Just a catch up.

Apologies in advance for the rambling post this may turn out to be! I don't have a particular topic in mind as I sit down to write this time so I'm not sure where this is going to end up.

This week has been a good week so far. Because I have a 'casual' contract with work I am not guaranteed a certain number of hours per month. I am only working on Saturday this week so while that is good for saving money on childcare costs, it does mean that we are having to have a particularly frugal week with our spending. 

I haven't done a weekly shop this week for starters! I am trying to use up things that we already have in the cupboard which is making some interesting meals. We have plenty of meat frozen and there is a lot of salad left over from last week, as well as plenty of tinned potatoes in the cupboard plus rice and pasta. This has saved us spending the usual £40ish pound on our shopping.

I have forced  suggested that Mr MFW cycle to work today to see how long it would take him and to save on our fuel costs. We put on average £25 of diesel in the car each week. Surprisingly, it didn't take him as long as I thought it would for him to get to work, it only took 50 minutes which I don't think is too bad considering its 7 miles away and we live in a very hilly part of England. Also, he is not quite at the peak of physical fitness!

It is strange being at home for so much time. On days that I do work I have to be out of the house by 1:30pm to drop our daughter off with the childminder to get to work for 2:30pm so the mornings are usually quite a rush. I feel like I have had so much spare time to actually get things done! I have organised the baby's bookshelf with all my childhood books that were brought down by my Mum last week so her room is looking a bit nicer now. I have got soo much cleaning done, all those niggly little jobs that don't really NEED doing but it is nice to do them every so often, like dusting the lampshades and washing the curtains.

On other note, we are having our garden re-done this month/next month so that's not exactly moneysaving but it is something that needs doing in time for summer. The previous house owner had arranged the garden so it has 3 levels (no idea why! all the neighbours have flat gardens!) and he had flagged each level with those ancient yellow and pink flags old people seem to love. We have ripped all them up from the bottom level and dug it over, as well as chopping down the 5 big trees that were down there. The space looks a lot bigger now and after payday we will be buying turf to lay so that baby can play on something other than concrete!

I may have also started a little project of painting the bathroom! We had some leftover gloss paint from decorating our daughters room so we did the skirting boards with that. We found some white silk emulsion and cream silk emulsion in the garage so that did the walls and ceiling. Technically, we didn't actually spend any money buying new paint so it was quite a money-saving activity and it has freshened the place up nicely. I do love the smell of a freshly painted room.

We have had some fun Mummy/Daughter activities too. She loves being outside so we have spent a lot of time going for walks to different places. We like going to the library and to the park to play on the swings. Her cousin has given her a little plastic slide which he has grown out of so that has had a good few hours of playing with. It is nice to spend quality time together by ourselves. It is quite sad to think that in less than a year and a half she will be going to playschool.

So that's it. My week has been quite filled considering I have been off work. I could quite get used to the stayathome Mummy lifestyle but I don't think that would go down too well with Mr MFW!

Do you always manage to find little jobs to do when you're meant to having a relaxing week off?

Thanks for reading,
xx