Day in the Life 15th October 2012

The husband has his first day in the new job, and we are down to one car, which is going to make mornings interesting, going forward. To ease us into it, I have taken the day off work and am staying home to sort my accounts and to have a bit of a child-free potter and a rest. Having done a big clean and tidy of the house and three loads of washing yesterday, I am looking forward to having some time all to myself. I start by bundling the family out of the house, which goes well until we realise about the forgotten supply of nappies.

My office for the morning

Panic over, I put my feet up with a coffee and get to work on the sleeves of the cardigan I’m working on, while catching up on Saturday’s episode of The Thick of It via iPlayer. I decide to grab a box of stuff from the craft room and work through it while watching a film. I can’t find a film I like the sound of (your days are numbered, BT Vision) and since they took HBO away, the box sets available are a bit rubbish, too. I spy Nighty Night and remember that I’ve forgotten most of it. I stick it on and soon remember that Rebecca Front is in this too. Basically playing the same character. Hey ho. As the recycling collection is due today, I have picked up my overflowing tub of wallpaper offcuts and my circle sticker punch and get to work.

Before:

After:

Such an improvement, and a binful of unusable remnants can go off to the recycling plant. I really am starting to make a dent in the craft room these days. This is a good thing.

I realise that it’s actually a lovely sunny day outside, and stick another wash on – I can see the bottom of the washing basket, hurray – and decide to photograph the new products I made yesterday. A small range of address labels/bookplates/gift tag stickers upcycled from some envelopes and offcuts of packing paper I located while tidying the kitchen. Find them in the shop very soon!  I’m now on my 3^rd episode of Nighty Night and haven’t done anything to do with my accounts.

 

In the interests of getting more stuff in the recycling bin, I order up a delivery of meals from Hello Fresh so I can put Saturday’s newspaper (where I’d seen it advertised) in the bin. Hello Fresh sends me a confirmation email with a code for friends to get £20 off their first order, which in turn will give me credits towards a future order. I’ll come back and review what they send me here, but if you want to try as well, here’s the code: MVL4VC   I really like the sound of this, and with the voucher code it means that 5 meals cost roughly what I’d spend in the supermarket on them anyway. And by taking the thought out of cooking (all the ingredients measured and a recipe to follow), I shouldn’t be too tired to cook and have to resort to an expensive takeaway or ready meals. This is the plan.  I will let you know how I get on in reality...

In the meantime, I make myself a bagel and, seeing as I'm at home and not work. a not very office friendly tin of French onion soup. Once I’ve finished lunch I hang up the washing and decide that now is the time to tackle the accounts.

I head upstairs to the craft room after hanging out the washing and hoping it doesn’t freeze onto the line. Before I put the PC on, I dig all my accounts stuff out of the filing cabinet, and grab my big box of Post Office receipts. I have a lost parcel to claim for, and a damaged parcel to claim for. It’s fairly easy to find what I’m looking for once as everything’s in date order and I have a ridiculous memory for postcodes. I’m in the middle of a bigger project to try and get rid of most of the paperwork/fire hazards in my craft room – there was a lot of stuff associated with the flat I’ve just sold that needed to either be shredded, scanned or a few very important things that I’m going to keep hold of in hard copy.  Bitter experience talking there.  I am glad I am not one of these ruthless chucker outers.   My newly replaced scanner is my new best friend, mind you.

After sorting my receipts ready for finalising my tax return, I pop the rest in my recycling tray ready to take downstairs. I also round up a few things for the proper bin. I decide that filing an online tax return is more compatible with the new me, so I get myself registered. I scan in the form I had completed and save it until my registration details arrive in the post. I scan in a few flyers my dad has sent me, and a clipping from the Manchester Evening News advertising Scottish meat products to exiles down South:

I fail to find three matching purple buttons for the cardigan, but I do manage to dig out a pair of buttons to go on Amelia’s handed down dungarees from her cousin – I have been meaning to make her a new top that I found the pattern for, and won’t have time to do it today, so the least I can do is fix her dungarees.  I know there are some needles in the kitchen so I pop the dungarees in the pile of things to go downstairs and head back down for more knitting, coffee and Nighty Night. I have a look at Facebook and surf a few blogs, and find this, for the knitters amongst us.

The rest of the day gets even more boring, but I basically walk to Asda, forget to buy sweetcorn so nip into Aldi on the way back, bring the recycling bin in, find out that my husband had a good first day, watch half an hour of Madagascar AGAIN, make noodles, watch more Nighty Night, finish the cardigan sleeve and find the most amazing website ever which is going to help with my rug project no end – more on that as soon as I re-find the flipping rug canvas.

See you soon for the next Day In The Life - I will hand over the baton to someone to pick the next date once I have updated the list of contributors - please leave a comment or email me if you have blogged yesterday.  If you haven't managed to take part this time, we'd love to have you along next time!