Author: wherethejourneytakesme

I live in a small old mill town nestled into the Pennine hills in Yorkshire with my long-suffering husband of thirty some years. I have two beautiful daughters who have flown the nest (most of the time!). I paint and draw (a little) when time allows, make and bake sometimes but not often enough and garden and grow things as much as possible. I recycle and up-cycle, hate waste and I couldnā€™t live without my time planner and lists.
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feasting ~ and yet more partying

Another weekend of partying and party preparing.

This time it was Master Freddie’s 7th birthday party on Sunday afternoon with many of his friends. He has always been good at arithmetic and quite obsessed with number blocks from an early age, so it came as no surprise that he really wanted a number blocks party. It makes no difference to him that the other boys in his class may have already progressed onto Nerf battles or Pokemon parties – he was adamantly sticking to number blocks.

So we made some.

It took us most of the week to source the bits we needed to build seven number blocks. Not quite cubes, as we used mainly the empty wine boxes Sainsbury’s put out for customers to take, as they were free. Finding the plain coloured paper was not easy and a roll of orange was not to be had anywhere and too late for us to order any, so we had to improvise and join a few sheets of orange A4 card together that we had left over from Halloween (but it did the job…and here they are).

Master Freddie’s mum hired the local village hall and a wonderful party entertainer called Nellie B, who was happy to do a mix of traditional games, team games, dancing and the highlight at the end was the snow machine, which had all 23 partygoers screaming with excitement.

And now we are recovering from the two weekends of partying, and we both came down with a cold on Monday morning. I am not surprised as our diet for the past two weeks has not been wonderful, many quick to make meals and a few cans of soup to fill in when we haven’t been able to make our own. So we are paying the price of not looking after ourselves and the dental appointment for today has been cancelled so we don’t pass on any germs.

In all I am feeling rather weary, it has been quite a hectic time since well before Christmas and no doubt my body is telling me I need to rest. Mum is already pestering me about going up to see her as her party seems a long time ago now to her….increasingly she has no sense of time anymore. I will somehow have to dodge the question of ‘when will I be seeing you’.

January seems to be melting away now, just like the recent snowfall we had. In a weeks time we will be greeting February and all the month brings. I already have a joyful vase of daffodils on my kitchen windowsill and orange tulips on the table. I especially like them as they begin to droop and their stems wander and, had I the time, I would reach for my sketch book and watercolours.

As I eat my breakfast I have a direct sight out to the garden arch we erected in the garden last year. It was one of the non-negotionable possessions that we brought back from our cottage garden in Scotland. I have hung the fat ball feeder from the top and it is wonderful to see a host of garden birds everyday coming to feed. I am not organised enough to take part in the Big Garden Bird Watch, but I will get plenty of pleasure just watching them each day.

Apart from making number blocks I have been making headway with our finances, planning a new budget for this year against the final figures for last year and updating our savings accounts with any interest. This passive income is vital when you are on a pension, so it is important to find the highest earning tax fee ISA accounts that I can when any come to maturity.

All in all, even with the cost of living increasing, we are doing OK but I do worry about our long term future and possible care costs given that my mum has reached 100 now and the cost of her care over the last 2 years has now depleted her savings to the point that we need to apply to her local authority for assistance.

I expect after their assessment they will not want her to stay put in her own home as the cost of her care is over a Ā£1,000 a week now and when you add her living costs onto that it will probably far exceed what the council will pay and they will obviously prefer to pay the all inclusive care home fees where they do a deal with certain homes for the smaller, cheaper rooms.

Of course there is no issue for the council if a relative wants to step in and offer to pay the difference in costs, but this has to be thought through carefully because we have no idea how long mum might live for…at the moment I am thinking possibly to 105 and five years of expenses will be required, and expenses that will increase as she gets less able and with more dementia; this will drain any savings that we have put aside for our long term needs.

Mum is so much better remaining in her own home with carers going in four times a day for almost an hour at a time. She would not get that amount of undivided attention from the carers in a care home. When she fell and had a brief spell in one a couple of years ago she was lucky to be helped to the toilet two or three times a day and that involved minimal ‘chatting’ as they would be dashing to help the next person pressing the buzzer. Her main contact was the support staff bringing a meal.

It is such a worry but all I can do now is wait for the call from a social worker, when one is appointed, and they are struggling to do that until some time in February.

But not all is doom and gloom, there are little signs here and there that spring is on its way and that is always cheerful. On our walks we see the catkins growing longer and in the garden I have shoots forcing their way up through the ground – only to meet with this bitterly cold and wet weather.

I never mind January, in fact I quite like being able to hibernate (parties aside) and concentrate on staying home where it is cosy and warm; bringing the paperwork and filing up to date and if I exhaust that, turning out a few cupboards. And planning, lots of planning…maybe even dreaming a little of what I might do in the year ahead.

