Thrifty But Glam

So it's January and a lot of us are feeling the burn from a big Christmas money splurge.  Every year we say that we will save throughout the year and every year some unexpected event or bill clears out any plans that we had to put money aside for Christmas. What if I told you that you could pay for Christmas by putting aside a few pennies a day?  At first I thought that there is no way that you could save a reasonable amount in this way, but the figures don't lie.  The basics are on the 1st day of the year you save 1p, on the 2nd 2p, on the 3rd 3p, on the 4th 4p and so on.  The most you will ever put away is £3.65, and at the end of the year you will have earned a cool £667.95 (£671.61 in 2016 as it's a leap year!).  In fact it's only part way through April when you will need to start putting away more than £1 a day, plenty of time to recover from last years Christmas over-spend. There are a few people out there that prefer to start the money challenge backwards and

Well 2015 is over and today we are enjoying the first day of 2016! 2015 was certainly eventful and although I lost my much beloved Nan, we have come through the year being thankful for all that happened too.  I am currently 8 and a bit months pregnant and we finally moved into our forever house a few weeks ago. As we move into the new year I'm in a quandary about what to do with this blog.  Trying to conceive has been such a huge part of my life for over 5 years, but that chapter is about to come to an end.  My blogging and crafting hobbies helped enormously with regaining a sense of self that our miscarriages and struggles robbed me of, but at the same time I don't know where my new role as a Mother will leave these priorities. Most importantly I am all too aware of the lovely people that read this blog that are still trying to achieve their dream of parenthood and I don't want them to have to read about the new baby and have it feel as if it's being rubbed in. 

Since getting the keys to our home 10 weeks ago so many things have changed.  At one point the house literally looked like a building site!  Walls were knocked back to bare plaster, dado rails ripped out, doors removed, carpets torn up, fixtures and fittings gutted and the cloakroom suite completely ripped out. Thankfully we are now on the final stretch (under 6 weeks until we hopefully move in!) and I wanted to do a video walk through to document just how far we have come in our renovation journey.  In hindsight, shooting in landscape would have been a much better idea, but sorry folks you'll just have to put up with the scaled down view! If you can't remember the condition of the house when we moved in, I featured it in a blog post here :) Our home is definitely one built from love as it is thanks to amazing parents, friends and family that we have achieved so very much.  The Mr and I have sadly had minimal input with the physical side of things (joys of ill health f

It occurred to me a few days ago that I haven't technically announced my pregnancy on here!  Sure I may have mentioned in passing in a few recent blog posts that we are decorating the nursery etc, but seeing as I am 24 weeks along tomorrow, I guess I really should be making the formal proclamation! Well we had IVF/ICSI back in May (2015) and although it almost killed me (I WILL post my scary OHSS stories over the next few days) we were successful!  I am almost a Long Term Trying To Conceive Graduate, and although we are a matter of months from having our baby, I still don't think it has sunk in. Junior will be due on January 25th 2016 and of course we are over the moon! Like most things in life, we never get the easy ride.  Firstly I was hospitalized for just shy of 3 weeks immediately after our IVF egg transfer as I'd managed to develop Ovarian Hyper Stimulation Syndrome (OHSS).  It doesn't sound all that scary, in truth most cases are mild and just severely u

So, last week I shared our initial moving in house post and I promised to share some of the more interesting house quirks (or bodge jobs as the Mr calls them), so here we go! The first thing I noticed when we stepped through the front door with the keys in our hands was that the previous owners had left a lot of random things attached to the walls.  There were coat hooks, childrens plaques, mirrors and strangest of all two notice boards in the kitchen. A bit of closer investigation to the notice boards revealed that the previous DIY novices had left it all behind as it was attached with no more nails!  I mean seriously, who sticks a light weight cork board to the wall with a heavy grade adhesive when a simple frame hook will do?  What were their magnets made of, lead weights?! For those of you that are fortunate enough not to be familiar with this god awful invention, when you try to remove anything that is secured to a wall with it, the damage is so severe that great big chunks

Well it has taken almost 5 months, but we finally completed on our new house! Previously we have always been lucky enough to rent or own new build flats and so purchasing a property almost as old as me and the Mr has taken a huge dose of adjustment! We purchased our house on the shared ownership scheme and although it is far from perfect (and admittedly very over-priced!) we know we were lucky enough to be accepted as the scheme is highly sought after with huge waiting lists.  For us (like most), it was the only way we would ever be able to buy our very own home. The major drawback with viewing shared ownership homes is that only the barest of details are listed (both online and with the estate agent/housing association) and you are lucky to see a photo of the outside of the property, it is almost never that a listing will feature interior shots or floor plans.  This means that you get into the habit of booking to view and having to keep an open mind when it comes to figuring out i