Alex's family are quite a tight knit bunch, so whenever there is a birthday everybody decends on mass on that person, so when Oscar's birthday came round, so did nanny and grandad.
Actually, they didn't come over for Willow's birthday as they where both in Spain, and Alex's brother didn't come over as my sister in law was about to give birth. Conversely Ben & Sarah didn't come over for Oscar's birthday as she's just given birth!
Anyway, nanny and grandad came over and did the dutiful grandparent bit at the weekend, skillfully managing to arrive at the end of the party, just as the tidying up had drawn to a close.
Now, food is also a big thing in the life of Alex's family, and a celebration gathering is all very important. Unfortunately, in our current financial situation, Alex's mum discovered that our cupboards were bare, so instead of taking us out for a meal, decided to take me to Tesco.
I can't say that I was annoyed, because to be perfectly honest I was immensely grateful, but there is something intensely weird about your mother in law taking you shopping for groceries.
Without my knowledge, she had rifled throught the cupboards and written a long list of everything we hadn't got (and she thought we should have) and off we went.
It was a very surreal time following her round as she told me what we needed and filled the trolley for me. Every now and then she would ask 'do you need such and such?' to which I would reply 'yes?' not sure if she would then chastise me for being too grabbing.
To be totally honest, what I really wanted to do was slap her and tell her not to be so nosy, and that I was an adult now and could look after my own family, and I didn't need her doing it for me. I didn't want to accept her charity. I want to be able to fend for myself, I should be able to, I am old enough now. But I didn't. Lets face it, I would have been very stupid to do so. So I chewed the inside of my cheek, and smiled meekly and thanked her profusely. I have to put other people first over my own misplaced need to be independant. I have children to feed, but having to ask someone else is it ok if you buy my children some yoghurts, at the age of 37 is more than a bit galling.
Monday 8 June 2009
Cheap birthday parties
This weekend was Oscar's Birthday party. We always do the kids parties at home, as we can't afford to hire some flashy venue and a ready made party - just fork out loads of dosh, and sit back and let somebody else do all the hard work.
Anyway, he wanted to have a Star Wars party, as he is obsessed with it, so I checked out some ideas on the internet, and away we went. The whole thing was done on a minimal budget.
We played Star Wars music through the party, I borrowed a CD from a geeky freind.
Game One - Asteroid Hunt. I have a pack of plastic pirate treasure coins and red paper bags, so I wrapped the gold coins in tin foil and pretended they were asteroids, hid them around the house and then they had to hunt for them.
Game Two - Lightsabre Skills. I collected kitchen roll tubes for weeks before hand which I then painted some red and some green, attached rolled up black card at one end for the handle and decorated with circles of shiny paper for the buttons. Blew up some balloons and they had to keep the ballons in the air as long as they could.
Game Three - Harness the power of the Galaxy. Collected jam jars and cleaned them out, removing the labels. The children put sequin confetti stars in the jam jars and then put in different shades of glitter. I then filled the jam jar to the top with water and hey presto! An instant galaxy snow storm!
Game Four - Jedi Training (obstacle course) I don't know how many of you are avid star wars watchers, but in The Empire Strikes Back, Luke goes to vist Yoda on Degoba to start his jedi training, part of this consisted of running around a swampy jungle with yoda strapped to his back and hurled insults in his ear. So we recreated this scene, just without the swamp and the insults. I very quickly made a soft toy Yoda from felt and gave him a little jedi jacket (see above) and in the game, the kids took it in turn wearing a little backpack with Yoda stuffed in the front pocket, and then they took turns doing an obstacle time trial. Originally it was supposed to be outside, but as it rained that day, we quickly changed it to indoors involving chairs and stairs!
Game Five - Pass the Thermal Detonator. Just like Pass the Parcel, but a bit more exciting at the end. I made a Thermal detonator shape using a balloon blown up just a little and papier mache'd over it with newspaper and wallpaper paste (approx 50p from Focus). When it dried I decorated it to look like a thermal detonator and put a R2-D2 key ring (approx £2.50 from Legoland) inside it with loads of shredded tissue paper. Then I sealed it up and wrapped it up like a normal pass the parcel would be, with the corresponding number of layers to children ratio, with a sweet in each layer(this is vitally important). So as you play and everyone has had a go and removed one layer and had a sweetie we are then left with the thermal detonator. The kids then had to pass it around really quickly incase the bomb exploded, and then when the music stopped, whoever had the bomb had to quickly rip it open before the bomb went off!
