A weekend away!

 We drove down south for our second granddaughter’s christening. It was a small family affair, the service being performed once again, by the same fabulous locum vicar.

Don’t think we will be able to do such long drives shortly into the future, 5 hours plus stops, was a lot!

We were invited by family (in laws) to tea on the Saturday and had a great relaxing time. A marvellous spread was laid on, enough frankly to feed an army. The baby was in fine fettle, only crying when accidentally biffed in the face by her dad whilst getting changed in the car park, into her long gown. She was a bit sick in the morning so they didn’t want her in it too long beforehand.

Our holiday home was ok but as always, it was great to be back home and in our own beds. Granddaughter 1 was very excited to see us which is always nice. The weather was fine but freezing as it seems to be just lately.

In the bin!

 Honestly, my brain scares me sometimes:)

I decided to make a cover for the oval dog bed we recently bought. Got a lovely fox fleece from Morrisons. Measured, cut and sewed around the outside, leaving a gap to push the cushion on. So far so good apart from the mess from the cut edges.

I had planned on fitting poppers as a closure but it was too thick. Changed over to press studs and sewed the first half of four on one side. So far so good.

Next day, sewed on one of the other halves and yup, the first 4 were upside down:(

Removed just one and turned it the right way. Hooray, one done. I decided to finish the other 3 today. Got the next two on then went to cut the two wrong facing ones off. Promptly cut off the two I had just attached. Doh!

In the bin it went as I had decided that fleece was just too messy and her fur would stick like crazy. I shall rummage in my materials box and see if I can find some cotton duvet to use.

Keeping on top of our pantry inventory!

 We have tried many ways of doing this but a spreadsheet document on the computer, printed out, works best for us.

We have one for items stored in the pantry and one for the freezers, split into indoor and outdoor. It’s not perfect as occasionally, we both forget to cross things off the list when items are used.

The pantry one needed redoing today. DB stood in the pantry and yelled out what we had. Everything is dated in black pen so we rotate to use older items first.

Wasn’t too far out, maybe 10 or so items, some on the list but none in the pantry:( They have now gone on the shopping list.

I am a bit of a prepper regarding food, toiletries and other items. We definitely work on the principle of two is one and one is none. Some items we use regularly, and have quite a few extra ones put away! I have just started to use the frozen bags of our own tomatoes grown last year.

I had never run a pantry this way until I noticed my mother in laws pantry worked like this. She used to say, if only they had known war was coming, a few extra items would have been squirrelled away:) Everyone thought it would be over by Christmas and had no idea just how short they would be of certain items, or the impact years of rationing would have. This made them think about food storage differently after the war.

Expenses galore this month

 Christening accommodation, final large payment on the car and insurance for Ruby. That has dented our savings massively but was planned. Now to get it topped up again. 

Good job at the moment we don’t need to be spending my pension and the increase will help. However, the increase now means I pay tax due to the personal tax allowance not being increased. Win some, lose some!