The Friendly Frugaleers; joyfully saving through July

[Wolfcub]

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Love summer off sounds like a terrific idea!

Cag glad the house is starting to feel like (a spacious) home. Are you moving finally next week?

I am at the hairdressers, so not cheap. Would have been an NSD yesterday but the home hair lady came to do DS’s hair, £12, plus £150 for phone line. We now have a working home alarm, woo hoo! And we can put the alarm on the doors and garage at night too. That might stop me thinking every little noise is a burglar. It would have been cheaper to stop reading all the crime hysteria on the local community fb group

I have also just spent over £400 on a roof Box and bars. A lot of money but with two kids and always self-catering (mostly in Uk) I think we’ll use it a lot over the coming years. I feel as though I am haemorrhaging money at the mo though we knew the holiday would cost a fair bit - it is a once-in-a-decade long trip though. Home insurance also renews next week so I have to get on a comparison site.

Massive Ocado shop coming tomorrow - food for the 10 days till we go plus some stuff to take with us that might be harder to find in small shops Londoner here, terrified of not being able to get Harissa paste and pecan nakd bars on demand

I am actually dreading the credit card bill this month . We can pay it from savings but it will hurt.

mammy I know. It’s crept up over the past few weeks. Ds’ christening then a few dinners out with mil (where I used the wrong card) some clothes spends for me and ds, some spends for dh for father’s day.... etc.

Must clear it.

Have put it in the drawer. So I can’t use it when out and about.

Woo sold my sling £25. Good thing too as new one was £70 and that was half price! Friend is having it, she got a call about fostering a newborn showed her how to use it. Still need to get another friend to show me how to use the new one!

Train fare today and some cash for concert tickets.

£73 Sainsbury's, £87 Matalan, £24 Halfords, plus cash to pay for tonight. Owe friends for open air theatre tickets. I have a wicked sore throat and don't feel like going tbh.

you might enjoy it when you get there life

nsd.

love black pudding. I liked it better when the lumps of fat were bigger, it was more filling 30 years ago.

Weekly shop done with dd1. £55 Aldi, £17 in the range dd1 bad influence! £10 Lidl (bakery) and £58 Asda. All stocked up and dp will choose what to make for tea with what I've bought this week.

wolf I know you didn't ask me, but Tevas all the way. They are beyond brilliant. I used to live in them. I'd never buy almost-tevas, (do love Merrels but they don't fit my feet) - always teva brand here. You should be able to get via topcashback. Worth the extra money imho.

I'm really impressed with the clarks outlet site, I've bought two pairs of the same sandals as love them for £20 each and they are SO comfy! Got DDs shoes for £13 each instead of £32 good savings there...

Paloma was amazing last night! Loved it.

Spent £15 on various things Ystd.

£30 riding.

Had one of the best lessons for a while. Lovely hack then some schooling work followed by a saddle free bare back canter - which I’ve never done before. Today I did it twice. So my core training at the gym is paying off. Hoorah!!

Came home and Dh had made pork and pear burgers for lunch. From Jamie’s latest book. Yummo.

Pleased Paloma was good.
And the riding lesson.

Took a car full of stuff to charity. Took winter duvets to launderette and negotiated 10% off.

Going to go into the attic and get the suitcases out next and make a holiday buy list

Em I was just thinking I need to be brave and check bank balance and cc tonight. I expect we're in a similar situation.

Just spent £30.60 in Aldi. Top up shop and socks and tights for school. The rest of the uniform didn't have the right size left but it's a start.

Love thank you it was Tevas that arrived yesterday and got sent back because of damage and it put me off. I’ve taken your recommendation and ordered another pair.

Expensive day so far took mum out in the city whilst ds had contact £7 parking £117 two pairs of Birkenstock/papillon I had promised myself new birkies didn’t expect to end up with two pairs. £36 seasalt on dress that o didn’t like online but was lovely in person and a multi use headband scarf thingy. £19 Clarins on lip colour, £30 taking mum out for breakfast £50 dad birthday present £10 teacher present and some other stuff on top and £20 in home bargains. Don’t even want to add that all up. Then another £70 on Amazon on things I didn’t find in town. Still need at least three new bras as none of mine fit. Holidays are bloody expensive

We’ve come to local Manor House. It’s quiet and shady here and we’ve taken up camp on the grass after having a walk around the grounds. We bought a membership in April £40 for the year (2 adults, children under 12 free and we can each bring up to 4 adults in with us) this is ds’ fourtj Visit. Given that an adult ticket is £8 we’ve made our money back.