Food - For their tea I made the kids Chicken Nuggets and chips. This is my staple party fare. I don't know many kids that don't eat either chicken nuggets or chips. It's easy to do, you just chuck it in the oven. There is no hours of preparing sandwiches before hand (which they never eat) and wasting money on loads of sickly part food only to have loads left over because you over estimated and had too much left. Afterwards we had jelly and icecream, with as many different sprinkles and toppings as they like, again, not much waste. Spare icecream goes back in the freezer. 3 pints of jelly all got eaten, and only cost a couple of pounds. Drinks where lemonade with a touch of green food colouring (yoda soda) and blackcurrant/orange juice (jedi juice).
After tea, to work of some of that sugar we had -
Destroy the Death Star - I made a huge pinata using a large punch balloon as a paper mache mould. It took about three days to dry out completely. I then filled it with loads of sweets I bought (massive tub from Costco - £3) and more shredded tissue paper etc. Then sealed it up and decorated it loosely to look like the Death Star. During the party, it was hung menacingly above their heads, but at pinata time it was lowered and then they took it in turns to beat it with a plastic lightsabre! I must say, as my first ever pinata making, it was quite a bit sturdier than was neccesary. Alex had to help them out a bit with a Stanley knife, or they might still be at it now. When the pinata came apart all the kids dove on top of all the sweets like a pack of hyenas.
Party Bags - these consisted of the following
Star Wars Colouring Sheets downloaded from the internet.
Lego Star Wars Stickers downloaded from the internet, cut out and fed through Willow's sticker making machine.
Their Galaxy Snow Storm
The Light sabre they used in the game,
Some balloons left over from lightsabre skills game,
The sweets from the pinata.
Slice of Darth Vader Cake.
The cake I made using the tin I hired from the cake shop at the top of my road. I had loads of icing left over from making Willow's birthday cake so I just used that. Unfortunately, this was turquoise as she had a dolphin cake, but luckily I had some black food colouring so I painted that over the top.
Altogether I paid out the following
Balloons £1
Key Ring £2.50
Wall Paper Paste 50p
2 bags of Chips £2
2 tubs of ice cream £1.40
jelly 70p
juice £2
lemonade 60p
Sweets £3
cake tin hire £3
Tuesday 2 June 2009
Pie in The Sky
Hello, It's me again, I have risen like a phoenix from the ashes, at least for this week any way. Thought I'd answer your lovely questions about Sky, although I don't know a great deal about it.
1. I am aware of the Sky TV/Broadband/Phone package. I happen to think it's quite a good idea, I think there a couple of other companies you can get a package like this from, Virgin being one of them. There are several reasons we don't have a package like this -
a. Neither Alex nor myself are sufficiently interested in television enough to be bothered about having more channels of bad programmes to watch. The only thing we would have got Sky for would be so we could watch Lost, but they don't offer that channel in their lowest price package.
b. We can't afford it. Sky's lowest priced package would be the equivalent of what we currently pay for our telephone and broadband, (tv is freeview) so would just be time wasting to change for no benefit. See above.
c. Neither Alex or myself are interested in football or boxing and have no wish to watch it constantly.
2. I have to say, I don't have much of an opinion on adverts apart from when I see them so often they become highly irritating, or they are very clever, in which case I appreciate them as a piece of art, not necessarily as an advert, or they have really cool music in, but I remember the music and not the advert. I don't really remember many adverts, that part of my brain obviously doesn't work.
So, speaking objectively, I think if I saw an advert explaining how much I can save with a Sky bundle, I could possibly be interested in finding out any benefits/savings I might make if I change, a bit like changing gas/electricity provider. If I saw an advert explaining what I could win through Sky, I would very sceptically probably laugh, and ignore it. I was brought up to believe you never get something for nothing, and if it sounds too good to be true, it is. If I see an advert with real people talking about how much they saved and what they spent it on, I would think they were actors for starters, and if they weren't, then I would think they were very sad individuals if they previously spent so much money that they saved enough to have a tangible amount after the change. It just gets absorbed into the big wallet in the sky. I think in that respect, the first option, even though on the face of it is very boring, would be the one that I would be most likely to feel positive about.
