How many of us were expecting to end February with a huge amount of snow? Not me! I'd rather assumed it would have warmed up a bit by now. But I really like snow, and I'm fortunate to be allowed to work from home by my boss, so I quite liked looking out the window and seeing the snow settle.

The arrival of March also means it's time to review my February goals. Sadly I started doing this last weekend and realised how many I'd forgotten about! After the lovely week off for Christmas I had loads of energy in January. But my long commute has sapped a lot of that and I found February to be quite tiring. 

February results;

Health

- Reduce portion sizes for dinner < I think I did quite well with this! Can still be difficult with pasta though, but generally I've found that I'm feeling full but not stuffed after dinner, so that's working.

- Only eat crisps at work < I thought I would struggle with this, but I only failed twice! So will maintain this in March.

- Exercise video once a week < I completely failed at this, I didn't even do one video this month DX But I did improve my walking so I did get some extra exercise.

- Take a vitamin c and d every day < I failed at this too, I remember to take these about once a week DX Might start leaving them on my desk at work to see if I remember to take them at lunch.

Other

- Print off wedding photos for frame and hang it up < This was carried over from January and this time I got it done! My husband has put the frame up at the top of the stairs, so I get a lovely reminder of our wedding day every time I go up and down the stairs.

- Sort & photograph wedding china < I did the cake stands, milk jugs and sugar bowls and listed them on Facebook. Not sold much so far but at least I've started!

- Sort out all the used stamps and send them to a place that buys them < Going to donate the money to my favourite charity, the MND Association < I emailed the guy who buys them and got signed up, so I haven't sent anything yet but I will next month!

- Buy a tumble dryer < Another month has passed without me sorting this out DX It would have really helped with the snow this week!

- Comment on one blog post a day < I only remembered to do this occasionally, but it encouraged me to read and retweet more blog posts, so I'll try to continue this next month.

- Update car log book with married name and address < Ooops....

As you can see, a limited amount of success. I do find my memory gets worse when I'm tired, but I won't be able to take any time off work until the end of April, so I might have to get in to the habit of reading my March list every other day to remind myself of what I need to do!

Speaking of my March list...ta da!

Health

- Continue with exercise video once a week < I didn't even start this last month, maybe I should change this to something more sustainable XD

- Work days = 9k steps, home days = 5k steps < I've been testing this out last month with some success, just a case of motivating myself when I'm at home!

- Reduce biscuit eating to once a week < Eating sweet foods at work has been sneaking back up again so I really must stick to this!

Other

- Sell the wedding china! < I've started this, need to photograph the teacups next!

- Buy shelving for the bathroom, plus a paper shredder and extension cords < These are little bits that we need around the house so getting them done this month will be good.

- Sort out the garage < Our vendors left a load of rubbish behind so we really need to clear it out!

- Update car log book with married name and address < Carried forward from February

- Sort out all the used stamps and send them to a place that buys them < Going to donate the money to my favourite charity, the MND Association < Carried forward from February

- Buy a tumble dryer < I've been trying to do this since September, will March finally be the month it gets done?

I might stick the "no biscuits" thing to my computer screen at work to stop me feeling tempted XD Hope you all have a lovely productive March!

2018 Goals - February

Did January seem to stretch on endlessly? Judging by my Twitter dashboard and I'm going to say that answer is - yes! But we're now in to February and in the back garden the crocuses are starting to come up. It's still very cold but now we know that spring is on it's way.

Because it's February I can now review my goals from January and tell you all about my aims for the new month! I was actually quite impressed with everything I managed to tick off last month, only one thing needs to be carried forward!

So my results for January were;

Health
- Drink 2 litres of water a day < Not quite there yet but I'm definitely getting a lot better at drinking more.
- Reduce biscuit eating to twice a week < Was doing really well on this and then fallen off the wagon this week, but again I'm improving.
- Take a vitamin c every day. < This is the bit I have real problems remembering, even though I keep the bottle on my bedside table 

Other
- Open an ISA (future house move funds). < Opened and first payment made!
- Open an easy access savings account for car and holiday savings, and a fixed rate savings account as a future maternity fund. < Did both of these! The rear tyre replacement meant that I didn't pay anything in to the car fund this month, but I did make a holiday saving payment, and paid £150 in to the maternity fund. I also opened another easy access account for an emergency pot and shoved £1000 in there so it's out the way.
- Print off wedding photos for a frame we got as a wedding gift, and hang it up. < This is the one thing I didn't do, DH needs to pick a photo of me as part of it, and I need to decide what other family ones to print off. It's on the list for February.
- Sort out all the filing for bill paperwork. < Done, although when sorting through some papers the other I found another few bills so I need to file those.
- Buy a blind for the living room. < Did this right at the end of the month, Blinds2Go had 5% off on the one we wanted so we saved a few pennies. It should look really nice when it arrives!

