Advancing into April - Frugal Friends still being, er, Frugal.

[needastrongoneagain]

New thread.

All welcome.

Morning.

Love the idea of a frugal friend @marthasmum!

Quiet weekend here, we went bathroom shopping yesterday and have family over later. Nothing planned tomorrow.

I've have one DC that leaves no stone unturned in terms of academic work, hence why she's about to do a funded Phd, and one that doesn't even turn over the stone, who did get a 2:1 in Maths, but on the minimum effort required. Bloody frustrating but I left him to make his own mistakes generally.

Decent weather here @lifelongfrugaleer, sorry yours is crap.

What don't you get on with re the resistance bands @RumBananaSundae?

Hope DS is okay now @WeightoftheWorld

Spends have been minimal this weekend.
£17 local shop, including two bottles of wine as I got paranoid I didn't have enough for nine guests today when I probably do...
£20 some over the counter meds for DH.

Food shop in budget this week.

Menu plan
African slow cooked lamb and slow roasted salmon for guests today. Various African roasted veg.
Cashew and courgette curry
Broccoli and Stilton soup. Crusty bread
Samosa tart.
Cauliflower curry of some description.
Senegalese 7 veg one pot rice.

Good morning everyone 😁
Just put my new duvet on for the Coronation, I am so pleased with it I cannot contain my joy 😂
Bought it from George home about three weeks ago .I think it was 16 pounds but oh it's such a lovely duvet cover and the other side is just like Cath Kidston .Well the whole thing is just like a Cath kids and it's gorgeous 😍
Hope everyone is ok l will have to catch up.
Have a lovely Sunday everyone 😊
Good luck to all the DC taking exams bless them 😁

I was all set to blitz the house this morning 'cos my sister is coming over later. The house badly needs a good hoovering (two cats - need I say more?). Anyway, I started on the hall but the hoover wasn't working too well so I suspected the bag needed changing - it did. Reached into the box for a new bag only to discover it was empty. WHY didn't I order more when I took out the last one? Really annoyed with myself. Anyway, €17.07 for new hoover bags. I can still clean the bathrooms and dust etc. but hoovering was very high up on my agenda.

Enjoy sleeping in your new duvet cover Mrs

We had very heavy rain yesterday and thunder and lightning. It's sunny atm but looks like there's more rain on the way. I was hoping to mow the lawn this weekend........

I would love to be the parent who lets their child make their own mistakes and learn from them. And, to be honest, to a great extent I have. DS is a well-functioning adult! But when you know the choices are going to narrow dramatically and the pathway to adulthood become that much harder if they don't knuckle down NOW and do this shitty few months of dull work before the summer of freedom ahead, it's hard not to intervene.

TBH, need, if one child is doing a PhD and is highly self-motivated, and the other got a 2:1 in Maths with no effort, yours are sitting in the very highest percentile of pretty much any cohort, anywhere, in all time. For us who have reasonably bright kids of average talents but struggling with direction, a bit more effort to stop them going off-track at a critical point is needed. Mine needed a lot of nurturing.

bigskies your kids are so lucky to have you! 😊
need huge congrats to your DC getting funding, I work in academia so I know just how competitive funding for PhDs is!
waiting to hear back from promotion panel but not holding my breath.
Cleaned out the bottom shelf of my wardrobe, huge bag in bin, one to charity shop and everything else organised and tidied. Will be working through whole wardrobe and chest of drawers, planning to get rid of anything that isn’t a Hell Yes! So will probably be left with very little, but sick of only wearing 1/8 of what I have.

Fingers crossed for your promotion Gen

Yep, sorry, wasn't meant as a criticism, no amount of cajoling would have motivated DS until he did flunk of his own volition and learn from that experience, which he did to some extent with mock A levels and then again in the third year of university when he had to motivate his sorry self for his finals!

DD wasn't treated well at all at primary school, she was basically made to feel like the less able sibling. Again, that could have gone either way, but she's got a 'I'll show you' attitude and worked her ass off to prove them wrong.

