Frugal friends follow each other frugally through Hallowe'en, COVID all welcome

[Happierwithouthim]

Here you go life

Busy today not has time to post till now ☺️
Spends were 6 Tesco 26 Morrisons 24 on 2 beautiful dressing gowns from Asda in the sale . Must go through bed now though 🙄
Hope everyone is fine have a great night everyone 😀

Morning everyone 😀
Hope everyone had a great night 🙂
The weather is beautiful cold blue skies and sunny just gorgeous 🌞
Off up to MumBobs now 🤗
Have a glorious day everyone

£55 Sainsbury's to connect tomorrow. Mostly wine for dh team. 6 for 25℅ off.
Aldi tomorrow £££ and need lots

Good luck with the new jobs curls and unescorted. I got to offer one person a job and sort a pay rise for someone else this week. I felt like Santa arriving early 😂

Been a busy week this week, seems to have flown by.

Just popped by my parents. DDad seemed to know who I was, but didn’t know who DMum was. He kept telling me he’d get mum to call me when she got home And their Christmas tree is looking very odd as he couldn’t put it together properly. Dmum has just left it, and didn’t want my help.

Good luck to new job starters - exciting to be doing that. I'm back in one of our local charity shops (volunteer) this afternoon, which I'm looking forward to. Hopefully there will be no further lockdowns - no post-Christmas wave...

Have done my budgeting this morning. After my contribution to the joint housekeeping and mortgage, my tax bill, my credit card payment and various other bills and essentials (which this month includes haircut and colour, oh yes - spent £5.99 on L'Oreal root touch-up yesterday), I have about £240 left until next pay day on 2 Jan. At the moment, this sounds a lot, but I have to decide whether to be utterly Tightwad, and just hang on to it, or spend it on Christmas cheer. Not going to decide today!

I have decided however to open a stocks and shares ISA for DS with some money that has been sitting uselessly in a young person's savings account. Just a low-cost, index-tracker that can be topped up and forgotten about for a good decade, or more, hopefully.

Nearer horizons - my paint samples are here, yay! I can start testing them out this weekend.

@Lovemaltesers - that sounds stressful with your dad, hope things are OK. I haven't seen my parents since September, and am not likely to do so until well into the new year now. We're just starting on the LPA process together - online and via the phone. It's not easy, since it inevitably brings to mind the fact of demise.

Hello all! I had a really rough experience with egg collection for IVF yesterday. The procedure was a success, but they collected 25 eggs which under new covid rules meant the rest of my cycle was cancelled as the government have decreed that women with more than 20 eggs are too much of a risk for getting sick and over burdening the NHS during the covid crisis. A blanket rule applied even when your local trust may not be remotely overwhelmed. It’s unbelievably annoying.
However I’ve been in so much pain since the procedure I don’t really care too much about having to wait to have the embryo transferred. They only managed to fertilise 7 eggs so we are very concerned now that we may end up with nothing to transfer.
I’ve spent a lot online shopping for family presents for Xmas. DH and I are doing stockings of small things for each other and I’ve asked him to get me nice treats but no tat - hoping for new pants, socks, chocolates etc.

Oh gensola that sounds so stressful. Take care of you xx

love you too. Take care of you xx

We are effectively in lockdown here in all but name. We were mentioned on national news (radio 2) yesterday. As our R number is through the roof. 378 cases as of yesterday. All licensed premises are closed. Gyms are closed. Back to 2m social distancing.

The coops online ordering system has gone haywire. Apparently it was full to capacity by 10 this morning.

