And speaking of cushions.....

I've finally finished the first batch of new cushions for me:) They're mine, all mine.



It feels like an eternity since I've made something for myself so I'm a teensy weensy wee bit precious about these cushions.

Husbands who arrive home from work, kick off their nasty work boots and fling themselves onto the sofa feet and all, not to mention 4 year olds who will still occasionally wipe a stray booger on anything unlucky enough to be within arms length are in very real danger of winding up on the endangered species list, if you get me.

I've been meaning to make these for, ooh a couple of months now, isn't it amazing how easily time gets away from you, and yet what it all boiled down to was an hour or so on Thursday evening pressing and cutting the fabric and a very thoroughly interrupted 90 minutes this morning and I have six completed new cushions, plus two more covers ready to be filled.

I already looked like a mad bag lady carrying six of the inserts home on Wednesday, adding the last two would have been just pure insanity. Plus I can always collect them on Monday.

In the end I went for simple envelope cushion covers because in this house zips tend to get broken and I figure they'll last a heck of a lot longer this way.

In case it isn't immediately obvious from the photo the cushions are a pale buttermilk yellow and a soft pistachio green which are conveniently enough the very same colours I've chosen to repaint the living room eventually.

So I'm moving ever closer to my cosy welcoming home and so far I'm managing to stick to my very tight budget because I saved a bundle on the fabric.

Because my local fabric shop also carries out a curtain making service when a new print arrives in one of the seamstresses whips up a curtain so that it can be hung to display the fabric properly, but because of the limited space they only do this with the most expensive fabrics, then once they either decide they won't be reordering any more of that print or it becomes an end of line print, the curtains are taken down and popped in behind the counter out of sight.

However if you know they're there you can buy them for £3 each! Each curtain is roughly two yards of fabric and both of those prints originally sold for £22.99 per yard. Picture me with the big grin on my face. Add to that the fact I found 300 thread count heavy weight cotton sheets on sale in Makro for £6 and my new covers ended up costing me a little more than £1 each and I still have a little more than half the fabric left.

I did spend a bit more on the inserts though, but I opted for the ones that love the washing machine and tumble dryer. I have the same pillows on my bed and they've lasted years so I really can't fault them. I'd much rather spend the extra now, than end up replacing crappy inserts every few months.

I'm also working on a little something for Chloe's room at the minute which is turning out to be just about one of the cutest things I've ever set eyes on. I'm taking my time though, because I will be posting a tute once it's complete.

Out with the old

Bob gave his notice at work this morning.

He was offered a new position with a different company and in a slightly different field last week and we've just been waiting for all the loose ends to be tied up and contracts signed before he handed in his notice.

Astonishingly, they were actually surprised ever though you'll remember that he threw the head up a few weeks ago and told them he was planning on leaving. Though employers often do suffer a selective memory so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that they are surprised.

This new position will be enough of a change that he won't automatically be labelled the "fixer" as he so often has been in the past. The new place have told him that they already have a bunch of completely new sites for him to get stuck into in the New Year which means that for the first time, in a long time he'll actually have the chance to see a job completed from start to finish rather than just spending his days fixing everyone else's dumb mistakes. He can't wait. Neither can I!!

This is the point were I'll be completely honest and you can call me a selfish cow if you like, but these past few months have been exhausting.

Don't get me wrong, I love my husband and I'd do anything for him (scratch that, almost anything - you can never put a thing like that down in writing) but there really are only so many of another person's bad days that I can deal with. Now I know you're not supposed to say that, but sometimes I've had a bad day myself and I'm tired and can't be bothered but because I know he'll have had a bad day, I have to brush my day under the carpet, swallow it or just not think about it because we can't both have had bad days. One has to be there for the other and all that.

Hopefully though, a fair amount of that will be put behind us now. I've sat him down and given him a good talking to and reminded him that this job may not be the answer to all his prayers, that mythical company that only exists in rumours, whispered in office corridors and cubicles. "They only work a half day on Friday you know!" "I heard they give their staff huge Christmas bonuses", "I know a woman, and her friend's sister works there and apparently they're brilliant to work for if you have kids, so understanding!"

That company isn't real and he's been told that, but I have to admit that this weekend has seen him in the best mood he's been in, in a very long time.

Long may it continue!!

Tick

I'm a great believer that a good night's sleep can cure all ails. Alright maybe not everything, but if I'm feeling down, a bit under the weather or when I've just had a particularly punishing day that leaves me heading to bed with a thumping headache, a sound sleep will leave me feeling ready to deal with anything.

But what about when I can't sleep and sight's like are all too familiar...



A couple of weeks ago now (I think, it feels like a couple of weeks) I woke in the wee small hours convinced someone was trying to get into my house.

I heard a noise, a cracking and popping noise that I'd heard before years earlier at one of those "Why you need a security alarm" talks given by a salesman in the company I worked for at the time. I was only 16 and an office junior at the time, but had been asked to go along, take all the names and hand out tags and info packs. During the talk the salesman brought out two pvc double glazed windows and proceeded to carry out the demonstration that most pvc salesmen at the time were doing. He took a hammer and tried with all his might to break the window all to no avail, it cracked and cracked but remained in the frame and was bloody noisy into the bargain.

Then he turned to the second window and using a butter knife proceeded to pry the seals away from the edges of the frame*. Some of the clips holding the glass panel in place broke and made a cracking noise while others merely slipped from their slot with a soft pop. It was very quiet and a bit disturbing.

Not as disturbing as lying in bed 12 years later at something like 3am listening to the very same noises!

