What can I say .....

 

What can I say ..... to simply say thank you seems inadequate, but THANK YOU.

 

You all pulled me up and set me straight just when the doubts were creeping in. 

 

You're all absolutely right, maybe I just needed someone else to tell me, and boy did you tell me.  I snuck onto the computer for ten minutes last night while Lovely Hubby was in the shower to see if there were one or two replies and there were 41 comments all telling me in no uncertain terms what I needed to be told.  I lay in the bath that LH ran me after his shower, thinking over what I had just read, glowing in the warmth of your involvement and care for me and it straightened me out.  We have worked so hard for so long to get to this position, owning our own home, filling it with the things we want, the things that we have wanted and needed for so long.  If I don't lighten up and enjoy this moment I'll miss it forever, because this is our one and only burst of spending, our one chance to set ourselves up and get it right.  What we do now has to last forever and I have no right to tarnish it with negative and downright daft thoughts.

 

New page, fresh leaf, I will continue to show you what we do and what we buy and I WILL ENJOY DOING IT :-)

 

THANK YOU.

 

And thank you to Karan for my lovely cosy socks, a gift from a friend who started off as a Blog reader and who has turned into a confidante and true friend who comes for coffee, chats away and lets me into her life as much as I let her into mine.  They will be travelling with me in the morning and until the wood burner and the Aga are installed at least I know I will have cosy feet inside my boots.  Blogging brings such treasure and brings me into contact with so many truly lovely people.

 

It helped my head slightly yesterday afternoon too, I had taken off the summer weight duvet and replaced it on the bed with our old heavier weight one.  We have new duvets in both weights for the new house, so these will not be needed again.  Usually I air the one I have just removed, wash it if necessary and then store it away, but what to do with this one if it is not to be needed for a bed again?

 

And then I realised ... the dogs need another bed. 

 

 In our house the dogs (and cats) have lots of beds.  They have their main ones, the ones they sleep in at night, outside ones, living room ones, yes they still prefer the sofa like all pets do, but in our new house with our new sofa we have decided they will not be allowed up.  So we were going to buy them a super duper comfy long style bed that they could snuggle up on while we sit on the 'posh, animal banned from' sofa.

 

As I folded the summer weight duvet I realised  I could make it 'doggie sofa shaped', I lay it on the floor to check the 'comfiness' of it, the dogs immediately got the idea and came to test it out.

 

The verdict was obvious.    "Yes Mum ..... this is perfect, please can we have it ?"

I decided to stitch right through in a number of places to hold it together and then I will blanket stitch around the three open edges, when LH saw me doing the these stitches he said "so it's going to be a Chesterfield then" haha ....not quite ..... but it will be comfy and by the time I've finished it will look posh!!  I have a large fleece blanket that I can cut to size and make two covers for it so they can be popped in the washing machine when needed.  So the dogs have a new bed that smells of their favourite humans (not in a bad way I hasten to add) and this will bring them some comfort at bedtime during these weeks of upheaval, and I didn't have to spend a penny.

 

 

This has all made me realise ... well this and a lot of you telling me so, that it's these little things, the saving of money in what seems like incidental ways that has made it possible for us to save so quickly and get to where we are today.  Yes I could have rushed out and bought a super duper all performing top of the range doggy bed (the one in the photo is £42.99) but I thought things through and saved myself the cash ...... I'm back on track :-)

 

 

And as I told myself to 'lighten up' ......

 

I did ... literally, went to the hairdressers got it all virtually chopped off and then used half a box of lightener on it, other half saved for eight weeks down the line when it'll need doing again.

 

 

New head of hair, new balanced mind set, last box of dye from my start of the year stash.

 (See the page at the top of the Blog 'I Love Saving Money - 2013' for more details of my New Year stash).

 

I'm back on track and back on form - thank you.

 

Sue xx

Buying and Storing

 

 

Yes, you've guessed it ..... I went back and got some more!!

 

Now I have a stash of twenty bottles of our favourite shower gel, a good mix of all the scents that we love and this should see us right through next year, after all you can't say no to a price reduction of more than half price.  Usually sold at £2.30 each, these were all bought for £1.

 

My idea of 'brilliant frugality' is to buy something that you love using, that is a good product and one you trust, at a fantastic saving and these fitted the bill perfectly.

 

In my opinion being frugal isn't about penny pinching and using products that are simply cheap it's about finding what you like to use or at the very least don't mind using that save you money, as much money as possible.  In the past I've been 'frugal' out of sheer necessity, then sometimes for experimentation's sake, this time I'm being frugal for a reason, we need to get as much cash together as possible over the next 2 or 3 years to pay for our forever home.

 

 

 

 

And if watching the pennies on a year's supply of something gets us there this is what I intend to do.  I realised yesterday that my No-November has slightly gone out of the window.  I have been spending money much more than I intended to this month, but there are two brilliant reasons for this.  We are slowly being stocked up with lots of basics that will see us through an almost No-Spend 2013 AND at this time of year when folk are going mad buying for Christmas I can feed my slightly obsessive shopping habit (that does sometimes rear it's ugly head when faced with massive over-consumerism all around me) but in a good way.

 

 

 

The bread and yeast and my 10kg of Basmati rice are now packed away and being stored in the spare room where it is nice and dry, so that's us in bread for twelve months.

 

 

 

And the handmade soap is in there too, sliced and drying out and as an added extra making the spare room smell absolutely gorgeous. 

 

A lovely bonus for me that while sorting out in the spare room to make way for all these goodies I found four boxes of bought in Lavender Soaps that I used to sell with little soap dishes on my Farmers Market stall, so now we have a stock of 90 soaps, more than enough to last us for the year, and at no cost to us whatsoever as all the soap supplies were written off when I closed my lavender business. (Pulls happy, smiley face and does a little dance!!)

 

It looks like it is going to be a lovely day here, after a frosty start the sun is shining and the world is just starting to thaw out, with clear blue skies overhead it looks like being one of those Sundays that really recharges the batteries for the week ahead.

 

Enjoy your day, I hope you have sunshine too.

 

Sue xx