Thursday 31 December 2015

Happy New Year



Happy new year to all my dear friends.

I hope you have a fun evening and a healthy, happy and prosperous new year.

Our New Years Eve will be spent playing games with the children and watching the fireworks on the tele at midnight (although we may be in bed watching them, I'm tired already).

Today, I treated myself with some Christmas money to a pair of half price boots. They are furry and warm so should the cold weather arrive I should now be fully prepared. And at £15.00 I couldn't really go wrong!

In the forthcoming year I would like to :-
Lose some weight
Become a bit fitter
Save regularly each month also linked with reduce our spending
Monitor everything that goes in and out of our accounts and where it goes
Relax more
Finally but possibly my favourite have as much fun time with the children as possible (they are growing up quickly and I don't want to miss out)
Pop and see my dear dad (and mum) as often as I can


Have fun and take care xx




Wednesday 30 December 2015

Daily ramblings

Hi, I hope you are having a good day.

Every Christmas and Easter my darling mum makes my children a chocolate house. She tries to make them different every year. Today the children started to eat this years so I thought I would post a picture of it.


Isn't it lovely, sadly it now has no door, no tree, no little men and only half of the roof left. But I guess its made to be eaten!

Yesterday, I said I was going to try and get some yellow snickered food to help get though January, so tonight I popped to Asda to get some milk and found a Chicken and Gravy pie for 15p, a four cheese ravioli dish for 10p and six eggs for 10p. So I picked these up and popped the pie and ravioli in the freezer and I thought we could have scrambled egg on toast for lunch tomorrow.



I was very lucky for Christmas this year and received lots of lovely bath smellies and shampoos, as did the children so for the first couple of months of the year I should be able to get away without buying any toiletries other than toothpaste. Yippee only food to worry about then and hopefully I can be really clever about how I shop and get things for as little as possible.

I have also been quite inspired by my dear friend Nathalie who uses her store bonus cards wisely and gets quite large savings from doing this. I did manage to get £25 off my Christmas shop by using my Sainsbury's Nectar card and I got £12 off some beanie boos for my daughter by using my Boots advantage card and as the beanie boos were on three for two I also got one free. But next year I intend to monitor this more closely and see if I can use these cards more effectively.

Well now I am going to pop off and have a nice warm bath an early night and read a bit of The man in the high castle.

Take care and sleep tight xx

Tuesday 29 December 2015

Menu Plan Monday (ok its a day late!)

We are starting a day late this week, so only a six day week this week.

Tuesday - shepherds pie and veg (carrots and parsnips leftover) update chicken pie mash and veg (my mum has just made this and dropped it over) lucky me!

Wednesday - Gammon, mash and veg

Thursday- Gammon, chips, eggs and beans

Friday- Roast Lamb, Roast potatoes, veg

Saturday - Cold meat, Roast potatoes, salad and pickles

Sunday - soup and bread

I am going to try and keep my shopping down to a minimum this month to make up for the expense of Christmas. So this may well mean trying to get as much yellow stickered food as possible and freezing as many leftovers as I can manage.

I also plan to make soups (as these are cheap) for my lunches when I am back to work.

If anyone has any cheap recipes that they can think of please let me know and I will give them a go.

Take care and talk soon xx

Monday 28 December 2015

After christmas update

Hi, I hope you have had a good holiday.

Have you done any sales shopping this year?

We live near a retail park and I had to drive past it today to drop Christmas presents to my lovely Aunt and Uncle who spoil us rotten every year, the traffic went on for miles. Then when we returned home a couple of hours later the traffic was even worse.

I'm not a big fan of shopping but I honestly could not think of anything worse than sitting in traffic to get to the shops, struggling to park and then battling against people to get the things you want. Yuk!

I don't normally have New Years resolutions, mainly because I probably wouldn't keep them as I don't have much willpower. But I do intend to try not to buy too many new items this year.

With charity shops and places like Ebay, items can be picked up at a fraction of the price of new items these days. I also intend to try to reduce the amount of things we have in our home.

Because of being so poorly these last couple of months I have realised that I put an awful lot of pressure on myself because I can't stand having an untidy home (and having five children it can become a mess very quickly). I can't change the way I am, so I need to change the amount of things we have to clean up and put systems in place to avoid the mess.

I have also never really asked my children to do anything but over the next few days I am going to put a chore plan in place. My mum suggested this because she believes if they are doing part of the work then there is less chance they will want to mess it up. Ha ha we shall see!


Well I am going to head off now and try and come up with a healthy menu plan for the rest of the week using leftovers. After Christmas I always fancy soup! I'm not sure the rest of the family will
 want that though.

Talk soon xx
 

Friday 25 December 2015

Happy Christmas to all my friends

 
Happy Christmas!
 
 
 
I hope you have all had a nice day! Thank you for all the Christmas wishes. I have been away again because I have been unwell. I have been in hospital as the virus that I have had turned into pneumonia. I am on the mend now thank goodness.
 
I look forward to catching up with you all soon.
 
Lots of love
Tara xx

Wednesday 2 December 2015

Kids stockings

Hello my dear friends,

I have taken a bit of inspiration from my dear friend Nathalie who told me to post pictures of the children's Christmas calendars. As I am trying to take things much easier for a couple of weeks I thought I would post some pictures of them for you to see. Two of them are embroidered and I would love to get the others embroidered too but I can't seem to find anywhere to do this. In fact I ordered my two youngest sons dressing gowns with their names embroidered on them and only one has arrived and I have been refunded for the other one as they are unable to send this one.

This makes me feel quite sad as there is only a year between the youngest two and they are like twins so I really wanted them to have their names on the dressing gowns.


This is my eldest.


My second eldest.

 
My daughters.
 


As I said the youngest two are like twins so they chose the same calendar that doubles as a stocking.

They are still behaving like angels in the morning, two days running, ha ha if that's what chocolate does in the mornings I might have to think of an excuse to carry it on after Christmas. (I really am joking for those that don't know me)

Take care x



 
 


Tuesday 1 December 2015

Feeling better

Hello dear friends,

I'm sorry that I have been away for almost three weeks now. I have had some sort of virus, that started off with flu like symptoms but every time I stood up I felt as though I was going to pass out. I have been up and about for about a week but have felt completely drained of energy. I still feel very lethargic but I feel I need to get back to some sort of normality so please bare with me, my posts may be a little lacking until I feel back to myself. If anyone has any ideas of a pick me up please let me know and I will certainly give it a try.

So sadly, I am now quite behind with my Christmas organising. But sometimes these things happen and its not going to be remembered this time next year if we don't have the perfect Christmas.

My mum bought my dad a shirt that he wanted so another present is out of the way.

The children's Christmas calendars are done and hanging up and I have to say they were so good this morning that it was as though Father Christmas had sprinkled Angel dust on them. Lets hope every day is like this until Christmas. Ha ha.

We have our stockpile of goodies to eat in the freezer and in the garage for the busy Christmas days.

Sweet man has his Christmas party next Saturday and mine is meant to be next Friday but I have decided to opt out this year.

My sweet girl has an evening production coming up so we will need to use a freezer meal that night.

I hope that you are getting organised and I look forward to hearing all about it.

Take care