Phew, what a list! As you can see the only thing that didn't get completed was the wedding photos. I'm especially excited about the blind as our living room is south facing. It gets lovely and warm but the sun really gets in my eyes when I'm on the sofa. I've been planning on buying a blind for months so getting it done at last is a big relief!

And I'm now all nicely set up for February;

Health
- Reduce portion sizes for dinner
- Only eat crisps at work < Going to really struggle with this DX
- Exercise video once a week < Going to struggle with this too
- Take a vitamin c and d every day

Other
- Print off wedding photos for frame and hang it up
- Sort & photograph wedding china < Can then start selling some of it!
- Sort out all the used stamps and send them to a place that buys them < Going to donate the money to my favourite charity, the MND Association
- Buy a tumble dryer
- Comment on one blog post a day
- Update car log book with married name and address

I think that's all quite enough to be getting on with for the time being, what are your aims for February?

A week off in July

After a very busy period at work, and my last week off being for my honeymoon back in April, I was very relieved to have a week off this month. Well, technically it was four and a half days, but it was still time off work and I was grateful for it as my brain was starting to get a bit bogged down!

Monday

This was the half day part of my leave. Popped in to the office in the morning, which might have been a bit daft as I have a long commute (live near Colchester and work in Cambridge) but I had things to sort out around the office. Once I'd done everything on my list I then started my holiday by driving over to Cambridge's Grafton Centre, had a little lunch in Bella Italia (I had two starters, pork and beef meatballs in tomato sauce, and carbonara croquettes, delicious!) and then strolled around the charity shops outside the centre. I managed to get some DVDs and a nice top, so my next charity shop haul post will have some good bits in it! Keep an eye out next month.

Started the week with a good book!

Once I'd worn my little legs out with all the walking I drove home and had the rest of the afternoon with a nice cup of tea and a good book, heaven!

Tuesday

Sadly my car needed work done so I dropped it off at the garage Tuesday morning and spent the day confined to my town. But that's not too bad as the town isn't huge and the walk down the high street to the river is quite pleasant. There have been some changes in bin collections recently, which mean that we can now get free sacks for garden waste! Excellent news as they were £3.50 before. But you can only get them if you fill out a form online and get an emailed voucher. Unfortunately having jumped through the respective hoops, I got to the Town Council offices to find that they had run out of garden sacks.

Quite frustrating but there you go. I was asked to phone on Friday to check if sacks had arrived before walking down, and I walked back home to spend the rest of the day reading my book, playing online, and planning what to do with the rest of my week. I intended to go for a drive up to a village called Coggeshall, but when I went to pick up my car they showed me where my suspension coil had snapped! Not good, so I had to book the car in for Friday for more work and be careful with my driving for the rest of the week.

Wednesday

Mirror for £4? Yes please!

Despite the car trouble I used Wednesday to drive in to Colchester and have a long walk around. I popped in to numerous charity shops but sadly couldn't find anything I particularly wanted to buy, not even a book or two! However I did manage to get some nice hanging baskets from Wilko, for our garden, and a bathroom mirror for only £4! We've been really struggling to find a bathroom mirror we both like, so at only £4 I figured this will be a handy placeholder to use, and then we won't rush in to buying something we don't like just because we need to fill the space.

I also managed to get some nice birthday presents for one of my sisters. Her birthday isn't until September, but I think I might have all her gifts sorted now, getting that done early is a big bonus!

Thursday

I decided to call off my trip to Coggeshall due to the car problem, and instead went up to Marks Tey. I drive by Poplar Nurseries here every day, and it looks like such a big garden centre that I've wanted to go inside for months. Now I had my hanging baskets I decided it was time to get some plants and get gardening!

I wasn't disappointed, it was a lovely big shop. I spent quite a lot of time mooching around the "grow your own fruit and veg" section before coming to my senses and realising it was far too late to be planting tomatoes and strawberries (but I'll try to find a budget for them next year) and instead wandered over to the outdoor section to see what flowers I wanted. I knew I wanted some lavender plants, and then something nice for the hanging baskets. 

