Birthday Celebrations

Yesterday was my birthday I'm now officially closer to 50 than 40 eek.

My delightful youngest daughter always gets so excited about other peoples birthdays and always decorates the front room with banners, confetti and balloons.
She is always the one that has to give ideas of what to get me.The girls have purchased 3 tickets for us to go and see Woman in Black at the theater in London on Tuesday.How exciting is that....
I got money, perfume and handbag/purse.

I had flowers lots of flowers.My newly found brother sent me a lovely bag of flowers.
So was a very lucky girl.
We went out for a meal on Friday to celebrate both my sons and my birthdays.
Yesterday we had a BBQ last night bit chilly but it was at least dry.
Up bright and early this morning to take DD to work

What do you all think?

I will post a proper post later but i need advice.I have had this on my Amazon wish list for ages and now i have had money for my birthday i can get it.All my family have laughed when i said its what i was thinking of getting and asked why i would need one.

What do you all think? Do you have one do you use it and would you recommend owning one?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0000ZH0DA/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

Snowballing

Im back
Newgirly asked me a very sensible question and one i have never even considered.She asked how much would i be saving by snowballing.
So for the first time i have entered the figures on just paying the basic monthly amount and how scary was that.
Here are the results

The Bottom Line

It will take you 152 months to pay off these debts if you snowball correctly. During that time, you'll pay £5,260.00 in interest.

This is paying the mortgage at £531.66 a month ,obviously this is all subject to interest rates mine is very low so plan is to keep going and pay off as much as possible and hope the rates dont go up until at least 2017 like some experts are saying.

Once debts are paid off each monthly amount is added to snowball so my monthly payment would be £1,462.00 this would then enable me to pay my mortgage off in 56 months.

By these figures i would pay £1,781.00 in interest. but this is only a rough figure as we will only get to that monthly payment when debts paid off but the difference in interest is not to be sniffed at (if i have done figures correctly)

Sorry about all the different fonts that's what you get for copy and pasting.


HBS


Out for a meal tonight with DS and rest of family (well most) as its my birthday tomorrow as well.DS is doing his own thing on Monday ( actual birthday)


Have a good week,a break will do you good.
x

Enjoying the sun whilst it lasted

It has been glorious in my neck of the woods for the last few days,changed a bit today though.In between work i have been making my washing machine do overtime.I have washed curtains,quilts in fact anything not nailed down has been washed.
We have had a few BBQ's and just enjoyed the sun.

I feel so relieved now i know things are getting sorted, current debt is now just a tad over £4500 so its definitely on the downward slope.Should break through another month on the mortgage free journey over the next few days,it should  go from 57 months to 56 months (this is if snowballing is achieved)

What a weekend

Im now back safe and sound from my trip to Paris.It couldn't have gone any better.
The journey to London on Friday didnt go to plan,We boarded the 7.27 am Paddington train only to be told it wouldnt be leaving as there had been a fatality on the line,We rushed to another platform to catch the slow train which took us 1 hour 20 instead of 27 mins.We arrived at Eurostar with 5 mins to spare.
Train journey was smooth and effortless we arrived at Gare de Nord at 13.47 (French time)  We were met at the station by our driver holding up a card with my daughters name on it.Our bags were carried to the car and we were driven to our hotel and wow what a hotel it was.
Once again our bags were taken in we checked in and were shown to our room.The pictures dont do it justice,We grabbed a map and set off on our travels.
We walked to the Louvre


was so excited to find this.
walked through the Tuileries gardens
 .

Once we reached Place de la Concorde  where we went right and wondered passed many beautiful buildings,Browsed in the little shops and made our way back towards our hotel,stopping on route for something to eat.
Saturday


Breakfast in the hotel was amazing i have never had a continental breakfast like it.Champagne was available as well as specially cooked food by the chef.
You can tell i dont normally stay in hotels like this as i couldnt resist bagging a few cakes and pastries to take out with us for later in the day.


We had to meet the over competition winners for a trip to the Tim Burton exhibition,We were very privileged to have the curator of the exhibition give us a personal tour.The exhibition was good but Tim Burton has been weired from a very young age.On way back the driver dropped us at the Louvre so we could start our walk to the Eiffel Tower and thats one seriously long work.We found a supermarket grabbed some lunch and sat by the tower to eat it.It was real effort to get up and begin our walk back..


Today we walked to the Moulin Rouge then caught the mini train up to Sacre Couer ,We had an amazing view as it was such a beautiful day.We then walked back towards hotel where we had lunch and waited to be picked up for our journey home .The car came at 3 pm to take us to the station.I was disappointed that i missed the end of the Tour de France,We saw all the preparations and hype and seeing the end on the news it was weired to see places we had walked by a few hours earlier.
We walked about 33km this weekend (wore a pedometer) we were treated so well by staff in the hotel ,taken to parts of the hotel that aren't open to the public.

Outside hotel

 Hotel reception

 Toilets

 Breakfast room

 Carpet on 1st floor

 Bedroom

 Bathroom

 Happy hour in Tapas bar

 Ready for bed,bed turned back,cloth on floor,curtains pulled,chocolate and next days forecast

 view from window

 Bucket of ice delivered to room to keep water cold

 Breakfast

 Jade in hotel bar

 Hotel used to be a bank

 Notre dame

 arriving at Tim Burton exhibition

 Notre dame

 Place de la Concorde prepared for Tour de France

 Lunch

 Moulin Rouge

 View from Sacre Couer

Truly a once in a lifetime experience.