We also get discounts on the cafe. Up to 50% off (today was 40% because it’s our fourth visit...)

Two ice creams. Ds had milky. And a slurp of my ice cream. Then realised it was rum raisin so figuredaybe not the best for him...

I went right off the sensory dock this morning and had some sprite. It was lovely. Yum.

I've learned the weirdest thing about respiratory physiology. I wondered if I might explain it? It's basically a complex reason why fizzy drinks are good for reducing anxiety. sort off

It turns out there's this weird chain of biochemistry in the body. When we are anxious, we breathe faster and can accidentally breathe out too much carbon dioxide (this is called hyperventilation).

When we lose too much carbon dioxide like that, the blood becomes a bit too alkaline, because it needed the carbon dioxide to be dissolved in it as carbonic acid.

When the blood becomes too alkaline, all sorts of things get complicated in the body and one of the results is a sort of physiologically caused state of anxiety. (One of the symptoms of chronic hyperventilation is anxiety, even though anxiety also causes hyperventilation.)

There are two answers to this. One is to breathe much slower and be sensible and calm and what not. Have a holiday, or a long bath, or something.

The other is to drink carbonated water, or any fizzy drink that is made fizzy with carbon dioxide. This makes the blood that little bit more acidic again and sets thing right. Isn't that odd?

I know this sounds like total bullshit, but I got it from an actual medical text book.

Legal disclaimer: Whatever you do, don't start drinking fizzy drinks to sort out anxiety on my advice. I'm a botanist and am probably talking garbage.

The sprite was very nice though.

sunny I love a sprite!

This is someone else's explanation of the same, with the proper references:

www.facebook.com/leamingtonosteopath/posts/hyperventilating-chickens-and-fragile-eggs/375500059192193/

Em As of today, so do I Yay!

That's interesting sunny as when I'm feeling stressed I find drinking fizzy water helps me chill out a bit!!

That's interesting Girlie. It makes me wonder about all these posh people who used to go on about relaxing with a Perrier water, which is apparently chock full of carbon dioxide.

How hilarious would it be to do a controlled trial across the MN population? Anxiolytics v. Perrier water. Fantastic.

Ugh! Today has dragged. So fed up of being woken up at 5 am by DD. Is 4 too old for a Gro Clock? She is exhausted too. Her behaviour today has been challenging and I'm sure it's due to tiredness but still she wakes up at 5. Every single day. Keeping her up later doesn't make any difference either, she's just an early riser I think. I am not!

We're home from our holidays. Very tired now.

We stopped on the way home for coffee and cakes €15.80.

We also got a Tesco shop on the way home - €64.99. That didn't include any milk or meat as we were too far from home and it would have gone off. We topped up with milk and meat in the local shop - approx. €10.

Hopefully school will tire her out, Snuggly. I could never have coped with 5 a.m. starts. I've probably been up at 5 more often from the night before than at 5 to start the day!

Sprite is one of the very few fizzy drinks I enjoy a few times a year, Sunny. I also like lemon Fanta.

NSD here.

She is def not too young for a gro clock snuggly I would also think old enough to occupy herself for a bit before getting you up. By age 4 I had trained dd to get up and put the telly onto cbeebies without waking me up!! Sometimes putting them to bed earlier weirdly results in later waking for some reason.

My account is looking unusually healthy for a change so have moved some more money over to my savings. Have also signed up to the National Trust monthly direct debit, for dd and I its £6.25 a month which seems reasonable.

Need to sort out holiday club for dd will be looking at around £200 for two weeks of the club 😣

Spent £11 today on a bday present.

snuggly my ds is an early riser but I just gave up and started going to sleep at 8pm. Only in the last few weeks he's started adjusting his own body clock and it now sleeping from 9pm until some arbitrary later waking time. This morning it was 7.30am. He's 8 years old.

I would do that Sunny but I have all my school prep to do in the evenings. I am destined never to sleep again it seems!
She does sometimes play quietly in her room for a bit but that's not helping her to be any less tired unfortunately! She also likes to come and tell us she's up first. Grrr really.

Oh, yes I see what you mean. I never could have managed a job as well. Yikes!