So now I'm wide awake, bolt upright in bed wearing my pink jammies. The only thing I can honestly say I heard was my own heartbeat as my blood pressure raced for the 100, but at the time I heard footsteps, outside on the gravel path at the front of my house and inside creaking on floorboards.

I got out of bed and lifted one of my new rocks from under the bed, a perfectly serviceable weapon in a pinch because it weighs half a ton and has a metal plate or six surrounding the sole. I carefully opened the bedroom door and looked down the stairs only to be faced with the familiar glow of a lamp shining from under the living door. I moved quickly and quietly down the stairs and along the hall before resting my hand on the, really rather rattly handle because Chloe swings on it, and I flung the door open wide.

Nothing, not a soul to be seen. I pulled the curtains back and checked the windows, locked and intact. I checked all the doors and every single room in the house thoroughly, nothing just quietly snoozing babes and husbands. I stood by the front door for what felt like an age with only the sounds of my only heart and ragged breath in my ears before setting the alarm and going back upstairs to lie staring at the ceiling until morning cursing Robert for having left a lamp on.

I haven't slept since. This is one noisy git of a house at 2am. It creaks and groans and pops and makes some of the weirdest sounds I've ever heard as it cools down for the night and warms up again after sunrise.

It's made me realise that something has changed. I've said again and again countless times that my house is like Fort Knox and yet in going on for seven years in this house I can count on one hand how many times I've set the alarm at night and I almost never set it during the day if I'll only be gone for 30 minutes (which I know from the experience of friends is just enough time to remove all valuables from a home, in fact it can be done in 12).

I always felt completely safe in this house, this street, even the entire neighbourhood but what bothered me most about that night is that at the time I didn't (even for the briefest moment) have a second thought about the fact that someone could be in my house. It seemed like it was just such a normal event. I was in a panic, don't get me wrong but the main thing running through my brain was "Someone's in my house! Fecker! Better go deal with it!". There was no quiet, barely heard voice saying "but that's absurd, that kind of thing doesn't happen around here". It just felt like it was a very plausible thing to happen.

I'll admit that the completely unshakable Leanne, is quite a bit shaken by this revelation enough to keep me up at night anyway.

It doesn't help matters that my husband clearly doesn't know how my mind works at all. The next morning, when I told him about the night before (slept right through it, couldn't wake him by setting a bomb off beside him), he could have made everything all better if he'd called me a daft bint or said I'd been watching too much Crimestoppers or something, but instead he said I was daft for having gone downstairs by myself, I should have woken him, he would have gone down with me (equality people, this is why your great granny burnt her bra!) . This leaves me with one conclusion. He thinks its perfectly plausible that someone could break into our home too.

So now I have the husband working at the alarm to make that silent timer a lot less silent. I want that alarm to scream its head off the very second someone comes in. I want it to wake people up and piss people off and for whoever it is downstairs to run out of here at break neck speed.

So now I set my alarm every night and I've even reverted to leaving bait like I used to when I rented in Belfast (that would a twenty, a phone and the car keys left sitting right at the front door with a "please take me and clear off" sign taped to them), then I walk upstairs, climb into bed, rub my eyes and settle in for a night of staring at the ceiling and wondering "What was that" as the house cools down...

*In the last five or six years the seals on pvc windows have been changed so that the seals are inside the house (common sense you would think) but prior to that quite a lot of windows had the seals on the outside.

What mummy did...

On Chloe's first day of school Mummy was taken to Ikea and treated by Daddy.

He bought me some gorgeous funny little hippo print cotton...



Another lovely cotton covered with little sketchy type people, bunnies, ducks, frogs all going about their business...




A lovely orange striped heavy weight cotton.




This is my favourite, another heavy weight printed orange cotton canvas ...




And on the way out the door I also treated myself. For the sake of complete honest, I actually bought two bags of Dime Bars and two of the Marabou Dime chocolate bars... and a big box of ginger biscuits..... and a bag of cinnamon rolls.... and two packets of the marabou cups.... yes I'm a heffer.




And because he accidentally broke my last lampshade, he treated me to a new one.




Its embroidered with tons of flowers and bees and butterflies and I love it.



Now I'm off to pick up Chloe from her second day at school.

All quiet on the home front

The rain is back. No surprise there really, but it does mean we're having a few quiet days just pottering around the house.

It's nice, we haven't had a few uninterrupted days to just relax in a while and it starts to feel a bit frantic when there is so much to do.

We've started a new thing around here too. Toots has been a little clingy lately. Well perhaps clingy isn't the right word but she has insisted on doing absolutely everything mummy does for a couple of weeks now.

So this week we've been trying to separate ourselves a bit. She has to play in her bedroom for about 30-45 minutes after breakfast and again for about an hour or so in the afternoon after lunch.

She seems to be taking to it so far, although there is still a novelty to the whole thing. I'm functioning a bit better because of it as well. I know that I have a set out of time to get things done, which she can't help with or which I would prefer she didn't help with and it motivates me to get the tasks done and out of the way. I use the time to make phone calls, write letters, pay bills that kind of thing.

I think in a week or so I may try to bring a little more routine to our day. I'll wait to see what happens once the novelty wears off, it'll give me a better idea of how happy she is to play by herself, but ideally I would like our day to run something like this;

Breakfast (both of us)
Play Time (Toots)
School type work (15 to 20 minutes of maths or working on her handwriting)
Help Mummy (she can help me bake, fold laundry, prepare lunch)
Lunch
Play Time (toots)
School type work (if she chose maths in the morning, then it would be handwriting in the afternoon)
TV (should be around 2.30-3.00pm and she sometimes "hits a wall" around this time)
Outside play
Help Mummy (a last quick tidy for dad coming home and preparing the dinner)

I'll be able to get bits and pieces done while she plays in her room and really the schedule isn't as strict as it appears. I haven't restricted Toots or myself to times because then it would be destined to fail.

