I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen loads of those banners saying “earn cash for browsing the web”, gone “yeah right” and ignored them completely. As I’ve mentioned before, I quite often pop on a few prize draw sites and surveys – won a couple of prizes (£200 once, yay!) after a lot of boring form filling in and still waiting to hit the minimum pay outs on the web surveys, so generally motivation is low (Aside: has *anyone* had a payout from You Gov surveys yet?!).

Anyway, someone told me about Free Fivers and I thought I’d give it a go. The basic idea is that they’re a collection of shop and site ads who give you cashback on purchases if you click through them or pay you pence per click through. The most lucrative seem to be the bingo sites, many of whom will offer deals like “deposit £10 get £15 cashback” (as long as you’re disciplined enough to *only* play through your initial deposit, that is). The most useful part of the site though, is a click through guide written by one of the users (see the Forums) which, in theory, helps you to earn about £3 a day just running through the free clicks (i.e. the ones you don’t have to buy anything from). In practise, I mostly get about £1.50 to £2 on a run through and it takes me about 20-30 mins. I also get any online purchases that I would have made anyway by clicking through to the shop via them. My running total at the moment is about £45, those are mostly the free click throughs and I joined on the 31st October – it adds up fairly fast. It’s a slow process – minimum payout is £25 but you have to wait for them to be validated which takes about a month – should get a cheque on the second month after joining if you’re consistent, but don’t expect a payout in time for Christmas. I haven’t had a cheque yet, but I know people who have so I know they’re legit.

If any of my UK readers fancy joining and want to use this link instead of the one above, I get a fiver once you receive your first £25 cheque for no extra cost to yourselves, but please don’t feel obligated to use it – I’m recommending the site because it’s useful rather than pimping for dosh. Hopefully at least the stay at home mums among us might find the extra cash handy!

… to Amy! Hope it’s a good one, hon.

We’ve had a bit of an expensive month. First expense was a planned expense – an exercise bike for me in one of my many attempts to find an exercise that I like and doesn’t take up too much time. So far, it’s proving a good purchase as I’ve combined it into only allowing myself to watch TV if I do some cycling at the same time – am now up to 30 mins a night on the easy setting.

As I said, that was planned, so not too hard hitting on the budget. But then, all our electrical appliances rebelled. First the printer died – I mean really dead, not just a little broken – but giving it credit, it was fairly old and well used. That, of course, needed to be replaced immediately as Akra works from home a couple of days (and evenings) a week. As the scanner has been dodgy for a while, we replaced both at the same time with an all-in-one singing, dancing and probably make you a cup of tea printer. Great.

Then I was browsing through some websites and found these beauties and they immediately fell into my “don’t need them but I WANT them” list. My old Panasonic upright vacuum cleaner (which I’ve disliked for a while now) took this as the final insult and stopped working completely the very same day. Akra thinks it was sabotage, but it wasn’t I promise. Somehow, I didn’t think our budget would stretch to £300+ for a robotic light vacuum cleaner, so I went for a Henry and here he is in all his glory!

Isn’t he fab?! The kids love him (in fact, Akra Jr is convinced Henry is his and I only borrow him from time to time – I’m planning on training on hoovering technique very very shortly), he’s excellent on hard floors or carpet, he’s got much better suction than the old one and far more reliable than any of the fancier vacuum cleaners (including Dysons). Also, WHY did no-one tell me how much easier a cylinder cleaner is compared to an upright?! So much quicker, easier and no faffing with tools. I’m in love. And all for only £85 – bargain!

Only problem now is… the Sky box has started to get a bit dodgy… *gulp*.

And where better to restart the blog than with an angry rant? This incident is wrong on so many levels and a prime example on why England should have breastfeeding in public places protected by law similar to the recent law passed in Scotland.

You know, I think I find bum cleavage in public offensive, d’you think a police officer would intervene for me if I complained?

… but more of a sabbatical.

Guess who couldn’t stay away?

Lots been happening over the last month, but I don’t really know where to start. The intention was that without the blog, I was going to do lots more “proper” writing, but that hasn’t happened, and I just missed this daily brain dump far too much. I knew it was getting serious when I was writing out whole posts in my head and having nowhere to “release them into the wild”.

I’ve got Akra to give me a quick blog overhaul, so things are still a little basic in here. I plan to do something about that gradually as I can be bothered.

So, you can all either breathe a sigh of relief, or run for the hills – whichever you feel most appropriate.