Rest up gen. Fingers x for embryo transfer
Oh love it's such a shit illness

No further spending today

Evening all. Sorry I've not been keeping up with what you are all up to. I will try and read back this weekend. Much love to you all and I hope all are keeping well

Work has been absolutely crazy
Been trying to pack up belongings, find places to put them that aren't in the furniture- bit challenging and sort out removal men etc

Signed will today and spoke to divorce lawyer who has received a very weird letter from stbex with some odd demands which I now need to sort out with him

Also bought new sofas. I had been looking at some Black Friday offers for a brand new one and would then have bough an armchair or oversized armchair/small sofa separately. But saw an ex display pair of sofas this morning, they were 4K off list price already and managed to get another 500 off and free delivery. Quite pleased with myself. They aren't perfect, they have some small scratches etc as they've been in the showroom being sat on for a year but my current sofa is third-hand so I'm not fussed by that. Just hope they fit now, but worried about that

gen sending happy fecundity thoughts to your 7 fertilised eggs.
Love it is such a horrible nasty disease. It must be so frustrating watching your Dmum struggling and also refusing help.
tight £240 can go in a blink of an eye at this time of year. It makes me thankful that we get paid mid month so we don't get a 6 week gap between pay cheques.

It snowed here today..... almost exciting as getting the baby home tomorrow. She is in a happy mood - having got really positive feedback about her work so far and really kindly one of the admissions tutors said that she was so far ahead of the cut off that all the other colleges were jealous. It came about b/c she was griping about one of the other colleges having an art studio. Her tutor is going to ask the dean if there are any spare rooms that can be repurposed.

gen keeping everything crossed for you.
Love it must be so tough not to intervene, horrible condition
wolf hope getting rid of the furniture gives a bit more closure. Hope the new stuff fits!
unescorted not long now! Sounds like she's doing really well.
Mrs no blue sky here today

Work was manic, but reasonably productive. Ds submitted his essay last night with 12 hours to spare, dd has finished first week of mocks. I feel back to normal now, thank goodness.

Have made progress with Christmas shopping. Got mum RHS membership so that we can go to Bridgewater when it opens & hopefully a visit to Harlow Carr too. St Eval candles for my work team. Budweiser are running a Save Pub Life scheme. If a pub is signed up to it then you can buy a voucher for that pub for someone else and you get a matched voucher from Budweiser to spend at the same pub (all valid to the end of June. There is a lovely pub on the edge of Dartmoor in the scheme so dh and I have bought a total of £125 in vouchers & got £250 in total through the scheme & are going to use them to pay for all his family to have a meal & drinks there when we are able to visit again, instead of presents. We may also have done the same for our favourite local pub as it would've seemed silly not to!
I'm pretty much sorted for ds, struggling a bit more for dd & then I need to think about dh.
I'm going to have wine tonight, have a good evening everyone

wolf I admire your fortitude. He seems to think up ever more creative ways to annoy you and you just deal with them and move on. I nominate you for Fugaleer of the Year.

North finally she has settled properly...just in time for home time.

Is there really anything left for him to think up wolf jeez. Hope the furniture fits.

Aldi today.

Morning everyone 😀
Wolf I don't know how you cope with him, he's, well words fail me you are brilliant the way you were dealing with all this crap! 💐
Em Sounds as if the Co-op is doing a raring trade and it sounds as if it's well needed there too !! 😀
Unescorted absolutely fantastic your baby will be home very soon, she sounds like a girl who's going places, good for her to get some rooms for them to be able to work in ! 😀👏👏👏
Gen as one who has suffered with infertility for 13 years and lost two babies before having my two darling daughters , I can only wish you the very best of luck but 7 embryos that amazing ❤️

North that RHS Subscription sounds amazing, my Mum has her very best friend to buy for, so I think she would really love that! Thank you for giving me a heads up ! 😀👏
Love having gone through very similar to you with my darling father, I can only empathize with you and say I'm thinking about you and wishing you all the very best, take care of yourself too lovely🤗💐

Tight you have a great hold on your budget great work ! 😀👏
Life enjoy Aldi today, they have some gorgeous Yankee candle rip offs for 3.99 we bought the peppermint one it's so lovely , we went this morning very early and it was really quiet thankfully 😃

wolf? I hope your new sofas fit, they sound like a bargain.
mrsmadevans thank you - waiting for a day 3 update on how they’re developing tomorrow. Gutted not to be having a transfer next week but to be honest the whole process has made me too poorly to cope.
Bring on the Xmas !