Fingers crossed @Gensola, this is the one the encouraged you to apply for no? Good luck!

Love the duvet @TheNewlmprovedMrsMadEvans!

Good luck Gen.

My dd is very much like me in terms of academic ability, if she works really hard she will get good/average grades. We're not blessed with a natural ability to withhold lots of information sadly. We have lots of other talents to make up for it luckily 😉 that said dd is well on her way to passing this year of her diploma with merits and I got my degree eventually.

Bit of a spendy wend, went out for dinner last night with friends, I didn't drink so it was just food £18. Had a nice time and the food was 😋

Spent £116 in Aldi 🫣🫠 that will last a couple of weeks at least (I hope!)

Bought garden paint £54, am going for a stripey fence look I think, what do you guys think? I'm thinking it's beach hutty which I like!

Will try not to spend any more money now.

I love the fence Girlie. Really pretty. I'm aiming to paint my boring grey concrete wall later in the summer. Then maybe plant some rose bushes or climbers in front of it. But it's too early (and too wet) to paint right now.

Eee mrs I have no strong feelings about the actual Coronation but I love the bedding!

I'm practicing a cake for a Coronation lunch at my friend's next weekend. Nothing special, a victoria sponge but I want to check it works! It's my spendy friend (as opposed to Martha's frugal friend) but she is making lunch at hers so i think it may be a frugal day 👍

My DC are v different. Younger one will discuss school, home work and accept help, elder one point blank refuses help. He passed his GCSEs (only just but at the right grades for a level 3 course) but I didn't see any evidence of work or revision - says he did it all at school. Younger does really well at school. I suspect the elder has undiscovered potential but we may never see that!

So far £18.50 for ice skating lesson, also spent £2 at the cafe.

Done a 5k run so that was free. Headed out to IKEA next. It will be heaving as the weather is naff here, forecast for rain and thunder ☔

That menu plan is fierce, need! I'm planning to try and have a cheap couple of weeks, feeding just me and DH and sticking to veggie stuff, so that Ddog isn't tormented. He has lost a total of 500g so far - it is very slow work. I will do a Victoria sponge for the coronation, however. I'm not a savage.

DH did one of his Saturday cooking sessions yesterday. This usually involves finding a recipe in the New York Times, making a special trip to buy the ingredients (ignoring anything we already have in store) and getting slightly merry while cooking to a soundtrack of Van Morrison/Tom Petty/Dylan/Random Old Gits. Last night he produced a lemon pudding, which was basically hot lemon curd to which we added creme fraiche. Very lovely too!

Loving the jaunty garden fence girlfriend.

good luck with the job, Gen...may you be doing this:

My DC are similar to yours kessie and need. DD works her socks off with no prompting, in fact the issue is getting her to stop (not a stealth boast - she gets a bit obsessive). DS1 is bright and capable I think but doesn’t put the effort in. I feel I should be like you big but if you go hard with DS, he will go harder and it becomes incredibly confrontational and counterproductive. Lockdown was awful in that respect. So I tend to back off and let ot come from him, and at this age (17) I think I have to do that anyway as no one if going to hold his hand to do it at uni. He is currently refusing all offers of help and is either going to flunk and will have to think again about his future, or pull something out the bag…not sure which and it’s quite hard to stand by and watch. I guess the most important thing is that your approach works for them!

Been out to watch football in the rain, thinking of slobbing now…so not very exciting but not spendy at least.

Love the fence girlie

can’t beat Mary berry for a Vicky sponge imo

im slightly above average but need to work as are dc, I envy the motivated teens, side eyes catlike dd 👀

spent a horrible amount this weekend on food,
1 May tomorrow = reset

The fence looks great Girlie, really cheerful

Ds needs nailing to something to make him revise (or do anything at all). But equally I'm also trying to get him to learn from natural consequences and build his own drive and ambition (because I don't want him to end up useless and unable to manage basic life like his father), as many will remember ds can also be very aggro and has a hair trigger temper, so this lead up to GCSEs has been a bit of a nightmare trying to find the right line to tread between letting him set his own course and stopping him from just letting it all flow away. Luckily he's naturally bright but what he wants to do requires high grades so he does need to put some effort in.

