Free Fruit

Last week on the way home from school we saw some lovely looking blackberries.. so we spent a few minutes picking some. After getting home and washing them we got to taste them and they tasted lovely. Even better because they are free! A also had some for her lunch box the next day. She really enjoyed picking them so we stop for more every few days. There seems to be a lot of berries and I never notice anyone else picking them.

We also have red currants growing in our garden, its a massive bush as well. We never really do anything with it but this year I've picked a load and working through freezing them. They are really nice in my morning porridge, actually its really nice just to grab a small handful and eat them straight from the freezer!

My parents are currently on holiday so whilst they are away I am watering their greenhouse and they said to help myself to any ripening tomatoes!

I'm definitely going to be on the lookout for more free fruit on my travels.

Baby sale

Last month my sister and I thought we'd do a baby sale at a local church hall. We have so much baby stuff left over and don't have anyone to pass it on to so thought we'd give it ago. Well to be honest it was a total waste of time and we ended up making a loss of 60p haha. We sold £9.40 worth of stuff and then had to pay the table fees of £10. I think we will have to try ebay instead.

Savings

A little while ago I opened a savings account with the same bank our mortgage is with so that I can save up to pay a chunk off the mortgage. Since April I have saved £93.14 which isn't too bad as its only made up from the small amounts left over in my current account each week. I want to get to at least £200 before paying a bit off the mortgage which is currently £76014.96!

What have I spent my swagbucks on

Just sitting here feeding H and thinking about what I've spent my swagbucks on. Well so far I have only exchanged them for Amazon gift vouchers as you seem to get a better rate than if I went for PayPal cash. 
Well I have bought several birthday and Christmas presents with the vouchers. Also lots of party bits for A's birthday, lunch boxes and cake toppers etc. I also treated us to a nice portable hard drive as well as some odd random things I've always wanted like a melon baller and wavy knife!
My next aim is a big one, I'd love to get enough for a PS4 (the new play station coming out later this year!) Me and my husband are both gamers and it would make a great Christmas present to ourselves! So I think they will be around £350 and I currently have £50ish sitting in my Amazon account so that's £300 I need before December! Not sure I will get that much, I would be happy to get half that much actually lol.  I'm not far off my next £25 voucher. I'll have to work out how many SBs I will need to get a day if I want to get the PS4 before Christmas.
Edit: well I've worked out I would need to earn 335 SBs a day to get £300 before Christmas!  I'm lucky if I can get 200 a day so I'm going to aim for 152 a day to get £150 in vouchers.


Here is my referral if anyone is interested in joining Swagbucks:

http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/kerrypage81

Changing mobile network

Several months ago I thought I'd change my mobile network to see if I can save a bit of money.

I was on Vodafone paying £35 per month. I think I had unlimited calls and texts and 500mbs of internet. Well my husband gave me his old phone which is still in good condition and works well so I decided to go for a sim only contract with GiffGaff. I'm now paying £10 per month for 500 minutes of calls, unlimited texts and 1gb of internet usage.

I change to GiffGaff in December and so I have worked out I have saved £200! I'm amazed as I am no worse off with the package I have. I do have less calls but I never use up my allowance or even get close. I also never phone out from my house phone in an attempt to use more of my free calls.

I have a reveral link below to send off for a free GiffGaff sim card. If you go through my link you get an extra £5 credit for free when you register!

https://giffgaff.com/orders/affiliate/alix81

Couch to 5K

Its an NHS podcast that coaches you to be able to run 5k in 9 weeks.

I started this a while ago with my sister and going from hardly being able to run we have just completed a 20 minute run with out stopping! I'm so proud of us :D

We have just finished week 5 (you should do 3 runs a week) so 3 more to go!

What makes it a bit more difficult is that 2 days a week we take H in his buggy so we take turns pushing him! He seems to enjoy it lol

I'm trying to loose the last half a stone to get back from my pre pregnancy weight and this is really helping. i'm loosing around half a lb a week so that's pretty good)

If you want to do it too here is a link to the NHS C25K page: http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/c25k/Pages/couch-to-5k.aspx

Bit of bad luck

Why does everything go wrong at once? Last week I had a particularly awful day, first the fridge decided to freeze everything again, then my washing machine chewed up a pair of my daughters leggings. After investigating why that could have happened I notice the drum has a massive dent in it. I also knocked a Demby plate off the work top and it smashed. I thought bad luck comes in threes but I was wrong as some idiot decides to kick off my wing mirror. What makes that even worse is that I only fitted a new one the week before as the old one had been held on with duct tape for most the year. I felt really proud of myself for fitting it as well.

