The friendly frugaleers natter on through November...

[blueteapot]

Hope you dont mind me starting a shiny new thread

I just misread the subject line of an email as saying "There is still time to regret your recent Argos purchase". The word was actually review.

I wish I knew why some people gain weight with stress and some lose it. It's odd isn't it?

I saw a lovely research video once where there were two mouse wheels side by side, empty. Then a hatch in the back wall of one wheel opened and a tiny thin mouse came into the wheel and started running and running on the wheel as if its life depended on it. It continued to do that for the remainder of the video. A few seconds after the first mouse arrived, a hatch opened in the back wall of the other wheel, and very very overweight mouse came in and sat down in the other wheel. It looked around itself, up at the wheel, and then sat thinking to itself for the remainder of the video.

It said it all really (at least for me). I can never stop rushing around doing things and I am an over-thin mouse. Lilac are you quite a calm person, or do you also tend to rush around constantly as if you were an over-wound watch?

ipsos I have spoken to them about my struggles with it.

I'm going to write every morsel down for the next 7 days and see if anyone else can shed some light on it

Taking NSD's to a whole new level Year Long Shopping Ban Blog

lilac Keeping a food diary is quite an eye opener, believe me. I had to do it once, for training (running) purposes ,and it was analysed by a nutritionist. Physically writing down everything that touches your lips is quite a task, but quite a revelation too.

Finally, finally got fibre optic broadband in the village. I have scouted the market, but actually, keeping with Plusnet was the best option and they are only charging me £4.99 extra a month to go from 2mb of download speed to 40mb. Honestly, the BB coverage has been such an issue here, this is brilliant news.

I am the busy mouse too. DH is the mouse on another wheel entirely, with steam coming off it

need that's hilarious about your dh being rocket-mouse. I can completely imagine that. Well done on getting fibre optic broadband. That's great.

I have also found food diaries very interesting and also calorie counting. Quite a long time ago I realised that calorie-for-calorie I find sardines more enjoyable to eat than chocolate fudge cake. It always amazes me that Weight Watchers people are still eating cake and sweets even in moderation, because for the number of calories involved I just don't find that they are worth the trouble in weight gain terms.

electro just out of interest, have you ever tried taking magnesium supplements? I find that if I am a bit rocket-mouse and take a magnesium supplement then quite soon after I find that I can sit quite happily for a while and just stop. Maybe for ten whole minutes, you know, but it's a start.

need I've always kept a food diary, but when I went wheatfree at end of September I just stopped for some reason. I guess I knew if I was to show it to my colleagues it doesn't fit in with what we recommend so I didn't bother at all.

What is glaringly obvious is I don't get very much exercise. I get up at 5.30-6am for work, don't arrive home until 6pm 3 nights per week and 8pm & 8.30pm the other two nights, in the time I'm not working I'm making lunches, eating, sleeping and spending time with my children before bed and am exhausted. Saturdays I take dc to pool but as ds is too young to be left alone I don't get much use out of my time in the pool, and I also do grocery shopping and laundry etc and errands. Sundays are similar, dh is working all the time so I don't have time to get away on my own without the children. Sorry for the essay didn't want to drip feed.

Ill today with a tummy bug so haven't done much but have been working on a frugal home ed project. I've been a bit 'meh' about the maths workbooks I bought for the DCs, as a lot of them don't have that much content or enough opportunity to practise a particular concept. I think rather than using them, at the moment they just need a lot of repetition every day to get more confident at arithmetic (DD in particular really struggled with maths at school so I just want to build things up slowly). I have found worksheet generators online which are helpful but thought I'd try my own and make them just right, knowing exactly what they need to work on.

OK the above was probably REALLY boring sorry but I'm geeking out :o and I'm pleased that it will save money/printing too (we get free printing at the library homework club, but they have a page limit per person so we have to be selective!). People often ask if I find it stressful having to figure out what work to give the DCs but TBH it's one of my favourite things about home ed, I'm in my element doing this kind of thing :o [nerd emoticon]

Oh FFS I lost the main bit of my post!

In short I made some little drill sheets using Excel's random number generator, fiddled around with it a bit to make sure all the questions are guaranteed to be doable for them, and embedded them in a Publisher document so just by pressing F9 a few times I get a whole new set of worksheets for them.

Wow that sounds brilliant fuzz so you're doing the work once but getting loads of worksheets in return? I thought from first post that you were designing their sheets each time you needed one and was thinking either they'll get very little done or she's going to be up every single night late prepping for following day

Nsd. Wondering if the power might go off tonight.

That's what I thought I'd have to do lilac which is why I hadn't bothered trying before. But I Googled a couple of things and messed about on Office until it worked (am glued to the sofa anyway so may as well). So now yes I'll just have to click/press F9 in a few places to generate new sums and then print them - all the work is done :)

I didn't find any actual instructions for what I did though so I'm vaguely considering doing screen shots for a 'how to' post when I finally get around to starting my home ed blog

Oh no Spotty :(

I've been to see "Suffragette" at the cinema this afternoon. Spent £20, on travel, cinema entry and a late lunch. On my way home now and as it's a nasty, wet afternoon, it's almost dark. Urgh!

lilac are you sitting still all day in your job?

That sounds brilliant fuzz!
Spent £84 in Asda including a generous amount for the food bank as we are doing a Xmas collection at work.

Well done Fuzz. You could put those online for people to download.

I've got a plasterer booked to start for tomorrow. That should be exciting. I hope nothing else falls off the house once they start.

That sounds like a brilliant idea, fuzz.

just out of interest, which workbooks did you buy?

Good idea ipsos thank you :)

I just was doing a tesco order just now and unusually I remembered to scroll down to see if there were any coupons that I could use and there was a whole fiver worth of them and triple tesco points. Eeek! I wonder how many times I have missed that by not scrolling down on that page?

Thanks Rafa I have various types - ones called Leap Ahead are nice and fun but don't have much in them, Carol Vorderman ones are far too difficult for DD at the moment (unless we went below her age which would be a bit disheartening), and Schofield and Sims are varied - the mental maths/times tables test type ones by S&S are pretty good really.

I quite like the S&S ones. It's difficult to find one with enough practice.

heslerton.n-yorks.sch.uk/data/documents/BMBT-Learn-Its-Tests.pdf These might be some use and are free.

The Singapore workbooks tend to be better than English ones for having lots of examples to practice. But obviously that might be an issue if you want to stick with an English curriculum.

Hello all, work day today NSD other than £2.30 to dd for a school dinner.

Its very windy, also hoping the power doesn't go off. The TV is flickering a fair bit - eek!

I used to lose weight really easily when I was younger but since hitting 35 its been easier to put it on than take it off iykwim!

I was organised and took a portion of spag bol out of the freezer last night and had that tonight. Was really nice, def something i need to do more often (bulk cooking and freezing portions!)

Creme what did you think of the film? I went a few weeks back, thought it was good but quite hard to watch at times!