Top 10 Ways to Save Money

9th May 20194th May 2019 | Suzi Stamp

Top 10

We all like to save money and today, for this Thursday Top 10 post I am sharing with you some ways you can save money in your day to day life.

Make yourself lunch for work instead of eating out. While a meal deal (in the UK) can cost around £3 for a sandwich, snack and drink, making your own lunch can work out a lot cheaper.
Make your own drinks. Whether this is a reusable bottle that you fill with juice, squash or water, or a travel mug of hot drink, taking your own rather than buying will save a lot of money in the long run. It will also save you time that you would otherwise spend queuing.
Use comparison sites. Whether you are looking to renew car insurance, check your gas and electricity deals or for a new mobile phone deal, it is worth seeing what is available to you before you go ahead and sign up to another long term contract which might not be the best option for you.
When travelling, check ticket sites for any cheaper travel you could use. It can cost around £55 for a single journey to London on the train but by travelling by coach, for example Megabus or National express you could pay around £15 for a return journey on certain days.
If you are going to be staying somewhere overnight, rather than booking the first hotel you find, try checking AirB&B, Late Rooms or Last Minute for any cheaper alternatives.
If you live alone, or there are few of you living in the house, then see if it would work out cheaper to have a water meter installed. You can find out about water meters from your local water service provider.
Review any subscription services that you have, whether it be Sky Tv or a break down service for your car. Are you paying for unnecessary things that you don’t use? Often, phoning the company to see if you can change your subscription can get you a better deal.
Check what you are paying for on your telephone bills. If you are forever going over your minutes, texts or data consider switching to a tariff that offers more of these things. Also check your landline and what you are paying for on that, if you never use your landline it may be worth thinking about losing it altogether.
Look out for loyalty cards for shops that you use regularly and sign up to them. Tesco Clubcard offer points that you accrue when you spend money on fuel or shopping generally, these will then be converted into vouchers that you can use against your regular shopping. From time to time Tesco will also send you vouchers for items you would normally purchase. Boots offers a loyalty card too and points are accrued as you spend money on purchases which can be used against other purchases you make in future.
Switch to shop own brand rather than buying name brand goods. Own brand items are often as good quality wise and you could save quite a bit on your shopping bill.

What are your favourite ways to save money? Let me know in the comments!

Book Review – Checking Out – Nick Spalding

8th May 20194th May 2019 | Suzi Stamp

I downloaded the book Checking Out by Nick Spalding to my Kindle a few weeks ago as I wanted a new book to read at lunch time in work. It is free to download for Kindle Unlimited readers. I’ve read a few Nick Spalding books in the past and have really enjoyed them so I thought that I would give this one a try.

What do you do when the doctor says you could die at any moment? Well…after you’ve made a cup of tea, of course.

Nathan James is young, successful and has the world at his feet. Unfortunately, he’s also about to die—which ruins things somewhat. And now he’s staring imminent death in the face, Nathan is having to rethink some of his life choices very hard.

This means embarking on a hectic journey of self-discovery that includes, amongst other things, losing his dignity to an inescapable bean bag, suffering screaming nightmares about a monstrous potato, and getting up close and very personal with a bipolar donkey.

All of which is fine, but then Nathan falls in love with a charming girl called Alison, which is a really stupid thing to do. Because how can you give your heart to someone when it might be about to stop?

From Nick Spalding, the bestselling author of Fat Chance, Bricking It and Mad Love, comes a comedy about dying—which is easy—and living, which is most certainly not.

The blurb about the book sounded like something I was interested to read, though the subject seemed a bit sad so I wasn’t sure what to expect for the story’s end.

The book is about a man called Nathan who finds out that he has an inoperable brain tumour. The book follows his life after he gets diagnosed, the band he is in and a girl he meets along the way. There are several really funny parts to the book which made me laugh out loud, one where Nathan has a reaction to some herbal tea that he is given while on a date with Alison (the girl he is falling in love with) which has disastrous consequences.