Morning everyone.

I survived a crazy busy week in work. I'm working from home this coming week and then I only have one week left in the office! I can't get my head around that at all.

I spent a small fortune on top up shops this week. I'd a big Tesco delivery booked for the week before last but I cancelled it because I had to meet my insurance broker to make arrangements for a new mortgage protection policy. Then he rang me the night before to say that their online system was working again and he didn't need to meet me after all, as we could just do it over the phone! There are no delivery slots available between now and Christmas. Maybe I should book a slot for January? Normally I do a really big order once a month or so for non perishable stuff. Then I just have to do small top up shops for the likes of bread, milk, fruit and veg.

DD made some fabulous chicken and leek pies for her Home Economics project. I can get the recipe off her if anyone wants to try them. We had them for dinner yesterday and we've some left over for lunch today. Nice to have something different for dinner.

We're out of lockdown now (sort of) so DD's going to a friend's house later for a teen birthday party. Tomorrow we're doing a bit of Christmas shopping and having lunch and seeing the Christmas lights etc. DD wants to go to Penneys (a.k.a. Primark) but I told her if the queues are really long, we're steering clear. There were reports of big queues during the week when it re-opened. This meme made me laugh www.facebook.com/pureoldskoolclassicsofficial/photos/a.1588463931371757/2744858965732242/

I brought DCat1 to the vet for a check up after his dental op but they weren't altogether happy with how the wound is healing. The vet I saw took some photos and said she'd discuss it with another vet and they'd give me a call about it. She sent me an e-mail on Monday to say that they're going to leave it for four weeks and see how he's getting on after that. So if there are any difficult decisions to be made, we don't have to make them this side of Christmas. Phew!

Our Christmas tree has survived a week of two cats, although we've had one broken decoration.

A beautiful morning here - blue skies and sunshine. It's been very cold the past few days. I must order more home heating oil on Monday.

£81 Aldi, £16 b&m, £55 Sainsbury's, £15 skatepark
Will get some of that back as shopping for others too.

Tightwad budget it £60 a week?

It's 5 paydays to next rent payment, which I'm hoping won't even happen so I'm taking advantage of dividing it by 5 instead of 4

I've started my Christmas shopping with earnest, will post my spends later, when I've them sorted out.

Gensola take the time to recover before the next stage

Em keep safe
Wolf that's a great deal on sofas sounds great

North that's a great deal on the pub vouchers

I went to the next big town over today & it was good for queues very manageable I was dreading Penneys but had to get stuff in post for oz and even there was ok

Tayto could you get SuperValu delivery instead?

Tree is up. Yay.

The dc are super excited. Dds face!!! This is her first real Christmas. She was only 5 months last year so it doesn’t really count!

I’m in bed. Feeling awful. Wiped out and fuzzy headed. Hoping a bit of a rest will do me good. Mulled wine later. Yay.

@Happierwithouthim - it's closer to £50 than £60. That might sound horrendous, but it is purely my 'fun' money after absolutely everything is paid for this month, across both my own accounts and the joint account. Oh, and the £25 voucher for M&S! I am trying to stick to my guns and not weaken around buying yet more stuff (we've all done pretty well on new stuff this year - I'm typing this on a new MacBook my husband gave me for my birthday, for example) but to hold onto the money to pay for stuff that we want to do in the new year - like travel to see the Olds, help out with holiday costs, or have some as-yet-unplanned days out over the Christmas break.

It does feel odd because Christmas in years past has been quite generous with presents and entertaining, driven mostly by me, to be honest. I'm struggling to get excited this year, and I don't see anyone else jumping into the breach.

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See you over there