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.

So spends today...

£20.48 M&S picnic food and breakfast
£62 Tesco click and collect but £25 has been refunded as they forgot half of it fuckballs
£17 same day delivery new tin opener. Ours broke so I got an electric one (muscle wastage in my hands makes it hard with a manual one)
£5 car wash
£5 Tesco car food and a birthday card
£10 amazon on a birthday present for my best friends daughter. Her party is Saturday.

Also dd got sunburnt today. I feel so awful, she had cream on and would have had a rash vest on if I could get the bloody security tag off. And I've lost the receipt now

Oh and £7 parking

First class rocks

There's will be a YouTube video on removing those tags. Don't worry about it, it's not like you stuck her on a lounger covered in coconut oil and a silver sun reflector.

£2.59 four sachets of dermalogica multivitamin repair mask. I think it's cheaper to buy sachets as I don't go mad with it.

NSD. Went to the park again. It was busier now it's not blisteringly hot. Had a lovely hour there.

DH spent 40 mins on me with the nit comb. Who said romance is dead?!

Life, glad you are enjoying first class. I did it once with a boss in the days when we were still allowed and juniors could accompany seniors in first clasa

Ds had a preying mantis on his shoulder the day before yesterday when we went for a walk, I looked around and there it was bold as brass head ing for his ear. I swatted it with my handbag Maggie Thatcher style. Tenacious little bugger, took a few good swats to knock it off (alive)

EWFL was less annoying than normal

More fiddling with accounts and moving money around. I've paid the first week of day's school lunches for high school for September, so much more expensive than juniors.

The Range sell those chopping boards cag

Have just ordered invites for my party in November hoping I haven't made some obvious error (I rechecked about a 1000 times) £23 for 50 (I haven't got 50 friends but worked out cheaper to get more!!)

Don't feel bad Wreck when I was kid it wasn't summer unless you'd had heat stroke at least once luckily dd doesn't burn easily although I confidently told a friend this on a day out so obviously dd burnt then!!

Girl cat would talk in a very posh old lady voice if she could, 'oh really darhhhhlings you expect me to sit there? I couldn't possibly.... ' that said she smelling decidedly fishy (and not at all like a posh old lady) atm so a vets trip could be on the cards.

Have also put over a bit extra to my savings account to round it up a bit, only £30 but every bit helps and all that.

I was always burnt to a crisp Wreck, at least you put sunblock on her instead of blaming her

😁 at first class.

Fingers crossed Girl cat can swerve the vet Girlie

Grocery delivery today, £90-ish. Then went to nearby big city to chase up doormat accounts. Paperwork was done in May and DDs are still waiting. DH paid for parking and lunch, £25 on sandwiches, ffs.

Girlie I have a neighbour who is like your posh lady cat and I feel hopelessly inferior in her company. She seems so elegant and marvellous and kind, and spends ages telling me how marvellous I am, but at the end of a conversation with her I feel like a small mossy rock. What on earth are we meant to say to people like that?

Back briefly to say hello and to try to channel my frugality again! Then I read about first class train travel....what is going on??!!

Hope all is well with everyone and that you're all having a good summer and not melting in the heat. Look forward to catching up properly.

July came and went so quickly here, I think I only posted once on the last thread. Not sure how, or what it went on, but when I did the numbers at the end of the month, we've spent much more money than we should've done. So now is the time to tighten the belts, but our holiday starts on Friday morning so not great timing! We're driving to Portsmouth to get the ferry to Santander. We're away for 13 nights & are staying in a house 20 miles away from Santander. Really excited, after years of Brittany it will be a change for us. Currently running several lists and planning how to spend as little money as possible on food on the journey.
Since I last posted, dh applied for a new job but didn't get shortlisted, then among all the public sector pay rise announcements, he was told no pay rise for him and that the MoJ are cutting the allowance he gets for being a qualified accountant. We don't know the details yet but it could be up to £3k less per year
Ds is starting to worry about his GCSE results but on the positive side, his health is better and his eyes are improving. I've been getting him to cook a meal a week on one of my work days which has been a treat. Of course he's played lots of cricket & has had a great season against the odds really.
Dd is enjoying the down time of the summer holiday. She passed her drama exam with a merit & has decided to do the German exchange through school, so we'll have a German visitor in October.
I'm preparing to start my prescribing training in September which will mean a very intense 4 months. I found out last week that I'd passed the course work element of the training I did in October. That means I'm now qualified to teach the Buteyko breathing technique to adults which may be a way to earn some extra money.
Frugal wins: £120 cash back from our Brittany Ferries holiday, £30 cb from new house insurance policy which was already £50 cheaper than the renewal quote.

That's brilliant about your training north. I'm going up to Papworth at the end of August to be assessed for Chronic hyperventilation, and I've read this book (below) practically from cover to cover. It's all very interesting. I'm trying to fix the problem by learning to play the clarinet. At least I was until I came down with bug a month ago that I can't seem to shake. I'm working on it though,

www.bookdepository.com/Multidisciplinary-Approaches-Breathing-Pattern-Disorders-Leon-Chaitow/9780443070532

I'm really glad your ds is having a good time with his cricket. That's great.