The schedule only accounts for about 4 to 5 hours of the day, but you can't really plan every second of a child's day anyway.

I'm hoping it works. Ideally I would like her to be used to a schedule where certain things are required of her and roughly the same time each day so that the schedule of school comes as less of a shock to her system.

What do you think? Have you had any success in setting a schedule for your kids?

I'd be interested to know if you found a schedule that worked for you.

Show and Tell Friday

I'm jumping feet first in to Kelli's Show and Tell Friday over at There is no place like home.










I've been admiring some of Janmary's beautiful things and I'd like to share a few of my own with you.
This is a plate. It is no ordinary plate. It was my mother in law's plate.




She bought it for herself many years ago and unfortunately never had the opportunity to hang it anywhere. It stayed wrapped in tissue paper in a box at the back of her wardrobe for years and when her condition worsened she asked me to visit and she gave me this plate.

She passed away shortly before my husband and I married and it pains me that she never met our beautiful daughter, but it also makes me smile that my daughter will occasionally point to the plate and say "that was my Granny Freda's, she was lovely".

Because she was and I'm glad that because of this simple plate and it's bright colours, my daughter knows about Freda and what a lovely and beautiful person she was.

WFMW - Flat Pack Tools

Its time again for Works for Me Wednesday over at We are THAT Family.

If you're anything like me and you love Ikea and all things flat pack, chances are you've gathered up a fair few of these little tools over the years.

And chances are that you will need them again at some point, especially for kids furniture.

You know the pieces I'm talking about.

That fantastic crib you bought which can have the mattress up nice and high to make it easier for you in the early days and then nice and low once your child seems ready to scale Everest stand on their own two feet and then, as if that wasn't enough, the crib finally can be changed into a toddler bed complete with low guard rails to stop them from rolling out of the bed.

So you're going to need to be able to find those tiny little tools at least twice, long after you've put the bed up in the first place, three if you count taking the thing down to get it out of the room once your child outgrows it. And all of this over the course of about five years.

So what's the easiest way to guarantee that you'll be able to find exactly the tiny little tool you're looking for three years after you last saw it.

Simple.

Once you finish building your beautiful new piece of furniture and you've finished the bottle of wine necessary to build flat pack, just take a strip of packing tape or any kind of sticky tape and stick the tool underneath or to the back of the piece of furniture.

Only you will know its there, safe and sound, ready for the next time you need it.

Now won't you sleep better tonight.?

I know I will.

Because sometimes they need a little reminder

So its been a little monotonous around here for the past couple of weeks.

We get up, the hubs goes to work, I clean the house (somebody sneaks in every night and dirties all my dishes, I swear) and play with Toots or go out on a few errands, the hubs comes home, we eat, you get the idea.

Same ol, same ol day in day out.

Which is kind of fine for me and Toots because it provides a bit of structure to the day and I think a (almost) 4 year old still needs a fair bit of structure.

But for the poor husband ... not so much.

I want more for him. I want him to feel loved and appreciated. I want him to know that I still love him for all the reasons I loved him and married him fahumina years ago.

Now I know there are many ways to show him how much he means to me. There are plenty on the "kiss your husband everyday" bandwagon which is lovely, but I do that every single day, always have.

There are also plenty of posts encouraging us to sleep with our poor neglected husbands every night for a whole week (seriously, just the one). Again, a great idea, but my husband would probably just think I'd got into the cosmo again and he just happened to be lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time.

I tell him I love him all the time. I tell him every morning and every night. The thing is I also brush my teeth and moisturise every morning and every night so there's a fair wee chance he has it in his head that it's just part of my routine.

I could pay him more attention, cook him beautiful meals, basically I could hint to the fact that he's still very important to me, but really, come on now. If he was any good at picking up on subtle hints I wouldn't count a waffle iron and model Dodge Viper among my collection of birthday presents, would I?

Husband I love you dearly, but it really isn't the same thing. Nor was it a "bit of fun". It sits there, tucked in under bed mocking me. It goes, "na na na na naaaa" every bloody time I reach under there to retrieve a misplaced sock or the super duper bouncy ball you kindly gave the daughter.

The waffle iron does not mock. The waffle iron knows better. The waffle iron lives in fear of the day I may try to use its royal wafflyness. The waffle iron knows I could take it in a fight.

Anyway, yes, the poor neglected husband.

You need to tell them, sit them down, turn off the TV (you might want to switch off the computer, tweeting about the whole thing might take something away from moment) and tell them.

I did and he's been strutting around here like cock of the walk for the last few days. It really is an amazing transformation.

I asked him first, if he knew why I loved him and if he knew, I mean really knew, that I still love him and how much I appreciate him.

I told him how much he means to me. I told him that I love how confident he is, that he's always in complete control of every situation. He never second guesses himself, once he makes a decision (and let me tell you it only takes him milliseconds) he sticks with it and makes it work.

I love the way he carries himself, everyone assumes he's the boss (whereas his boss is a weedy little streak of a man with girlish hands, ahem).

I love that he is such a perfectionist. He always gets the job done and then some and it's perfect. I love that I asked him for a utensil rack which comfortably holds up two cast iron frying pans.

I spent a good hour telling him everything I love about him and I could have went on a lot longer.

Then you can kiss him or....whatever.

And you can tell him why you want to ... whatever... while you're at it (just don't mention if you did get into the cosmo again).