Tiny lavender and little petunias!

But there were so many other beautiful plants that in the end I had to go eat some lunch as I was just wandering around in circles trying to work out what I wanted to buy. After filling up with a lovely cheese scone and a nice cup of tea, I had my head on straight and went back out with a trolley. Three small lavender plants for £1.50 each, a box of six dark pink petunias for £4.50, two small trough pots, and two bags of compost, and I was ready to come home! Buy not before I popped back in to their farm shops to get two enormous slices of cake for me and my husband (chocolate loaf for me, carrot and walnut for my husband). I really liked the nursery so I think a second visit is on the cards so I can write a proper review of it!

Once I got home I got everything potted up and placed, ready to surprise my husband when we came home. I ended up putting two petunias each in the hanging basket, and the other two in the smaller trough. The three lavender plants fitted nicely in the larger trough, despite being quite small and spindly. I've been told in the past that lavender can get quite larger so hopefully they'll grow a bit and won't stay quite so small.

Friday

Car went back in the garage in the morning, and then a quick call to the Town Council meant that I could hurry down and pick up some newly arrived garden waste bags! Then all I had to do for the day was wait for the call to say my car was done. I decided to use the time to sort out my clothes, we out our wardrobe from IKEA back in June and my clothes were still in bags in the spare room. I sorted through them I realised there was a lot there that I hadn't even missed despite not seeing them for a few months. I ended up filling a few bags to donate to a charity shop and then hung up the rest, so now all my clothes are sorted out and the spare room looks a lot clearer!

So that was my somewhat productive week off! I didn't get as much done as I'd intended (sending off more forms to change my surname for example) but I'm especially happy about getting the plants sorted. Gardening doesn't come naturally to me so getting plants potted is an achievement to me!

My next week off is at the end of August, and since this week off really wasn't long enough I'm really looking forward to it XD

Preparing for winter

Yes, I know, preparing for winter in the summer sounds a bit daft, at the very least I should probably wait until September. But we all know how quickly a month can go by, and since I've had a few days off work in July, and have another week off at the end of August, now seems like a good time to get a few things ticked off to get ready for the colder months!

Even if it doesn't snow we should get frost!

Car prep

It's not just getting the car through the MOT (mine is due in November so I have to get any problems sorted in the summer anyway), it's making sure that if you get caught out by the snow then you have things in the car that will help. Along with my wellies (which live in the boot of my car from autumn onwards) I also have a little bag with some extra thick socks, gloves, a scarf, a woolly hat, an energy bar, and a torch. Should I find that I have to abandon my car at the bottom of a hill and walk the rest of the way home, I'll be a lot more comfortable doing that walk with multiple layers and some food in my stomach!

My Dad had to walk home from the nearest town several times over the years, and every time it happened he wasn't prepared for it and had to do the walk in smart work shoes! Even if you don't drive, get your other half to prepare a little kit to go in their boot, just in case!

Food prep

I'd love to make some jam but it sounds difficult XD

I doubt we'd get snowed in to the point where we can't get any food, if only because there's a One Stop 5 minutes walk away. But I find that the winter calls for more homecooked food, in the summer I can throw together a cold Tesco quiche with a salad and some oven chips for dinner after a long day, but when you've just got through the front door in January a cold quiche isn't going to cut it.

Since we've moved in I haven't got round to doing as much batch cooking as I would like, so my plan is to top up our stocks of bolognese, and add some more chili and a lasagne or two. We went to IKEA last Saturday and restocked on meatballs, and I've already done a batch of half a packet with some tomato sauce (we had a taste test for dinner and they were lovely!) so that's safely tucked away in the bottom drawer of the freezer. I'm also going to keep an eye out for some more yellow sticker food in the supermarkets so they can be put straight in the freezer after purchase and will make a nice quick hot dinner in a pinch.

One of our wedding presents was a slow cooker, so I'd also like to do a few casseroles as well. But that may have to wait until autumn as I don't think a nice beef casserole will be a great thing to eat in the middle of August XD

Stocking up the medicine cabinet

With winter comes colds and sneezles. One of the worst feelings is to get up with a bad headache, head to the medicine cabinet, and find that there's no Neurofen left. So I've started to stock up with headache pills, Lemsip Cold and Flu capsules for me, and the Lemsip drink for my husband. I'm not a fan of the drink as it always makes me feel a bit sick, so I'm happy to take the pills instead.