The book is really easy to ready and is well written, guaranteed to raise a smile and, will remind you that life really isn’t so bad.

And, I’m pleased to say that the ending made me smile!

What have you been reading recently? Do you have any book recommendations? Let me know in the comments as I’m always on the lookout for new authors and books to check out!!!

What is a Blogger?

7th May 20194th May 2019 | Suzi Stamp

What Is A Blogger_

When I say to people that I blog, most of them assume that I just write and publish to the internet but there are a lot of other things bloggers like me do aside from writing. Today I am sharing with you what a blogger is.

First and foremost a blogger is a writer, we write about lots of different things. There are blogs that people write about gardening, mental health, reviews on products, books, fashion and beauty. You name the topic and I’m sure there will be a blog post written about it somewhere on the internet.

We are content creators, we are constantly thinking about things that would be interesting to write about and things that fit into our blog niche.

We are photographers, taking photos of things that we can add to our posts, and alongside that we are image editors, tweaking our photos digitally to enhance the lighting, shadows and making the most of the subject we have chosen to capture.

We are graphics creators. We use different software’s to create page banners, logos and other items that we can add into our posts and social media channels to make them more visually appealing.

We are editors, writing posts and then re-reading them and checking them for grammatical and spelling errors, often re-writing parts of sentences and even whole paragraphs to make them easier to read.

We are social media marketers. We share our blogs on different platforms in the hope that other people will want to read the posts we have written.

We are website designers, choosing how our blogs look to the outside world and how they operate. We run checks to make sure that links work and things appear as they should and where they should.

We are schedulers. We often work out a schedule of posting that fits in with the rest of our lives, sometimes this is easy to do and other times it can be hard. Some people choose to blog daily and others work to a one post a week schedule. We can be driven by self-imposed deadlines and try our hardest to stick to the schedule we have.

We are “stats” people. Many of us are interested in the stats we generate, from page views to likes, comments and follows. We like to keep tabs on this information and try to make sense of it.

We are readers and researchers. We are always reading about things to do with our subjects and are interested in any new developments. We research our topics to make sure that our facts and writing are correct and that our thoughts and arguements are well rounded.

We are not takers and makers. We often have books full of ideas and thoughts, things we can do and things we need to do, things to look into and ways to improve.

But above all, we are human. We make mistakes and we have days where we don’t want to get out of bed or leave the house. We have lives outside of our blogs, we shop, we meet friends for coffee, we cook and eat food. And we are all unique in what we write, what we post and what we do.

Blog Bullet Journal

6th May 201928th Mar 2023 | Suzi Stamp

I mentioned in my Monthly Goals for May post that I had recently set up a Bullet Journal for my blog. I found that the little diary I had been using didn’t provide me with enough space to plan out my blog schedule and add many notes. I had been using a bullet journal in previous years for my general life which worked really well for handling different elements of my day to day life and thought that a bullet journal may work better for me and my blog than my current planner.

I happened to be perusing the aisles of my local Flying Tiger one week day while waiting for my Mum and found a cute little dotted journal that would be perfect for the task of a blog planner.

The journal itself is A5 with a rubbery feel hard coated cover which has dotted punch out detail and an image of the star constellation Ursa Major (which is also known as The Big Dipper, the Plough or the Saucepan!) in a silver print. I chose the pink colour although there were several other colours to choose from! I can’t remember how much I paid for the journal but I think it was around the £6-£8 mark which I think is a fairly reasonable price to pay!

The inside front page is blank and the rest of the note pages are dot grid in a grey tone print. The pages are not numbered though I don’t find that to be a problem as I don’t really use an index system anyway though it would be easy enough to hand number them if you so wished.

The note pages themselves are of a thicker gsm paper than a Lechtturm and I would say that they are very similar to those of the Scribbles That Matter pages. The paper is smooth and lovely to write on with no catching of pen nibs or pencils! Pencil lines rub out really easily with no damage or marking to the pages and ink seems to dry fairly easily and quickly. There is hardly any show through from one page to the next, the only shadowing I had was from using highlighters and going over the highlighted parts a few times, but a quick swipe over with a highlighter does not show through at all.