Well the new washing machine arrived today and fridge freezer will be here next week. The Demby plate can wait till the next sale in debenhams and currently driving around with no wing mirror... Might just get the duct tape out again!

Weekly weigh in

Every week the girls in my family weigh ourselves and say if we have lost or gained weight. Well I stayed the same this week so that's ok really. I only have around half a stone to loose anyway. Just need to exercise a bit more.

I have been doing an exercise challenge.. I'll see if I can post the picture...  Well I've just done day 9 and its started to get hard! Hoping to see results soon, I do get impatient haha.

Mobile blogging

Just having a go at blogging from my mobile. I downloaded the free app from Google play and so far so good, it seems to be working!

Anyway I won't make this too long in case it vanishes when I post it!

Earning websites - NeoBux

Other than Swagbucks there are more earning websites, I seem to discover more every day! I heard of one today called NeoBux so searched for it through the Swagbucks toolbar and it won me 10 SBs :)

As I have just joined I really have no clue what its like or even what I'm doing! You seem to be able to earn in three formats: $, NeoPoints and NeoCoins, I don't know the relevance of this yet. I'll have to update when I find out more about it!
 
I think this banner is my referal if anyone would like to sign up:

Back to School and a bit of exercise

The holidays are over, our daughter 'A' is back to school. She really does love school so it wasn't too hard getting her ready this morning, she couldn't wait to see her friends.

Another good thing about going to school is the walk, its around 3/4 mile to school so a mile and a half there and back. Its my chance to get some exercise, H goes in the buggy and we walk to school and jog back. Some mornings I'll meet up with my sister and we will jog along the sea front if its a nice day.  I would like to join the gym but our local one doesn't have a crèche and its awkward getting someone to look after H. Maybe I'll join when he starts nursery next year.

Work stuff

Well I had the grand total of three orders from my website in May... three more than the month before haha. Of those orders one will be refunded as the part won't fit my customers car. one is out of stock and waiting to hear if my customer is happy to wait for it. And the third one, well I hope its third time lucky and everything goes smoothly.

At least things seem to be looking up and the work I am doing to my website seems to be working and attracting people again. Here's to a better June! :)

Swagbucks

I came across Swagbucks this time last year and it seems pretty good.. nice easy way to make a little bit of extra money.

You can earn swagbucks (SBs) from completing certain actions on the site. Swagbucks offers many ways, such as surveys, videos, tasks, polls, games, competitions.......lots of things really.

You currently need 849 SBs to get a £5 Amazon voucher or 1049 SBs to get £5 to your paypal account.  I only exchange my points for Amazon vouchers as you get more for your bucks but sometimes I think the cash would be nice!



Last year I managed to buy a lot of Christmas presents on Amazon and I hardly had to use my credit card! It made things so much easier. Since January this year I have made £140 in Amazon vouchers :-D (although I have spent a lot of it on presents and a few treats for myself hehe). Making £25 a month is very do-able if you can do a survey everyday. I have read about people who have made up to £50 a month!

Here is my referral if anyone is interested in joining:

http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/kerrypage81

Apologies...

If my blogs are full of typos I'll blame the fact I am one hand typing whilst breastfeeding our son 'H'. It's not the easiest thing to do in the world but easier than reading a book one handed, turning pages is quite hard one handed!

H has fallen asleep in my arms and I dare not move in case he wakes up.

Mortgage free dream

I would love to be able to clear our mortgage, we have around £78k and 18 years left! The difficult thing is I'm a WAHM (Work At Home Mum) and my Husband has an average paid job. I started my own business several years ago selling car parts and accessories and it started off OK but this last year has been terrible and I'm lucky to have not made a loss. Still I'll keep at it as every penny helps!

So I though I'd start this blog to kinda keep a record of all the things I'm doing to pay our mortgage off quicker.