Gah!
March already!
Can you even believe it? It will be my birthday next month, which means two years already since I wrote my 40 things before 40 list and still plenty to tick off, some of which are not feeling terrible affordable. Panic not though, this time next year and all that.
In the meantime, while I save frantically for that trip to Iceland, here are a few things that are making March lovely…
When I was younger I slept like a baby. Even when I was an actual baby. I was always in bed by 9pm, (meaning that I missed most of the interesting family incidents), and would sleep pretty solidly through the night until 7am. I would even go to the toilet without waking up, a fact my Grandad would testify to if he was still alive, me having walked in on him in the middle of the night, causing him to leap from the toilet just before I sat down on his lap.
And then I had a baby.
Goodbye sleep, so long good friend, I enjoyed our time together.
It’s not so much that Bee was a bad sleeper, she really wasn’t, but there is a special secret switch in your brain that gets flicked when you become a mother that means that from that point on you always sleep with one ear open, just in case.
And then Belle was born and I was well and truly screwed.
She has many charming qualities, but the ability to sleep for longer than 40 minutes at a time until the age of about four was not one of them.
And so here I am, left with an annoying and yet fairly impressive ability to guess the time at any moment to within about eight minutes, so aware am I of the passing of time throughout the night. Impressive maybe, but not hugely restful. View Post
I love getting hampers, especially if there is wicker involved. There is something about having all of those little bits and pieces gathered together in one place, surrounded by shredded tissue, that makes them feel like they’re worth about ten times their actual value. You could basically stick a few tins of beans and a loaf of bread in a hamper for me and I would be impressed. I do like beans on toast though.
My boyfriend and I are currently still in that stage of a relationship where you crave knowledge and want to know everything there is to know about each other. You long to be able to tell what the other person is thinking, to understand their tastes completely and to know at a glance whether or not a particular cutlery set is going to make them swoon or gag. Before Christmas for example we went through the gift section of Country Life magazine and tried to guess each other’s top two presents from each page and I at least felt decidedly pleased with myself every time I guessed correctly.*
What does February mean to you? There’s Valentine’s Day of course, if you like that sort of thing, Pancake Day, and, for lots of people, it means the end of Dry January and the opportunity to get properly stuck back into boozing for the rest of the year.
The weather starts to turn too – the mornings have a different coldness about them, a promise of spring, a flavour that makes you want to take huge deep breaths and stare up at the sky. With all of this in mind, here are my favourite things this February:
I wrote a little something earlier this week about my fear of switching bank accounts and it’s true; the older I get, the less appealing change becomes. I opened my current bank account in 2000. I was newly graduated and had started a job training to be an actuary at a big insurance company. Part of the deal was that all staff had to sign up to the bank that the company was a part of to get their wages, so it’s safe to say that not a huge amount of thought or research went into that decision.
Fifteen years later then and although I have moved house and changed jobs more times than I can remember, and changed partners a few times too, I still have exactly the same bank account.
There is of course a lot to be said for the ‘if it ain’t broke’ ethos, (this applies to partners and jobs too), but I think it’s a little bit more than that. Part of me is convinced that being with the same bank for a long time is good for my credit, but this could well be a myth. Another part of me just doesn’t fancy the idea of any sort of faff.
I suspect though that the time has come to push my reservations aside and think seriously about switching bank accounts. Mine is perfectly functional, but it’s not spectacular, and the interest rates are definitely on the crap side. It’s very tempting indeed to switch when you see things like the TSB Classic Plus Account.
I do have a bit of a fondness for TSB, regardless of their 5% AER on balances up to £2,000. It’s where my Mum used to bank, before it merged and then unmerged, (definitely a word), again with Lloyds, and for some reason that sticks in my mind. Trips into the local branch to pay in cheques must have been my idea of a fun outing as a child. I also remember being rather proud of knowing what TSB stood for. It’s hard to believe I wasn’t that popular as a child isn’t it?
I had a very rock and roll moment last night.
I was overcome by the urge to sort out the kitchen food cupboards, an urge that I’m sure was slightly annoying as my boyfriend was trying to cook a roast dinner at the time. Our kitchen is small and having a girl sat on the floor surrounded by tins of beans and half empty bags of pasta isn’t helpful when you’re trying to check the rise on your Yorkshire puddings.
It was certainly helpful for me though as I discovered that while I had been frantically buying those fruit yo-yo bear things on my Ocado app in a bid to get Belle to eat fruit in some form, I had actually been stockpiling them at the back of the cupboard. I transferred them to an old biscuit tin and discovered I had enough to feed a family of four for roughly eight days.
With my iPad in hand, sat on the lino, I did a spot of food shopping and menu planning and reckon I will have saved a considerable amount of cash, just by taking half an hour to actually think about meals rather than just panic buying various meats.
It got me thinking about other potential ways that I could save money, so here are a few of my thoughts to inspire you:
Reduce, reuse and recycle
As much as I don’t want to be the kind of person who leaps on you the minute you unwrap a present so that they can fold and save the paper, there is a lot to be said for being a bit more thoughtful when it comes to waste. Things like wrapping paper and padded envelopes are stupidly expensive and given the number of padded envelopes that come through the letterbox, I really can’t justify ever having to buy one.
Get the best deal
I’m pretty good at comparing insurance deals and energy suppliers – Belle has at least four Meerkats – but I’m a little ashamed to say that I have never tried sites where you can save money on your monthly bills phone, TV and broadband bills. Silly isn’t it? It’s just not something I’ve ever thought to do, mainly because I’m terrified that it might mean not being connecting to the internet for a period. This is less for me and more for Belle – how would she monitor her Dance Moms Instagram account effectively?? It’s definitely something to think about though. View Post
Weather permitting, tomorrow I am flying out to New York to interview some of the cast of the new SpongeBob movie: A Sponge Out of Water.
