Friendship and Falling Leaves, Frugal Autumn Continued

[Wolfcub]

New fred

I love sea salt coats

yeah for the boost collie and forgot to say but love the smart meter data. We still don’t have one

hopefully once you are there you will be ok wolf.

been to the gym. £41 filling the car.

Another vote for seasalt coats I may have four a few 😂

Spendy day here lots of little bits in town but probably around £30 altogether. Includes bits for DC birthdays / Christmas (getting organised early this year due to surgery)

Good wood bargain Kessie
Love that coat Need. Am tempted to have a look, but will wait till I get back to the gym & so am a better shape for trying on!
Happy birthday ds Em, great cake. Just over a year since we met, I had the Jersey pics pop up last week.
Need, Wolf, Life have you tried magnesium supplements for better sleep. Dd and I went through our meds/supplements drawer the other day & found some which I never tried, so I am going to give them a go, also there were multivits perfect for dd and some Menopace for me, so no new spending needed. Have been looking into HRT alternatives, but most isn't suitable as my cancer was hormone sensitive.
Decaff have you got a date yet?
Gen how are you doing? How long do you have to wait for results? The waiting is one of the worst parts.
Socathe the £30 boots sound frugal to me knowing how much they can be. Well done to your dh!

Had a really lovely night out with my best friend and her dh last night. Food & drinks to celebrate good health. Spendy but very worth it. Paid for with proceeds of a betting account I have. I am very careful and have only put £15 into it and have managed, over 6 months, to withdraw almost £200 in profit, mostly through free bets they keep offering.
Out with other friends tonight but I'm driving so not drinking, so it will be less spendy.
My mum has had a bumper damson harvest so I am making jam and gin this afternoon.
The car needs all 4 tyres replacing which is going to be about £400. That leaves us nothing more in the car budget to the end of the year so will have to hope nothing else goes wrong.

north thanks for thinking of me ❤️ I am ok, my throat is now at the level of a bad cold throat, sore but tolerable and I’m off the pain meds except for occasional paracetamol. My tongue is still numb and sore (how is it possible for it to be both numb AND sore?!) so nerve damage is talking longer to heal. No biopsy results yet - apparently they all go to the same lab in my county/trust and they’re on a 2 week backlog. It’s a disgrace, it’s a lab that mainly looks at cancer histology so those delays could mean people don’t get the treatment they need.

gen how frustrating about the backlog (grrr!!!) and that numbness 😔 sounds awfully painful. Hope you feel better real soon xx

Oh gosh north you've reminded me to budget for new tyres too!

north i have no idea on date, getting a bit fed up now. Pre op next week so I'll ask them although they did say they wouldn't be able to tell me at my pre-op as it's a different department.ans a different hospital actually. But worth an ask! They said before Christmas so it could be next week it could be 23 December 😂😱

Running out of perfume and my birthday is not for a few months. Trying to convince myself that my third full tub of Chanel No 5 body cream will get me through....
M and S do a white coconut taster perfume for a fiver, which is lovely, so might use that.

Ginger if you like Chanel then Madame Glamour from Lidl is the most complimented perfume I have at around £4.49. The M&S one sounds really lovely, just to tide you over.

Agree with others gen that is too long to wait.

North, great on the jam making.

Decaffe hope you get a date (not December) soon!

I've been awake in the night with hideous cramp. Been like that for my entire adult life, some months worse that others. Honest at 50 you would think it would stop soon and my life would be hell with the menopause instead 😊 still got that awful overwhelming feeling with costs of stuff and work. It will pass.

Had a spendy few days
£73 aldi click and collect
£14 meal out with friends
£15 fish and chips for DH / DC while I ate out.
£19.79 Iceland
£18.84 Farmfoods.

Today £4 coop, £1.99 Morrisons, £15.74 Amazon - Pocket Rough Guides to Amsterdam and Berlin as that's the holiday we are saving for, hoping to find bargain places to visit / eat while there!.

Sorry only caught up on this page, hope everyone is having a good weekend.

@kessiebird
Have I told you lately that I love you?
Trotting off to Lidl tomorrow xx

@kessiebird
I think you are my twin. I have been in bed all afternoon with cramps too.
Also 50 - Mum and Aunty didn't stop until they were 57. FFS

Really fancied some naughty snacks so DH and I used our pocket money and gave ourselves £4 budget in Lidl.

It was like Supermarket Sweep 🤣🤣🤣 and we've come home with doritos, olives, fancy cheese and nice crackers

I'm in the mood for snuggling up and watching a film now 🥰 but having a hot deep bath first as I'm so unbelievably achy. Bath is another treat as we're just having 3 min showers at the moment.

Evening.

So sorry kessie and ginger re the cramps. Been lucky in this regard myself but DD suffers more.

Far too long to wait gen and boo to the tongue taking longer to recover.

decaf - boo, hope it's not too long.

north. I'm usual a good sleeper, this is stress related re DH for sure. I weirdly feel fine tonight! Glad you had a great night and hope tonight is just as good!

collie I love exploring new routes locally, there's some new ones opened up here, had a wee jog down them earlier but will explore fully.