Hey North, 👋🏻 Glad DS’s eyes are better

A brief question for those from the north... we are looking at stopping somewhere in the Northumberland area for a few days on our way back down from Scotland. DH has elderly relatives there so we can make a couple of visits and also perhaps take the dcs to a beach. Can anyone advise of any nice beaches for kids? Ideally for us we’d go for sand and not too busy /noisy (ie not a massive resort pleasure beach) . It would be easier for us to be south of Newcastle because of location of relatives but I don’t know the coast on that side, I’ve only been to Seahouses /Bamburgh before. Any advice very welcome! We’re probably going to be staying inland a bit, there’s a few options near Durham, beamish etc on AirBnB

Hi north good to see you! So glad DS is recovering and your training sounds exciting. Bugger about the pay cut though.

Interesting about blunt knives, I've not got any special ones really so not terribly fussed but I'll remember that next year. Basically my plan is to replace kitchen stuff in a year when we get a dishwasher. The glass is a germ thing for me, not having a dishwasher I feel like wood and plastic ones, with all the knife marks, never get really clean in the kitchen sink :( I know it's nonsensical but I have pretty big fears surrounding food prep and it's a source of anxiety I'd rather avoid. I'll probably switch to plastic boards once we get a DW. Just need to get permission to remove a cupboard once we've been here a year (unless I can wrangle it via occupational therapists when they do the home visit... Must organise that). Will leave the decorating of the kitchen till then and plan to upgrade various kitchen things, knives included, at that time too, for example actually buying a dinner service (all our crockery has always been charity shop and hand me downs plus the odd random mug etc - we have never had a complete matching set)

Also wolf totally jealous of the mantis! Where were you that they were just lurking?! I'd have been tempted to smuggle it home. My friend raises them from babies (she has loads of cool animals including a chameleon whose habitat I'm pretty sure is bigger than my old kitchen)

Christmas We used to go to Berwick-on-Tweed caravan park all the time. There was a farm nearby where we could feed lambs and a lovely beach. It was a great holiday. Not sure it's ideal for your relatives though. Ours were in Berwick.

This is the place: www.hoseasons.co.uk/holiday-parks/haggerston-castle-holiday-park-hagg

It's an hour from Newcastle. They used to have a stables there when I was going. It was brilliant. Except for the time when I fell off, which was less brilliant.

There is a hedgehog rushing round our garden looking as though it has far too much to do today and far too little time.

em at least he was just going for the cat biscuits. Dd2 ate cat litter when she had just started crawling 🤢 she also used to lick Windows and the buggy wheels, chew shoes and eat sand! She was pretty gross, hardly ever been ill though!

cag when I think of preying mantis I can only think of an old episode of Buffy the vampire slayer when the teacher was a preying mantis..... do you have anything like reptylers near You? We've been to a few parties and events with them and the girls have held snakes/lizards/various insects and when they came to the nursery i work at i held a tarantula and big snake (had to be brave in front of the dc I was looking after even though I was petrified!)

sunny I love hedgehogs, dh likes to try cuddling them when they come in the garden, they are surprisingly soft when you stroke them 😂

That sounds nice Nocuts. Ours is quite big this year and very bustly. I had no idea that they could run. I thought they were like tortoises. But now I think of it, we used to have a tortoise that used to chase our cat, so they can definitely run too.

seacow you need life really, she's much more local. But I went to college in South Shields, and the beaches there are lovely, you can access the coast all the way along down to Sunderland, there are some lovely quiet sandy bits along there. Seaburn was my favourite, and you just park on the roadside (parking all the way along) and it's like 20m to the beach.

Spends today were 78p on a croissant for lunch, and £8 after work on crap in the co-op. This is a habit I must kick.

Finished my tiny knits to post tomorrow, £103. So that's a good weekends work. I'm hanging on the center parcs website, today there were only 8 £699 lodges left. If theres still one available when I have the money, I'll book. If not, ce la vie.

We should maybe approach Wool Warehouse and ask for a special frugaleer discount code. On account of the business quite sent their way last weekend! Until then always use SC33 for 10% off non sale items!

Lonely you've started me knitting too. Yesterday I undid my tiny grey doormat and make a scarf for a mouse. LOL!

I had an actual NSD again yesterday. That's two in a row. The answer seems to be to be so far under the weather that I stop having good ideas and just end up mouldering instead.

sea if you are are staying Durham/ Beamish way:

Beamish museum - fab -about £50 for a family ticket but gives 1 year unlimited entry. Gets busy but with a pic nic you will be fine.
Chester le street park is meant to be very good and has a water play area. It's on my list to go.
Durham city is good, the cathedral is free and there is a play park behind the railway station. I forget the name I will Google.

Beaches, south Shields is lovely, there is play park/park, rides, and the beach is lovely. The is also a place called the word which is meant to be good.
Seaham beach is nice too in Sunderland.
Seaton carrew, Redcar are meant to be nice but honestly i wouldn't go
saltburn is lovely, we go there a lot.

Let me know if you need any more info

Do you have national trust?

Souter light house is good, Washington old hall for an afternoon,