Saturday 29 June 2019

A Great Idea

I had to just share this article that I read on the blog budgetsaresexy.com. Like Little Free Libraries, these Little Free Pantries are now opening up all over the world. What a great way for people to give to those in their community that are suffering hardship.

Little Free Pantries are like Little Free Libraries — but with food

Thursday 27 June 2019

Still Blogging

It's been quiet on my blog lately, and I'm sorry about that.  I guess work has been taking up most of my energies and I haven't really had anything very interesting to blog about lately either, so these two things combined have meant a dearth in posts.  I don't want to stop blogging though, as I love to keep in touch with the lovely people I've met and engaged with via the blogging world, so I will try to keep posting as often as I can, even if it is only a couple of times a month. To make up for it, this is going to be a long one, so brace yourself.

I have made a slight change to my blog in that I will now be moderating comments as I have noticed lots of spam comments being made on my posts lately and I want to prevent this in future.  Apologies if this causes you any inconvenience, but I notice that many of the blogs I read regularly do the same thing too anyway.

As indicated above, life has been pretty routine of late. On the days I'm working I throw myself into it full steam ahead.  That's just the way I am. I'm still enjoying my job though which is definitely a good thing. I'm slowly getting used to earning slightly less money each month, approx. £200, as my hours have reduced by half a day per week under my new contract.  This month I fared better, as I didn't have too many expensive things to pay out for, but last month was a bit of a disaster.  Next month, most of my money will go towards spending money for our upcoming trip to Australia to visit my sister.

Time is hurtling by at the moment. Before we know it, we'll be sat on a plane for 28 hours on our way to Brisbane. I'm now starting to look forward to the trip, but I haven't started packing yet.  At the moment, I'm just trying to get on top of our washing and ironing, to make it easier when we all do pack. I'm also trying to get ahead of myself at work to help things along whilst I'm away. One positive is that I have already sussed out some Zumba classes close to where my sister lives which is exciting. I love trying new classes. I've also bought some sun cream and a few clothes too, which is a start.

I had a bit of a shopping spree in the H&M sale.  I don't normally buy much new, as I tend to just buy things from the charity shop in which I work, or others that I visit on my days off , but I made an exception on this occasion, mainly because it's a special long haul holiday and I wanted some new t-shirts.  In the end, I bought three dresses too, but I don't regret it, as they will all be useful for wearing to work on my return from our holiday.



One was this black jersey t-shirt dress with pockets that wasn't on sale and I've already worn this one to work.  It's very comfortable and easy to throw on. It could be worn on the beach or poolside too.



Another, was a loose fitting khaki tie belted dress with lovely bell shaped sleeves. I'm definitely looking forward to wearing this one, but I'll probably wear it without the belt.



The third was  a lovely smart fitted lace dress, which will be great for more formal occasions and looks great on. This one in particular will be good for work days when I want to look a bit smarter, such as management meetings and visits to the shop from Head Office. This was the most expensive dress at £15, the other two were £12.99 and £10 respectively, so I didn't spend a whole lot. I know they aren't the most colourful items, but I don't tend to wear prints these days, save for harem pants which I tend to wear with plain t-shirts or tops.  I can always jazz these up with a colourful scarf or jewellery.



I also bought this PU biker jacket this month for £15, after the dog literally dragged me into our local RSPCA charity shop.  She must have known it was in there.  She loves going into this shop, as it is really dog friendly and she always finds something interesting to sniff. On this visit, the Manager also gave her a couple of treats, so I'm sure that it's now going to be a regular haunt of ours on dog walks when we're passing.

On the same visit, I found a £10 note in the pocket of a pair of jeans I tried on, so my visit was worth £28 to the charity instead of the £18 I actually spent. (The item wasn't gift aided so there was no way of knowing who the donor was)

In other news, LB finished her exams two week ago and after a weekend of partying, is settling into her extra long summer holidays.  She's got her Prom tonight and then her results in August, after which she's officially left her all girls' school, provided that she gets the results she needs to go to the Sixth Form College of her choice. She's already given her school uniform to the school, to sell to other pupils, so lets hope so anyway!