Thanks re the coat, I wore it when I walked the boys tonight. Took Ddog1 to the hospital to see DH today, he behaved in such an exemplary manner, coped with the hospital environment without a bat of an eye. That dog could have been a therapy dog. DH over the moon, we've lovely photos.

£1.60 coffee for DH.

I am posting this for the thread and for the lukers... So at the beginning of September we halved our shower time from 6 mins to 3 mins.

Shower is gas central heated

Baths were reduced to once a week, if that

BUT heating has been on almost daily for 30 mins to keep damp at bay.

The reduction in shower time has literally saved us so much in gas that even with the heating on - its still cheaper than the whole of August.

August 134KWH (remember all those heatwaves!!)
September 95KWH so far....

😱 if there's ever a reason to have shorter showers, this is it!!

need DDog1 sounds beautiful!! They're amazing aren't they. I find dogs so calming - I'd love to get one when I can afford to. Your DH will be beaming from that visit for a while!

@Gingerwarthog 😂 for that price it's worth a try. My sisters and DM were all early to mid forties when they stopped, I don't know what's going on there but the nurse at my last smear test said you're still in the normal age range. 57 though! 😳

Thanks for that info collie. Need to get my head around gas usage. At the moment a broken mixer valve (or something) is keeping our showers v short as it blasts out cold water after five mins, but once the plumber to fix it comes DC will be back to spending up to 30 mins in there with me banging on the door! Thats a great idea with Lidl, enjoy the snacks and film!

Need how lovely about the dog! We don't have one but my dsis has a v gentle border collie and my friend an ageing Lab. I love spending time with them, they are therapeutic. Bet your DH loved that.

Ber-limely, em, that cake! how many layers of sponge in that?? I am making a cake tomorrow morning, to take over to SIL's to celebrate her new job. But it's nothing like yours!

Good commencement of joint financial planning discussions with DH today.

Catching up as I’ve been a bit busy

the smart meter info was quite interesting.

north I know! I thought of you the other day - I had coffee in the market. And the weather has been glorious. Just like it was when you were here.

big-skies 5 layers. 3 vanilla 2 chocolate. The sponger didn’t rise up enough so had to make it taller.

ds had an ace day yesterday. So many new cool toys. He loved the trampoline park we all did especially me I did flippies

i just realised I have tomorrow off work. It’s a study day as I have online lectures in the morning. Yay.

So pleased ds had a good day and well done on the F lipping

how lovely you could take the dog into dh need,

hope the date comes through soon decaf

and the news for you Gen.. and your mouth continues to heal

hope the cramps have done one today

yesterday £12 Chinese £35 dog food 6 pound land 1 Iceland 15 Aldi

3 loads of washing line dried too so taking the win there

Yesterday -£60ish in waitrose as was too knackered to go further to tesco, why does our local have to be waitrose?! We don’t even live in posh area!
today going to venture out and meet a friend for coffee. I need to get my head around returning to work on Wednesday, two weeks off and I’m totally behind the curve.
My Vinted item sold got lost in the inpost locker debacle so now I have to wait til 12 Oct to get compensation. So annoyed. The other item has been delivered but buyer hasn’t picked it up and I won’t get paid until she does and confirms it’s ok. It’s defo better as a buyer than a seller! If both sales actually come through I’ll have £40 to spend which is fab as I have a wish list a mile long 😅😅

Oh yes i went down a sea salt rabbit hole
on Vinted and bought a long sleeve top €13

Re bargain perfumes I second the M&S range. I chose the mandarin scent. It’s not at all orangey, but lots of amber, woody notes that I love. And at £9 a bottle can’t go wrong. They also do a smaller bottle for around £4.

The M&S perfumes sound divine! I might give them a go!

Just collected our last cheapy cheap shop from Sainsburys.

From payday (Friday) our new budget is £65 - £70 a week max. It takes A LOT of time keeping to keep food bills down as low as £45-59. It takes a lot of screen time and mental load and its too much for me.

Anything I earn will go directly on making life more simpler. I.e more money towards food shop

I have a migraine just kicking off so am going to up my dose of propranolol and hope it goes away. :(

Migraines are evil, hope the meds work quickly Collie

Haven’t tried M&S perfumes but I bought some lovely soaps from them, Fragonard brand. It’s a French perfume house.

🤣🤣 at you enjoying DS’s trampoline em

Shopping today for a BBQ tomorrow, Step son is coming over with his family. DH will be paying.

Don’t wish to a put downer on the thread, but we had an elderly pooch put to sleep on Friday, and the other elderly one is struggling so we have take her in this week. So , about £800/£900 in vet bills.

Adora - so sorry about your Ddogs. I had a dream about ours being injured the other night, and waiting on our doorstep with a bleeding shoulder. Told DH about it, and he was genuinely appalled that I would share such a horrific thing with him. I do wonder, sometimes, why we put ourselves through these agonies of falling in love with our household animals.

Honey, apple and cinnamon cake baked and cooling. Kitchen smells amazing. It's a new recipe for me, so hoping it tastes good. Will take some creme fraiche to accompany it. These things are plainly not on the diet plan, but very little this weekend has been. Tomorrow a new day!

Oh adora I’m so sorry. Was it you who had the lovely German shepards?