Oh I remember exactly why I need to be frugal!

I'm really devoted to my job and nine times out of ten, it's great but teaching is a minefield and today, I was bombed and it blew my heart out. After my heart had been blown out, my senior management team, found it, laughed at it and then played football with it, handed it back to me and told me they'd do something about it later. Today I received three sexually explicit, personal and disgusting emails from a student. They'd breached security (which is obviously made of tissue paper) ......logged on as an innocent little year 7 girl and whilst in a year 10 science lesson, had managed to send three emails without the teacher noticing, which I immediately forwarded to the IT support team, the senior management team who could have acted on the spot, gone to the classroom, gone to the computer (the twerp left a cyber trail and we knew which computer it was sent from) and apprehended the culprit...............but they did Fredrick all about it, and later told me it was too difficult to find out who it was and no one would admit to it. So they've done precisely Fredrick all about it when they could have acted sooner!

So back to the why I am frugal...............I want to pay off debts, downsize to a two up, two down cottaged and pay off the mortgage really quickly so I can retire before I work myself to death and sit and watch my garden grow and not have to put up with 15 year olds being sexually explicit to the point that if they were adults and said what they said in public, they would have been arrested. I'm waiting for the repercussions when I show the email to Dearly Beloved tonight! I feel sick to the point of never wanting to go back to work at the moment, which is a shame as most of the students are a credit to themselves.

Monthly budget

It's that time of the month again, when we sit down, work out everything coming in and everything we have to pay and wonder what we are going to do with the tuppence ha'penny we have left!

This month I cleared the last £1.76 off my Halifax, so the balance is ZERO! My other card is now receiving the snowballed payment of the full £500 per month, which means my Santander balance will be down to £1300 (after receiving my tutoring fees in July's wages - that will be zero too) We have transferred one of DB's 21% cards over to Barclays on 0% and that will be paid off in ten monthly payments of £210. I have transferred his other card to Virgin, again on 0% and that will also be paid off in ten monthly payments of £500 (I'll make the first payment when I've cleared my Santander card, in July I will have to make the minimum payment.) We are left this month with £315 to live on, to buy all food, clothing and anything else we need, which is fortunate that we don't need anything!

I don't count the lodger's £30 a week, and usually buy the groceries when we get paid and then use what ever we have left in the 'pot' at the end of the month to put towards a debt. With our projections we will have paid off another £11,294 in ten months..............I know what you're thinking, if we were not in debt, then we would have masses of savings! We will get there!

This is the time of year when I work the hardest and try to make as much money as I can! I get all the money I'm owed with my July wages, then I'll wipe out £2300 in one go. I'm also going to be far more proactive about lodgers in the future and aim to rent my room out all week, to make some more tax free money.

I'm looking forward to spending my summer holiday, in a deck chair in my garden, or doing craft of walking on the moors with the dogs...........roll on the holidays!

Bring on the subs!

For lunch today we had tex-mex fajitas with a cheesy sauce! My lunch was 6 points and DB's was 11. I dry fried the onions and peppers and used the one cal spray oil. It was expensive to buy but it seems to go a very long way. I then added some quorn meatballs that I'd cut in half. Again, another spray of oil.
Whilst they were cooking, I warmed the tortilla wraps in the mini-oven. I love the simple food labelling, and it's easy to work out the points. The wraps were 79p from Lidl so approx 10p each. The meat balls were £1 - Morrisons on offer. DB can have a third more than me at every meal as he can have 30 points a day and I can have 20.
To make up the points for DB he could have 40g of grated low fat cheddar.......I couldn't. Instead, I had no points Caesar salad sauce with mine, which gave it a lovely cheesy taste. So we substituted the chicken for lower fat quorn, we didn't use oil and DB had 40g only of cheese, which went a very long way. I added a heaped teaspoon of the Asda Tex-Mex spice mix and that doesn't have any points either. I'm amazed to think that I lost three stone once and then put it all back on again. You all know my determination and I am going to lose the weight, so is DB and I'll make sure it isn't expensive and that it is tasty.
I had to include a photo of Scruffy, he takes relaxing to the next level!

Locked away from the world

I'll be back soon............school work and planning has shut me away for a while. I'm surviving on toast, Marmite, low fat spread, strong coffee and gritted teeth. It's going to be a long weekend and I may have nothing to show for it at the end; but a teacher's job is never done. Normal service will resume shortly; plus Dearly Beloved is very ill so I'm attending to him.

What's the alternative?

We are picking strawberries almost daily, we eat them with breakfact cereal, snacks and with our meals. In WW terms, they are low in points and we ate them with fat free yoghurt (bogof at Pesky Tesky as Ilona calls it).

It's the alternative of strawberries and ice cream. We had another alternative too. We had grilled chicken, baked sweet potato and half a tin of beans each. Ever so cheap, lower in calories and low in points. My weight this week 13 stone 6 pounds, so in my first week, I have lost six pounds. I know it will slow down. Still just under £1 each.