It was nice to clear the decorations from Christmas, they are neatly packed away again in the loft, and have a clean around but I never feel it is quite the time for a deep clean until I can get any soft furnishings washed and out to blow on the line. We had a trip to Ikea last Thursday, not for anything in particular just a look around. I like to look at their room sets for ideas, especially where they cleverly use some of the items in tiny spaces. I do want to fit out our built in wardrobe but it is quite shallow and definitely not walk in. The 35cm deep and 50cm wide Pax frame would be ideal to slot in at one side and would give me room to put 3 or 4 shelves above and 3 or 4 drawers below.

I have a yearning to create a capsule wardrobe of clothes that actually all fits into the wardrobe – underwear, scarves, bags, coats, the lot. I have already condensed the clothes in the 3 drawer chest down enough to be able to remove it from the bedroom all together soon as our main bedroom is not very big by today’s standards and space is at a premium. I am replacing it with the Ikea Nordiska dressing table, which will be painted a duck egg blue colour and is just a nice size to fit between the bed and the window wall. DH will have the Nordiska bedside table at his side.

So that is my few ramblings and now I am going to rest and read…quite a treat really if it wasn’t for this awful streaming cold.

Thank you for your previous comments, my mum had a lovely week with plenty of attention, but so far no card from King Charles, maybe he needs a nudge.

Back soon….I hope x

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feasting ~ 100 at last…

We have been waiting for this day for quite a while, planning and plotting and at last the day finally came and when mum woke up on Monday morning she was 100…….. a whole century of living and I cannot imagine how that feels.

On Sunday, the day before, the family (the ones she hasn’t managed to outlive) gathered together for a celebration of mum’s special birthday. I had organised a private room at the Keys in Yarm near to where mum lives for a two course Sunday lunch. The organiser at the venue, Kimberley, couldn’t have been more helpful; the tables were beautifully decorated with flowers and candles – we just added banners, balloons and scattered lots of photos of mum’s life around.

My sister made the cakes, they were wonderful. One had a lovely scene of mum when she was in the Women’s Land Army during the war (a job that she was always very proud of and for which she has a badge) and the other she decorated with flowers. All the flowers and decorations on the cake were handmade by her and her little team (husband, daughter and friend) and I know they were up until the early hours getting them finished.

I made a place card for each of our guests using whatever old photos I could find of them in their younger days, so each person had to find their seat by recognising their own photo. It became a great talking point too with a lot of memories being shared.

It was all a big surprise for my mum, but a very welcome one. I think she struggled to grasp who all the family members were as we don’t see some of them very often, but as she keeps reminding us all now ‘I am 100’ so she is now officially allowed to have memory lapses. I didn’t like to point out that her memory has been ‘lapsing’ for quite a while now!!

It was a struggle to know what to buy her so we bought her a very large display clock for her bedside table that is specially designed for people with memory problems; it tells you if it is morning, afternoon or evening, (in the hope she will not keep ringing us in the early hours thinking it is the afternoon). We also made up a hamper of her favourite bits and pieces that everyone could add to.

The celebrations continued on the Monday, her actual birthday, at the retirement apartments where she lives. The residents had wanted to get together and put a little spread on for mum which was nice as her main carer could attend as a guest too.

So mum is completely wiped out now and will probably sleep away her days for the rest of this week!

Meanwhile, we have yet another celebration to turn our attention to as it is Master Freddies’s seventh birthday party on Sunday, but this time it will be mostly his little school friends attending this one.

Next Monday might see me lying down in a darkened room all partied out.

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treasury ~ miss moneythrift

I hadn’t intended to have a blog break, but I have been busy and haven’t really wanted to stop the momentum by blogging about it. So the days have been a flurry of activity, but the long, cold evenings have been a welcome rest and snuggled under my throw I have taken to watching Bleak House and marvelling at Charles Dickens, such a wonderful story teller, inspired by real life, and in particular the names he gives to his characters – Guppy of Kenge and Carboy (you couldn’t make it up so well as Dickens did), Miss Flite, Lady Dedlock, Krook and Smallweed; all their names suit their characters.

So at present, I am thinking of myself as Miss Moneythrift as it is that time of year to overhaul the financial situation here.

Many moons ago, I decided to plan each month of the year around one aspect of my life and it went something like this – January Finances, February Health and so on…. as I remember it worked very well for the first few months but fizzled out towards the second half of the year, but the more important things were covered. A whole year is a lot to plan for at once so, after a lot of thought recently, I decided I would split the year into 4 quarters so that my plans only stretch to cover the first 3 months and I would combine this with focussing on one aspect.

The first being finances.

