Live on £4,000 for a year - 2009, Part 4

Frugaldom

Hi guys!

Bails, I spotted your frantic plea for inclusion in any possible future frugathering. :rotfl:Still not sure how to orchestrate it but we've plenty of time, you've a wedding to organise and I'm not yet super slim, so still won't fit into my old clothes. Could always make a belt for my big jeans from baler twine, though! :rotfl:

LETS meet was very quiet with only a couple of us there, but I did manage to come home with a few 'good things', like some handmade cotton gift bags, a wooden bird house, some books, a big bag of organic chard & some celery. :j I popped into the butchers and managed to get a piece of boiling beef and a large smoked ham hock, so that's this weekend's soup making taken care of, plus I'll G00gle to see what else I can make from the chard. (Plus I'll keep some for the 'neebor'. )

Just baked another loaf and the breadmaker seems to be behaving fine since the paddle got hit with the hammer and then oiled. :rotfl: Thanks for the tips about it jamming, I'd have given up and headed for €Bay if I hadn't read about it happening to others, too. :T

Edited in - I found some interesting and tasty sounding things to do with chard here

bails

La Senza Pjs bought thanks to the weekly email :T I'll be sorted for ages and I love snuggling up in cosy pjs

Hour long chat with one of my bridesmaids for FREE on Skype - got to see her scan pic and her bump, v exciting, and of course ask her to be my bridesmaid! :j

slowlyfading

evening everyone.

Another NSD for me which is good I went to Mr A last night and spent £9.55 on some fruit, yogurts, throat sweets and some biscuits. I don't quite understand how that adds up to £9.55?

Not feeling that good this evening - my voice has nearly gone, my head is banging and i just feel really lousy. I had a bottom yr7 set last lesson and it didn't go that well either, so its just not been the best day. I'm going to aim for an early night, as I have 3 lessons in a row tomorrow, so I need to be on better form then.

bails - that's so exciting! I presume she said yes!

Hope everyone's having a good evening.

sf x x

savingfortravel

Hi Everyone!

Been busy writing reports. Making good progress. Trouble is I tend to graze after working longer hours and that's not good for the tum is it?
Bought the bottle of wine so got the 175 T*sco points. Also bought 10 x 4 tins of tuna so stockpiling is going well too.
Not much else to report really.

SFT

Blairweech

SF - Hope you feel better soon
Nyk - Would love a frugathering but Scotland is just too far for me to travel I'm afraid

I am exhausted after 2 12 hour days. And it is bone-searingly cold in my house, so I'm just curled up in bed with the blanket on.

Re: Christmas presents - I am only buying for 6 people this year (maybe 8 at a push), and I definantly have my frugal head on for it. Will be cashing in all points, vouchers etc and have set a strict budget limit which forces creativity.

Not much else to say right now. Zzzzzzzz......

grandma247

Sf hope you feel better soon. I am just getting over it,started with a whacking headache on Sunday. I have had a lovely couple of days doing map jigsaws with ds3. I have taken all our jigsaws out of their boxes and put them in clear zipbags from wilks with the end of the box with the small pic on and if the large picture will go in then that too. Any pictures that are too big are going in a folder. They now occupy 1/4 of the space.

bails

Hope you feel better soon SF. Take it steady, as it really is a full-on year x

Blair, what about the train?

Don't worry too much SFT; report writing deserves compensation, and I'm sure you can take some extra long walks once they're out of the way to make up for it.

Jigsaws sound great Grandma - we have a 3D one of the world; that was fun but not as difficult as the one of thesolar system :eek:

Must.Go.To. Work. Feeling a little coldy here also. The weather changed suddenly yesterday - looks like full on winter is descending.

Frugaldom

Good morning

Hope you're feeling fighting fit by tomorrow, SF

Blairweech, don't worry about the frugathering, it was just a suggestion someone (Bails?) made a while back that it would be good if several of us could meet up at the same time, then Shaz mentioned caravans and there are a couple of small sites on farms near us. :rotfl:You know how these things develop. Travelling isn't always easy, as it costs so much to reach places that don't have local railway stations, but there is a bus comes through our nearby town from London (Victoria station) if that's any help? It travels via Manchester & Birmingham but not sure where else, as I've never been on it.

Spent most of last night listening to more drips in the attic, so landlord will need to be informed that we need the roofers back.

Made the beef stock in the slow cooker overnight and now have a pot of broth on the go with a tub of extra stock removed for freezing. I also removed the boiling beef and sliced off all the meat that I could, so it's now in a container for using in chow mein or beef curry or similar. I could be extravagant and eat it on a sandwich, but it's going in the freezer to remove that temptation.

PS - Blairweech - I always wanted to visit the Eden Project, if I ever get around to that, maybe those of you in the south could organise a frugathering.

mama67

Found a small gammon joint in the freezer on Tuesday so yesterday cooked it up and then made "granddads soup" using the brae(stock), leeks, grated carrots, orange lentils, large diced potato and some of the gammon diced back in.

Lovely with hm bread.

I also put 2 tubs of the brae into the freezer for cooking my brussel sprouts in as we love the taste of them cooked this way.

FrankieM

Morning everyone,
No spend yesterday and it should stay that way until Saturday. Who thought not spending money could be so much fun!
I didn't get any cooling/baking /housework done yesterday, so I'll be pottering around today. DH is away from tonight until Sunday so That may encourage me to get myself into gear..or not!
So, today I've got to deal with the chicken stock. The soup is for tomorrow night, so I may make it up today and leave it on the stove for tomorrow, rather than freeze it today to defrost tomorrow. I think I'll do the flapjack and also some jam tarts as I've got loads of odd bits of jam in the fridge to use up. Also some kind of cheese and onion pasty thingy with someleft over pastry I have in the fridge. I'll serve those with the soup and bread tomorrow. I love using stuff up!

Hope you all have a good day.