On to the set up…

The first page in any bullet journal that I set up is dedicated to a key which can be symbols or colours for different things. I kept my key simple with a colour code for each of my blog categories (which are the same as the colour code I use on my blogging spreadsheet). I use this key in my journal so I can see at a glance what posts fall on what days and have a variety of different post categories through the month.

The following double page is used for my yearly overview which is basically the year from May to December laid out in grid format where I colour code each posting day with the colour of that posts category. This layout means I can plan ahead any posts that I want and spread out the topics so that they are not all similar through the month. I added a strip of washi tape to the edge so that the page is easy to find (and to hide the unused grid dots…)

Following this page I then have my Monthly Overview page which I use to plan out the posts I want to write. I add the working title to the day I want to publish the post on. I use this page as a working planner and also to tick off posts that I have written and scheduled.

Next up is my Monthly Title Page. I like to put my title page on the right hand page as I find it easier to locate that month when flicking through the journal. I have kept the page pretty simple, with a square containing the initial of the month, so that I can write any ideas of things I’d like to add to my blog in the month that I have not yet scheduled into my monthly pages and am still thinking about. This helps me to keep the ideas in my mind and gives me something to work on in the month and develop.

I added another monthly overview page after the monthly title, this isn’t really necessary though I have been using it as a forward planner for items that I want to make a regular feature in my blog. I’m not sure if this will be something that I will continue with as, at the moment I’m not really using it.

The next series of pages are taken up with my Weekly Pages. I use one page for my weekly blog notes and the other for any extra things relating to my blog. I have also added sections for my social media accounts so that I can jot down any ideas that I have for them that are related to the blog.

And my final pages for the month are my monthly goals page and a page I added for social media. I thought that having my monthly goals page written out at the end of the month would help me to construct my Monthly Goals blog posts a little bit easier, at the moment these posts show my Goals for the month just gone and whether or not I have completed them and then list my goals that I am hoping to achieve for the following month. The social media page is an experiment and I’m hoping to track how many times I post to these sites and how many followers I gain or lose…

What sort of planner or planning do you do for your blog? Let me know in the comments!

Weekly Roundup 28/04/19 – 04/05/19

5th May 201928th Mar 2023 | Suzi Stamp

Weekly Roundup(1)

I am going to be adding a “Weekly Roundup” post to my blog which will go live on a Sunday. I have been wanting to do something like this for a while now as I always do things that I’d like to share but don’t really warrant a full blog post so, what better way to share than with a weekly roundup post? These posts will share things that I do in the week from a Sunday to Saturday and I’m hoping to share with you the little things I do on a day to day basis! I hope you will enjoy this new addition to the blog!

Weekly Round Up 28/04/19 – 04/05/19

Sunday 28th April

I had a decorating day and spent the day cleaning my bedroom and painting it purple! You can see more from my painting day here which I blogged about as part of the April Blogging from A to Z Challenge!

Monday 29th April

I worked in the day then came home and watched Pirates of the Caribbean – Salazar’s Revenge on Netflix with my friend. It was a lovely evening after a long day in work. I even managed to have an earlyish night!

Tuesday 30th April

Worked again today and I learned how to process some different types of payment which was good. I left work early (around 4.45pm) and came home. I worked on some bits for my blog – blog posts and a few ideas.

Wednesday 1st May

I have been thinking about painting the coving in my bedroom an antique gold colour…it has been painted purple at the moment as I painted it when I decorated, but think it would look so much better gold. I worked and then came home and cooked a Quorn fillet thing which had tomatoes, peppers and mushrooms in it. My friend came round and we had it for tea with pasta! It was really tasty! We started watching the Blue Planet on Netflix but didn’t get around to finishing watching it so have saved it for next time.

