Oops

Keep leaving it far to long between posts here.

Time marches on, and DP has changed carears, at last! He's happy (oh, so happy. he's so pretty and witty and..,.... oops there I go again lol) but its going to be a pig financially.

So in an effort to make myself do something about that, and contribute a little more I've joined the £10 a day challenge, to be found on the moneysavingexperts website

And its contribution to us - apart from the financial factor - should be a reduction in the amount of 'stuff' in the house.

And so I hereby announce that September will see ebay at use. And some stock let go in a 'sale'. And whatever else I can sort out to do. Thoughts from anyone?

Oh - I suppose a link to the thread mentioned would be good :0

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1125049


There will be more links to things as they go up for sale ....


I'm strangely excited...

New blog.

Its a weakness of mine. Just as I fail to be able to 'compartmentalise' my life, I seem to be unable to have but one blog for 'me'. Instead I continue to split out things into ever smaller chunks. I suspect its the writer in me (I keep different notebooks for each style of writing and Genre I'm working on as well. One day, I will learn to buy small notebooks, but until then I end up carting around 3 rather large ones so they are with me when the urge strikes!

This one pulls out some of the green stuff, and links it with my need to shift a fair amount of weight. (OK, so only 15 Kilogrammes, maybe only 10Kg if I get muscle with it, but when you are five foot tall and should be in the range 55-60Kg being 70Kg means needing to lose more than 10% of your current 'mass').

Link is in Title. Would love your comments (but no spam for 'product' please!)

Waste

That's it - I've had enough!

We used to put out less than a carrier bag of rubbish a week.

Since we've been here, things have gotten horribly bloated and its getting towards a bin bag a week... the only change has been that we are now stuck with the supermarkets and they package everything in tons and tons of stuff... and we are stuck having to buy the standard size of things, where we used to be able to buy in bulk and decant, leaving a fraction of the waste (and that was usually recyclable, or big enough to be of some use as storage etc)

Oh - and that the 'wonderful' recycling facilities suck! I mean, so what if they collect from the doorstep, they only take bottle shaped plastics. That leaves us with everything else going to the bin, even if its the same category or type as the 'bottle shaped' ones...

Argh!!!!!!!

Ovens... and Scouting

DD1 has become A Scout. Actually she's been one for a fair while now... but it does seem to involve us in an awful lot of running about!!

Today I am baking for England... or rather for the Scout tea tent at the local Carnival Fete. Not sure what I've let myself in for - as all the baking is going to be done in my new 'toy' - A cusinart table top oven. Its rather nice really, but I have no idea how its going to cope with cakes etc.

Off to the field of battle.

Planning planting

The garden here is rather small, and dominated by the decking put in by the previous owners. Great for putting plants in pots on, or keeping the garden table out of the mud, and will provide a useful base for us to stand somesort of leanto on. But a large chunk of it will have to go if I'm to get anywhere near putting in enough variety of veg. to make a useful dent in the budget.

Add to which we have found that we have maybe 6 inches of soil, total. Discovered when the washing line spike wouldn't got far enough into the ground to hold up the rotary airer in all but the driest of weather (one short shower was enough to leave the soil totally waterlogged and not draining, and unable to hold up the airer even folded up and empty!). There hasn't been anything like the amount of rain we used to get in Sussex, so does this bode well or not?

I've had a lead on a good allotment plot a couple of miles away - and on a direct red route from here. Not the closest plots (I can't even get the parish clerk there to talk to me and put me on the waiting list) and we are currently 68 on the waiting list for our own parish plots (actually further away than the first set mentioned, but in the opposite direction) where there are around 30 plots total, all currently occupied and worked. From this pov I'm wondering if I've made a huge mistake in coming here. Originally we thought that we would be in this house for maybe five years, add a little value to it, and then sell on and go further out again to something with a larger garden or maybe an acre if we were lucky. But as life often goes, changes happen and DP is now working locally as well as commuting to London. So although he has sorted out the commuting job to enable working from home a couple of days a week, the new job (the ultimate plan for which is to dump the London job and become a salaried member of staff there instead) is very much based in the centre of MK, and is public facing so no way of remote working.

But on the planting? Well seeds have been bought for things like tomatoes, brocolli, and *lots* of leafy greens, plus courgettes. But I'd also like to get in some beans, and some things that will store into the winter like carrots or onions. Some beets would be great (yay to beet greens, two foods from one plant) and I'm wondering if I can replace the diddy conifers out the front with some sort of fruiting bushes instead - wondering is because the dog next door tends to urinate against one of the conifers so would that leave my fruit at risk? Blueberries would be nice, or Goji. Both quite compact plants as well, and something that we could do with eating more of, as we don't due to the seasonality and locality issues inherent in them most of the year round.

Ah well - off to the plant notebook and draw up a planting calender.

Let us try again

I've not been able to make this blog work for a while - so its now far from up to date. teehee. Yesterdays long post about my new year plans, and the preparations that I've been making towards them over the last few months, has failed to show and like a fool I forgot to save it elsewhere :rollseyes: Sometimes I am ashamed to call myself even vaguely geeky :redface:

So - lets have a go and see if they let this one through...

New House

.. to us anyway.

But the much worked for supermarket dumping has had to go, there's no box scheme :-( and the cost of living is scary here...

... and I have no working oven as this one is ruddy dangerous. Whole kitchen needs rewiring and then some, as *everything* (wall sockets and all) is all wired off the 'master switch' that should be for the stove alone... so I can't even turn off the dangerous oven or I can't run the fridge, freezer or anything else...