Need I feel like I need to get that cookbook after the weekly recipe thread, it all sounds good

Meant to add love the fence and the duvet cover (not so much the coronation itself though 😂)

Love the fence, @Girliefriendlikespuppies definitely getting beach hut vibes!

Duvet cover is very cute @TheNewlmprovedMrsMadEvans

Sympathising with the parents of people studying. Like you say @Wolfcub its a fine line to tread, encouraging and supportive without being overbearing. We’ve dealt with GCSEs during lockdown, followed by a challenging NVQ course when he’s never been shown any study/revision skills thanks to Covid.

Aside from a load of washing and the usual post breakfast kitchen tidy round, I’ve done nothing today, nothing at all and it’s been great.

Looks like my DSis won't be here until 7. If I'd known she was going to be that late, I'd have gone for a drive or walk somewhere this afternoon. To be fair, we hadn't agreed a time but she gave me the impression that she'd be here around 3 or so. Anyway, I got lots of jobs done around the house, except for the hoovering. I also did my budget for the month of May. DD was supposed to be with Ex this weekend but he was doing a race somewhere today, so she'll be home this evening. Except I'll be out with DSis. We're going to the cinema and we'll get something to eat first. I was thinking of a nice Indian restaurant but at this rate, it might be a quick McDonalds.

Sounds a nice evening tayto enjoy!
interesting what you say wolf. We had some horrendous scenes with DS during lockdown when we tried to insist and I was reflecting on that thinking it’s made me really back off from putting that pressure on. But he was 14 then and 17 now… Don’t get me wrong I nag him and make suggestions/ offers of help etc. But don’t put punishments in place eg you can’t go out if you haven’t done college work. Partly because I think by this stage you need to want to do it…but then legacy of Covid means he doesn’t have good study habits. I think I’m feeling a bit bruised having been to DSis at Easter and seen my nephew revising for 6 hrs a day!!

We took the dc to the circus. So £££ popcorn and candyfloss and merch. But free tickets. So win.

we had the best time. If anyone is in a spot where Gandeys is touring go to the Glitterati show. So good!

then home. For snacks leftover tea and kids monopoly.

Good evening all - had a nice day today so am feeling like I’m in a good place. A friend is doing a charity walk so we went for a 30km practice walk today.

Spent £7.50 on ice cream and then about £35 on martinis, a coffee and some crisps. Not a great start to the month but it could have been worse.

Yesterday evening I spent £27 on some custom maps for my planned photo book. I should pull my finger out and learn to draw them myself.

Need I’ve not tried the bands yet. I Amazoned them and they are marked as being delivered but haven’t been. I hate having to chase packages (I hardly buy anything online) and find out what has happened to them. I have tried the bands at the physio and they were fine so I think if I actually get them it will be ok.

TheNewlmprovedMrsMadEvans I hope you are enjoying your new duvet cover. There is nothing quite like clean bed clothes. I love Guardsman’s uniforms.

Gensola good luck with the promotion. My fingers and toes are crossed.

Love the jazzy fence Girlie. And* the tulips.*

A friend has invited me to watch the Coronation with her so I am hoping it will mean less spending for me. She is planning a light lunch and I have offered to bring something. Would love a fondue but not sure of the Coronation relevance. Am tempted to take a stroll to Poundland and see if the have Coronation themed deely bobbers.

Good luck to all with children sitting exams.

£50 IKEA. For four prints and frames that DD chose for her room, plus a plant and an ornament she liked.
£22 Asda our local has a Panko sushi bar and they are doing 2 mains and 2 sides for £10.. Pumpkin Katsu curry so good. 😋

Drinking mocktails tonight, had the mojito mix from Aldi, added some ice fresh mint and raspberries.

30k walk amazing rum

Good luck with the promotion gen

Will check out the circus em I've never been age coughs 21 plus some.