Fantabulous February with the Friendly Frugaleers!

[Cagliostro]

Hello everyone, new thread time yet again!

Great cake girlie . Well done on getting through the party. Between my dc they have had 36 birthdays (bloody hell), and I have done just 3 parties and a cinema trip I'm really not at all good at the asking other people in case they say no thing, so we always have a family pizza party round at my mum and dads.

Cake is fabulous Girlie well done

Hello, haven't totally caught up but Girlie I loooove your poodle cake, it's gorgeous!! I wish I was artistic and could make pretty things be they cake or cards but because of having Asperger's my coordination/motor skills are terrible so I can't do anything nice like that.

DH spent about £13 on our Chinese takeaway for tea at my suggestion . I don't feel too bad because we were meant to go to the cinema and possibly have lunch out but DH's got a cold (which I appear to have got from him as well just not as bad yet, urgh) and wasn't feeling well enough to bother going out. And I'd been craving a Chinese all week. Yummy. And my spend was online shop @ Sainsbury's which came into nearly £70, ouch . Think next shop will be Iceland again, much cheaper!

OMG the cake!!! That is fantastic Girlie well done :o :o :o

MissA how annoying about the half terms :(. There do seem to be two here - we do activities in two different counties so it's confusing.

Lying in bed struggling to get up, it's cold wet & windy outside but on a positive note I heard a car driving by & the roads don't appear to be slippy. One more snooze

girlie that cake is awesome!! I wondered how you were going to make it so poodley!!
Great job!

Stayed up a bit last night to watch the superbowl. Aimed to stay up for the half time show. Didn't make it.

Balance checks:

My ac £102.72
Joint ac £226
Penny ac £12.67
Cc: £766

Cash in purse £53 plus change (probably about £4)

Fab cake.

Want to cancel today as tired but I'll be ok after tea.

Lego batman is worth a look too. We all enjoyed it

missa that's so annoying

girlie that cake is awesome!

Busy day today. I need to go food shopping in one direction, come home and quickly put it away then take the car to the garage and collect courtesy car in other direction then back to original direction to meet friends at soft play. Then need to get dd from school and go in completely other direction to my hospital appointment. Not sure how I'm going to manage to do any of this on time. Hope the courtesy car isn't too old

Amazing cake, Girlie. Any left?

Ugh, work this morning, so up at 06.25. Bloody hard work after 4 mornings of 10 or 11.

Fab cake, Girlie!

I need to sort out DD's birthday before these twins arrive.

Finally got round to buying my long awaited LED bulbs last night. Ordered 20 on Amazon for about £32 which was actually less than I expected. We will have enough to replace all the halogen ones downstairs, most of the bulbs need replacing anyway, we have been stumbling about in the gloom for a couple of weeks!
Hoping to see a positive impact on the electricity bill. Does anyone know if I can use them in the bathroom or do they have to be special bathroom bulbs because of steam?

Bathroom will be fine, the fittings will be steam and splash proof.

Girlie Your cake looked lovely. I can't do things like that.

Has anyone read the price increase in aldi thread. Have to say I concur. I noticed a few weeks ago it was more. Ditto sainsburys. £1.40 for butter anyone?! I did exclaim rather loudly "I'm not paying that"

Thanks, Fluffy.

Lifelong I think food prices have gone up everywhere. Despite all my best frugaleering our shopping bill has gone up by about £15 a week in the last year or so. That's for mostly fruit/veg, own-brand yoghurt, tea, coffee and cereal etc and very little in the way of ready made stuff.

Freezing here this morning. DD left the back window slightly open on my car so had ice inside it too which was a nightmare to clear. Almost missed the train.

Hoping not to get a parking ticket. Parking inspector van was in the car park but didn't have time to pay at the machine and get a train ticket. Now paid online so fingers crossed won't have a ticket when I get back. If I miss this train I don't get to work until 10 o'clock

Yes I agree food has gone up so much. We're really struggling to keep in budget we go over every week.