And it doesn't hurt to take a few seconds to cop a feel, every time he happens to pass by.

Because have I mentioned, he's walking around here like he's the King.

And he is.

Since Coming Out of Work

I've learnt a few very significant things...

1. I have absolutely no idea how I ever had the time to work full time outside of the house. I'm amazed I managed it without having a nervous breakdown.
   
   
2. I really enjoy being at home. I've definitely been a much better wife and mother since coming out of work.
   
   
3. Toots enjoys being at home with me a lot more. We've been working on the discipline (hers and mine) the last week and we're enjoying each other's company a hell of a lot more. She's snuggled up beside me as I write and she has a little smile on her face.
   
   
4. A husband, with a wife at home, who knows how to use power tools and isn't afraid to, is a very happy husband indeed. He arrived home yesterday afternoon, completely exhausted after a very hard day and was planning on getting stuck into some jobs he felt needed done. He wanted to mow the lawn because it has been dry for a few days. He also wanted to put up the hooks on the back of the larder door for coats and other bits and pieces, plus a vent needed to be installed on the outside of the house to cover an air intake which is no longer in use.
   
   He hadn't noticed before that I'd already done all those things, plus a few others he had forgotten about over the last few days. Needless to say he was a very happy man. He was able to sit down and relax with a meal and his family and then spend the rest of the night winding down.
   
   
5. Being at home during the week, means that I can stay on top of all those little things which used to interfere with our weekend, grocery shopping, fish tank water changes, car washing and just the general cleaning and tidying which I would normally have done every weekend. All these things I now do during the week leaving all of us to truly enjoy our weekends, whether its a day out to the forest or the beach (still wrapped up warm though, we don't live in the tropics) or even just going out for a walk or spending time at home together.
   
   
6. We're eating a lot better than we did. When I worked full time I tried OAMC which sacrifices freshness and I always prefer fresh. I would end up coming in every evening and preparing something quickly. I still tried to cook from scratch which means having to buy better cuts of meat which can stand up to quick cooking but also cost a fortune and are usually lacking in taste. Now we have a good meal everyday, Toots is really enjoying her lunches because she decides (to a certain extent) what to make and she helps me to prepare the food, plus the husband is enjoying the variety of lunches he gets sent to work with along with the baked goods. We eat a lot more fresh vegetables and fruit because I always have time and I'm not to tired to run to the market at 6.30am on a Saturday morning and I'm really starting to feel the benefit of eating all this fresh food.
   
   
7. The garden is better organised this year. I already have all the plots of land cleared and have some of the earlier seeds in the ground and they're sprouting already. Last year we were all good intentions but wound up making a bit of pigs ear of things, planting seeds when WE had the time rather than at the right time, forgetting to water during the summer months and not picking the few things that did grow when they were at their best.
   

I could go on about this for hours, but I won't bend your ear for that long. If you stay at home, do you enjoy it? What are some of your favourite things about being at home? And if you work outside the house, how do you make it work for you?

A few days in the life

Its been a busy few days around here.

I'm still managing to keep up with the Project365 and I'm actually having fun. My addictive personality has kicked in big time though. I badly want a new camera along with all the bits and pieces to go along with it, but short of a lottery win that won't be happening any time soon. I'll just have to stick with my "old as dirt" Fuji.

We went to Wacky Whizz Ards on Thursday. I managed to get in touch with the mother of Toots best friend in daycare. We'll call the mum Alison and her lovely son Jimmy. Toots and Jimmy had an absolute blast in Wacky Whizz Ards which is a large indoor soft play area for kids under 7. They spent most of their time scrabbling up the platforms and going down the spiral slide on their tummies. The real bonus is that Alison and I got on like a house on fire too. We have quite a lot in common. Unfortunately, she will be made redundant at the end of next month so meeting up worked out quite well for both of us. We'll be able to get together and occupy the kids once a week or so and I've said that I'll happily take care of him and take both kids to the library or let them play around the house if she needs time to attend interviews or anything like that.

She's a single parent and in her line of work you don't really want to mess potential employers around by changing interview dates and times. Take the first one they offer, even if it's at lunch time, today.

Later we went on to Alison's home because the kids just couldn't bear to be separated again just yet and it was quite late in the afternoon by the time we arrived home.

I threw some food together with Toots and the husband and popped a load of washing into the machine. About 20 minutes later it stomped out into the middle of the room in protest. It's been a bit noisier than usual lately and I've been pushing my luck with it.

The husband had a look because he's pretty good with these things but all the obvious things, brushes, belts, motor seemed to be perfectly fine. So I had to call a repair guy to come and have a look at it. I'm pretty well on top of things around here, but I can't be doing without a washing machine for any length of time.

He came out, popped the top off and fiddled with four large bolts holding the block of concrete in place. I don't know if all machines are the same but ours has a big block of concrete in the top of the machine to stabilise it. He said the bolts were loose and after removing them said that some of the threads were worn and they'd need to be replaced. About fifteen minutes and £35 later I swear that machine is quieter now than when we first bought it. Plus now I have a fair idea of whats wrong the next time it starts to get noisy again.

I'm pretty happy about the charge for fixing the machine though. £35 isn't exactly a lot of money, although I wasn't planning on it a week before the end of the month so its thrown a spanner into a couple of my plans, but at least the machines working and I can keep everyone in clean clothes.

I still have the old bolts so I think at some point over the next week or so I may pick up another set and keep them somewhere safe for a quick fix next time. Obviously buying the bolts and replacing them myself will be a lot cheaper.

