Library Books and Weightloss

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These are our latest books out of the library.  DD1 seems to have stopped reading (or wanting to be read to) atm, but still wants to take books out of the library, so we've amassed quite a collection at home atm.

And, though not quite a week, I weighed myself this morning and haven't lost anything yet.  I've not been specifically dieting, so that's probably the reason, but it has crossed my mind, that I'm back on the Depo jab now.  I was never able to lose weight before, and the two times in recent history where I have been able to lose weight (immediately before getting pg with DD2, and immediately after her birth) I wasn't on contraception.  I hope this is just a coincidence, and it doesn't mean that I won't be able to lose weight at all now I'm back on depo.

New weightloss

I'm starting again, with a new weight target (not just because I've put on weight since my last post )

Current weight: 68kg
Goal weight: 60kg
Weight lost this week:N/A
Total weight loss: N/A

So, I lost the weight I wanted to for my sister's wedding, and everyone said how good I looked, which was nice. It did occur to me, though, that I lost a similar amount before I got pg with DD2 and nobody commented. I know I didn't change shape that time, despite losing over 2.5stone, I didn't drop a single dress size. That used to frustrate me with celebrities who would lose a single lb, but drop 3 dress sizes. This time, I lost weight and went from a size 18 to a size 14; and some of my 14s are too big - hurray! I've never been skinny, and tbh I don't think it'd suit me. My previous goal was 10st-something, which I made, and my ultimate goal was 10stone. This time, my first goal is 10st (approx 64kg) and my ultimate goal is a bit lower, so I know that if I do vary a bit, it's all ok.

I've got rid of all my clothes that are size 16 and above (except a few special things, including my wedding dress), and you wouldn't believe how many of my family (and DH's) have said that was silly, because what if I put on the weight again. Hmpf! They have no confidence in me to stay healthy, or buy myself some clothes! Well, it's a good thing I'm not going to put on weight, or I'll have to be naked, and that'd teach them!

Two!!

DD1 was being naughty again, and climbing on the table again again (it's a butterfly table, so cannot take the weight), so I shouted at her to get off, and finished by saying "How many times do I have to tell you?"  "Two!" she answered cheerfully.  It took all my concentration not to burst into giggles!  She was wrong anyway, because in the 3 mins I've been typing this, I've had to tell her to get off the table again. Hmpf.

An update

I realised I haven't been posting for a while.  A mixture of life having got in the way, me persuing ideas for The Swap Shop UK on facebook, and me falling asleep in the evenings, even when I'm watching a programme I'm really interested in (like Sherlock, last night).   This post is just an eclectic catch up of what's been happening round here.

So, recently when we've been to the library and got out the following books:

• How does a ship float?
• The lion king
• Princess Rani
• Bathtime
• Bless you!

We're also doing the Circus Stars Summer Reading Challenge where you have to read 6 books.  Well, we'd finish it in one week, if we just tried to read 6 books, so we just go back for 6 weeks.  We've already collected the first sticker for our circus stage.

My sister's wedding went really well.  Again, I need to write a separate post about that, but I can now start losing weight again.  That said, i haven't started yet, and will do so after this weekend.  I'm visiting my grandparents, so there is no point even trying to eat healthily there, but next week I will start watching my weight again.  I won't be doing the fat burning foods diet, but will be applying those principles to my normal cooking for the family.

The veg patch is really doing well.  We've been eating tomatoes, spring onions (which are now bulbous and the size of shallots!), and I've even had a few carrots.  The strawberry plant served us well, but has since died, because the hanging basket dried out over the weekend of my sister's wedding.  Next year, though, I will try and plant the seeds at the right distance apart to begin with, so I don't need to keep thinning down.

I still want to move house, and we're still unable to.  Sadly, I have started playing the lottery and so far have won £2.50 on the lottery and £1 on a scratch card.  Not enough for my dream house, yet.  My dream house is still available atm which is probably prolonging my misery.  I'd love to move into no 11 but it's not looking likely.  I've even tried to set my sights lower, and I've found no 13 Chapel Court but we still can't afford that.  It's half the price of my dream house, but double the price of where we currently live, that's in negative equity.  As I said before, we've no chance of ever moving house unless we win the lottery, but in the mean time I'm slowly losing all my savings.  You'd think for a semi-intelligient woman I'd know better, wouldn't you?