Thursday 2nd May

Woke up feeling super tired but managed to get to work on time (which was a miracle as I’d only woken up 45 mins before I had to be there…) My day went fairly quickly and I managed to get more done than I had anticipated. I came home and went to bed with Roxy for a little lie down and slept until 7:30pm. I got up and felt really groggy so Roxy and I chilled and watched Gossip Girl on Netflix and read a few blog posts before going back to sleep!

Friday 3rd May

I had today off on annual leave and helped my friend to fill in some forms about importing a van to the UK. I thought we would only need one form but it turns out we need a few other forms to be filled in as well. It’s a lot more complicated than I was hoping. I went out for lunch – Subway and had some food, then came home and filled in some more info on the forms before looking into what else was needed. I worked on a few ideas I have for the blog and some graphic work as well. I also hoovered the house and tidied a few things up as Mum and Dad are visiting (hopefully) tomorrow! I saw my neighbour, she called round with some recipe books that I let her borrow and we have made plans to go to the cinema next week to see Avengers Endgame which we are both really excited to see after we went to see Captain Marvel last month!

Saturday 4th May

I woke up early on Saturday, worked on my blog for much of the morning before cleaning the house. I ran the hoover around, cleaned the bathroom and did some washing. I then had a shower. Mum and Dad came up in the afternoon, Dad had bought a metal detector and I said he could use it in my garden. Dad and I had a fun hour or so digging up things (mostly rusty old nails!) while Mum pruned back the dead parts of my hydrangea and gooseberry bush ready for planting, After we had been in the garden for a bit we decided it was getting a bit cold so we all came back indoors. I then helped Mum and Dad to hang 2 mirrors for me – one in the bedroom and one in the bathroom. After they had gone I spent the afternoon having a full clean of my bedroom and re-arranging things. I worked on my blog for a bit longer before deciding to have an early night.

April Blogging from A to Z Challenge

4th May 201928th Mar 2023 | Suzi Stamp

AtoZ2019Header

The April Blogging from A to Z Challenge is now over and incase you missed the posts I had written for the challenge here is the full series. If you click on the letter it ~~will~~ should take you directly to that post!

How did you all get on with the challenge? Did you enjoy my posts? Please let me know in the comments!!!

AtoZ2019E — E is for Evening Skincare Routine

AtoZ2019M — M is for Morning Skincare Routine

AtoZ2019P — P is for Planning a Crafternoon

Monthly Goals – May

3rd May 201928th Mar 2023 | Suzi Stamp

I decided at the beginning of the year that I would not make any Resolutions or yearly goals but, rather, make monthly ones that were more easily obtainable, you can find all my Monthly Goal posts here.

Today I am looking at the goals I set myself last month and whether I achieved them and setting myself goals for May.

Here are last month’s goals and whether I managed them!

Blog and Social Media

Update my Media Kit. I didn’t get around to doing this as I underestimated how much of my time would be taken up with the April Blogging from A to Z Challenge but I’m hoping to get this done by the end of April.
Social media content. I started to post regularly to Instagram but only seemed to get people who would follow my account and then unfollow a few days later or accounts that were advertising food and drink supplements or diet pills which was really disheartening. It did get me thinking about things I could post to my account though and where I want to go with the whole social media thing in general. At the moment I’m not really that bothered about it but I do have some ideas in the pipeline for things that will be published specifically for Instagram and Twitter only.

Home

Make a start on the garden. I have managed to get some bramble clearing and weeding underway and have made a start in digging over the patch that I want to get some veg and flowers growing in. It’s a long process as I have lots of ivy and bramble roots to remove from the soil that is packed with stones and bits of broken glass and pottery.
Decorate the Spare Room and Kitchen. I didn’t decorate the spare room as I’m still undecided on the colour I want to go for and I’ve yet to finish painting the kitchen but, I did paint my bedroom which I had wanted to do for a while so I’d say this is a goal of sorts achieved!
Buy a new bookcase for the spare room. I’ve not bought a new bookcase yet as I still haven’t decided on a colour for the room yet and have not painted. I thought it wasn’t worth buying a bookcase and putting it up if I’m going to then have to move it in order to decorate the room so this goal has been placed on the back burner for the time being.