What would you run through fire for?

This is me and four and a half year old Jo and my most precious photo and yes, I would run back into a burning house to rescue this picture. We're not close anymore, but she slept with me until she was well into her teens if anything bothered her! Like I did my mum! I miss her today xx

Counting every one of them.

It's all in the points you know. It's all about weighing everything and it's all about having mountains of food with no points. The pointless food is great because, in the main, it's cheap and very healthy. tonight I had a pork steak, DB had two and I had 120g of dry roasted sweet potato DB had twice that amount, we had a mountain of broccoli, cauliflower and carrots. I can barely move for all the food, which is good as I won't pick later. If you wonder where the piccies are, it's because I can't find my camera! It'll turn up, it's usually in a jacket pocket as I take it everywhere. This is not a picture of my cat! My cat is a skinny fast chap! But if I'm not careful, I'll end up like this fella! So, I'm counting all the points and making sure I don't over eat!

Sometimes it's not right to be frugal!

I try to see my daughter as much as I can, but sometimes I get turned away. Sometimes, I make arrangements to see her, turn up, ring the door bell of an empty house and she's not there. Sometimes we make arrangements to go out for the day and at the last minute we get a text cancelling. Nonetheless, we never give up. Today she turned up and all was well.

Her illness has a cruelty that eats away at her, traps her, sends her to such dark places and only allows her into the real world on odd occasions. Today we got to share one of those odd occasions. We went shopping today to buy Jo new clothes and she was sunny, chatty and easy to be with. I'm totally broke but Jo, I'm sure, will be cheered by looking and feeling better in lighter summer clothes and even allowed herself flip flops and a dress! For a girl who lives in combats, boots and a huge dark coat; she sparkled with the fun of the occasion today and for just a few hours allowed me to have moments with my little girl.

When I look back at their childhood, and the sunny child who loved life; I battle with the what ifs; the personal guilt and ask myself over and over what I did wrong and how I could have made it better. Jo has been ill since she was fourteen and she will be eighteen in December.

A while ago, I was in a busy branch of B&Q, and we sat and had a coffee to break up the shopping trip. A young mum, with a cluster of small children, struggled to get them into highchairs and sat to the table so she could give them a drink. I felt for the poor woman as she did have her hands full. On that day, like today, if God could grant me just one wish; it would be to have just five minutes with my children at a young age again.

Foraging for free food

We walked the dogs this morning and there is an abundance of wild strawberries. They grow on the Cornish stone hedges that everyone has at the bottom of their garden. They grow in the crackS and ripen really quickly. They are tiny, like little sweets. We kept stopping, picking and eating them! No good for the diet, but wonderful for our vitamin C intake! I would like to ask the homeowners if they want them, as technically they are on the other side of their boundary and not in their garden but the moral side of me feels as if I am scrumping!

Summer season for car boot sales!

There are two very good car boot sales in the Liskeard area in the summer months. Both a run by the local Lions clubs. The Liskeard car boot sale is held from 4 - 7 pm on Friday, at the Cricket Club and we arrived at 4 and it was in full swing. There were all sorts of useful things for sale, from furniture to clothes but I was most impressed at the amount of children's clothes, toys and equipment for sale.
There were a lot of mums there buying useful things for their children and lots of useful things for their homes. We found a stall where some one had lots of bedding. I bought a double blanket for a pound and it's in perfect condition. We put them under the sheets on the beds as it keeps us warmer. This, although it smells freshly laundered, will go in with my next wash ready for us to put on one of our beds. The other carboot sale is held every Saturday at Westwayland Farm, on the way to Looe and Polperro. We've never been to that one as I cleaned caravans every Saturday last year. I hope to get to one or two of them this year. We just had fun ambling around and having a good look. I can certainly recommend the Liskeard car boot sale and if you have anything to sell and live locally then it's buzzing with customers looking for bargains.

Difficulties of frugal weight loss

We are not even one week into our weight loss programme and already I'm concerned about the cost. Once upon a time, when salad was seasonal, it was cheap at this time of year. Well, it isn't anymore. After reading Hardup Hester's blog I went to Tesco and bought three packs of meat for £10, which I divided up into: three portions of pork steak, two portions of chicken and three portions of mince. We are used to filling up on things like homemade quiche, or homemade cake that I make for pennies. Until we get used to less calories, we stave off hunger with masses of fruit and veg and they are not cheap. If only Tesco would sell a 'fruit and veg' bundle for £10, like they do the meat.

