FRUGAL LIVING CHALLENGE 2010, part 2, April - June.

jtb2412

Morning all

Had a lovely weekend at my parents and got spoiled rotten (e.g. no cooking or washing up )

Sunday afternoon was spent on a free visit to Anglesey Abbey (my sis bought us National Trust membership for an xmas pressie :j). We did pay £1.50 for the kids to do the Easter Egg Hunt, I think even us adults enjoyed solving the clues ! Although it was a bit cold, it was really good to get out in the fresh air. The snowdrops had all but finished though and the gardens looked a bit 'dormant' but the house was lovely and we enjoyed it.

We had other family members round on Sunday evening for an Italian night English Pub Quiz :rotfl:. Me and DH bought the food and cooked for all 16 of us :eek:, (home-made carbonara, italian breads, tiramisu and cheesecake plus a few other things). Total cost approx £30 so £1.87 each and that included a prize for the winners of the quiz :T. That spending will come out of our 'entertainment' budget so it hasn't impacted on this month's food spend.

I dragged my dad along to the local monthly village jumble sale on Saturday morning and picked up a few things. I've now got my winter coat - a black long-length wool and cashmere blend - and I paid the grand sum of 20p for it :j. I don't think it's ever been worn. Not sure if I dare pop it on a really cool wash though, anyone have any ideas as to whether it would be ok?

I haven't had chance to catch up with you all yet, I might get on later tonight for a read but we're busy getting ready for holiday and time is running out fast ! Plus the fact that DH has pulled his back and I'm going to have to do everything for the next couple of days (where's that roll eye smiley ! ).

Hope everyone is ok xx

Puddleglum

lynzpower wrote: »

Hey michelle

I notice you are also a geocaher I try but I only have the app on the iphone and it just doesnt get reception in the peaks

I was considering spalshing out on a gps, but didnt want to overspend- do you have one? Can you recommend it?

Hi Lynzpower, we have both the app and the cheapest gps and find that they compensate each other. We were crawling around Cheddar Gorge the other day and most of the time it was only the app that worked. When the gps managed to get a signal it was much more accurate though.

Hope this helps

Puddleglum

cha97michelle

lynzpower wrote: »

Hey michelle

I notice you are also a geocaher I try but I only have the app on the iphone and it just doesnt get reception in the peaks

I was considering spalshing out on a gps, but didnt want to overspend- do you have one? Can you recommend it?

We have a Garmin etrex summit and it is pretty good. It has a compass pointing the direction, tells you how far till you get there, and stores quite a lot of data. We like it as it also shows a basic map. We started out trying to use DH's sat nav and it just didn't cut it as we prefer the country ones. We find this one is fairly good. My friend uses the cheapest etrex which is basically a posh compass in my opinion. Ours can be affected if there are a lot of trees, but not as badly as hers is. She finds it adequate though.

Ours was about £130 but we got my parents to get it for us as a family christmas present, and it is lovely to use it. Makes geocaching so much easier. We haven't found a couple, but we found our 42nd one yesterday, so i think a fairly good success rate.

Blairweech

Good morning everyone,

Not done much this weekend - went to a couple of carboot sales, bought a shirt (£2) and Monopoly card game (50p). I tried to do my application for student finance yesterday, what a failure that was - could the form BE any more complicated??? So, have to ring them today. OH is coming round, and the weather seems to be quite nice so hopefully we will go out somewhere. Being very frugal so far this month

Puddleglum

Well our car maintenance budget has just been well and truely blown! £300 for a new pair of front springs and a tyre. Garage said that they are replacing 2 sets of springs a week at the moment because of the state of the roads. Manufacturers of car suspension parts must be loving this recession - oops recession is so last year now!

Make that £500 as the garage discovered more damage when the spring was removed.

Frugaldom

Glad everyone who had or has hols is making the most of them.

Weather here is horrible, still pouring with rain, high winds and very cold. Not much spending going on but I'm now more determined than ever to get a wood burner installed.

Eggs in the frugaldom incubator are pipping and squeaking! All is not lost.

Got a pot of ham & lentil soup on the go, seeing as we're still in soup & puding weather here, and another LETS buddy is hoping to call in at some point with a load of potatoes to trade. Yeah! another huge saving, as we eat a lot of spuds here.

Back onto the 'get fitter not fatter' part of my challenge and was pleasantly surprised to learn that I haven't regained the half stone I lost at the end of last year. This time around, I'm doing the challenge for 6 months with the hope of losing the rest of the excess weight by the end of this year. Portion control only, nothing faddy or involving counting calories ar anything like that. Very frugal.

Just waiting for neigbour to appear for a cuppa but fear she may be swept away, blown away or otherwise detained by this incessant, driving rain. Arg! At least it's helping the fruit treees grow and we do have some spots of green in the garden.

Fishcake_Random

Afternoon all,
Another blinding day here so lots of washing out on the line, and I've put my seedlings out for the afternoon to catch some rays. Got rid of some things on freegle, organised fishfingers toys and bits and completed some online surveys. Not to shabby. I need to but a few bits online for OH so I'm going to pop on a musical and probably sing along a I do it lol.
Today is a spend day though as I need some furniture polish, OH is kindly nabbing it on his way home bless.
x x x

jtb2412

Just a quick heads up if anyone has a Sa1nsburys near to where they are, I've just popped in and they're reducing the fresh easter turkeys at my local. I got 2 half price (£8 and £7.35) instead of £16.07 and £14.79. I paid with my nectar points too so technically they were free :j

Winchelsea

jtb2412, the Sainsbury's tip would have been good had I seen it, except, we are veggies! Glad you got such a good deal.

Have been in our branch this afternoon and spent £4.97, which got us mayo, cheese, flour, 6 oranges, 4 large apples and 8 bananas. For such good value, obviously I was looking at all Basics items. I find the Basics range quite adequate for most things when you cook from scratch, which I virtually always do.

Have now got bread 'doing' in the machine, using half wholemeal bread flour and half cheapo plain flour - I find that works OK. And am doing roasted veg in my Remoska to serve with cauliflower cheese. I believe that using the Remoska (500w) and breadmaker (also 500w) at the same time uses less leccy than putting on the main oven, which has a 2090w heating element.

COOLTRIKERCHICK

ooo frugaldom.. so glad your eggs are pipping:T i bet it was a relief to hear/see that after the power cut...

here is the start of my brood....we kep them in the house for the first day or so, tomorrow they will go down the shed in the brooder with the heat lamp....i allways like to keep a close eye on the first few of the season, just to make sure man and dad are producing healthy chicks....cant wait for the ducks to start hatching.... you can see then grow before yuor eyes....



thursday will be the start of our weekly budget... as this when we pay ourselves..