The Friendly Frugaleers: Saving and chatting as the heatwave rolls on.

[BestFootForwardAndThenSome]

Now that I've put that in the title, we will almost certainly get snow. LOL!

Welcome to nearly-August.

Welcome to all newbies, you'll enjoy it here so much you'll never leave I'm here about 6 years I think 🤔

Returns totalling
Aldi 15.98
Penney's 24.00
Littlewoods 143.25 but that's on credit so doesn't count

Snuggly sounds very grown up, and to get a nights sleep as well is great progress. I need to do the same in my room can't see the floor at all
What hours does your dh do? Just thinking with you being on holiday is he still getting up for work tomorrow?

Thanks all.
Ived rented a spot at a local 2nd hand kids store and dropped off loads of stuff today. So hope to sell a lot during the next couple of weeks. They do the cleaning and commercialising and then take 15 % of the sale. Had a browse around and of course found stuff so spent 15 £

Try cross stitch sunny it's more methodical & you can see progress every time you do some. #notagreatknitter

Thanks Mammy. I do like embroidery.

My big thing these days is writing and photography usually when I'm feeling creative. I wish I could show you my writing but we're meant to be anonymous on here. It's so much fun to just blather a bit online and in print. I like it a lot. Not as warm as a jumper though. If I could knit, I could make myself a jumper, and that would be good.

We have had such a fab afternoon. A friend has a niece who was visiting so we had a meet up for lunch. The neice is going to take the beautiful puds (DD) for a pootle about the Slade and meet up with the admissions tutors and gallery owners in London. She has also offered DD studio space and hospitality in London if she gets a place at an art school in London.... We know some really awesome, talented and generous people.

We were at the Discovery life we've had a debrief over tea (home grown spuds, heavenly), and decided it wasn't all bad! Just hot and airless in the museum, and a bit fractious when we were a bit lost in town! Dp does not do cities it appears, I was stressy and the dc's didn't know what to do.

It occured to me earlier that the lovely staff at Wool warehouse will be packing three orders tomorrow, for three of us! How odd. The drops cotton is really nice, I've used it before. Always excited for a yarn delivery. Pics are mandatory, remember.

Lonely i though that when you said dodgey area. Ikwym. I'm sure it's not but one side of it feels like it. Westgate today is fine though.

We were at the North institute of technology and engineering or something like that at the station. Only very small though so don't make a special trip.

DH couldn't go back for his weekday work today because ferries cancelled due to storm.. He'll have to go tomorrow now.

We had 'left over- left overs' for dinner (one of my very favourite meals..). This time cold chicken and cold salmon plus random bits of cheese , bread, pickles, pesto, olives and home-grown salad &.. A pretty decent meal just pulled out of the fridge and picked from garden . Just about to settle down now to watch Unforgotten (love this series) .

NSD again

Lasagnenfor dinner at dparents. Gave ds some. He made a bit of a mess (Dm luckily put an oil cloth table cloth on the floor under the table and under his high chair as we ate in the dining room and beige carpet...) but he ate every last bit. And some cheese bread. And then some water melon.

Dm made a fatal mistake with his nappy change. I took him for a nap at theirs, and settled on the bed in “his” room. I fell asleep too! While I was napping ds woke up and Dm came to grab him and nappy changed. Somehow she managed to only get his nappy covering one cheek. And essentially going up his bum like a nappy thong. Needless to say when he pooped we had a clean nappy. But poop trousers which resulted in an emergency bath....!

Also. Big news. The relative peace in our lives has been shattered. We have a crawler. Not fast. And not far. But he crawls. I’m so proud of him. He’s been trying so so hard this week and finally this evening he got it. He was after dads shoes. Now the fun really starts right....?!

Feeling sorry for catface already!!

ememem the fun starts now! They’re so cute when they’re on the move.

We’ve had a lovely birthday with DS1. The boys went on a barge trip with their dad and loved it. Then this evening we went out to dinner with family. And of course my parents insisted on paying, bless them.

Just used the last of the Debenhams gift card we had lying around. 4 bras and 2 packs of knickers for me and 2 shirts for DH. Discounts on them came to almost £20. After the card it only cost me £5.88. Result!

That's brilliant Em. I think you're just in the cute phase just now, and it's definitely worth just enjoying that. Hell didn't really break out for us until ds was 18 months old and was able to climb onto the kitchen worktop. That was when it really got interesting.