We did OK with last night's dinner and ate: roasted veggies/butternut squash/roasted carrots, roasted parsnip and roasted new potato (only one small one each) and roasted beetroot - we've bought some spray on oil, which seems to stop them from drying out and not burning. We had one chicken breast each and then a pile of steamed frozen green beans (which were really OK) Although we're not spending money on Weight Watchers, I have all of their literature and advice and we're following their points plan. I did this previously and lost three stone; kept the weight off for two years and then put it all back on again. I'm still managing to keep our food budget at under £2 a person a day. DB is missing sweet things and he loves the occasional biscuit or piece of cake so we mooched around Morrisons for something low fat yet nice. We came away with WW chocolate biscuits and some low fat yogurts. What concerns me is the list of chemical inside them. Heck knows what those will do to us.

Weigh day is Tuesday..........just picture this! DB wandering down the corridor in his pants!!! ready to be weighed! I'm his weight loss advisor and he is mine! Our target is to lose 10% of our body weight initially and then keep it off!

Beans in a bucket - 1, Beans in a bag - 0

My homemade upside down tomato planters are faring well and the plants are covered in flowers and I hope for some toms in the near future. The rest of the garden is a bit hit and miss. My Bramley apple and Victoria plum trees have doubled their yield since last year and there are two fruits on both of them!!! However, the strawberries in the hanging basket are thriving and I keep picking strawberries; it's lovely to leave them there until they are completely ripe and eat them straight off the plant!
I am growing climbing French beans in: a donated large pot, an old Habitat bag and an Aldi bag. The beans are thriving in a pot but the beans in bags seem to have been eaten by insects and their leaves look like lace. I have searched the plants and the bags and I can't find any flies or insects so I can only assume the beasties fly in, eat it and fly off.
My buckets full of courgettes and butternut squash are doing well too. I have to keep watering everything as it's so dry and I must find somewhere to plant my broccoli so I have plenty for the winter. I'm going to try growing it in the potato sacks after we've eaten the potatoes, which I think will be ready in two to three weeks.

The onions are just about OK, they are growing in flower pots. We had an amazing time tonight as one of my potato plants was looking a bit dead. I emptied out the growing bag and it was totally filled with little potatoes. I found out how dry the compost was and have increased the amount of water to my potatoes. It's hit and miss and I'm not sure how growing things in buckets and pots will work in the end, but I'm having so much fun doing this.

Frugal Weight watchers

I like the picture of me on my bike. I'm on holiday a few years ago and I had lost three stone. I wore a bikini on holiday and sun bathed by the pool and felt like a princess! I still am a princess but I look like Shrek's missus! So! I'm going to climb up and get back on the wagon that I've fallen off for the last two and a half years! I'm going to be realistic and know it's going to be harder than last time as I can't afford the nicest and healthiest foods and will have to make do with what I can get.

I have joined a very exclusive slimming club as Dearly Beloved has decided to lose weight with me. I've been totally inspired by a blog I follow by "Bitchcakes" a lovely lady from Brooklyn who has lost weight by hitting the streets of New York on her Hello Kitty pink bike, and cycles in high heels, a basque and lots of lippy!!! Dearly Beloved reminded me about our bikes, bike rack and how we've paid for them (still paying for them!) and we need to get over to the Camel Trail at the weekends to get some exercise and other than paying to park the car, a couple of quid for diesel, it's reasonably cheap! It can get very busy! So, get there early and pack a few drinks in your panniers as it's a hot and muggy ride through the camel valley.

So here is my starting weight - 13 stone and 12 pounds - BMI = 27 - I hope to lose a pound a week, and maybe, like Bitchcakes, you'll get the weight loss photographs! Weigh day will be Tuesday!

And it's not even Christmas!

Look what the lovely people at AQA sent me! 400 exam scripts! I'm off to mark some now! There's going to be some llllllooooooooooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnggggggg nights!

You've got to have a roast on a Sunday

I know it's hot but we still love to have a roast dinner once a week. I took all the veg Ihad left in the fridge: half a butternut squash, 1 courgette, 6 small potatoes, 1 large onion and one red pepper. I diced them and tossed them in approx. two tablespoons of olive oil.
I then sprinkled them with Tikka mix and put them in a baking tray.
I roasted a slice of belly pork each that I had marinated in barbecue sauce, just the type you get in a bottle and eat with cooked meat. It's just as good. I then roasted them in a hot oven for an hour. Sunday roast!

Primarni!

I went to Plymouth today to meet my daughter and take her clothes shopping. She didn't show up so I went clothes shopping and spent (rent from the lodger)£37!!! ON: two sleeveless tops, two linen blouses, one skirt, one pair of linen trousers, one linen shirt for DB. I needed some work clothes and my charity shop clothes were looking a bit faded for someone in a managerial position so I splashed out. It was not so many years ago that I would have spent £50 on one shirt! I can recommend Primarni for light weight summer clothes and it's very cheap and before I get the moral backlash; I am perfectly aware that some one some where is being paid a pittance. But then if you go to Monsoon and pay a fortune...............they do the same. P.S - I am going to be cool and smart at work on Monday............they'll be shocked.