I am working on getting more money, without the lottery, although I know this is a much longer term solution, rather than the quick fix I need for either of the homes I want.  I've bought a website for my tutoring (a domain name and a hosting package) in order to advertise myself some more.  Unfortunately, I'm not that technically savvy at programming level languages (I can cope with the higher level drag/drop with a small amount of coding, but what I've bought seems to require a lot more) so DH is going to have to help me.  Unfortunately, with his anxiety, he's not convinced I've done the right thing.  Especially as i've bought a second domain name www.theswapshopuk.com so I can develop my swap shop idea.  Atm I'm planning everything on paper, and then will type the text up and send to DH so he can put it together for me.  He said it looked fairly easy, but when I queried whether that was 'easy for him' or 'easy for him to teach me' his face suggested it was the former, so it may be a while yet, before either of these sites go live.  At worst, I've just wasted £70, which would be a few takeaways; at best, I've not got the means to make some more money.  The website it meant to have an easy to use website building function thing called Click be.  I haven't even found that yet, so I really do need to learn more!

The Swap Shop UK

So, I have set up a page on FB called The Swap Shop UK.  The idea is simple: it's a mix of freecycle and ebay, so you list items that you have to offer, and people who want that item contact you directly, offer you something of theirs, and arrange a swap.  Lots of people seem to think it is a good idea, and after joining a couple of networking sites, in less than a week, I have over 150 Likes!  I just need to get more people to actually start offering things, because it is a bit slow atm.

The Swap Shop UK doesn't make any money from the transactions, and it is free to join and list your items; it just provides a platform for the transactions to take place.  There is a list of items that are banned (animals, alcohol and products, tobacco and products, adult material, fake designer things, and anything illegal, amongst others), so I need to work out a way of keeping those off from being offered.

Meanwhile, I am also looking at setting up a separate, non-FB site.  It will have higher security, and better features, and though I will be paying, personally, for the domain and hosting, I still will not be taking any money from the transactions.  Instead, if the website gets a fair amount of traffic, I will try to cover costs from advertising, so I am not out of pocket.  DH is worried about the legality, but I will have t&cs such that The Swap Shop UK is not liable for anything, and it is up to the individuals to declare (where appropriate) any gains to the HMRC.  I now have got to the point, where I want to move forward with this.  I don't think it will be a huge money spinner, tbh, because I am not charging to register, nor charging per listing (like ebay).  The idea is that you swap stuff, not cash, and in the same vein, it won't cost the individual anything to list and swap their items either.

I do want to get this going, and I have found a company that I can get hosting for £8.50/yr and a domain name for £10/yr, so if I do decide to add adverts to the site, I need to make at least £20/year, but I'd hope that would be possible.  I then need to work out how to direct any FB traffic to the new website, but hopefully that would be ok!?!

Swap Shop - a trial.

So, I've been giving this some more thought.  Incidentally, DH thinks it's a silly idea, and that if i should do anything, I should try and promote one of the existing sites.  I, however, have a tendency not to take the easy route. lol.  And anyway, I need a project to keep me busy.  So what that I'm a SAHM and pt tutor, there's always more hours in the day, right?  And as I'm discovering, if you want anything done, then do it yourself!

So (again), I initially thought about starting up a separate website, and use FB to try and promote it - you know how things go viral.  But, paying for a website, and then using FB seems a bit silly, so as a trial I am going to set up a FB Page or group to see how it fares.  if the interest is huge, then it probably makes sense to set up a separate webpage.

Now I'm going to have to go about doing this.  My first point of call is to do some research on pages vs groups.  I'm not sure which is better?  If I have to set up a new FB account to do a page, then I will have to get a free email address, as I don't want to link it to me (yet. Of course, if it's successful...).

Then once the page/group is set up, I will have to link to it and share as much as possible to try and get members/'likes'.  And I have to hope that some people will start swapping.  It will be not for profit, and no money is to exchange hands.  In the research I was doing yesterday, I saw some info on tax, so I may reproduce/link to it.  In the same vein as ebay, I think you only need to declare if you are a frequent swapper or have made capital gains, but clearly I'm no lawyer or tax expert, so I don't know.

