The Friendly Frugaleers, saving and chatting as autumn arrives

[AGenie]

Hello all :-)

€8.60 at cinema on kiddies deal & bag of yorkie buttons! Was reimbursed for tickets I had paid out for too.

€1281.77 tax refund notification!! Will be checking bank app every day for its arrival. Mechanic needs paying for work done on three cars & android boxes to be purchased then remainder is off our cc's.

Broadband installed speed is fantastic, must cancel sky tomo & buy android boxes when tax refund comes through
Covering class for my friend & former colleague for two weeks, will be €50 each night

Mammy woohoo!!

Cag - by prefab are you talking a static caravan...?

I'm not too sure really - we are mainly talking about statics yes but I've also heard about some kind of prefab little house type things which are similarly small/cheap. Open to anything TBH :)

Thank you all for the thoughts BTW

Girlie yep we are on Band B with council but have been on the list over 3 years now and no higher up (we see the results of the bidding each week) due to increase in people on A/A+. Even when the Caglets are old enough to officially need their own rooms,we will still be band B because we are already overcrowded (due to size of second bedroom) so we can't be more overcrowded IYSWIMz Did consider the medical needs for me but TBH I'm not seen as ill enough. I can walk and mostly use stairs even if I have to crawl up sometimes and rest at the top

No the Caglets aren't diagnosed with anything, they've got the referral to child development centre but no idea how long it'll take. Or TBH if DD will actually get a dx because she is typical of high functioning girls and masks everything until she gets home and unleashes hell - nobody can believe it of her (DS is pretty obvious, he does the spinning, echolalia etc). A friend did suggest going for medical needs for them, as they were housed that way, but her boys' needs are far more severe.

Asked around about that dungeons and dragons thing today, the game shop guy said it's too valuable for him to sell on our behalf, but the comic book shop guy told me about RPG facebook groups so we will try that.

Oh well now I'm grumpy. My nice chocolate is all bloomy like beyond a normal bit of bloom. £2.50 wasted! Shall I complain to the shop? :o

That's a nightmare cag. I would mention it to the shop if I had just bought it. What's blooming? Is that when it goes white?

cag if blooming is when it goes white it's because it's been kept in the fridge. Chocolate is not supposed to be kept in the fridge.

(And before anyone says anything about chocolate shops and fridges...they're a different kind of refrigeration apparently - my sister used to worn at thorntons).

Cat. Has. Peed. On. The. Couch. Again.

Although I think I've worked out why. We're using wood pellet litter. Which doesn't clump. I'm obviously not getting all of the pee in the box. Am going to do a gradual switch to the clumping stuff and see if that makes a difference. After cleaning couch at 6am I've also done litter box and have apologised to the cat for being a bad mummy.

And spends so far today £9.98 on pee remover spray from Amazon. Mine has almost run out.

I have had 2 porn pop ups on Mumsnet so I have changed my password just in case. There's a thread about it in site stuff so it isn't just me. Thankfully! Hope the site hasn't been hacked again :(

Spendy day today! Hoping I can pay the boiler service man via invoice & online banking as I forgot to withdraw cash.

Fluffy we used to do home brew pre- DC. It was good fun and very cheap, a kit yielded about 40 pints! We will get back into it one day. A good book is "Booze for Free", sorry I can't remember the author.
Cag my FIL lives in a park home which I think is the sort of thing you mean. Slightly different as his is on a retirement site but he loves it. From inside you wouldn't know that you weren't in a normal bungalow. I'm fairly sure it has proper radiators too!
Need to buy icing sugar today to decorate cakes and we are going out for mum's birthday, cheap lunch in cafe though, nowhere posh!
£10 yesterday for pregnancy yoga and I feel much better for it so money well spent.
Still planning what to do with our bonus mortgage money. We might finally replace our ancient and decrepit fridge freezer with some of it.

collie I hope the film is 'appropriate' for the whole family!

Today & tomorrow will be NSDs. I don't tend to spend money most days anyhow but then weekends can be very very spendy

Haha! Yes it was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!

I've no experience of home brew Fluffy, sorry.

Cag Would you be looking to rent or buy a prefab/static. I can't imagine much of a market for renting, but might be wrong of course. Is it worth getting pushing for the diagnosis for your DC? They are far more focused in on girls now, and their masking behaviour. And also pushing for your own health diagnosis too. You can then access a higher priority housing band but also other help and opportunities for the DC the diagnosis might afford.

