Safely into a frugal September saving as we go...

[northender]

New thread. Thought I needed to get back on track.

Happy birthday, Em! Great cake!

Bit spendy today. Lidl shop to stock up on nuts and things £30 then spent £70 in Next on warmer duvets, new pillows and duvet sets for the dts as they still have cot bed size ones and they are getting a bit too tall for them. £8 butcher and £8 ds hair cut. He looks super smart now!

Happy weekend all!

Takeaway this eve too, treat for me not to cook evening dc are at childminders & treat for them to choose where we eat. It can be either eat in or takeaway

Happy Birthday em - that is an amazing cake.

Beautiful Hedgepigs

Adora how is DD2 coping with the local lockdown in L'pool? I have to post DD to Oxford on Sunday - the weather is looking grim.

My brain is mashed.... work is battering at the moment. I was logged on for 6 this morning & have just finished. I will sleep well this evening.

£6.05 in farm shop

I think I bought coffees, £5, but it hasn’t shown up on my Apple Pay even though the till said it did 🤷‍♀️
£34-ish on a couple of books I’ve ordered.

Cake looks amazing em 😍

£37 on takeaway. On the plus side there is lots left for tomorrow.

Happy birthday em. Cake took beautiful to eat. 😀

Beautiful cake Em such a talented person to make that it is like a work of art
Thank you for the Hedgie love Unescorted
We also have a lame Magpie called Cassidy , Cass for short here as well that we feed as well as hundreds of Sparrows . You know they said that Sparrows are scarce, well that's becaue they all live in our garden
Spent £30 in Tesco on a completely takeaway weekend , Pizza tonight which was yummy ! Chinese box tomorrow and Indian on Sunday . Also bought the girls their Advent calendars, Dd1 is vegan and had this one from Tesco and it was gorgeous, Dd2 had a Lindt one as always Decided to get them now because in the past the vegan ones have gone, also thought with the pandemic and Brexit l better had .
Didn't get anything else though restrained myself
Dd2 mixer came from Aldi's it is gorgeous
Will post now

Here are the pics

unescorted has your dad gone to Oxford now?
Having a lazy evening here. Did is baking s Mary Berry apple & cinnamon cake while I browse Mumsnet & watch TOTP on bbc4. We made gnocchi for tea. Never tried making it before & it turned out well though I'm not sure did was convinced!
£70:on boots for DD as she is starting rugby on Sunday. Spent more than I hoped as she has wide feet so restricted choice.
DH finished his job on Wednesday after 13 years. He starts the new one on Monday. He had s lovely send off and we now have masses of vouchers, wine, beer, cheese & posh food treats.
£80 on tea out after dh's last day. So a spendy week.
Will have to get backing fabric for my Christmas quilt tomorrow. Apart from that it's being made completely with fabric I already had.

north she goes Sunday.

£57 Chinese takeaway for 6 of us. No leftovers. Yay.

Unicorn cake was chocokate salted caramel flavour. I cut into it and blobbies of caramel ooozed out of it. “It’s bleeding!” Cried dsis! My god it was delicious. (Apparently it cost dh £100....)

It doesn't surprise me it was £100 Em it was as just darling 💗

I don’t have much to catch you up on today. Teaching feels weird as there have been a few COVID cases in other classes. Everyone’s definitely bit on edge. It’s been rainy and miserable today, I must get used to it, it’s forecast for the next 10 days!. A very spendy day today, I ordered all our Christmas shopping, it was pricey £569.65 but that’s me done now, everyone’s present sorted, stockings and Christmas Eve boxes. I might pick up a few bits and bobs for the kids if I have a spare bit of money left over. I also got a new school bag for DD as hers broke £7.50 which I thought was a bargain and also a frugal win! I found some old stickers in my drawer which will help as I wanted to start a reward chart for the DC (pics attached).

Happy birthday em! You’re cake looks amazing. DD would love that.

Sorry about the stressful morning love, but good news about the John Lewis order being delivered!.

Thanks camden, I’m quite organised when it comes to decs. The DC love it and it’s a nice way to cheer the DC up.

I love the pj’s happier!

I love the mixer mrs I also love the blanket behind it. Great going with calendars, I need to get some.

pumpkin all your Christmas shopping done?! Wow. Good job!

That’s my next mission. Make lists of things to get. Then get them by end of the month.

Vets today with catface for her annual check up and vaccines. Ds is coming with me. I’m feeling awful. Cold has fully taken over. But will try and get a nap in later this afternoon.

Atrocious weather here too. Sigh.

Morning everyone. Sorry I've been awol since early September. It's been a rollercoaster of a month - have changed my working pattern from 5 short days to 3 long but have also been doing some overtime on my non-working days. Also just had to go through a potentially life-changing decision (family planning related, or should I say lack of planning). It was 100% the right decision for us, our family already feels complete and I'm so lucky and grateful for my girls, but it's been emotionally draining. As a result of lots of soul-searching about where life is taking us, we've decided to put our house on the market. We currently live in a very urban area, very close to the city centre, and just want a bit more space and green! So the coming months will be quite spendy as we sort out our house to sell, but also quite frugal as we'll need every penny!

Happy Saturday all x

Oh tough decision Madden but you have to do what's right for you and yours. I can confirm it is indeed spends getting a house ready for sale. Fingers crossed

£30 dinner at services last night.

€30 childminder
€3.80 on eggs and milk, out of both
€17.50 on takeaway for 3, most of ds's remains uneaten. Going to freeze his chips for again if he doesn't eat them today.