Yes I've noticed food's gone up too. It's not as if it was cheap before either.

Think I've peaked too soon today! In the last hour I have cleared out and reorganized 2 kitchen drawers, cleaned hob, worktops and cupboards, changed bedding and vacuumed all of downstairs. I'm tired now!
Going to have a shower and get dressed then make soup.
Have just had an idea of adding a daily housework job (or few small jobs) onto my meal plan so that it all gets done throughout the week instead of taking half of Saturday.
I might even try to do a bit of kitchen cleaning/tidying whilst waiting for things to cook instead of looking at the internet on my phone!
Starting another charity shop bag. Does anyone know if they take socks? They are in good condition.

Thanks for all the nice comments, the cake was a mission to make, all those marshmallows nearly finished me off!! Oh well was pleased with the end result and dd loved it so all good. She got some lovely gifts as well, very lucky girl.

Day off today which is nice as lots to do here, the kitchen needs a proper sort out (lovely sticky icing sugar everywhere ) and need to do a quick food shop.

Was a LSD ystd as needed more marshmallows £1.

Snuggly I recently organised my housework like that and it really makes a huge difference. Now I have an assigned room to do each day and once that room's done I don't do any more. If another room is in chaos I just look at it and think "that's okay, it'll get done tomorrow." It's freed up masses of time, because previously I was cleaning rooms two or three times and week, but now I just do them once a week. Because they're done regularly they don't get so messy and the tidying and cleaning is much quicker. It's great!

snuggly that's a great price for the bulbs. Must get some sorted.

No ice here but wet wild and windy.

Just realised I never bought my weekly -newspaper-rag on Sat with YOU magazine in it

Sounds like you're nesting, Snuggly. Not long to go if that's the case!

I was away most of the weekend so I just did a quick catch up.

Wreck sorry to hear about the car. Did you manage to source a new key? Gorgeous cat!

Girlie the poodle cake was fab. Nice of your mum to take you out to lunch the day of the party. I'd say you need the day off today to recover.

Cag are you feeling any better today?

Italian so sad about your friend and her baby

Seacow your experience of farmers' markets sounds a lot like mine. I find the products are very expensive, even though you're cutting out the middleman and buying directly from source. It's probably more ethical as I've read all the articles about large supermarket chains not paying farmers a fair price for their products. But you have to think about your budget too.

MissA that's a pain about you and your DH having different half terms.

em another poster advising you not to make too many plans for after the baby's birth. You really don't know how you'll feel physically, mentally and emotionally after the birth. Some women take longer to recover physically, especially if they've had a c-section or needed stitches. Some women take to motherhood like a duck to water and others find it very overwhelming. One friend suffered from postnatal depression. If your baby is a bad sleeper, you may end up feeling like a zombie from lack of sleep and exercise may be the last thing on your mind. I realize I'm not painting a very pleasant picture but I'm taking a worst case scenario approach - your experience might be a really positive one. And the cuddles will make it all worthwhile. It's great that your parents live so near and are willing to help out.

Having a quiet, low key day after a busy weekend. Should be a NSD as DH took some dinners out of the freezer. I've to meet DD's teacher after school but it's just a routine parent teacher meeting. I'm sure I would have heard by now if there were any issues. It's my last parent teacher meeting for primary school .

Em If you're keen to know how to get back in shape quickly post-baby though, it's very easy. If you're breastfeeding then you'll be burning up about 4000 calories a day and the weight will drop off. When my ds was little I lost a whole pound in weight every time I walked to the GP and back which was a lot and that was in spite of having a Costa triple chocolate muffin every single day. If anything, keeping weight on is the challenge.

About 4 weeks to go, Creme! Still have a lot to do, such as buying a car!!

Cathode now I want a triple chocolate muffin ! Probably a good thing it's so wet and windy out and I'm too lazy to walk to the shops .