Toots had another ballet lesson yesterday. This time was much better. No tears whatsoever, as soon as she spotted the tutor coming down the hall she was off running, pulling other kids along behind her. Still no photos though I'm afraid. It looks like I really will have to wait another 8 weeks.

Also I'm going to start menu planning. I tried this once before and it didn't really work out too well, but this time I'm determined. I want to try to plan leftovers for Toots' and my lunch more so than the actually evening meal. I could eat the same thing everyday and it wouldn't bother me but I think the kid's getting a bit sick of reheats.

We'll see how it goes.

Procrastination, Distraction and Just Plain Laziness

Photo Courtesy of Markel

These past few weeks have been a little crazy.

My mind has been on other things. I have little unfinished projects lying all over the house and I add new ones daily. The husband has caught the flu and I'm pretty sure Toots has a dose currently working on her which will probably land sometime around Friday.

I've barely posted (if anybody noticed) and I didn't even manage to get a WFMW post up last week. In all fairness, I'm still very new to this, so you'll have to bear with me while I find my rhythm, or just learn to live with my randomness if no rhythm is ever found.

And don't even get me started on the housework. Getting by doing the bare minimum has been the order of the day for the past week or so. I keep telling myself that it'll all be there tomorrow, but I can't keep doing that forever.

It isn't that I don't have the time to do any of these things, but I've been lazy tired as well lately and it seems I decide to sit down for ten minutes and then get up to do something, only to realise that its 10.00pm and I've wasted another perfectly useless evening.

Still, on a much brighter note I gave my notice to my employer yesterday. Everyone was very nice about the whole thing which made it a lot easier and now I'm in my final wind down. I'll be in the office on 31 December and then off home to learn how to do a completely different job.

Of course, once I'm at home I'll have no excuse, at least none that I can think of.

I'll have to get a wiggle on and get more housework done. I should at least be able to finish some of my little unfinished projects. And there shouldn't be any reason why I can't cook a meal every night, instead of feigning exhaustion and calling for a pizza.

But I will manage to get everything done. Obviously, once I've helped Toots play with all her toys, make buns and had a little nap with her.

Honestly I'll get stuck in, right after the nap.

365 Day Decluttering Challange - Day...ah, erm...

Forgive me friends for I have sinned, it’s been…..ooooh ages since I last confessed.

I have been busy though, really busy.

The house is on the market so for the past two months or so we’ve been tackling all the really big decluttering challenges. There are a few.

The garage has definitely seen the most benefit from this. Himself insists on keeping all the boxes from appliances until the shop warranty has expired. Personally I don’t see the point and would rather just recycle the boxes to get rid of them. So that’s what I’ve done, every last one. They’re all gone, eighteen in total which were all piled up fully constructed (not even sensibly flattened) in my garage. Only an Irish man parks the car out on the street and locks all the junk and the £30 lawnmower away safely in the garage. Everything which needs to be kept but won’t be used for a while has been packed, labelled and shelved away for a moving date (whenever that will be). It’s been a long haul but at least it looks as though there’s room in there for a car now.

The roof space also got a thorough clearout. Again more boxes (he’s unstoppable), old toys which have been forgot about. These made their way to the local Simon Community. The Christmas decorations got cleared sorted and packed away. Now they only take up two stackable crates instead of the four huge cardboard boxes they were originally spread over. It’s a lot more pleasant up there now and there’s tons of space so we can start working our way around the house and sorting and packing anything that can be and storing it up out of the way until the move.

I may eventually get the minimalist home I’ve always dreamt of.

It may also rain skittles and m&m’s but don’t hold your breath.

Sunday Savers

I’ve decided to make Sunday the day I post about what I do around here to save money and cut costs. I need a bit more structure; otherwise this place will turn into a pigsty.

I need to get one thing straight right off the bat. For me frugality isn’t a personal choice. I make ends meet, sometimes barely. I have a nice house by my standards, but then with the house prices at the minute if I sold it I couldn’t afford a house half the size so in that way I’m just lucky.

I’m cheap, tight or frugal; call it whatever you want, because I have to be. If I threw money away on things the bills just wouldn’t get paid. It's that simple really.

I think I’ll start with the small everyday things I do, although please bear with me if I run off on a tangent a lot of these things I do without thinking. A lot of the things I do are green as well. I prefer to be as green as possible at home because my job is sickeningly un-green. Although I’ve never quite figured out whether I do the things because they’re green and saving money is the bonus or vice versa.

I don’t buy any cleaning products, none whatsoever. I do buy a bottle of all purpose soap called Stardrops which costs around 50p for a half litre. You can use this to clean everything from dishes to windows, upholstery to floors and everything else in between. I’ve also been known to buy magic sponges which are £1 for four, but I keep these for specific things, when the Stardrops and elbow grease just hasn’t worked.

I mend clothes from simple things like fixing hems and re-attaching buttons to altering some of toots and my own clothes to get an extra season out of them. I do this every year with jeans for toots. The one thing I will spend a bit of money on is a couple of pairs of jeans from Next. They have an adjustable waist and adjustable leg length so for around £10 a pair she gets an entire year or more out of them. I’ve taken a few pairs up into shorts when there has still been plenty of room left at the waist.

I use old clothes for cleaning clothes.

We always use the library, but I was brought up to use the library. They’re threatened with closing on a regular basis and we need to support local libraries. People keep your kids away from the internet as long as possible and GO TO THE LIBRARY or there may not be one to go to.

I prefer to shop in charity shops. Some people really don’t like the idea of second hand clothes but so many have such a “throw away” attitude to clothing that most of the things I buy have barely done a hands turn. Especially the clothes I buy for toots in fact a fair amount of them still have the shop labels attached.