Anyway, I'll start researching now, whilst I'm waiting for dinner to cook, and maybe you'll join me in my quest for swapping.

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Edit: if you are on FB, please search for The Swap Shop UK and like it.  It is a cashless swapping site, and I need 25 'likes' to have a better/more direct address.

Swap Shop!

I'm really trying to find new ways that will enable us to move house.  My short-term plan of winning the lottery, so far, isn't succesful, so I'm trying to come up with other things. 

My first thought was a house raffle, where people buy a ticket for the raffle (say £1000 each), we only need to sell 200 tickets, and then someone can win our house!  Whilst there are a couple of site that will help with that such as http://win-house.co.uk/blog/running-your-own-competition.html, house raffles are actually illegal in the UK.  This can be overcome by setting up a competition, rather than a raffle (eg to enter you have to pay however much and answer a question), but it seems like a lot of effort.  Especially considering that many houses that you can win are over £1M and many of them haven't sold enough tickets, so have remained unsold (though the winner gets a cash prize of the profits).  Given that our mortgage is currently £120k and our house worth approx £105k, I'm guessing that people probably won't be up for spending £1k for a chance of winning it.  Even if we dropped the price of the ticket to £10, then we would need to sell 14,000(!) just to make the recommended 15% to cover costs!

So, now I'm inspired by The Red Paperclip story (http://oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com/).  You know the one - a guy starts with a paper clip, keeps swapping it until finally he has a house!  Simples!  So, now I've been looking at various swapping websites.

My first difficulty, is that most 'swapping' websites are nothing of the sort, but rather are selling websites.  That is fine, but I'm cash poor, but have lots of stuff. I freecycle a lot (as ebay generally costs me the listing fees, but doesn't make much money), and maybe just maybe I can swap my old things for something better?

The only true swapping sites that I have found are http://www.preloved.co.uk/ and http://www.u-exchange.com/.  (I have come across a few skills-swap sites, but atm I'm reserving my 'skill' of tutoring for paying customers! lol)  Even http://www.craigslist.org/about/sites (which the red paperclip guy used) is mainly selling.

Whilst browsing the first two sites, I discovered that you can swap your house!  Most of the sites, if you type into google, are links to swapping council houses.  Not being a council tenant, that's not what i'm looking for.  However, there are swapping sites for owners of houses.  Some of them are proper swaps, some are selling sites (but without estate agent fees).  Still, I'll list them all here, as it's interesting to know what is about:
http://www.houseswaptogo.co.uk/
http://www.swap-a-property.co.uk/index.php
http://www.uk-auction-websites.co.uk/
http://www.ukpropertyswap.com/
http://www.switchproperties.co.uk/

So, now I am going to raid my stuff, and try my damnedest to up-swap my things.  TBH, I am tempted to set up a pure swapping website, as I do feel that is lacking.  the main thing holding me back is lack of interest/awareness.  I'm sure the interest is there - just see how popular freecycle is! - but setting up a website, and relying on other people to share it, word of mouth; will it work?  Or will it just end up being a list of my junk (sorry, I mean 'highly desireable stuff') and nobody interested at all.

If i did set it up, it would require free membership and absolutely no money to exchange hands.  All 'adverts' would be 'offers' and it would be up to the 'wanter' (that's a T, not a K - hehe) to make an offer.  All adverts expire after 7 days, at which point the 'giver' can choose from the offers that has been made, that which is the best for him.  If there have been no offers, or nothing that he wants, he can relist the item, which again, would automatically expire after 7 days.  Regarding actually swapping, it would be up to the 'wanter' to arrange delivery/postage/collection etc; so it may be better to set this up regionally perhaps?  Maybe not at first, I'll wait until there were enough members for things to start moving.  Maybe have ratings (ebay stylee) of 'givers' so that people know who they can trust, and if someone doesn't swap/send the item, they will get removed from the site.  Not sure how the details will work, I'll have to give it some more thought, but if you are reading this, do you think it'll be a good idea?  Would you be interested in something like that?