The Friendly Frugaleers - Furtively planning Christmas, as August arrives

[StoogingOn]

Welcome one and all!

Well done Caglrtini. I love ticket to ride Cag

Meant to add @fluffycloudland77 I picked up a couple of Lidl French blend bags of filter /cafetiere coffee £1.29 for 227g .
Will report back.

She is 9.5 months scandi :) ooh WiFi I can put a pic on now.

And then I really must go home! But... WiFi... 😭

Yes , he has always been very clean..We are just starting out on this journey with Dcat, he is also still very hungry, currently vet is recommending v low dose feeding twice a day only and keeping an eye on him, but at the moment she is saying we stick to the routine and initial dosage , but after a month she may change it..

Poor pusscat, he has always been so very gentle and lovely, but he is not taking to only being fed when he has insulin.. Caught him attacking the recycling bin this forenoon, ( and it really only has veg in it) . hes never been like that ..but he still had 2 hours to go before i could feed him

Omg cag she's absolutely stunning and young age for taking a step. .
My youngest is 21 month... and as you can see she both eat chips and have a tablet

Aww scandi so cute 😍 anyway relaxed parenting is the way forward! 😉

Well thanks to being able to get on Amazon I am now several £ lighter. Ordered the utensil pot I wanted, a chemistry board game for DS birthday, a card game (DD tried it the other day and loved it, and as she often avoids games I tend to leap on those she likes!)... and then got all over excited as I saw a hard to find game had become available so I bid on that, although PayPal will more than cover the latter.

This is why I don't spend money on clothes 😂

I love TTR too wolf and I think it's a good breakthrough game to get people into the habit. We have europe and new york.

I am still trying to decide how to arrange all the games on the kallax. Need some kind of small boxes for the tiny games too.

2 x NSDs Saturday and Sunday and LSD today - approx. €4 on bread and lunch ingredients . I filled another bag of clothes for the charity shop. Where are they all coming from?

I have DD washing all the doors downstairs. MIL and FIL are taking her to the beach for two days (from tomorrow), so she's doing a bit of work before the fun starts. It's good timing because her two best friends are away on holidays, so she was missing them.

Exciting about the house Em, sounds ideal. So DH came with you in the end, I take it?

And the step *Cag! How exciting, she’ll be walking before my dd in spite of bring 4 months younger. I left DH in the car today with the dcs for 20 mins and dd was saying ‘mummy car!’ The whole time while she waited for me - first time she has combined two words! I think she’s well ahead with speech but very slow with walking, definitely her mother’s daughter 😂😂😂. Cagletini has changed s lot I think. Funny to think we were all chatting when they were bumps!

Bandit I think I know that ‘relaxing’ phenomenon [guilt emoticon]

A good day’s work Curls !

Unescorted I’d love to see the top you ran up in a morning! Have you any other day fabric you can use for yourself now, with wider arms?

Scandi (I think it was?) thanks for the one pot pasta recipes, they look really good!

Btw, I like the idea of a lovely special edition book for a christening. I do like the ‘Lost my name* books but as the baby only has 3 letters in her name it might not be great value!

Dinner is in the oven (Boulangere potatoes with chicken legs slathered in garlic butter on the top). I am so hungry I could eat my own fist and the kitchen smells amazingly of garlic.

Oh, it wasn’t an NSD . Another top up (stupid small fridge) for about £12, milk, chicken, potatoes, broccoli, and then some money on jewellery for myself. There are dozens of artisan jewellers in Orkney and I love loads of it! I saved my very generous birthday money from PILs and spent a good chunk of it today on a pendant and earrings. Mum also bought me a beautiful garnet ring, in lieu of a couple of birthdays where I didn’t know what I wanted so got nothing. So I’ve done well today! Ring has to be made to order though so will be sent on to home. Seriously, if I was rich I could just buy soooo much lovely jewellery here... but I’m
not

quite so, so true. I meticulously plan projects, collect up buy all the materials, and maybe start. Never have enough time in all the clutter to actually do any of them. I'm going to check out that thread.

Busy but good day at work. They're planning the Christmas do, and I'm included! How bonkers that this makes me so pleased (plus thats 2.5 months over my trial so hopefully I'll still be there!).

£7 in the co-op on crap on the way home, starving!

Yay em on the offer, when will you find out?

cag eeek! Early steps. My dd3 was the same age, unstoppable force of nature, running after her sisters by 11 months, be warned! I think it makes them more eager to get going when their super interesting people have such tiny and cool stuff, just over there.

Is anyone watching Jamie? I don’t eat squid but even if I did I wouldn’t be bloody well sewing one shut

Good evening.

What beautiful cute children!

I've not had a full chance to catch up today. First day back at work etc.

But fingers crossed on the offer em.

Spends were £20 each on a sports massage for myself and DD.

House update. Dh came with me in the end. He did the offering. I was mad at him (seriously this is a stressful time and he seems to just tip me over the edge) for saying it wasn’t worth the asking price. No house is worth the asking price.

He offered. I didn’t do it. I’m a bit rubbish get over excited and he was afraid I’d offer asking price. I did say in the car that I’d do that because I loved it. So. He did it. He offered £39k less. Apparently that was rejected (he’s only just told me) and he’s now offered £24k less. So we’re waiting.

