Meal Planning Monday 24th February 2014

Well back to normal this week, nursery is back open and I'm taking back my motherly duties of doing the school run and looking after Squiggle on his days off.  I have "recovered" from my gallbladder operation,  it's been 3 weeks and the scars have healed, not sure the insides have recovered as I have an horrendous niggling pain that comes and goes but the doctor said not to worry unless it carries on after a month has passed! - a month will be next week and I can't see it going away by then.

The meal planning helped last week both with the diet and with my recovery as they were simple foods and I could actually get in the kitchen and cook them. There was a slight chop and change towards the end of the week with what meal to have on what day but all meals were accounted for.

This week looks like a fairly easy week judging by the contents of my freezer. Fish fingers everyday it is then! They must have either been on offer whilst I was in hospital or my husband is desperately trying to deplete the fish stock of the Atlantic Ocean!

Anyway after searching further into the snowy wasteland of the freezer, past the fish fingers there is something I can make a meal out of for the week, so I have constructed the following meal ideas and made a firm decision to not buy any more freezer food until I have defrosted the freezer. As a bonus though I did come across a jam roly poly and half a dozen frozen margaritas which will go down nicely at the weekend!

Monday - Leftover Spag Bol
Tuesday - lamb, mash & peas
Wednesday - fish fingers!!!!
Thursday - Child free night so possibly the pub or a takeaway
Friday - chicken fajitas
Saturday - spicy chilli sausages & mash followed by frozen margaritas!!
Sunday - roast dinner- using up the half empty bags of veg from the freezer, plus the jam roly poly!

Now after reviewing that I may have to go shopping for foodstuff because by the end of the week the freezer will just contain a bag of chips, some peas and fish fingers!

Thanks again to MrsM for arranging #mealplanningmonday, if you're in need of meal ideas please feel free to click through to her site.

Silent Sunday - 23rd February 2014

Are you a credit card tart?

I'm a bit of a credit card tart in that I like to chop and change and swap balances on my credit cards in order to keep the APR down, and try to eventually get them paid off. Unfortunately like many promiscuous people, my past has finally caught up with me!

A few years ago I did a bit of swapping onto what I thought was a lifetime balance transfer of 5.4%, all was going well until my credit card statement landed on my doorstep this morning and I nearly had heart failure. At a second glance I thought this cannot be right, they've made a mistake and duly rang to tell them so. I felt smug sitting there waiting for the call to be answered, that feeling soon wore off and embarrassment took over as I was put in my place. The promotional rate was only valid for 2 years and had now expired, so the regular rate of 28.9% !!! would take effect from next month.

Panic set in because I hadn't got another card spare to tart my money off to, and there was no way I could afford to pay 5x more interest than what I had been used to. By my rough calculations it would have been equal to my current minimum payments which means I would probably never pay the darn thing off.

Thankfully Mr Homer came to the rescue this evening and we managed to shift the debt onto a new lifetime balance transfer of 6.9%, I'm gutted that it's more than what I've been paying but so thankful that it's a heck of a lot less than what I could be paying.

So lesson learnt, if you are going to be promiscuous with your credit card tarting make sure you take precautions and check the fine print before jumping into bed with a new credit card provider!

Meal Planning Monday - 17th February 2014

So I'm officially back in action, gallbladder removed, no serious side effects, had my 2 weeks of recovery and it's driven me insane, so I'm back in the kitchen this week cooking. I am pleased to report that I did lose a little bit of weight following the restricted diet so I'm eager to continue but not to that extreme. I'm going to try calorie counting which will allow me to still eat what I like but with smaller portions.

So my plan for this week is as follows

Monday: Fish fingers, mash & alphabet spaghetti

Tuesday: lamb steaks, mash and peas

Wednesday: lemon chicken & rice

Thursday: child free night so off out somewhere!

Friday:  slow cooker day will raid cupboard and see what sauces I have lurking in there

Saturday: possible leftovers from yesterday

Sunday: Roast dinner with all the trimmings

For more inspiration or to join in with meal planning Monday follow MrsM's! blog

Craft Nomination

I must say I have been lucky enough to escape the stupid Nek Nomination craze that is currently doing the rounds, for those of you who don't know what this is, I'll explain as best I can. You nominate a 'friend' to drink a pint of alcohol in one go ( i.e. neck it ), they have to do this within 24 hours of being nominated and film themselves doing it. Once completed the Nekker become the Nominator and picks one of their friends, and so it goes on and on. I used the word 'friend' loosely because why anyone would ask a friend to do such a stupid thing is beyond me but some of my friends have partaken in this craze. I am of course excluded on medical grounds, my pancreas just won't allow it.

However I am all for being RAK nominated ( Random Acts of Kindness ) and a new one which I received yesterday - Craft Nomination.

I was nominated to do something crafty within 24 hours. Now this is just the kick up the back side I need to get back into card making & paper crafting. My News Years resolution was to make more this year, I think I managed to make just a single card last year, which was a pretty poor effort on my part.

I bought some cute Forever Friends London/British papers and stickers in the New Years sale but up until tonight I hadn't got round to using them. I decided to take up the challenge and make a card.

Chosen items from Docrafts Best of British &
Papermania Portabello Road collections

End result!

I was so impressed with my effort that I went on to make another card from the same packs.

On a roll!

Two cards in one night is enough for me! It's 100% more than I made last year and it's only February, so I think I can safely say that my New Years resolution of making more cards this year is well and truly in the bag!

I'm off to sit down and congratulate myself with a cuppa, but for those of you reading this I now nominate you to do something crafty within 24 hours and post about it. It can be big or small, card making or cake baking, you could do something you're already good at or try something new, something simple like following a step by step guide to origami or if you fancy something more challenging try painting a full blown self portrait, the only limit is your own imagination. 

Come back and let me know what you've done.