Oh come all ye frugalers, joyful in December, oh come ye, oh come yea and chat

[babsmam]

New Fred, hope I've done it right I've never done one before.

Wow lucky find ursula enjoy it!

Work this morning then dd's Christmas fair this evening. Ds still unwell.

He's currently being sick into a bowl all from his cough though

Just place marking
My poor little ds is in hospital with a bronchial infection, I didn't even think he was that sick lucky dh was home with him yesterday. He stayed with him last night & I'm going in to take over this morning.

Oh lilac your poor little boy thinking of you all

Good work on finding £60 Ursula. Enjoy it.

Yep its a local job. The money earned would go in to our savings pot for moving. Id bring home almost £1000 a month. But jobs like this are rare down here and they probably have 800 applicants. oooh well.

Our Christmas Tree is up. It looks amazing! DS couldn't care less thoug. He walked past it and said "lights!, leaves!, tree!" And then sat down and played with his trains.

Oh no lila poor bunny hope he makes a speedy recovery

Having stairs in the living room will definitely make it cold INeed. We have the stairs in our hall but we often sit in the hall and it is much colder out there. I've never been able to think of a solution unfortunately.

Get well soon everyone! There are so many coughs and lung things around it's horrendous.

Ursula sorry about bfn, it's a tough time

Today is a bit of a test. I'm having to work from home due to a travel issue so I've turned the boiler and all the radiators down but not off (heating would normally go off completely during the day). Will see if that helps as house does seem to cool down very quickly and take ages to heat up again. Cat is delighted that I'm home unexpectedly so is sitting on my lap which helps with the heating!
Just need to resist online shopping given I'm stuck at home.

INeed You could try a blanket over your legs too. That might help.

I'm aiming for a low spend day, tomorrow is top up shop (but haven't actually had a big shop this week) so that's not ideal

I just finally managed to pay my UpWork money into my stakeholder pension. I paid in £179 and the government contributed £44 of tax rebate to the amount. That was a bit nifty.

I've never logged into the pension website before but it just looks like an online bank account, without the option of withdrawing money.

Also my new dishwasher has arrived, so I am a happy soul.

I'm home from work early as ds is still unwell. He was sick all over my step mum and still has a fever. That's four days of fever and cough now vomiting. I phoned my dr but she just said give him some medicine and she will call back at 3

What's his temperature Spotty? (I think everything's scarlet fever after ds had it last spring, but it probably isn't.)

Nah not scarlet fever. His temp has been between 37.8 and 39 over the past four days and is usually 36.6

That's good then. We couldn't get ds below 38 with calpol when he had scarlet fever and his tongue was big and red.

Spotty your poor boy if temp still up might need antibiotics?

And Lila sounds really scary, hope you are o.kay and he picks up soon

So I have had the spendiest day ever bit scared to total it up tbh but here goes...

£20 towards adds school trip
£42 petrol
£3 parking
£2 in Greggs
£27 in a lovely independent book shop, got two beautiful books for this, one signed. Gifts.
£38 in M&S got a lot for this four gifts and vests for me and dd.
£8 in the Entertainer gift for dd to take to a party this wend
£14 in Primark, Christmas madness had well and truly gripped me by this point and although got three more gifts for this none of them were really needed
£15 bad for sil

On the plus side I think I am pretty much done on the Christmas shopping front....

should read bag for sil!!!

spotty hope he gets well soon. Bless him!

Just spent £5.69 at GB Posters on a Thomas & Friends poster for DS. (For Christmas). Allposters were advertising "40% off EVERYTHING" but it didn't apply to what I was going to buy The mobile site didn't let me read the terms & conditions of the offer. Anyway I found it MUCH cheaper elsewhere with 12% Quidco cashback so that's a frugal win.

Gosh I missed that Lilac. Good luck there.

I was reading the little leaflet that comes round from our local church just now and there's a lovely thing from our new Minister. She says that Christmas should not be about buying expensive presents and big dinners, but about doing little kind things for our neighbours and enjoying the community. She says we could ask a neighbour over for a hot drink, or reduce our spending on Christmas lunch and instead give a few tins of food to the local food bank. I thought that was a much better way of looking at it.

It does confuse me why people think they need to buy Christmas jumpers and expensive advent calendars and things like that, when they can really add up.

My kitchen is all working again now. The dishwasher has arrived and is working, and the washing machine, fridge and freezer are back in after the vinyl was replaced earlier in the week. So nice to have everything back to normal there.

The wood floor looked lovely yesterday, but then the central heating pipes (where the radiator had been removed) emptied water all over the floor in the night and now we've had to take up 20 floor boards and put them in the airing cupboard to dry. Ooops.

Just paid up for boat storage

Bye bye money. it wouldnt be so bad if we had used the damn thing last Summer.

Oh dear, sorry to hear about poorly children. Hope they all get better quickly.
NSD today so far but DH is out tonight so will probably overspend on food and drink and I am really tired and fed up so might get a treat on my way home. Just waiting to see the physio, I can hardly keep my eyes open!

Low spend day (I was very good about sticking with what I needed and nothing else!)

Not read the updates but had to pop on to say I am sitting here entering some competitions, opened the post and I seem to have won a clangers DVD, storybook and activity book I had no idea, that sorts a Christmas present out!

Argh this thread moves so fast, I can't keep up! Sorry to hear of all the poorly dc, I hope they all have a speedy recovery

I went grocery shopping today, it was so busy at aldi I couldn't find a parking space so I had to go to Lidl instead. I spent £98 this wasn't even with any Christmas fayre. I had to pop into tesco too to get the rest of the things on the list and spent another £20. I did get a few small gifts and put some things in the food bank too.

I've had the washing inthe line today, I'd say it's about 80% dry. I'm loving this mild weather, although I do hope we get some snow soon