I have at last documented all the receipts for December that didn’t get done before Christmas, balanced the statements and paid any outstanding bills – there are few of those now as most things are on direct debit. Thankfully, I am left with a healthy balance and as the advice of Mr Micawber in Dickens David Copperfield – “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen [shillings] and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery”.

Once all the savings interest is updated I shall be able to run the year end reports that will tell me exactly where we spent our money and what our passive income is. I can then adjust our budget for this year, although I will probably break some of this down into 3 month periods too.

I can already see that we managed to get through Christmas without breaking the bank, but…and there is always a but, this is a heavy month for us with the cars – insurance, car tax, MOT and servicing all to be done in January. To cope with this I save a little towards it each month in our bill account throughout the previous year.

As January is also a long month for the housekeeping money I have been grocery shopping at home (rather than going for our weekly shop at the supermarket). The pantry is well stocked since before Christmas with dry, canned and packet foods, so a plentiful supply of ready cooked lentils and beans, coconut cream, passata, pasta and the like. We have been using these up together with the vegetables in the fridge. The freezer is also well stocked with bread and rolls to last us until our next shop so all we had to do this past week, to keep us going, was buy a few extra veg and some fruit for breakfast.

We were snowed in on Friday and had a treacherous walk to the village for milk, potatoes, carrots, broccoli and a courgette to top up. I also bought 2 bananas and a pack of raspberries – altogether it came to just under Ā£10 but it will keep us going until Tuesday, our usual shopping day, and it means we have saved around Ā£80 this week already.

As readers may know, we have for a long time always bought organic food and although it is much more expensive, we still prefer to do this and save money in other places.

There have been a few programs on TV last week about the food we eat. One of them comparing how much of our income is spent of food now to in the 70’s. I was quite shocked to find it is substantially less. In the seventies it would be on average 30% of our income and now only around 11%, this isn’t a reflection on the price of food either but the choice of food – low quality, highly and ultra processed with cheap ingredients, or even no recognisable ingredients like in Pot Noodles and strawberry smoothie.

I decided a long time ago that I would only buy quality food, those that have the least processing and without lethal preservatives or pesticides and grown in naturally fertilised soil – it made sense to me as it is something we are eating 3 or more times a day and should be a pleasureable part of life. So if you were reading my blog for any frugal tips around food, then it will not be about skimping on quality.

Where I do save money is by only buying groceries when on offer and stocking up with them if the dates are suitable. If there are vegetables on offer we buy extra and make soup and stews and alter the weekly menu to suit. We minimise waste by cooking only what we can eat to ensure an empty plate and keeping any of the tougher parts of a vegetable, like broccoli stalks, to add to the soups we make, so nothing is wasted.

In and amongst the adding up and balancing bank statements I have been doing a bit of house clearing whilst it has been too cold to go for any long walks, and now there is a nice little pile to leave our house – bags for the charity shop, recycle and a few items to return to friends and daughters.

I spent a whole day in our craft room cum office sorting out paper. It mounts up quickly and every so often I need to tame the pile. I think this year I have not used very many of the craft papers for cards, but aquirred more from somewhere (though I think it breeds secretly when I am in bed!). I really need to get down to some crafting and sewing, but I know it will not be this week as we have mum’s celebration party next weekend and Master Freddie’s party the weekend after. There is also the cost of mum’s celebration to take into account as well as two major presents….could be bread and jam for the rest of the month!!

Inbetween, we have hair and dental appointments (more expense) and the car is booked in today for the MOT and service…and of course it is the bigger of the two services (they alternate yearly) this year, which is always an extra Ā£100 on top – lets hope they don’t find any fault to remedy as well.

I will leave you now as I continue my hunt for a suitable birthday card with 100 on it.

Have a good week,

Back soon x

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dear diary ~ dismantling Christmas

You will all have heard of the saying ‘it will get worse before it gets better‘ – well that is the state of my house at the moment…in the getting worse part.

So far, DH helped with removing the baubles from the Christmas tree, dismantling it and returning it to the box and bit by bit all the decorations were taken down and repacked in their boxes ready to go back into the loft. It is always a little sad….there are many memories in our decorations and we only see them for a few days a year.

I sorted through the unused rolls of wrapping paper, replaced them in the special long ‘wrapping paper box’ and this too will have to go in the loft as there isn’t another place to keep it in the house.

Why, I am wondering, did my mum never have such a box, nor my gran – were they able to estimate to the very last sheet the amount they would use so there was none left over to deal with? I am left with yards still on a roll…and there is more than one roll and it is difficult to store in a small house. I did have the bright idea this time to take a photo of what is in the box before it disappears away so I don’t buy more unecessarily next year – I can’t think why I didn’t think of this before. I took a photo of all the decorations as I repacked the boxes.

When that task was completed, I turned my attentions back to my new planner notebook – that is always a much more pleasing job. DH reckons my love for stationery and anything admin is due to having a post office set at a very early age.

