This morning I took advantage of Starbucks latest promotion. The American coffee house giant has introduced a new policy in that they no longer call out your coffee by its name, instead they will be calling out your name. This marketing stunt is designed to make Starbucks appear more personal, setting it apart from the Costas, Coffee Republics and Cafe Neros. Today they were giving away lattes free of charge as long as you tell the barrista your name. The giveaway has gained loads of coverage on the net and is one of the top topics on social networking site Twitter, to find out more here's the BBC's take on things: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17356957. Having weaned myself off of coffee shop take aways it was a nice mid-morning treat to enjoy one knowing it hadn't cost me anything.


In other news, there's nothing more to really report; enjoyed a fairly frugal weekend of Saturday night drinks (I drove so ended up only spending about a tenner) though I did buy a £10 H&M voucher off my friend as she was given it for Christmas and nothing in the shop fits her. I might save it for my sister's birthday in June to go along with the Marmite set I picked up for her in the Boots sale.

On Sunday we made the most of the sunny spring-like weather and cycled over to Richmond Park and enjoyed a picnic as the sun set. We then cycled over to our friends new flat who have just bought their first home, then back to ours to whip up some carrot soup for the week. I bought a huge bag of carrots for 50p from Asda, chopped them up, threw in half an onion lingering in the fridge along with some vegetable stock boiled it up and blended. It made six portions of soup which should be my lunches for the week. Its been surprisingly filling and at less than 10p a portion great value for money.

Finally, yesterday I really needed to pick up a few bits from Sainsburys so dipped into my Nectar poitns- what would have been a £5.30 spend ended up costing me just 30p. Oh and the water bill has come in for the next year at £80 each, which works out at £6.60 per month, which is liveable. We're paying in two installments the first due at the beginning of April. then the second at the beginning of October. I've picked up another extra bar shift on Saturday which should hopefully cover this half. And lastly its official, our rent isn't going up because 'we've been such good tennants' in the words of our landlord... the same day the oven broke sods law ay?