Frugaleers Still Saving into September

[Laska5772]

New Thread!!

Dinner was £46, unexpected spend on taxi home as well as I was in epic pain trying to walk - that sort of extreme 'stitch' type pain, nothing worrying as I had it with the other two. Just annoying as hell.

Hi Italian lovely to see you, your dds are beautiful, your baby dd almost makes me feel a bit broody

Great news about the pony Need

Term time is a ball ache, it was brilliant when dd was at nursery and we could book annual leave outside of the school holidays!! I miss that a lot.

Sunny hope your dh finds something soon.

Happy birthday to your ds Cag we did Go Ape in Southampton last year and dd loved it, she is so much braver than me

I am on the sofa under a blanket, so tired have worked 8 days out of the last 9 so relieved to have got to the end of that stretch. Got us a MacDs for a treat tonight which was lush cost £10 ish I got myself a honeycomb chocolate frappe which was so delicious, got have had 10 of them!!

Day off tomos, plan to take dd for a haircut and do a food shop, we have run out of everything.

Hope something turns up soon for DH, Sunny.

Get well soon, Meadow.

Low spend day today. Just bought milk.

Here you are!!!!!!!!😀😀😀

I've made jam - plum jam from our own plums I'm very pleased with it

Your post about porridge made me smile em this morning I was in a hurry so grabbed all the stuff I planned to eat today & my weighing scales, and off I went to work, when I put my hand into my box of golden crunch at breakfast I discovered it was Tesco extra smooth porridge aka ready brek, I like porridge so I made some, it's rank I ended up throwing half of it into the bin. I don't know if I even expect dc to eat it anymore it was so bad

Is nursery convenient for work & home em?

Laska overnight oats are lush especially if you make it with frozen berries which defrost and soak the oats in their lovely juices. I have a sweet tooth, I love adding some Greek style lemon yogurt

Sportsdirect sell sketchers seacow dd actually requested them this year - got two pairs for same cost as her single pair of trainers in Feb.

Happy birthday caglet boy
Wiking hi ya missed ya your girls are beautiful

Spends €10 on a cheesecake for colleagues 60th €10 on book rental scheme

Waitress well done on reducing your eating out spends, had ye a nice holiday?

Need impressive morning

Em glad to hear nursery visit went well , guess fish finger wasn't worst lunch to step on

Sunny hope your dh is successful in his job hunt

Bacon lovely image of that dress

meadow absolutely do not worry about asking questions at this early stage. If it's something you don't know how are you expected to learn unless you ask? Also write notes, I have a notebook on my desk which I've tabbed up with mini postits to mark pages for various training things - payments, how to use statutory system, how to print report, bookkeeping etc etc. Useful! as long as you don't lose notebook

Go to bed have a nice rest hot drinks and vitamins and you'll be right. I'd suspect it's being in a new environment. And maybe a bit of stress - new house new job etc. Take care of yourself. Xx

Oh. And nsd. Woohoo!

The jam cost the price of one bag of sugar! Got me thinking I might make jam from fruits on super six maybe too.

mammy yes - the nursery is in town and is near a car park. It's a 10 minute walk from both our works (opposite ends of town). Longer opening hours than most which is a bonus.

Cool em
My bff just had her first baby last evening, just woke up to read her text they've named him after both grandads I'm so excited I could burst. If she's still in hospital Sat I will visit if not I'm not sure if I'll wait another week. My dss lives in same city so he could look after my two while I visit either hospital or house as they live close by

Ds is getting his hair cut this morning and I need to get loo roll from Tesco. It's really chilly! Going to rain later so will probably spend the day indoors sorting out stuff for next week, I have to go back to work on Monday!

So impressive mammy that I ended up in bed with headache at 8pm! I did sleep soundly though. good news about your bf.

The nursery sounds good Em. Being so accessible to both your works is a massive bonus. Term time only would be a ball ache, agree with others.

I'm genuinely sorry to hear about your DH Sunny. It's still an unsettling thing, regardless of how employable he will be.

Meadow Everything Em said. I suspect you are far stronger than you think you are, I always have - you deal with so much!

I would have more than welled up Seacow, I would have flooded the place! How's your DD doing? Any more settled?

I've got my diet back from my coach yesterday. It's interesting having someone else look at what you eat. It makes you look at it in a bit more detail yourself. I didn't expect there to be any issues, and there weren't as I'm too aware (obsessed) about the stuff going into my body affecting how I run. That and the fact I enjoy cooking and we eat pretty clean anyway.

One thing that did come up was that I take a multi vitamin. Apparently this is a very poor quality supplement and would probably have been passing straight though me anyway. I mention as it's a very well known brand, advertising everywhere and with varieties for men, women, children, teens, sports, menopause etc. And not cheap.

Anyway, spends today will be.
£16 PT session.
£100 Ocado - but that's including wine and beer as we are out at friends on Saturday, otherwise way less.

That's it.

I'm going to make hummus today, something I never have done believe it or not.

Does anyone have a good falafel recipe though, they are so expensive to buy and the DC can finish a packet in a day just snacking.

