Monday musings

Not a lot to report today - a fairly run of the mill kind of Monday!  I did so much washing at the weekend that it took me all morning to do the ironing, and now I have to pack it all away into the airing cupboard tonight....not my favourite job at all.

This afternoon the YFG had an extra piano lesson, as she is taking her grade 1 exam next week.  She's doing OK but she'll have to keep practising hard.  The EFG went to school for a maths lesson today, and will go for the morning tomorrow.

Tonight I have had a blitz on the room that was once the dining room, became a sort of office and then degenerated in to an untidy storage space (dumping ground!) and have removed three bags of rubbish from there - hurrah!  It isn't great yet, but it is a definite improvement on what it was before I started....

I found a great new-to-me blog last night, http://mortgagefreeinthree.com/ and it is great!  Not only is the writer based in Cupar where we used to live, but she is also on a major money saving mission - and doing a fantastic job.  I am going to be trawling through it this week for new ideas and recipes.  I'll be adding her to the blogroll later.

I missed doing the end of May financial review because we were on holiday but I would like to report that the holiday spending was within the budget!  The sealed pot money (about £141) covered all the entry fees to the various places we went, the ice creams and treats, the postcards, parking charges, and the gifts we brought home for our friends!  I was very pleased with all of that.  The food for the week came out of the normal grocery budget, as we ate pretty normally, and the diesel is also within the usual fuel budget.

In place of the May review, I am going to do a half yearly one instead - so I hope to get that done tomorrow.  I am optimistic that it will be in line with some of the predictions, as I know that although we have spent £3K on new cars and about £1000 on the holiday, we are still just over £700 better off than we were at the beginning of the year, so we are doing something right.  I have to work hard on making some savings or I won't make the savings targets for the end of the year.