Art, Craft, Hobbies, and Interests

Make invites for my next Mind Crafternoon event. I haven’t made any invites yet but I have been looking for inspiration and ideas for the invites. I have been thinking about tying in the design with some of the activities I may be doing for the event and once I have the event activities all planned then I can make the invites. I have a few ideas of things I want to do on the day so it is just a case of finalising them and then taking my ideas and putting them on paper!
Create a few Scrapbook pages. Another thing I didnt manage because I was so absorbed in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge…maybe this month though? It would be ideal for me to combine this activity with making my Crafternoon invites!

Personal

Blogging from A to Z Challenge I am pleased to say that I managed to complete the challenge on time and in the correct order with all posts going out on the correct day and I’m super proud of this achievement even though other goals I set myself this month fell to the wayside because of this.

Goals for May

Blog and Social Media

Update Media Kit. This is something I am determined to do this month as it has been on my list for the last few months and it would be nice to actually get it updated and off the list!
Check all backlinks and make sure that they are all working as they should and also check categories and tags on my blog, making sure that all posts have a correct category assigned to them and that the tags are all relevant and present.
Work on Blog Awards. I have been kindly gifted a few different awards in the last month which I want to work on and share with you this month.
I’m thinking of introducing a few new elements to my blog so I want to work on graphics for these things and introduction posts for them.

Home

Paint the spare room. I have got a few different paint books now and have a few different colors picked out that I would like to get my friends opinion on before I make the purchase and start painting but hopefully, this will be done in May.
Wash all bedding and towels. I wash my towels altogether and bedding gets washed when I change it over but I have been drying my things in the house all winter and then putting it away. At the beginning of spring, when I can get everything dried on the line I like to wash everything and then dry it on the line and then put it away. Everything seems to retain a fresh smell and feel when it has been dried outside. I also like to take this time to check if anything needs mending or replacing too.
Sort clothing. We are fast moving from cold weather into warmer weather and summer is not too far off so this month I would like to start to pack away some of my winter clothing and start bringing into rotation some of my summer clothes.

Arts, Crafts, Hobbies, and Interests

Plant up peas and beans. I have set aside some of my flower bed to try and grow some peas and beans this year so I really need to get out and finish sorting the bed before I plant things but I feel that this should be done sooner rather than later as I don’t want to miss the planting season.
Rhubarb, Gooseberry and Hydranga. I have these plants already in my garden, I bought the rhubarb from the local garden centre, the gooseberry bush is in a pot in the garden and was there when I moved in and the hydranga was given to me by my brother from his garden. All of these really need to be in the soil soon. I think the gooseberry and hydranga are pot bound though I’m hoping that by planting them directly into the soil they will start to flourish.
Set up Bullet Journal for June. I set up a bullet journal for my blog as I just didn’t have the space in my blog planner that I needed. I am using it for this month and am finding that it gives me a lot more flexibility and space to organise everything so now I need to set up for June and July. So far I am happy with the layout I chose so will probably stick with it for at least june before making any layout tweaks that may be needed.

Personal

Read a book. In work we have a small bookshelf where people can bring any books that they have read for others to take and read too. There isn’t usually much there which I would read, but, when making myself a coffee the other day I spotted a Mandasue Heller book called Two-Faced which I picked up. I have read a few books by her and have really enjoyed them so this should be an enjoyable and attainable goal this month!
Give myself a manicure and pedicure. I haven’t been looking after my hands as well as I should, digging in the garden has left them in a bit of a state, and my feet have either been in wellies, shoes or slippers all winter so hae barely been given any attention so I think that both my hands and feet deserve some pampering.
Work on my book. I have not been working on my book notes as much as I have wanted and this last month I have not picked up my notes at all so I really want to get back into the habbit of working on it each week and maybe I’ll actually get a rough draft written up before the end of the year!

That’s all my goals for the month! What goals do you have for May? I’d love to hear what your plans and ideas are in the comments!