*acts nonchalant*
Who am I kidding? I am about as chalant as it gets. (Why is chalant not a word? You feel like it should be.)
Firstly, there is the snow. I’m not good in snow. I will fall over and it will be embarrassing.
Second, NEW YORK BABY!! I have only been to America once and that was to go to Arkansas. Even the guards at airport security looked at me funny and asked me why I was bothering.
And finally – the thing I am most chalant about – I have to conduct video interviews with celebrities. When they asked whether I wanted to do written or video interviews I figured ‘in for a penny’ and all that, and so said video before I had chance to think about it. I figured it would look far more impressive and then you would know that I had actually been there and not just sent an interview by email. View Post
No, I’m not going to go under the stairs as me and come out as Barbara Streisand, this is a post all about my attempt to be one of those bloggers who always has a beautiful collection of vintage objects effortlessly yet stylishly arranged on their mantelpiece. Except I don’t have a mantelpiece and I’m not very stylish, so it’s basically some pictures of me showing you my under stairs area* before and after I move my massive printer and hide it in Bee’s room.
I know right?? It’s going to be awesome. Hold onto you hats.
So basically I have these lovely spiral stairs, which look very pretty indeed when the light is right and you apply a good Instagram filter. See?
Nice right? Except my house is pretty small and there isn’t really anywhere to put stuff, so if you look closely you will see that under the stairs I have two printers and a nasty black IKEA table. Grim. View Post
I love a good fad.
Some days I decide that soup is going to be my new thing and I drop everything to rush to the kitchen and chop some limp vegetables. Other times I vow that I’m going to start journalling every day and I buy a new notebook. I write my first entry – ‘So hello and welcome to my diary!’ – and then I find six months has passed and I have to write another entry apologising for the intermission.
(I don’t know why I do this in diaries, but I do always write with half a mind to someone else reading it. I like to set the scene. Heaven forbid anyone actually did.)
I started this month (vaguely) determined to complete a dry January, but I think that was mainly because I had drunk so much in December that I felt slightly queasy at the thought of even just a small sherry. Suffice to say it didn’t last. I’ve only had a couple of glasses of wine on a couple of social occasions, so I’m not exactly rolling in the gutter, but it demonstrates nicely my usual lack of willpower.
Today however is day five of my involvement in the Halfords #31FitterDays challenge. The challenge involves a different exercise every day and there is a plan for beginners and those with a little more experience, so you really have no excuse. I’ve been using my new Garmin Vivofit as part of the challenge to help me track the number of steps I take and generally give me a bit of focus and motivation. (I know it’s the 12th already, but there was a bit of a delay in the arrival of the Vivofit and everyone knows you can’t throw yourself properly into a new fad without the right equipment.) View Post
How careful are you when it comes to protecting yourself against fraud?
I have one of those fancy shredders that shreds things in two different directions, but it’s under my bed, not plugged in, which isn’t very helpful. Normally I will build up a pile of things for shredding – a pile which I will store alongside the shredder under my bed until it begins to spill out onto the floor – but sometimes I am just too lazy to walk upstairs and will chuck the odd thing in the recycling.
I have ex-Boyfriend’s voice in my head the whole time of course, scolding me over my careless approach to fraud protection, and depending on my mood that can go one of two ways; either I accept that he always was more sensible about stuff like that and I make the effort to climb the stairs, or I think ‘well sod you, I don’t have to do what you say any more’ and it’s all I can do not to post my sort code and account number on Twitter. (Which again just proves that he is generally far more mature about things than me.)
I digress.
Fraud isn’t just about people rummaging through your recycling for old credit card bills of course. It can happen to anyone, any time, and it’s important therefore to understand exactly how you might be at risk and what steps you can take to prevent becoming a victim. Did you know for example that £27.5million of cheque fraud is committed every year in the UK? Who even uses cheques any more? Surely just the presentation of a cheque as payment for goods or services would be enough to make anyone suspicious?
Natwest have put together some tips in the form of the funky little graphic below, so you can get up to speed on the risks.
Have you ever been the victim of fraud? What do you do to protect you and your family?
Credit – Natwest
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This week I hired a carpet cleaner and cleaned all of my carpets.
That sounds like a bigger project than it actually is – my house is pretty tiny and only has four fairly small carpeted rooms – but it still took me about four hours of furniture shifting and emptying bucket after bucket of filthy water into the bath. It is Christmas after all, the time to really treat yourself.
I felt pretty good about it, never having cleaned a carpet in my life before, and my bedroom carpet in particular came up really nicely; the beer stain is completely gone now. (Don’t ask.) I even think it counts as exercise.
Now my carpets are your bog standard plain colours, nothing fancy here, so I was intrigued when UK Flooring Direct got in touch with me to ask me to take at look at what they think could be the flooring of the future – printed floor designs.
Dum dum dum dum!! View Post
This is a review from my 12 year old daughter Belle. All words and pictures are her own.
Recently my mum asked me if I wanted to design my own doll and then write mine own review it, obviously any girl would not turn up the opportunity to create and customise their own doll! So this is my review of my Makie Doll!
I spent along time deciding if I wanted to base it on a person or just make it up. In the end I decided to just make it up as I went along!
The first stage of completing your Makie Doll is to choose the skin colour. Next you choose the clothes and then the hair style. There is a button in the bottom corner to make the face more detailed so I used this to change the shape of the ears and eyebrows, etc. View Post