The next bit is the gradual child-proofing of the house, which basically involves moving everything up off the floor and eventually as high as it can be put. Our ds also liked to take books off bookshelves, so that we constantly had piles of books at the bottom of each bookcase. We had one bookcase shelf that only had tins on it, just to liven things up for him.

Haha! sunny he’s started to be interested in opening drawers. Partly because they hold all sorts of secrets! And partly because I customised our drawers with different knobs. So they’re all different textures.

He’s been opening them, having a look and has trapped his finger. I’ve said “no” but he just looked at me, grins and does it anyway. Am going to have to be firmer with my “no”

I told him today if he crawled, I’d buy him his own phone. (Charity shop near work had a phone on wheels) so if it’s still there I’ll pick it up tomorrow.

Good stuff! That a fine inquisitive nature he has there. I love the textured knobs. That's a wonderful, thoughful thing to do.

Are you chests of drawers well attached to the wall or similar? One of the standard failure modes for crawlers is that they pull a drawer open and then pull themselves up on it. If it's a higher drawer then the whole chest of drawers then tips over on top of the child.

That happened to ds once and then the heavy CRT TV on top slid off and plummeted down towards him. Fortunately I was sitting right next to him and was able to push it away as it fell and it landed with a bump to the side of him. That was a close one though.

Well done to you, on your crawling you fellow. That's quite a thing.

Oh lord that's terrifying Sunny, you must have been in bits afterwards.

Scandi I bet they get that a lot. You can always sell what you bought a later date.

Aah yay for DS! Yep now is the time when your most spoken phrase becomes "get out of there". He will be speeding across the room before you know it, and life will never be the same again. It will be crazier, busier, but cuter than ever before.

Welcome to newbies!

House admin tomorrow. Also got British gas coming to change our meter. Apparently we still have to have a Prepay but it's a smart one. Then we have a credit check to move to direct debit, just as we've had at our previous homes. Never been remotely late or in arrears etc so should be quick.

It was pretty exciting Fluffy. Oddly, I was cool as a cucumber. I don't really go into bits tbh. I just lose my appetite when stressful stuff happens, which why I am the way I am now. Delayed reaction from ds's early years. Eeek!

The weird thing was that the CRT screen didn't shatter when it hit the floor. I thought it would, but in fact it just bounced, and it was a big 20" screen or thereabouts. Who knew that large CRT screens could bounce?

Interestingly, my ds at the age of 8 has just started fetching his own clothes to get dressed and so now routinely opens multiple drawers in the IKEA chest of drawers, which is well known to be a way to tip them over on children. At least now I can just show him the video and he will hopefully cop on.

It must have impacted at a strong part of the screen, like if you try to break a double glazed window the middles meant to be stronger than the corners. I would imagine that's why people wall mount tv's now.

Cag That's such batshit crazy behaviour of them.

Em That's lovely. Nothing like little squashy legs powering across a room with their nappy clad bum wiggling away.

Yes I suppose so. I'm glad it didn't shatter though. I wouldn't fancy clearing up that much broken glass.

We didn't get much sleep Mammy as we were both up with the dts in the night. The alight lie in compensated slightly though. Yes dh is at work. Alarm will go off at 5.50. I often wish he was also a teacher as we'd have 6 weeks of alternate lie ins to look forward to!

Sorry Em meant to say congratulations on your crawler. Fix everything to the walls as if you live in an earthquake zone!

We optimistically bought an extra large playpen at this age, thinking that we could put ds in it, but in fact we ended up keeping the lawn mower in it, while ds had the run of the rest of the house. Sometimes, life is just very strange.

Is northender on holiday?

You can buy adhesive black out film for Windows, you stick it on the outside. I use it in the utility room so that the cat doesn't get hot during the day.

That's great em well done to your ds! I loved that age, dd seemed to learn something new every day. She crawled late but then walked early!

I'm tucked up in bed, been so tired today!!

Dd is home, she had a wonderful time with my dad and step mum being spoilt. They went to see mama Mia 2 today and said it was very very sad, they all cried 😢

Sunnywhen dd1 started crawling we put the Xmas tree inside the play pen!

Both dts have been up on and off since 8.30. This is my 3rd attempt at going to bed. Wish me luck...

Ah, nice work EmDS. I quite like having a crawler, it’s very amusing, but it does cause holiday stress - we arrived yesterday and immediately had to sweep the place for hazards and ‘interesting stuff’. The pot pourri went straight into a kitchen cupboard. As did the basket of tourist leaflets and a carriage clock. I did not foresee the problem of bungalow and access to bathrooms (= toilet brush) until this afternoon though