I have ready made calendars and checklists for birthdays, household tasks and such like, stored on my computer that I print off and stick in the front of the book. Other lists are written in as I go along. Each month I start with a list of intentions, a note of appointments, events etc and then the list of tasks – some I have to do, others I would like to do. It is a catch-all for anything of interest or anything I need to remember as well as a place to plan for wekly menus, birthdays and parties, holidays and Christmas. I also make a note of anything I need to buy this month, gardening notes and tasks and to keep tabs on our monthly financial and administrative tasks.

Each month I try to do a review. It reminds me how much I have done and what is still to do and going forward this year I will also make a note of what worked and what didn’t. I am determined to only repeat things that enhance my life not make it more difficult.

I have for many years made notes about Christmas so that I don’t repeat mistakes the following year – so below is a review of what worked well for us and what didn’t.

I thoroughly enjoyed the visit to Mrs Gaskell’s house and this will certainly be on the do again list, it may not be this same house but something similar.

I also enjoyed the lino cutting workshop, the result of which I turned into our Christmas card. I would certainly enroll on one again, but next time even earlier in November would be better. I have yet to overview my Christmas card list and revise it ready for next year.

Even though I made it myself, I have loved my Advent calendar and will be sad to take it down. I have a couple of sheets of black card already cut out with the windows so I might make them up ready to send as a little gift next year with a card.

The tiny outdoor flower lights that I bought, reduced at Argos, have looked so pretty at night in the wooden planters, the batteries are still working and they were very little trouble being on a timer. I am undecided whether to keep them out for a while or remove them and pack them away.

The little desk calendars that I made as gifts for my friends took a large part of my time so if I do them again another year I must start them earlier so I am not burning the midnight oil.

The gingerbread stars were well received and I am told were very good, though I would add even more ginger to the mixture next time. They were a bit fiddly with the different chocolates, but they did look Christmassy and quite effective. I would make them again and I will add the recipe to the menu below the header.

The children loved the session we had decorating the gingerbread too and this will certainly be something we will do again, and I would buy the ready roll again for them, and maybe, I will ask them if they want to make a gingerbread house.

The Santa visit to Portland Basin at Ashton-under-Lyne (our second year there) was good too because the venue is geared up for children; it was a really lovely family day out, but whether the children might want a change next year we shall see. They do like repeating things they get to know, like our yearly holiday to Scarborough. I shall have to make a diary note though to check for the booking form early as there are very few slots available and they sell out quickly.

The gift from Santa’s Elves that we put on the doorstep on Christmas Eve is still a magical mystery to the grandchildren, so I will probably keep that going next year, the difficulty is thinking of some game they can all join in with across the age range.

I think (touch wood) I managed to bake my cake for the right length of time this year in the oven – it turned out perfect for once …not under or overcooked. So I have made a note of the times and temperatures for next year.

There are always things that don’t go well or to plan, I was disappointed to miss both the Carol singing events and the Christingle service. Every weekend was taken in December and so conflicted with the Carols and there was so much Christmas ‘stuff’ to pack into the car on Christmas Eve for our trip up north that we set off later than intended and it meant something had to give…. and it was the Christingle service.

Having to pack cookware and food to make a dinner for mum and ourselves on Boxing Day in her apartment was a big hassle, partly because we had to keep a lot of the food in a coolbag or my daughter’s fridge over two nights. It worked OK last year but we went to mum’s straight from home on Boxing Day morning. This time we were staying the two nights before in a hotel and didn’t have access to a fridge.

Luckily, the temperatures outside in our car boot were freezing which helped to keep the coolbag cool. We had to go into Yarm to Sainsbury’s on Boxing Day for vegetarian gravy granules. DH had made the gravy at home and I accidentally forgot to take it out of the fridge and put it in the coolbag! I wasn’t sure Sainsbury’s would be open on Boxing Day, but it was and looking back it would have been far easier to have bought some ready meals or something which would have been a lot less trouble.

Blogging everyday leading up to Christmas was another challenge which I may not do again, I might only be repeating myself anyway. Taking the pictures when the light is at its’ worst during December is also a trial. It was fun, but quite time consuming and I admire those bloggers that ran the course.

Tomorrow, we will put the decorations back into our loft for another year and then maybe tackle the overflowing box of Christmas items I have for crafting – ribbons, cracker parts, and embellishments and hope I get some ideas for creating a few bits and pieces for gifts next year. I doubt I will get to do anything with them immediately as we really need to make plans for the mammoth decorating bonanza…long overdue.

So if I haven’t bored you to death with my random thoughts, I will be back soon with even more random thoughts!

I hope anyone reading this who has some brilliant ideas for making Christmas an easier and super simple time, will share them in the comments!

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