Tag Archives: birthday

P is for Planning Ahead for Presents

Day 16 of the A-Z Blog Challenge

Following hot on the heels of O is for Organise and matching it hand in hand is P is for Planning Ahead for Presents

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Yeah, couldn’t find the number 7, it’s an upside down L in the lightbox…

The lists and immediate to do items are one thing, but it can also be worth looking further into the future when making plans for saving money.

In my phone i use the notes app to keep a list of people that i need to buy birthday/xmas presents for as well as any other celebratory events that may cost me money over the next twelve months or so. When i am out shopping, i keep an eye out for bargains/sale items that are suitable for those events and pick them up as and when i see them.

Now, i have always done this – remember the skint single mum thing back when the boys were growing up? But the problem i always had was that i would then squirrel them away somewhere and forget their existence until i was doing some random tidying up and would come across them again…usually a couple of days after the event they were originally purchased for.

Doh!!

So now, i make sure that i make a note next to each name, what the present is and how much it cost. This latter may not seem so important at first glance, but i generally have a set amount of money in mind that i allocate to each person. If i can save money on a present, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they only get that one, after all, they don’t know how much i paid for it, but quite often, i will make other purchases that brings the presents up to the value of that figure. Doesn’t mean that you have to do that too, remember, they don’t know how much you paid for it, whether full price or reduced, and does it really matter what the cost is if it is something that they want or need?

Not in my book, it really is the thought that counts. The thought that somebody has spent the time to try and find something you like and appreciate rather than a ‘that’ll do’ present that was purchased while standing at the check out, half an hour before closing time on Xmas Eve.

leggings

I once received 7 pairs of leggings for my Christmas present from my (now ex) husband. He said that i always wore leggings so what was the problem?

I had given birth to my third son one month before. I was sick of poxy leggings. I’d vowed never to wear the darn things ever, ever, ever again. I was already back wearing my size 10 jeans. i wanted something a bit more flattering than leggings.

It is my birthday one week after Christmas.

He bought me another pair of leggings. I’m not kidding you – he really did!

I felt like strangling him with them.desperate-screaming-woman-clip-art__k16052356

He admitted that he’d bought them with the other pairs on Christmas Eve and thought he’d save them for my birthday present.

My motto.

Plan ahead.

 

Buy presents throughout the year so you spread the cost, but make sure they are suitable for the recipient.

…..Unless you want to get garrotted by a stray pair of leggings…

.Have a happy day.

Anita x

A no spend birthday treat

Blog number two for my no spend, make do and mend year

 

31st December 2017.

I’m not going out tonight. My New Year’s Eve party invitations must have got lost in the post and I’m too excited about my London trip to care about the start of another New Year. It’s just the ticking of a time bomb after all. Although if I get one more flashing, round robin ‘happy new year, you are so special to me’ message in my messenger inbox from someone who hasn’t bothered to personally contact me in the last twelve months (or longer) I’m going to bloody scream!

My evening has been spent packing, I have been instructed that the clothes I wore to David’s 20th birthday back in November will be suitable, luckily they fold well. I have also tried to forego the necessity of spending money in the buffet car on the train by making ham and spiced apple chutney (my recipe) sandwiches and cooking up some frozen sausage rolls and cocktail sausages. The challenge may not have started properly, but I don’t need to waste money do I!

1st January 2018.

I’m on the train. London bound!

Sandwiches going down a treat, eldest son, Ben, is delicately snoring beside me catching up on the sleep he missed due to his rather excessively late night last night. He is obviously not as well organised as I am. So far, I haven’t spent a single penny, unless you count the diesel I used to drive us to the station. It being New Year’s day and the fact that my middle son, Michael, wouldn’t have slept off enough of his alcohol intake from last night to be able to get behind a steering wheel, I opted to drive into my place of work which is about a mile from the train station. Ben and I would walk from there. He was up for it as well, probably another reason why he is now snoring gently away – as I write, I have a lovely view of his lack of tonsils. I live in a tiny hamlet where there are no buses on bank holidays or Sundays (and the rest of the week can be a bit intermittent), the price of a taxi for the ten miles was just ridiculous. Still, look on the bright side, the exercise was good – if knackering, it is a really steep hill up to the station – and I got my 5,000 daily step target on my fitbit sorted before eleven am.

2nd January 2018.