I spend between £50-60 a month on food shopping.

We grow our own vegetables and have a pear and apple tree as well as a lot of berry bushes.

I keep an emergency food sale fund of around £20 a month. Sales don’t rally follow any pattern here and sometimes a really good bargain just crops up and I’ll use the fund to stock up when I see them.

I am not brand loyal. I rarely buy the same brand of anything, if it’s on sale and I can think of a way to use it, then I’ll have it.

We used washable nappies on toots. I’m not great at sewing and I’m not that dextrous at the best of times, so we went with the shaped Motherease nappies. I bought second hand from Ebay and got a huge batch of 24 nappies, hundreds of paper liners, 12 covers, two small bins with mesh bags and four booster pads. I paid £85 plus £10 postage for the full set and sold them again 18 months later for £70 plus postage. £25 for 18 months worth of nappies was a real bargain. We don’t pay for water here and I did three loads of nappies a week (four in the first few weeks) at around 50p a load.

I don’t make my own laundry soap. It’s virtually impossible to get borax here any more and the homemade soap just doesn’t work without it. I just buy whichever soap is on offer and use a hell of a lot less than what it states on the pack. Most of the time a tablespoon or two works just fine rather than a half cup per load. I also always run a full load, never half loads.

We don’t take holidays. We’ve only had two in the last 10 years.

I don’t drive, never have. I don’t possess a license and I’ve never applied for a provisional. There is nowhere I want to be that I can’t get there under my own steam. We do own a car though. Himself drives for work and at the minute the car gets out once a month for the big shop. We spend around £10 every six weeks on petrol and the car is low emission so the tax is cheaper as well.

There are hundreds more things I do every day and big one off things which I do to save money but I’ll elaborate on these each week.

If I’m missing out on anything I could be doing to save money, and I’m sure I am, I’d love to hear your ideas and tips.

My Garden - She Provides for Me

One of only three lonely little flowers remain in my garden. The vast majority of space has now been taken over by fruit and vegetables. A few on-edible plants remain, not the flowering variety but still lovely to look at.

It's a tiny little garden really, but perfect nonetheless, in my humble opinion. Is it a little bit mad and overgrown? Well yes it is. But I love it that way to be quite honest.

Tucked away behind the tiny little hedge row, that I'm assured one day will grow to about two feet tall, is my deck. I started it just before a bad car accident. I wasn't too badly injured just some minor whiplash but Himself was put out of commission for months. However I was determined to finish the project which involved digging around five ton of soil out of the first level of the garden and replacing it with roughly the same amount of hardcore then bedding in twelve railway sleepers. This was no easy job mind you but I'm very pleased with the outcome. That was six years ago and I've spent many a happy morning hiding relaxing up there with my coffee and a book. Also it isn't obvious from the picture but the first level is four feet off ground level with a flight of steps running up to it, you can just see the handrail from the steps on the far side of the picture...see over there. Yep those are the ones.

I love lavender and use it all over the house, in baths and showers, drawers and in the bottom of the bin, so you'll hopefully understand and excuse the monster of a lavender smack bang in the middle of the picture.

Anyway, with all the rising costs at the minute, I decided to turn over much of my little garden to plants of the edible variety. I already had the two pear and apple trees planted around four years ago and I've been happily reaping the rewards ever since. Unfortunately, due to some particularly bad weather, in particular some very strong winds, a month or so ago, my little pear tree has been left barren for this year. All of the flowers had already been blown to lord only knows where by the time the brown bees arrived in the garden. She's still beautiful though, fruit or no fruit. That's her in the picture above, all big and green and lush.

It would have been a bit difficult to start removing some of the larger plants already in place to make more room for veggies, so I've given containers a go. I have to say it's working very well so far.

Cute aren't they? The top row are one pot of spinach and two pots of red fire lettuce, the middle row are two pots of rocket and one pot of curly cabbage and the bottom row are another two pots of rocket (Himself got a bit carried away) and another pot of curly cabbage. They've gotten a little bigger since this shot was taken three weeks ago.

Spinach, lovely jubbly.

Red Fire Lettuce

Curly Cabbage...Not so curly I know, but we can't be picky.

So I've gotten a bit carried away and Himself has built a trough type affair for me to add more plants to.

I probably could have done a better job and separating the plants because it does look a bit mad, granted.

I managed to squeeze in, peas, carrots, more cabbage (a different variety, the name escapes me at the minute though) and some dwarf beans, which aren't doing great to be honest

I've plans to head to the market this weekend and pick up some onion sets and potatoes. I'll be emptying the two window boxes in the top picture to use for the onion sets and I'll be planting the potatoes straight into a bag of compost. I'm assured by Gardener's World that this works well. I can poke a few small holes in the bottom of the bag for drainage and prop it up on a couple of broken bricks so that water doesn't collect around the bottom of the bag. I'll let you know if this works or not.

I'm quite proud of myself to be honest, I'm usually a bit ignorant when it comes to gardening and tend to have a brown thumb rather than green. The first thing I check for in the garden centre is whether a plant is hardy (translation = Leanne proof). If it isn't it doesn't make it home with me. But these plants are almost idiot proof, I opened a pack of seeds, shook them into a pot of soil, added water and voila.

I'd love to hear of things you've done in an effort to reduce your food bills at home.

Everywhere, it's everywhere.

I'm sitting on the floor surrounded by balls of yarn of every variety you can imagine.