Belated birthday wishes em
mad we've sparrows nesting in rafters of dogs shed, she lives in an old cowhouse, they'd 4 babies.

Mixer is just fab, I debated them often and then bought a kenwood handmixer that goes on a stand so is similar idea. This year I've bought a few new electrical items. All have made life easier and are used regularly.

Wow apumpkinaday that's fair stamina to do all the Christmas shopping in one go.

Ex is getting dc to write santa letters this weekend, I'm going to take them to Smyths today so they can see what's out there.

madden welcome back

I'm impressed by the shopping blast. Mine is quite piecemeal

£95 vets for catface. Check up plus annual vaccinations plus working tablet plus spot on flea treatment. Ds came with me.

pumpkin well done you!!! That’s quite a shopping haul.

Terrible sleep last night as the Takeaway we had sat heavy in my stomach and gave me heartburn 🤢 Cant wait to crawl into my bed tonight.

em hope you feel better soon

Morning everyone.

Having a quiet day at home today today. I've resolved to start sorting through Ex's stuff and putting it into storage boxes. I've a week off for the October mid-term break so I'm going to get a skip that week. Whatever Ex doesn't want to take to his new house, can go into the skip. I think I'm being quite fair to him as I'm paying to get rid of his unwanted stuff. I've lots of garden stuff to get rid of myself so I'm not ordering the skip exclusively for him. I got the boxes weeks (months?) ago but haven't felt ready to face up to this task until now. Anyway, DD is at her Dad's this weekend and I've nothing else on, so it's the perfect opportunity.

My wreath book arrived and I've been googling craft stuff online. I'm going to take a trip to a big craft shop tomorrow and see what they have. If I can't get what I want there, I'll order it online. Anyone use any UK crafty websites they'd like to recommend? I found some lovely Halloween ribbon on a US website but it wouldn't arrive in time for Halloween I could order some Christmas ribbon though. Hmmm..... DD informed me that she has a glue gun, so that's one less expense.

Unescorted you were asking about Christmas traditions. Things will be different this year with Covid but in previous years we've done the following:-

• lots of Christmas movies

the Late Late Toy Show

• A day in Dublin to do some shopping and see the Christmas lights
• Wild Lights at Dublin Zoo (it's cancelled this year )
• Lunch out on Christmas Eve because it frees me up to clean the house and wrap presents
• A movie at the cinema (not necessarily a Christmas movie, more in the way of a day out over the Christmas holidays)
• baking Christmas shaped cookies

Last year I started a tradition of getting DD to choose a Newbridge Silver Christmas decoration for herself.

Onto your news

em Well done for completing your assignment. Get well soon. A sore back and a head cold sounds like a nasty combination. Belated Happy Birthday. That unicorn cake was just divine! So perfect - it must have been hard to cut into it.

life good luck with the house sale

Mrs I recorded the Repair Shop programme and watched it the other night. That little horse! And the music box! We need a heart smiley. Sorry to hear about your neighbour - it will be a tough Christmas for his family . Love the hedgehog pics - we had a hedgehog visitor to our back garden last summer.

Girlie well done on getting the JL voucher. Hope the blinds turn up this time. Sorry to hear things are still so difficult with DD. Big hugs!

orange what an adorable photo of your DC! So sweet that they get excited about the rain. Cute Halloween decorations too.

Sing lovely to see you back

Seacow I know you spent a lot on food and wine, but no doubt a lot of the food will be used for cooking/baking for others and for entertaining purposes, so it's not really a typical weekly grocery shopping bill. Which is a roundabout way of saying don't feel guilty. Have a nice weekend and enjoy the get togethers. It will make a nice change for you to sit back and let others do all the hard work.

north good luck to your DH in his new job. Enjoy sampling all his presents .

pumpkin I'm seriously impressed that you did all your Christmas shopping in just one day! Must get a move on with mine. I've made a list of names but that's as far as I got.

madden sounds like you've had to make a rather difficult decision. Hugs to you.

I have just spent several hours digging 140 year of soot, dust, dead skin, dress making pins and dead things out from between floor boards. I think clearing up the resulting mess may have killed my Dyson not envy

Just having a quick tea break and then it's back on with painting

Busy day here so far. I did Booths shop for us (£100)& next door neighbour. Then streamed gym class with dd, treated her to breakfast out at a lovely place just round the corner (£20). Took dd to work, then went and did a £20 aldi shop which was mainly to add to the Brexit/covid stash. Bought backing fabric for my Christmas quilt (£28). Now steeling myself to do a clean of ds' room while he's away with dh!
Need to stop spending now. Shouldn't need anything more now. Dd is very excited about rugby training tomorrow, hope she enjoys it, but I'm pretty confident she will.
Dd made a delicious Mary Berry apple & cinnamon cake last night which could be my new favourite cake.

I’m on bed. Having a lie down.

Busy day. After vets dh announced he needed to sort out his clothes. So I jumped at jr chance. Emptied all items of clothing he has. And we dumped it all on the living room floor. About half has gone back. The rest has gone to charity or the rag bin.

Charity shop stuff has been dropped off. It’s a 10 minute drive ish to nearest charity shop. We did the round trip in an hour and a half as we wanted both dc to nap.

Dh is now downstairs with the dc. They’re watching baby bus or coco melon shit on youtube. He’s steaming his clothes.

I spent an hour packing away some of Ex's pictures (pictures either he painted or his artist friend painted) and some Lord of the Rings figures. Baby steps...... Tomorrow I'll do his CDs and DVDs. I think it will be easier now that I've started. And I'm planning a unit or cupboard for storing craft pieces .