I’m now 50 years old.

cake

I don’t feel it. I don’t know where all those years have gone. I am however, so thankful that I have made it to this lofty age with only minimal scrapes and bruises to show for it. Many of my school friends haven’t made it this far, and a lot of those who did are suffering and in pain. In my mind, it doesn’t matter who knows my age, it really is just a number and every one that I am lucky enough to be given is a bonus.

Philosophy over, I got presents!!! Best of all being tickets to go to The London Palladium to watch Dick Whittington tonight. It’s starring a whole gamut of stars, Julian Clary, Nigel Havers, Diversity, Elaine Paige, Gary Wilmot and Paul Zerdin are headlining and I am so excited. The last time I saw a London show was my first ever musical. It was ‘Annie’ in, I cannot remember which theatre, in the West End and it was a school trip when I was about fourteen. It was a reward for the school choir for learning the Faure Requiem in Latin. No, I can’t sing very well, but it was fun pretending, especially when with a load of others so my own voice couldn’t be heard. There’s probably some more philosophy hiding in there somewhere.

I also received a bottle of Moet Chandon, a silver bracelet, a few CD’s and some chocolates among a few other items but, what the hell…I’m going to the Panto at the London Palladium!!!

presents flat lay

Don’t think the no spend thing is going to work today, definitely a good idea to wait until I’m home.

5th January 2018.

I’m home. Dick Whittington was amazing, Julian Clary was hilarious, Nigel Havers was ridiculously funny, Gary Wilmot did the weirdest song about the London Underground ever and I will never know how he managed to learn it, Diversity were astounding and Elaine Paige has certainly not suffered any loss of voice as she has got older. She can still blow the roof off with those awesome pipes of hers. The costume budget must have been more than I get paid in at least a couple of years and the special effects? Mind-blowing.

London Palladium stage

I didn’t go overboard with the spending though. Mainly because it was my birthday and nobody would let me buy anything, which was unexpected but welcome. I had a cooked breakfast from a really nice café opposite Paddington station before boarding the train which meant I wasn’t hungry all the way back and I refrained from buying myself a coffee from the buffet car on the way home. I stuck to the bottle of water I bought on the way to the station so wasn’t I ultra good?

breakfast

 

Gold star to Anita please, I do like sparkly things.

 

Today is a happy day.

Anita. x

A no spend/make do and mend year

I’ve been keeping this quiet for the last six weeks but i have decided to go public and use my blog as my motivation to stick to my goals. There is so much waste in the world and i am just as guilty as most people of adding to it. I’m not doing it just for altruistic reasons though, i’m doing it for my own peace of mind, my own benefit and to improve my own bank balance. See, not altruistic, totally selfish.

betty its all aboout me  Anyway, here is where the story began back at the end of December. I’ve been keeping the diary ever since but it would be too much to put into one blog post, crikey, even i would get bored of my writing if i had to wade through all of that in one go! So, to catch up, it will be a few days at a time and then as and when i make an entry.

I’m hoping to succeed. I hope that you will join me on my journey.

Have a happy day.

Anita.x

29th December 2017

Today I had an epiphany. I was standing in Next, surveying the sheer weight of the sales rails and I pulled out a rather nice grey checked shirt in brushed cotton. It was just my style. Long sleeved and long bodied, perfect for wearing to work and enabling me to bend over a wheelchair without revealing the dreaded builder’s backside. It’s not a look that I particularly relish others getting a peek of. And, now this is the best bit…the shirt was half price! Absolute bargain, total steal, that really should have been the clincher. I should have grabbed that sucker, elbowed my way past the elderly lady trying to decide between a peephole bra (don’t go there, it’s not a pretty vision) and a more conservative version and gone straight to the till, no, I don’t need a bag thankyou, my car’s outside…

But instead, something rather strange happened instead. As I stood my ground against the rather pushy, blonde haired, stiletto heeled buxom wench that was trying to get in front of MY RAIL, I had a vision of my bedroom. More specifically, the four door wardrobe already groaning with so many clothes that I have to open the door very gingerly to ensure nothing falls out. If it does, I may not be seen again for weeks. I am ashamed to say that there are some impulse buys in there that are still adorned with their price labels and have therefore never yet been worn. There are others that are a size 10 and no longer fit but I’m sure I’ll lose that stone and a half one day and then I will get into them. It’s not totally inconceivable is it? Who am I kidding? I’’d have to starve for at least six months to lose that and I happen to think that life is far too short to deny myself cake.

