dishwasher and trying to keep my raggedy constitution running now the winter is here, but so far so good. The carpenter starts this morning.

Sorry to hear about the sore shoulders Em. I was a bit of a shambles after my finals with overwork. It seems to be one of these no-pain-no-gain things, but the pain is not a lot of fun. Good luck there.

I lied, yesterday wasn't NSD, I did some rapid fire Groupon Christmas shopping. A leather satchel each for mum (old school brown) and DD1 (red) £12 each, plus a robot kitty for DD2 £22, plus some curlers for either DD1 or me £15.

Well under way with Christmas shopping, still need to do a food shop. Have Waitrose vouchers, so probably there.

Thanks ladies! Loving the support on this thread.

They always say "it never rains but it pours". Totally feeling it this year. So I'm going to write a list of exciting stuff to do in 2016 and a list of things that I've learnt from 2015.

Happy Monday everyone! It's still stormy here. Feeling all cosy indoors.

How long will the carpenter take ipsos?. I can't wait to see the after pictures.

em what happened with plategate?

ipsos hope your renovating works aren't too stressful

Going to be a nsd today. Roast chicken for dinner.

Hello all, my day off today and its been a rather spendy morning

So met my friend in town with the plan to find a dress to wear out for my bday dinner next week, must have tried on about 50! Eventually found one in Debenhams for £25 which is nice (black with a dark blue flower design) also ended up getting another day type dress which was reduced to £10. Bought a jumper and cardigan (both really needed) for £23.

Spent £4.50 on tea for two and a sausage sandwich.

Also £3.50 in Card WareHouse, they have 10 cards for £1 again at the moment. So got a selection of bday cards, some will do for my friends and some for dds as well as wrapping paper and sellotape.

£3.50 ish on parking.

Eek, should have a run of NSD days coming up now though.

lilac plate gate is over. I caved. And cleaned. it was driving me too crazy.

So far today's spends include £1.98 on Diet Coke and twiglets. Am in a bit of hurty neck pain. And my muscles from riding on Saturday have decided to start hurting too. So needed a treat.

Might have to walk home after work to see if it eases up with exercise. Waa

Accidental frugal win. Went to a film screening today, as part of the Into Film schools film festival (it's free for school groups but home educators can go free too) - we were the only ones there so we had a private viewing :o

Oh and we got a couple of children's reference books for a quid at the library next to the cinema too. Bargain :)

Hello! So far so good on the renovations. I just got the internet back after having none all day. The man took the skirting boards off today and a lot of the render fell off the walls so now I am getting plastering quotes. Exciting! Hope it's all going well there.

Ah Em sorry to hear you'd to cave and had extra stress to go with it too.

Catch up since Friday Spent €42 in penneys on 3 pair skinny jeans, 2 string tops and another fab rust coloured top, all these will do both going out and my work wear for my class too. Usually when we travel it involves eating out a good bit on the road but this time we were very time poor so dh made sandwiches and we had one 2 hours into the journey with some fruit and another 1 hour before our destination, we were in the car from 11am until 7pm with one stop off to drop off the kids. Then Sat we ate breakfast in hotel, lunch at a friends and dinner at dss's and Sun breakfast and dinner there and had supper at home. Did spend a good few € on alcohol on Fri night but that was it for the weekend so quite pleased with myself.

lilac I think we all knew I'd cave eventually. It was just a matter of how long I'd last.

No more spends today. Dh is making nassai goereng for dinner. (Malaysian spicy rice with prawns topped with fried egg for those of us who up until yesterday had no idea....)

I am studying.

Yawn.

£1 lunch.
£3.20 on pizza for dh but I owed him £3 anyway.
£35 petrol
£12 amazon for dh's xmas present. They gave me the £7 voucher after I complained

Tomorrow will be nsd.

£20 on gas. Last top-up of £20 lasted 10 days, although I managed without heating 3 days.
£2 on toilet roll, a pint of milk, and chocolate, as my online shop isn't coming until tomorrow evening.
£1.80 bus fare back from Pilates.

Glad you had a good weekend, Lilac.

That's a good result fuzz.
Today should have been NSD but we came home knackered and didn't fancy what I'd defrosted for tea so went to the chip shop, bit cross with myself but we shared one portion so it wasn't too expensive.
Going to attempt making xmas puddings in the slow cooker tomorrow - have any of you done it before who can offer me any tips please? My mum is coming over with her small sc too and we're going to try to cook 3 at once, 2 in my larger sc and one in hers.

Em You lasted longer than I did, how's the neck/shoulder pain?

Spends today was £20 for the cleaner and my Abel and Cole delivery at £70 (extra meat bought for freezer Christmas).

Tonight was soup but a grown up one. Teen DC were fine with it though.

Porcini and button mushroom, barley and baby spinach soup.

Sweat an onion in butter/oil. Make up a litre of vegetable stock, add in dried porcini mushrooms, leave 15 mins. Once coloured, add to the onion diced button mushrooms and 75g pearl barley. Add stock/porcini mushrooms. Simmer 20 mins or until barley cooked. Stir through a big handful of baby spinach. Check well seasoned (I added a touch of umamai paste) Serve with crusty bread.

Nom!

Dd came out of school with a headache, had run out of calpol so bought a giant bottle of the stuff £5.99, should last ages though.

Shoulders and neck feel good now. Did another hour or so study. Now in bed. Have borrowed a fancy tempur space pillow from dm to see if it makes any difference. If so. It's going on y Christmas list.

No study tomorrow. Yippee!!

Am trying to take care of myself - eating properly getting loads of sleep. Exercise and water so that's all helping.

Tomorrow I need to buy iron on fleece from sewing shop. And am taking DVDs to charity shop.

Today £30 for new dancing uniform sweatshirts for DS and DD2, ordered DD1 a new Panto one last week, so she can manage with her old one for a bit longer.

20p for a pack of Milky Way stars for DD2 at dancing as she finished really early (well actually one teacher said the babies could go, then another called for them all do the mums rushed off! They have had a long weekend of dancing).

Yesterday I bought tickets to see DS and DD2 appear in Jesus Christ Sperstar. It is DD2's first professional show (she gets carried around the stage by Jesus!). Can't wait to see it. £76 fir DH, mum and I.

Then today realised that DD1 finishes at the theatre at 6 and there'll be no-one home for her she is going to have (a very late) play date with her dancing friend (I am such a bad mother, it'll be until about 11-11.30 on a school night) fortunately her friend doesn't sleep.

Very exciting Audit. Enjoy the show!

It's quiet on the list today isn't it? I have been really really busy today and keep coming back and expecting to be three pages behind and then find I've only missed three posts.

I've had an exciting day though. The carpenter has taken off all our old woodwork and found that the plaster was all soft underneath so I'm getting quotes from plasterers now. It's quite hard to get a good plasterer at short notice, so I'm getting some quite interesting characters to deal with. Fingers crossed I find someone good.

Are you all getting on well out there?

Collie - you said you had a stressful week ahead. Is it okay?

Good luck Em. Just a few more days now.

Should be nsd here. Didn't like my 5 am alarm today