The "Plan" seemed like a perfect idea two years ago. It was such a good idea. Think about it, keep all the patterns the "have got to knit" in a little pile through the year, buy all your yarn in the Christmas sale and put it together, along with the pattern into a bag and you're sorted for for your hobby all year long, for very little money. Brilliant, it was absolutely brilliant. Genious in it's simplicity.

Why oh why didn't I stick to the "Plan". You see I screwed up. Now I have a pile of patterns four inches deep and I'm sitting on my living room floor surrounded by three, yep count em, three huge bags full of yarn, trying to remember which patterns I bought them for. Not a pleasant task. I've been really busy for the last six months. I have four wips on needles at the minute with no idea of when I'll finish them. I have a baby blanket which started as a way to use up all the wee leftover bits. I started knitting four inch squares and grafting them together when I have a few. It's about two thirds done. There is a sock, half finished. I didn't even get a chance for second sock syndrome to kick in. A scarf destined to become a Christmas present. It's almost finished and its only garter stitch. I really have no excuse whatsoever for that one. And a cashmere jumper for me. It's missing one sleeve, the wool was a birthday present two and a half years ago. I have finished things in the last two years, mostly for toots. She loves knitted things and she's a joy to knit for.

The "Plan" was obviously not fool proof, there was a design flaw. The flaw being yours truly. You seen yarn is my downfall. There is definitely stuff here that doesn't belong to any pattern whatsoever. Now I have to think of something to do with otherwise there is something completely useless sitting on my home, taking up space I really don't have. Plus the house is on the market, if it sells, oh lord help I'm going to have to pack and move this stuff.

So I was sitting there on the living room floor, now I'm here telling you about my dilemma (procrastinating) and i have got to find patterns for the yarn I have for no reason, other than it was cheap and very very pretty.

So this year the "Plan" is out the window. NO MORE YARN until I've used at least two thirds of what I have... but then I have just been given three lovely balls by my friend which will be used for grocery bags...

Oh and I might have just printed off a lovely pattern for a lace work scarf. When do you imagine that one will get started, let alone finished.

The cost of living.

It's been a difficult year or so here in Northern Ireland. The housing market has all but died after the biggest growth period we've seen in a long time, on the up side this means that houses at the lower end of the market are dropping in price and finally, first time buyers can afford these houses again. Every housing market needs first time buyers like nothing else, the house prices here were increasing so fast and to such an extent it had to be inevitable that these buyers, the ones we need most would eventually be priced right out of the market.

Unfortunately, lenders are no longer offering 100% mortgages and most have stopped offering low rate introductory offers, this means that although the houses are now coming back down to a level which is more affordable first time buyers, who in theory can afford the houses and are eligible for the mortgages don't have the deposit they now require to add to the mortgage. Some lenders are now only offering 80% mortgage which means that a buyer will have to stump up £20,000 out of every £100,000 they want to spend on property. Now I don't know about you but that is a LOT of money to try to come up with, especially when six months ago most of these people were eligible for the 100% mortgages that banks and building societies were readily offering, they didn't know they would need a deposit and they simply don't have it.

I am in the unfortunate position of trying to sell my house at the minute and have resigned myself to a long sit in.

I'm having to be a lot more creative in trying to save money.

I'm in the process of altering all of tootsies winter clothes to double as summer clothes. I'll try to post some pictures eventually and everyone can let me know if the outfits are something they would let their own children out of the house wearing. She's had a bit of a growth spurt tallwise this year so although all her clothes fit her around the middle, they're now much too short. I had the forethought to remove all the girl trimmings from her baby clothes as she outgrew them so I now have a huge bag of lacy frilly edgings along with more buttons and bows than I can count. I've taken the scissors to a few pairs of her denim jeans and added a frilly hem around the bottom, they end just below the knee and have a small split at the outside edge which comes up to just above the knee. i fastened off the top of the split securely and added a bow to cover up my less than immaculate sewing skills. I have to say (even for my general ineptitude when it comes to sewing), those short are pretty cute. She loves them, she loves everything mummy makes for her, especially some of the things I have knitted for her over the years. But that's for another post.

My next task are two pink skirts, which still fit in the waist but are a little too short for my liking, although the had been wearing them on slightly cooler days with a pair of leggings underneath, she looks very on trend on them. These particular skirts are the kind of three tier boho(ish) skirts. This should hopefully make it easier to add a fourth tier to each skirt to lengthen them slightly. I have a white shirt of my own which was destined for the bin, I work in an office and it plays havoc with cuffs. Instead I'll use this white shirt as fabric to add the fourth tier to one skirt and in my bag of frillys I have a small gauzy butterfly which is also white with a barely there pink trim which I will sew to one side just above the join between the two fabrics and this should tie it together. I have some lilac fabric which I could use on the second skirt, but I'm not entirely sure I could pull this off as the colours may contrast too much. I might have to get a bit crafty and perhaps dip dye the skirt first, or die the whole skirt lilac. I have a lot of dylon cold water dies I picked up for 50p each a while ago and they could do with being used.

I have to sift through the rest of her clothes and try to come up with ideas for them. If anyone has any ideas or things you've done to stretch your children's clothing a bit further, I love to hear about it.

L.

365 Day Clutter Challenge

Days 4 through 8

Still sticking with SAHMmy's 365 Day Clutter Challenge.

Day 4 - Two old towels and a handful of cleaning cloths which were falling to pieces, one towel was chucked and one was cut into pieces to replace the cleaning cloths.

Day 5 - I cleared out my bookmarks on my laptop.....what.......It still counts :) It makes it a lot easier to find what I'm looking for.

