Chelsea flower show

Well very much not like us, lately, we had a fun day out. Fahed has a friend who is a stonemason and exhibits at the show. Tickets are over £100 even for the basic so not something I would go to normally. We had work passes but Caroline required very little work from us, just a bit of lifting, so we had loads of time to see everything.


Of course we took a picnic as are always keen on keeping costs a minimum ( so we can have even more fun!) but the food wasn't really tempting anyway. I should maybe have taken a bottle of wine for when we lay on the grass during the concert in the afternoon but I didn't miss it. Also i love seafood but i don't think you should be able to smell  it from outside of a seafood and champagne venue. It wasn't tempting at all.

Fahed looking lovely amongst some lovely flowers!

 Even vegetable gardens got a bit of a showing

 These are sculpted in metal and have amazing presence when you are right there with them

 My favourite. Highland cattle (well just the one) made of rusty chains. He was fantastic

 This is the monument to which Caroline carved to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of the 1st world war. That is being mount at the the actual hospital there after the show.

Sunny Sunday

I have been a clever girl! Well okay, perhaps not by the standards of others but I am happy with what I did. I previously synchronised my iPad and iPhone notes function. Now i also set up notes on my windows laptop. I am not a TV person so my laptop is always to hand at home.  I bought my first iPad expecting it to replace my laptop but instead found i like it for different things. So although i still consider myself fairly frugal, no really, I always have an iPhone, a iPad and a laptop.  And now they all are friends and talk to each other. Ha!

So anyway synchronising this all up together has obviously made me far more efficient than normal as I have finished my weekend to do list. Plus done a few other things. Plus made lunch for 8 people. I am just about to go empty the dishwasher, restack it and wipe the kitchen down and then I dont have anything pressing to do for the rest of the day. Its very weird.  I feel i should do something creative, some sewing maybe or at least something constructive.

So yeah, how clever am i???? (Dont need to answer that actually!)

Royal Wedding Day

Not that it impacts on me, as we dont get an extra day off :) I might watch a bit on TV though as the procession goes right by my Windsor office. I was there on Wednesday and the atmosphere was already fantastic. Lots of bonkers but happy people everywhere! Last night the princes went for a an impromptu walkabout in the town.

I have a pretty big to do list for the morning but ill do my best to be about done in time to catch some of the wedding. In between times i'll be planting stuff in my tiny front garden flower bed and having another round on Kon Marie on my clothes, So this morning all my out in the world stuff needs doing. So maybe I should just move and get it done!

Spring has sprung

I dont know how time passes so quickly but it seems like an eternity since I was here.
Lets have a catch up. How is everyone?

Life has returned to normal in our house. No-one is in hospital  or off sick. I hope I am not tempting fate, especially as I don't believe in such things, but at the moment we are all good. Fahed has some knee pain but its fading. The back is good and the vitamin D supplements seem to me to be life changing. He is so full of energy, its so lovely. So life hasn't returned to normal but to a new normal.

Having so much time on my hands has given me plenty of time for reflection. Also we had major changes at work. Lost most of our directors and worse, our direction. Bearing in mind we are social housing providers and what we do is important to us minions.  Amongst many other changes we had our pension scheme stopped.  So from July this year I feel my golden handcuffs removed. 

So that has led me on to doing our budget from now until retirement and beyond. Just to make sure we are going to be okay.  Ladies and gentleman, let me unveil my new priorities!

Year 1 (which randomly runs until October in my strange mind)- plenty of travel and fun
Year 2 Oct 2018-Oct 2019 Make a concerted effort to save £20k to finish the old house in Crete. That's the house we call Villa Aziza. Any further money to be spent in Crete must come from renting out the Crete properties. In these years I also have pocket money budgeted so plenty of super economical travel still gets done.
Years 3, 4, 5 and maybe 6 Up to 2022/23 - All the extra cash goes to the mortgage. I think I can overpay sufficiently to really get the mortgage wiped up by the end of that time.
Year 6 or 7 onwards - At this point I could sensibly afford to leave work.  And I probably will.

We also have a plan that when we retire we will travel for longer periods. Fahed has mild Aspbergers and short trips drive him bonkers but long trips are fine, so we are going to be all over that!

Bring it on!