I've also now signed us up to our local GP, several months after we moved to the area XD But it now means that if one of us falls ill with a chest infection or the like then at least our local surgery will have our medical records and we won't have to fill out extra paperwork to get an appointment.

Need some more blankets too!

Around the house

Because we've only been living here for four months, there's still quite a lot of things we need to get done around the house. Recently we've been focusing on things like decorating and furniture. But we know that our central heating needs some work (a lot of the radiators don't heat up properly), and the gutters at the back of the house are partly blocked. Since winter brings with it cold weather and rain, these are things we really need to get sorted out before it gets too cold, so booking some companies for quotes for the work is definitely on the table. Oh, and I also need to stock up on some nice warm blankets!

Hopefully this has given you some ideas on how to prepare for winter. What do you want to do for the season?

Mortgage Overpayment - June 2017

If you haven't seen my mortgage overpayment series, you can check out the other posts here.

This month's mortgage overpayment is once again a little small, I've struggled to sell things I've listed on eBay (to be fair they're in a saturated market) and I haven't had much time to dedicate to finding other things to list. My initial optimism didn't pan out unfortunately, but I'm still happy with the overpayment we made this month.

My expenses payment for this month was £22.29, which is fairly average at the moment. I also cashed out £10.28 from Quidco, which was left over from some more house things (including getting our washing machine from Currys and our fridge freezer from AO!).

But in between those two sources, and the standard £30 we have built in to our budget, this month was very slim-pickings. My work had a very big event at the end of the month, and much of my June was mentally occupied with "I need to email some more details to the venue, ask about the choices for the lunch, send out the invoices for the tickets, did I remember to tell my manager about this problem that came up? I don't think I did, I must remember to do that tomorrow", and all around my regular work tasks as well! The day after the event was great as my brain suddenly felt clear!

I was so caught up that I didn't even round down the final mortgage total at the end of the month. Now the final column of my spreadsheet looks uneven XD In total we overpaid £62.57 in June!

But the good thing about the work event is that it was held in London and I'm allowed to claim my (horribly expensive) train ticket back on expenses. This means that next month's expenses form has been very large, and will lead to a very generous overpayment! I also have next week off work, so I'll have a scrabble around for some more things to eBay during the week.

Mortgage Overpayment - Feb 2017

We've only had our mortgage for a few months, but one thing we agreed about early on was that we wanted to overpay it as soon as possible. We started repaying the mortgage in January, and made our first overpayment at the end of the month. Yesterday was the last day in February, so it was the ideal time to make our second overpayment!

Our overpayments consist of a flat £30 payment that we worked in to our budget. To that we add little extras we get over the course of the month. This can include cashback from Quidco, bags of loose change we count up, my monthly expenses claim from work for buying things for the office, money saved from spending less than budgeted, and money from having a clearout on eBay. I also check my current account regularly and round down the amount I have in the bank to the nearest £5 or £10. So if I had £37.20 then I'd move £2.20 to go to overpayments, leaving £35 in my account.

In February our overpayment was £64.14! I have a really great spreadsheet where I can track the impact that our payments are making. This is a great motivational tool, it took a good 40 minutes following very detailed instructions to set up properly, but it was worth the time.

The spreadsheet means that we can set ourselves goals that push us a little further, but which are realistic. For example we realised that if we overpaid by £60 a month (so if we managed to double our baseline £30 a month) then we would have paid off £5000 by February 2018. That was enough to push us to go a bit further and try to hit £5000 by end of 2017. 

On the other hand it's a bit of an eye-opener, we are currently paying over £11 a day in interest! We're on a pretty good rate too, but seeing that number really made us realise how much was going straight back to the bank. No wonder they consider mortgages to be easy money made!

We'll see how much we manage to save in March - my change jar is looking quite heavy!

Draft Excluder

When I was a little girl my grandparents had a draft excluder in the shape of a snake. It took me a while to work out what it was actually for, I assumed it was just a cuddly toy that stayed on the floor. Now that winter is coming I'm starting to think that getting a draft excluder for my room might be a good idea.

Sausage Dog Draught Excluder by TheSherbertPatch

This shop is full of gorgeous handsewn decorations for the home! There's draft excluders, doorstops and cushions, all in pretty patterned fabrics, so whether you like pale pastels or brighter shades you should be able to find something to your taste!

Have a nice evening!