Oh dear re the cat Em. Hope it's not a habit type behaviour? I know nothing of cats.

LSD yesterday.
A few bits from M&S reduced.

Made £8 on another top on FB and have a bid on another bit on Ebay.

I also made the Jamie Oliver minestrone soup which was delicious and very simple. He does 4 varieties dependant on season. Very cheap as seasonal veg, stock, bit of broken up spaghetti, a tin of beans and streaky bacon as optional. Fed myself and the DC last night and I have a portion
left for lunch.

I really took one of our staff to task yesterday, which is very rare, I hardly ever raise my voice at work. But I wasn't standing for the level of argument and attitude. It's an open plan office, so the room was very quiet for the afternoon after I had done so and I was quite pissed off all night tbh.

LSD anticipated today.

Hello!

Sorry I vanished for a bit there. That three week flu went away and I've been out tripping the light fantastic.

Thanks so much for all the thoughts on buying clothes and food and running as ways to deal with stress. I hadn't really thought about that before in that way.

Just in case I have put my foot in it, I want to explain that I didn't mean to be making remarks about anyone's spending. It was just that by seeing you all list the things that you buy to wear it gave me sudden perspective on my own buying habits, which I'd never had before. I found that really very interesting.

electric I know what you mean about your life and your job demanding that you are impeccably turned out. My job and my life are the opposite. In science it's cool to be scruffy and wearing a suit is absolutely not allowed.

I've been having a wonderful few days enjoying these old slides that I was sent my a friend and talking about them. It was really enjoyable and I feel brand new.

Cag I really like your housing plan. I think that living in a small dark house can really affect people, and if you can get out into a light airy prefab I'd be all for it.

cag something like my flatpack home kind of style? I know someone who convert a static into a lovely home, I haven't been inside but they're living there for years in damp wet miserable Ireland so it must be working out.

genie glad to hear you're better, your interest in people's spending habits doesn't bother me at all, the world would be a boring place if we were all the same. The spends on makeup bemuse me because it's something I'm not interested in spending money on but I'm sure cookery books and weight loss stories don't interest other people

Just spent £53 on a weeks shop with Sainsbury's. I had £9 off in voucher codes and earned about £2.50 in Nectar Points too via mycoupons. so really pleased and I got free Indian bhaji snacks, free chocolate biscuits and free sandwich thingies.

My only knowledge of home brew is that my late father's attempt came to an ubrupt end when beer bugs arrived.

Have just returned jackets to HoF
grocery shop this week was £68, I'm not doing a shop for next week. Half term, ILS coming to stay, DDs have days planned with friends. Have just spent £2.80 on a slice of cheesecake did I mention ILs coming to stay? and will treat DDs to lunch after school, early finish today.

well done on freebies collie

Cag My DGM spent many happy years, at least 10 in static home. It had a garden and was lovely.

Buggerbollocksarse. Just wrote the longest post and hit back. Post lost. Will uodate at home on the laptop later. Stupid arsing phone.

Hi all

Glad you feel better genie was the lone gp appointment helpful?

Boobs I am sorry but I don't think I could keep a cat that peed on the sofa repeatedly..... I think you have been amazingly patient with her but i wonder if she just hasn't been socialised well enough to make a good house cat - sorry

Mammy amazing - woo hoo!!

Cag I was on the B band for the council for 3 years before I got my flat, def keep bidding and might be worth ringing the council and explaining re how the house is affecting your health and your kids.

I have had a nice morning, caught up on some chores and met a good friend for coffee. Found out she is expecting baby No 2 so that was nice, treated her to a bacon roll and cuppa as it was her bday on Monday. Spent £12.

Been to Lidls and got lots of food for £38. Noticed on the receipt that the satsumas were £2.20 Lidls is so weird, 99% of their stuff is super cheap but then you get bits like that that are really over priced!! My fault for not noticing when i picked them up.

Girlie Thanks for asking. It's tomorrow, so I'm bracing myself and trying to have everything in my head that needs said and also to not witter. I feel like I'm going on mastermind.

DM has a static caravan which we holiday in - its an older one mind you. Quite cold in colder weather but newer ones have central heating which would be a help. Otherwise you could live in it quite happily. They do depreciate terribly though which is something to bear in mind