Shower timers!

Frugal shower. Get in....straight away! Don't worry if it's cold; it will warm up in a few seconds. Wet hair. Turn shower off and lather. Turn on and rinse. Wash your body as you rinse. Use "washandgo" to save two lots of hot/cold/hot! hot!/too cold showering! When shower timer beeps: get out! Do all of the above whilst standing in a big bucket and then use water in bucket to flush loo.............or wash urine off floor from Dearly Beloved wetting himself laughing at my ridiculous attempts to save water and electricity!

Looking for the next debt repayment opportunity.

Some people look for investments; I spend my time judiciously looking for opportunities to repay debts. I will have cleared my credit card debts by July and then will take up Dearly Beloved's credit cards and loans. I'm quite open about the money I owe and the lengths I will go to save money and pay back as much as I can as quickly as I can. I will be paid for exam marking in the beginning of August and I shall pay off two thirds of a small loan that DB has and then his payments will not simply be swallowed up by interest. I'm totally exhausted at the moment but I'm adrenalin driven. My next big frugal mission is to get rid of the dishwasher. I'm amazed by the amount of electricity it uses. I might hate washing up but I hate paying utility bills even more! Think of me on Monday when my 450 exam scripts arrive and I will do my own job and then hours of marking until the early hours to get it done! Every little helps.

Save water, save money, save the planet!

Can you guess what it is yet??? I have an old 1970's loo. Unlike modern small cistern loos it takes a lot of water. We try to flush as little as possible. No need to flush pee..........just poo. So here's what's inside the cistern in my house. A brick.........we had to cut it in half and drop in a half at a time. A Waterhog, which is a bag that holds a litre and half of water. The loo 'broke' and needed a new ball cock and arm, so we improvised and used and elastic band and a mouth wash bottle to keep it afloat. The result: a repair for free and 2.5 litres less water wasted when we flush the loo.

Save money and the planet

We have every device you can think of to save energy and money. We have water hippos and bricks in our toilets (which we rarely flush) We have power down adaptors so our appliances switch themselves off when we leave them on standby. We have energy monitors so we can see what uses to much energy and then use it as little as possible. All of these appliances and adaptors are free and given away by the water board and energy companies. We watch out to see who is giving them away for nothing and often give them as gifts or we even sell them on ebay. All of our low energy light bulbs were free and came from the local council and we've used the same ones for years. I've cut my energy bills by £850 this year and I'm going to make sure next year's bill stays as low. How much can you save with these nifty free devices?

The good, the bad and the smelly

Short blog tonight. Back to school tomorrow so lesson planning tonight. Mum in law is staying with us, which is good. Up all night completing my lesson planning........the bad. Mum in law has an elderly but lovely dog and she's in a bad way. Dearly Beloved has bathed her, cut all her tangled hair off and cut all of her claws to a sensible length. I'm sure she feels much better now. It's lovely to have mum here but so sad to see how much she has declined. We'll all get old one day..........even our dogs.

On the up!

We've had an extremely productive weekend. Firstly I procured a bed really cheaply and will now clear out my junk room and advertise for another lodger. I'm finding the extra £30 a week in cash to be really useful and means I can fill the car up with diesel or put some money aside. I managed to get all the bedding in a charity shop, including the duvet, which the lady in the Salvation Army shop said that she'd washed herself. Secondly we managed to transfer high interest credit card balances to 0% cards!
We set off today on our favourite 'wild walk'. I inspect how the wild plums, crab apples, overhanging pears from people's gardens are doing. I know where the best blackberries will be found and I keep an eye on all of this.
We went down through the woods and I filled my pockets with wild garlic. I wonder if it has garlic bulbs like cultivated garlic?
This wood is in the middle of Liskeard and it masks the sewerage works and pumping station for the entire town. It's a wonderful piece of public space and provides some much needed shade and cool for my poor dogs who suffer in the heat.

Here's Dearly Beloved looking all wistful and romantic......which he is!
Above is the pumping station. I love the effort the water board has gone to. I'm glad the highest water bills in the country is reaping some rewards for us.
I have to stop and stare on a regular basis. I love the blossom. I'll wait a couple of days for the rest of the elder flower to blossom and go and gather some to make elder flower fritters.

I have digressed somewhat. We must have improved our credit ratings. We have both managed to secure sizable 0% balance transfers for our credit cards. I will pay off one over the next two months and then start hammering away at one of DB's credit cards. Due to the 0% cards, we'll pay off debts even sooner. I have even managed to secure a meeting with my mortgage provider, Santander to investigate a renegotiation of our mortgage deal and hopefully be able to sell and downsize. A smaller house would mean a shorter mortgage (in time) and I'll be able to simplify my life altogether.