3. When do I tend to be thinking about value for money? Well, value for money is an ambiguous term. Someone told me a story once which I thought was VERY interesting, and VERY apt for my current situation. It goes something like this -
A rich man can afford to buy a pair of hand made Italian leather shoes, made to fit him. They are made from top quality leather and will cost a lot of money but will last him a lifetime. A poor man, can only afford to buy a pair of shoes made from cheap leather, which will rub his toes and wear out very quickly and need replacing every year. On the face of it, the poor man is getting better value for money, because he is buying cheap shoes, but over their lifetimes, the poor man has actually spent more money replacing the bad shoes, that the rich man.
My point is, value for money isn't actually about what you can afford. It is about quality, and what saves you money in the long term. Most people in my predicament can't currently afford value for money, because it means shelling out more cash in the short term.
My current mission, is actually to go as many days as possible without spending ANY money at all. At last count I have approx £20 to last me until the 20th of June when (fingers crossed) Alex gets paid, but that's another story.
So I think about value for money EVERY TIME I think about spending money. I weigh up whether I should a, be spending the money in the first place, b, can I afford it? c, is it poor value for money and am I only buying this one because it costs the least.
4. I think if I was likely to need advice about saving money, or looking for good value, I would generally use the Internet, and try a web site such as money saving expert, or just do a google search. But then I don't really have enough money to spend, to buy something that would require advice.
x
1. I am aware of the Sky TV/Broadband/Phone package. I happen to think it's quite a good idea, I think there a couple of other companies you can get a package like this from, Virgin being one of them. There are several reasons we don't have a package like this -
a. Neither Alex nor myself are sufficiently interested in television enough to be bothered about having more channels of bad programmes to watch. The only thing we would have got Sky for would be so we could watch Lost, but they don't offer that channel in their lowest price package.
b. We can't afford it. Sky's lowest priced package would be the equivalent of what we currently pay for our telephone and broadband, (tv is freeview) so would just be time wasting to change for no benefit. See above.
c. Neither Alex or myself are interested in football or boxing and have no wish to watch it constantly.
2. I have to say, I don't have much of an opinion on adverts apart from when I see them so often they become highly irritating, or they are very clever, in which case I appreciate them as a piece of art, not necessarily as an advert, or they have really cool music in, but I remember the music and not the advert. I don't really remember many adverts, that part of my brain obviously doesn't work.
So, speaking objectively, I think if I saw an advert explaining how much I can save with a Sky bundle, I could possibly be interested in finding out any benefits/savings I might make if I change, a bit like changing gas/electricity provider. If I saw an advert explaining what I could win through Sky, I would very sceptically probably laugh, and ignore it. I was brought up to believe you never get something for nothing, and if it sounds too good to be true, it is. If I see an advert with real people talking about how much they saved and what they spent it on, I would think they were actors for starters, and if they weren't, then I would think they were very sad individuals if they previously spent so much money that they saved enough to have a tangible amount after the change. It just gets absorbed into the big wallet in the sky. I think in that respect, the first option, even though on the face of it is very boring, would be the one that I would be most likely to feel positive about.
3. When do I tend to be thinking about value for money? Well, value for money is an ambiguous term. Someone told me a story once which I thought was VERY interesting, and VERY apt for my current situation. It goes something like this -
A rich man can afford to buy a pair of hand made Italian leather shoes, made to fit him. They are made from top quality leather and will cost a lot of money but will last him a lifetime. A poor man, can only afford to buy a pair of shoes made from cheap leather, which will rub his toes and wear out very quickly and need replacing every year. On the face of it, the poor man is getting better value for money, because he is buying cheap shoes, but over their lifetimes, the poor man has actually spent more money replacing the bad shoes, that the rich man.
My point is, value for money isn't actually about what you can afford. It is about quality, and what saves you money in the long term. Most people in my predicament can't currently afford value for money, because it means shelling out more cash in the short term.
My current mission, is actually to go as many days as possible without spending ANY money at all. At last count I have approx £20 to last me until the 20th of June when (fingers crossed) Alex gets paid, but that's another story.
So I think about value for money EVERY TIME I think about spending money. I weigh up whether I should a, be spending the money in the first place, b, can I afford it? c, is it poor value for money and am I only buying this one because it costs the least.
4. I think if I was likely to need advice about saving money, or looking for good value, I would generally use the Internet, and try a web site such as money saving expert, or just do a google search. But then I don't really have enough money to spend, to buy something that would require advice.
x
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