Mammy It's the half on Sunday no? How you feeling about it?

Thanks for the new thread Laska. I think I've posted. On every frugal thread from the start, but the last one could be a record low with only one post!
My feet haven't touched the ground until now, since getting back from holiday so I havent posted or even lurked. As a result I think I'll just start afresh now.
We managed to be reasonably frugal in France, so not too much of a disaster. It was budgeted for too.
Since coming home we've managed to do a couple of small grocery shops but using meat that was in the freezer.
Dh got a surprise £250 bonus in this months pay. It's not much after tax, but in the public sector at the moment, a small fortune. I think it's now 9 years since he has had any pay rise so every little helps. He doesn't get a pay rise as his punishment for opting to stay in his original pension scheme which has much better terms for him than the one they want them to transfer to. He is looking for other jobs & keeps seeing interesting ones but they all seem to be in London. It's tricky because as a public sector accountant, because of the sector he works in, he is relatively well paid. But he feels stuck, with no prospects of progress, so might have to make a sideways move to get out.

Uniform shopping today, then going to a new local cake decorating supplies shop looking for inspiration. I've been asked to make a chocolate birthday cake for my aunty's 60th birthday party in 3 weeks time. I'm a good baker so the cake itself doesn't scare me but I'm a very amateur decorator so that does scare me rigid.

That's a tough call North. It's the quality of the pension that's the sticking point isn't it? You feel trapped. DB had similar, albeit in a private firm. I can only say he finally made the move 2 years ago and is a changed person.

DD is just the same Need Thanks for asking! Her stomach is definitely better with the drugs but she still wants to be held all day long 🙄.

North it is tough being trapped by a pension. I guess it's a matter of weighing up how many years he has contributed /got left vs job satisfaction and prospects. Very difficult to calculate

Am going to take DS to Costa for lunch as a treat - their toasties are his favourite.

Do you think that's habit now seacow? Not suggesting you break it or anything as she's still very little but I remember you doing controlled crying to good effect with DS.

Ps - did it with DS too. Sleep seemed quite important to functioning as a decent parent!

Thanks for all the kind words about dh's job. It's an odd situation. Lots of kind emails from friends all over the place though, which is nice.

I got some nice scholastic books from WHSmith yesterday that show examples of all the maths and english stuff ds is meant to do in the coming year. They're really very helpful and are letting us chat with him about what he finds hard. They look like the one in the attached image. I noticed that Waterstones has a deal on all books like this, buy one, get one half price or similar. Just wanted to mention in case they are helpful for others.

Morning all. Just done the bits we needed so 16£ which included a DVD the good dinosaur for 5 £ for dd1 which will be saved for advent gift.
Sold a bit of molo clothes for 5£.
Need to make fish frikadeller and Danish sausage horns today.

Hi girlie ... thanks for the compliment about the girls. I've actually been asked twice if we wanted to let the girls model but have refused both times.

I agree about booking holiday outside school holiday. We do the same and will continue until dd1 starts school and then we'll see what happens. Here we don't get fined for taking them out or similar

. need I can ask dh about falafel recipe. He's a chef so he prop know one to use.

Ooh thanks sunny I'll definitely check those out. I've got a key stage 2 book for some subjects but something that breaks it up further and adds more detail would be great .

Haven't got out of bed yet. DH got the Tesco delivery in which we ordered late last night (last chance as we can only get Tues-Thurs). Only did a small shop as next week we will hopefully get back to Tuesday deliveries. I'm making a five day meal plan for the week - totally repetitive and dull as hell but necessary I feel to get through term time craziness as we get back quite late some evenings and DH is usually working. I need something I can do quickly when tired (sauces batch cooked and frozen) that the Caglets will actually eat. Not sure what order yet but:
Spag bol
Cauli/broc cheese with either chorizo or hot dogs
Fish fingers chips and microwave veg
Chicken wings and micro veg/rice
Tomato pasta with lots of hidden veg and tuna in the sauce

Thanks for all birthday wishes, DS had an awesome day!

DD was asleep BEFORE 10pm yesterday. I think it might be safe to say that the melatonin is working?!

That so helpful thanks Sunny. DS is a couple of years behind that stage still but I am very aware I have no idea what the national curriculum requires!

Need its partly habit I think, but also although the medication has helped the acid problem it hasn't stopped the reflux itself so she still vomits a lot, although it doesn't burn so much, so I think upright is better. We will have to break the habit at some stage, but she's a bit young for controlled crying yet. We'll just have to plough through for now 😬😁

Yeah, I did realise that seacow, just wondered really.

sunny, I don't know if you are aware but the GCSE maths paper was widely reported to be extremely difficult this year and the grade boundaries reflected this. DD thought she had failed and was really upset after the exam. DS remarked a lot of the content of their curriculum he was actually covering at A Level. As usual, it appears they've introduced the content but not the teaching first, which seems a bit backwards to me.

There were also no past papers obviously or no published grade boundaries, so the teachers had no idea in that regard. They just felt their way in the dark with a whole cohort of kids

Sorry, thank you italian, that's brill