Day 6 - I emptied the last few drops of shower gel and bubble bath out of eight (yep count em eight) bottles into a handwash bottle I keep in the garden tools box to wash my hands outside before I come back in. Eight empty bottles gone and all into the recycling as well.

Day 7 - An old warped baking sheet. It gets in the way of everything else because it just won't lie flat on the shelf and was only keeping it "just in case" so it's gone.

Day 8 - A cracked mug. It's not much but it all adds up in the end.

I'm having a look around at the minute and in all seriousness I could spend a year on one room and not run out of things to get rid off. This has definitely been a good idea for me.

Having your cake.....

In an effort to try and make ends meet I've come to the conclusion that I will have to take on a second job. This idea didn't really appeal to me, I work full time already and see little enough of my daughter as it is without working nights.

A friend suggested I try selling the things I normally bake and give away. I wasn't entirely sure about this but decided I would give it a try, what harm could it do.

After calling around a few different places I've decided to set up a table at the car boot sale which takes place at Movilla Abbey Church the first Saturday of every month.

I'll admit the prospect of baking all that food is a bit daunting, obviously I thought nothing could really be done in advance and would all have to be baked the two nights before the sale. I'll be doing some lemon iced gingerbread cake and a lemon polenta cake which are always better a day or two after baking so I knew I could bake these during the week before the sale.

I had thought about baking some cookies to sell as well, but thought that these would be a little time consuming and maybe not worth the bother. That was until reading Rebekah's WFMW on ready-bake cookies. I made up small batches of about six cookies worth in peanut butter, choc chip and oat/raisin last night and froze them. I'll be baking these at the weekend to check the texture and then hopefully making up huge batches of ready to bake cookies. Brilliant. This really has saved me a lot of hassle and it's also covered one of the "small" things to bake for the sale which I was getting a bit stuck on. I had welsh cheesecakes and that was about it.

So I ready now, it'll be a challenge but I'm looking forward to it and can't wait now. I'll be there Sat 5 July with my wee table all set up and hoping for the best.

Plus this way toots can help me a little, she's getting really good at weighing things out, so this way she can spend even more time with mummy.

Wish me luck

L.

WFMW - Shake it

Well its another humpday.

Its a very quick tip this week on what works for me. If you ever have cans or tins of food (beans, soups etc) that have maybe been on the shelf for a while and you just know everything has settled to the bottom of the can. Rather than opening the can and then trying to scrape all the contents out, because you know in your haste your going to grab a teaspoon for this job. Best case scenario you wind up with a hand covered in sauce and worst case scenario a hand that has been cut to ribbons on the sharp edge of the can.

Instead, and you can have a bit of fun with this, shake the living daylights out of the can before opening it, get out all your aggression on that poor tin, it doesn't have any feelings you go for it.

Post arrive looking like the postman's been practising for tryouts, did it pour 5 minutes after you'd hung out the washing, late for every appointment....all.....day....long.

You go to town on that wee tin, show it who's boss and I can guarantee all but the most die hard, the most determined wee bean will slide right out of that tin when you open it.

If nothing else, it'll save you from taking a bad day out on someone or something that really matters to you.

For more great ideas head over to Rocks in my Dryer for WFMW.

L.

Moving On

We currently have our house on the market. It hasn't sold yet, not even a sniff of interest. The housing market has all but completely died in Northern Ireland. I can live with that. You see in the last year we have slowly come to realise (although not yet come to terms with) the fact that we can no longer afford our home. I'm welling up just at the thought of leaving this place and I keep telling myself and everyone else that I'll be happy if I can have one more summer here. It's stark contrast to the comments I made when we first moved in that I would be carried out of this house in a wooden box, I'm sorry to be so morbid but I went through hell to get this house and that is how I felt at the time (and still do). I'm also hoping that by some miracle, a lottery win perhaps, I don't know but something will happen and my family and I will be able to stay.

The house payment itself isn't the problem, its a stretch don't get me wrong, but we could manage it...just.

Now with the prices of almost everything here increasing, heating gas and electricity were the latest prices hikes by 40%, it's just gotten to be too much and rather than risk debt, we've decided to sell up and rent instead for a few years. It breaks my heart getting off the property ladder when I fought so hard to get on and when I think of my husband who will be 4o this year I wonder if we'll ever get back on again. I also worry that I'll have nothing to pass on to my daughter, but most of all, I'll just miss my house.

I've decided to start putting a few posts on here showing my home and the silly little things I've done to it to make it mine in the hope that at least, when the time comes, I'll have more than memories to take with me.

This house was a complete shell when we bought it, it had been lived in but unloved by its previous owner and had been very badly treated along the way. This is basically the only reason we could buy the house in an area we otherwise couldn't have afforded. It really is beautiful here and a stones throw from a very good school which puts me right in the catchment area. I'd hoped to hang on to the house long enough to get toots into the school before we move but I don't think the pennies will stretch that far. So it looks like I'll be doing the three day camp out with all the other mommies vying for a place at the school.

All of my good memories are tied up in this house, everything so far about my life that I want to remember. I was married in this house, I brought my daughter home to this house and I can see my handy work everywhere. I'm a completely different person here too. I can completely be myself and relax. When I'm here I'm home and there just isn't anywhere else in the world I can think of where I feel this happy.

So this is all just really in explanation to anyone that pops along for a visit and sees a slightly random post of me extolling the virtues of my lovely garden or the plant on my bathroom windowsill that I love so much (I'm useless with indoor plants, the never make it). The plant that stuck by me through some pretty rough times and makes me smile just to look at.

These posts will be as much for me as anyone else and I'd love anyone who visits just to leave a wee comment, just to say you stopped by.