It’s still a waste though. I have so many clothes that I never wear, and it’s not all because they are too small and I can’t bear to part with them, just in case. I am one of those people who saves things for best. The problem is, I don’t actually know when best is? I rarely go out anywhere special to warrant having any best clothes and I wear jeans for work.

My epiphany? I put that shirt back on the rail, turned and walked out of the shop empty handed.

My buy nothing new, make do and mend year had begun.

 

30th December 2017

Well, that challenge didn’t last long. I went into The Edinburgh Woollen Mill today and they had reduced the price of a Country Rose tunic top that I have had my eye on for a few weeks. Well, I just couldn’t resist it. And, technically, as I was paying for it with my left over Love To Shop vouchers that I didn’t spend in the lead up to Christmas, does it count as spending at all? It probably does, I could have used them in Iceland and restocked the freezer with Slimming World meals for one (with an eye to actually losing that extra one and a half stone and fitting into those size tens again) but it wouldn’t have been half so much fun.

Anyway, as it’s my 50th birthday on the second of January and the boys have collected together to send me to London for I know not what reason yet – I sort of love surprises, but the control freak in me is really going ballistic right now – then to start the challenge now would be just a tad foolhardy. So, I have decided on a period of reflection. I need to work out some groundrules of what I can and cannot buy during this period of deprivation, sorry, read that as restructuralisation of my lifestyle, and the challenge proper will begin on January the fourth 2018 when I return home.

 

Have a happy day.

Anita. x

Musing on getting older

It’s another new year and the beginning of my 50th one on this planet. I don’t feel like 50. Some would say that i don’t look like 50 either, sometimes i think they are just being nice, other times i take their compliments, run with them like the wind and scream ‘Wahey!!’….Well, in my mind i do. I’m far too introverted to actually run and scream out loud…more’s the pity.

Me in London

I’d be lying if i said that hitting this milestone is a breeze, but it’s certainly not as bad as i thought it would be 30 years ago when i hit my 20’s and just couldn’t imagine ever being as old as 50. But i do believe that i am so lucky to be able to stand up and say, ‘Hey, i’m 50. And i don’t actually care who knows it.’

So many of my old school comrades either haven’t made it this far or are in poor health and therefore struggling to make it through every day in this disablist world we now live in. I can call it that. Although i am fit and healthy, i work in the care sector and see every day how people with disabilities are discriminated against behind the guise of political correctness. Just don’t get me started on the idiots who think it is ok to park in front of a dropped kerb…i guess they have never tried getting a wheelchair onto a pavement without one, but ignorance is never a reason, it is just an excuse for bad behaviour.

But i digress. What have i achieved in the last 50 years?

  1. I have survived (yes, that is the correct word, it has been touch and go at times).
  2. I have brought up my three sons just about single handed and i am as proud of the men they have become as any Mother could be – let’s just gloss over the fact that my coping mechanism when they were all tired and teasy and bickering at each other was to just tune out and let them get on with it…
  3. I have educated myself through two undergraduate degrees whilst working and bringing up my boys on my own.
  4. I am currently half way through a Master of Arts degree in Creative Writing whilst working full time …can no longer lay claim to the bringing up the boys though, the little blighters are just about self sufficient now.
  5. I work in the care sector, and have done for 18 years. It’s a hard job at times, but, for me, the pros far outweigh the cons.
  6. I have been published as both a poet and a theatre reviewer. I’m still working on the fiction thing. See point number 4.
  7. In the last year i have finally been brave enough to go on holiday on my own. It was a frightening and enlightening experience for someone as initially timid as me.
  8. I have loved and lost. Far too many people.
  9. But ultimately, i have survived, for that i am grateful.

 

So what about the next 50 years? Would be handy if i could have a peek inside a crystal ball, but on the other hand, where would be the fun in that?

Image result for crystal ball

I have no idea what the future holds but i do know that i am not intending to let ‘old age’ and ‘diminishing years’ hold me back from my plans for the future. I intend to write more, make my voice heard. I may be quiet in person but my mind and my fingers are itching to tell you so many stories…once i get the words in the right order that is…

I intend to live more and not rely on just surviving as i have in the past. I am bored with letting the fact that i am single dictate my social life and stop me from doing the things i want to do.

Finally, i intend to be happy. For all those who haven’t made it this far. For all those who have and are struggling to get out of bed unassisted or just make it through until bedtime.

We all deserve to be happy.

Take care,

Anita x

Make today a happy day too!