Last week, was a week of dental appointments for her, one at the orthodontist who has agreed to treat her in 15 to 18 months, once she works her way up the waiting list, and the other with her normal dentist for a check up and to find out what the orthodontist said. This week, it's all about prep for Prom, so she's had her nails done and her fringe cut in order to look her best. It's all new to me, as we never had such things in my day, but I'm sure she'll have a nice evening and why not. She deserves it.

Today, is also plot inspection day on our allotment site, whereby all the plots on our small site will be judged and the winner of Best Plot and Best Newcomer will be decided.  I don't think we'll win anything this year, as we won Best Newcomer last year, but the plot is all planted up and looking tidy.  OH and I ventured there at the weekend and cleared all the weeds from the paths surrounding our plot, as we'd been asked to do so  in a newsletter. I didn't take any photos I'm afraid, but here's a couple from a few weeks ago. It's all grown up a lot more since then, but is much the same otherwise.


I found this really cute sign at Poundland a few months ago, which now has pride of place over the compost bin. I hope it makes the judges smile.



To be honest, it's mostly OH's work this year on the plot, so I have him to thank for being on top of it, as I rarely have the energy to go there.  We did our usual on Saturday, of taking the dog with us and then going off to the pub afterwards for supper, which was nice.

Anyway, that's about me caught up for now.  I've spent the last two days cutting blank paper out of all of LB's old school exercise books, which she has now thrown out. I will use this as scrap paper. I've got enough to last me for the next 10 years I think.  I only use it for shopping lists, scrappy notes and for quilting, but it's better than just throwing it in the recycling unused. I have kept back some of her school books, namely Maths and English, just in case of any possible retakes. Let's hope this is not necessary.

Anyway, I must go as I've waffled on long enough.  See you in my next post.





Saturday 8 June 2019

A Week of Catcing Up

It's been a week since we got back from Center Parcs. We had a nice break despite some disagreements. Sometimes people seem unable to just enjoy a relaxing break, without creating drama. Anyway, the weather was a bit changeable, but we managed to do lots of swimming, cycling, badminton and I did a couple of classes whilst there. We were glad to get back to London, unsure that it turned out to be such a good idea, but the original intention was good.

In the week since we've been back, I've been busy catching up both at work and at home. I worked the early part of the week, so had done my days by Wednesday evening, leaving me with five days off to enjoy, before going back again.   The stockroom needed some serious attention, as some of the interns are not the tidiest and there was a huge pile of donations for me to work through too.  I managed to get it back under control, but it was an intense couple of days and had a knock on effect on my days off.

As a consequence of the above, my first two days were a bit of a wipe out, as I was really tired.  I did a few small jobs and a few errands, but didn't really get much done at all.

On Friday night, OH booked us a badminton court at our local sports centre and we had an enjoyable sporty date night. We've decided that we're going to book a court every couple of weeks, as we enjoy playing together.

A couple of things I have been doing this week have been my quilting and reading a book I got for Christmas or my last birthday, by Courtney Carver and called Soulful Simplicity.  I'm quite enjoying it and can feel another round of decluttering coming on.

Talking of which, LB has had another major clear out this week.  She's now got just 3 GCSE exams left to do next week, and so she decided to clear out her bedroom this weekend.  It's looking very tidy now and I've got a whole raft of stuff to pass on either to the charity shop or the Give and Take.  There was a Give and Take today, but OH needed the car so I couldn't get to it, but there's another in September, which I'm hoping to get to, as the pile of items to take is growing rapidly.

Having recovered from work and following LB's good example, on Saturday I decided it was time to do some cleaning myself. It's been a couple of months since I cleaned through the house on my week off, and to be perfectly honest it was a mess. I spent the whole day on it and was pleased to more or less get the whole house clean.  It wasn't the deepest clean, but it feels a whole lot better now it's done.  I've now just got a huge heap of ironing to do and quite a bit more washing and then I should be on top of things. With two more days to go before I got back to work, I'm hoping to get most of it done by then.

Tonight, however, I'm going to walk the dog, make some supper and then settle down in front of the TV and do some more quilting. A perfect reward after a busy day of cleaning. What are you up to this weekend?