I still don’t think we’ll get it. I’d love to be wrong. But just don’t think we will. But we’ll wait and see. I’m happily go up to £10k less. But he won’t.

Spoke to Dm today. Her and dad are premier customers of Hsbc (due to her being ex staff. Not minted!) she emailed her relationship manager and asked whether we could get premier rates on our new mortgage. These are better than standard rates. So that’s a plus that she can pass on those benefits to us.

Have packed up more stuff this evening. Ds’ chest of drawers is empty. I’ve kept enough outfits to see him through Nursery for the next 2 days. Tomorrow evening I’m loading up our car with his stuff. Then will drive to Nursery with it on Wednesday morning leave it in the carpark (hooray for secure under cover private parking!) then go to my parents straight after I leave work (half day on weds) and drop it off. Then come back with ddad and his big car for ds’ cot. Then come back here with my car and pack the rest up. And dismantle our bed.

Cag and scandi, such beautiful girls!

Have had a good day decluttering, but am exhausted now so going to have a soak and then bed.

Sea your dinner sounds delicious

Em, tell me to fk off if you like but what is dh doing whilst you’re doing all the moving stuff?

Sewing a squid?! Hmm.

Wow seacow two words together! That's amazing! Mine were "more cheese" which pretty much set the tone for my entire life. Cagletini is seeming like DD1 so far in terms of milestones, both the Caglets were early/average with the physical stuff but definitely behind with speech. We shall see. Trying not to over analyse everything, what will be will be! Agree lonely it inspires them to see the bigger ones, she is into all their stuff!

Stressful times em take it easy when you get a chance x

wolf while I packed up ds’ stuff this evening dh was washing up and entertaining ds. Then I came in to bed and packed up some more of my stuff. He’s watching a film.

On Wednesday afternoon he’s working so I’m packing solo. I’m ok with it. I’ll get more done. And will get things done properly.

Dh is off on Thursday and will sort the removals. I’ll clean after them. So as they empty a room I’ll clean it.

It was like this when we moved in. Dh did nothing and I had to force the move. We were staying with mil and fil at the time and I was itching to get out of there. Even though things were good then. I needed my own space, had my own space and so moved out. Dh wanted to move in over the course of a few weeks. I moved my stuff in and put the bed together and told him I was staying in our home from day 1. And if he didn’t join me that was his choice.

I’m being ridiculously bossy and practical and organised about this move. Because I have to be. I’d love to be as laid back as he is. But nothing will get done. I’m sure he knows that if he doesn’t do anything I will do it. But I don’t care. We’re on a time limit. So someone has to do it. Colleague asked why I hadn’t decked him yet. I noted the yet.

Cute kids guys!

em hope you can take advantage of staff mortgage rates. My parents get lots of benefits from both of them working for a bank( both retired from it now). But it doesn’t come down to us kids so that’s a huge bonus for you.

Fluffy we have no debts but since DH took a massive hit in terms of income for about a year (means to an end) we’ve never managed to get on top of the overdraft. Income is back to where we’d need it to be now. So with this money we will be back to where we need to be. It’s only setting us back 2 years on repaying the mortgage in full. Hopefully this will not be the case as we save for overpaying again.

And it’s only been a very short time but I feel this thread has really helped as well in keeping a frugal head on my shoulders!

I am trying not to overanalyse too Cag. I am not really too bothered about the physical stuff - she’ll get there in the end - but have been watching like a hawk for the social signs like waving, mimicking, joint attention stuff. DS wasn’t terrible at all of that though so I am not sure what use it fretting about it! I’m just relieved DD’s language is coming along because even now, at nearly 6, DS has pretty limited speech. So please all forgive my excitement at DDgetting off to a good start with speech. I don’t mean to sound boastful, but with all the struggles DS has I would just be so relieved to have a child with normal speech

sea please boost all you like

sea it's been said a lot before, but here is one of the only spaces where we can brag and boast (or just be honestly pleased) about our fabulous dc. No judgement, no eye rolls allowed here.

£18 extra work done tonight, but am now late to bed. The house looks like a bomb has exploded in it too. Ho hum. It will keep. Sleeps now.

em if you love love this house, over rule your dh and offer a bit more. He's really doing naff all to help you, so why does he get to make the 1950's man decisions? I recon you must earn at least as much as him (and made an epic wee boy while doing so), so don't lose it for a few £ (when it's a tiny proportion of the price). Lets hope they accept the 24k under, then you won't need to have a loud conversation.

Tu 25% off clothes is on.- £170 but one set of trouser will go back as might a trouser for me

The Sainsbury’s website is being an arse. Problems with the deliver to store and PayPal functions. Could well just be me but be aware

Probably volume of traffic wolf. Hope you get sorted

lonely we’ve had a quiet but stern conversation. I told him I’ll be so upset if we lose this house. He’s pointed out there might be others (true) but this one!!!!

Anyway. He realises that I’d have paid to get what I wanted. And if we lose it we won’t make the same mistake again.

He did say he’d start offering at the lower amount then if it was rejected ask the agent what they needed to move on (we know the vendors are moving to a new build and need to move out by early October which works for us). So it may be he’s done this. I should find out but don’t want to have another chat about it.