April 2011 Grocery Challenge

Mothership

Long_tall_sally wrote: »

Thee must be something in the air because for the first time ever, I bought some things from a nurserie last week in an attempt to try & grow some things myself! I bought 3 tomato plants, 1 pepper, 2 cougettes & 2 strawberries & I will be thrilled if I manage to get anything off them! Can I just ask a quick question? I never got any tomato grow stuff - do you think this is actually necessary? And if I did get some, could I also put it on the other things?

Its worth getting the tomato fertiliser, you definitely get a better crop, try Lidl or Aldi, I got dried tomato fertiliser from one of them a few years back the name of it had me in hysterics 'Tomato !!!!!n' or thereabouts. It was really good , feed everything with it. Look in the pound shop or home bargains and dont go for the known brands they are always more expensive and do the same job. Even the supermarket value lines and ok. Happy growing

Haven't a scoobie what I'm cooking tonight , it was chicken sweet and sour last night.

Trying to make space in the freezer for the Donald Russell order that arrives tomorrow. My paws are numb LOL

Rebekah24

Hey guys

getting ready for the challenge ahead!

Plenty of free eggs from MIL neighbour

going to use an envelope for my alloted money, may put some cider in with OH's shopping (need some treat!!)

Having 1 small meal a day at the moment so think £30 should stretch with some real luxuries thrown in! ..will declare £3 towards it..as I got some tuna steaks for the freezer

Will get there

Pinwheel

Hello
Haven't had a chance to update or keep up with reading posts for the last few days, I've really missed it! I'd like to declare my April as £230.40/£220, so I went over but not by too much.
I'd like to try for £220.00 for May please. I've been to L**l this morning and spent £21.52 on fruit, veg, mozzerella, washing up gloves and dustbin liners. I've got T**co coming later with my monthly supply of dry goods, tins etc. Hopefully I'll do better this month, even though I'm spending a lot in my first couple of days, I've done a monthly meal plan which I can move around a bit if I need so here goes! Good luck everyone.
PWx

Spiggle

Long_tall_sally wrote: »

Hi everyone. I am declaring at £471.37 for April which is not too great as not only is it over my target but I have also been doing some Mr T DTDing ... The cupboards are fully stocked however & I also now have things like suntan lotion that I would have needed to buy soon anyway....
Spiggle - Hope you are ok. It must be time for an update soon on your MFW diary isn't it?! I've been waiting!
...
There must be something in the air because for the first time ever, I bought some things from a nurserie last week in an attempt to try & grow some things myself! I bought 3 tomato plants, 1 pepper, 2 cougettes & 2 strawberries & I will be thrilled if I manage to get anything off them! Can I just ask a quick question? I never got any tomato grow stuff - do you think this is actually necessary? And if I did get some, could I also put it on the other things?

Hi LTS,

Well done, :T that's not horrendously overbudget and, being very cheeky so forgive if I'm overstepping, is under what I think (not that my opinion matters in the slightest!) should be your monthly budget at £475. Looking over your historical record it just appears that £475 allows you to cut yourself some slack (in view of your other pressures), increases your annual budget by only £300 and is achievable on the whole. You should not have to beat yourself up every month! :grouphug:

I didn't do the MrT DTD thing other than to enter receipts on the website (and I got nowt! :rotfl:). It seemed hugely complicated for a start so with the hospital looming and trying to get all my work as sorted as possible before being off I let it go. I often worry about schemes like DTD that there is some 'testing' going on of how high a price we're prepared to pay for an item, forgoing any potential multibuys/promotions and potentially catching out millions who are not MSE savvy to pay hiked prices, not conform to every t&c and therefore increase MrT profits yet more. But hey, I'm a cynic!

I did do a couple of strange updates on the MFW diary earlier in the month (between ops) and I haven't yet got back to investigating the discrepancies between my figures and the banks. The end of the month is here for me tomorrow and next week the May payments will go out so I'll update again then.

I agree with Mothership that you can use tomato fertilizer on all the plants you bought. Where we probably diverge is that we always buy T*m*r*te but that's probably not very MS! :rotfl: Most important thing is to enjoy the growing process and view your produce as a bonus!

I updated my sig yesterday after some further spends in town and the NSD is correct to yesterday. I'll update it again tomorrow as that's the last day of our April budget and I will then have our month end figure. Please put Spiggle down for £240 for May Mrs McCawber, :A thank you.

Congratulations to all those completing their April challenge, you've done brilliantly! :T Special mention must be made for tigerfeet (£50 under! wow!!! :dance:), GroinSexyPavement (superb newbie result :j), Allie (excellent result from cracking method! :beer:), CherryPie (great saving! ), cutiepie (for speed in the face of the finish line! :rotfl:) and fedupandskint (for hanging with us and a very brave drop in budget for May! :eek:).

Welcome back mummygems and congratulations on the birth of your DS. :j Good to see you back too Brassic and Gintotmelinda. :hello: Good luck to you and our newbies joining us for the first time in May - may your lists stick to your fingers like glue! :cool:

Finally, ieimimiai it's up to you what you include depending on how you run your accounts/finances. We wouldn't include it in the GC because it would be an 'Entertainment' cost. If you don't have anywhere else to allocate it, then there is no harm whatsoever in putting it into your GC expenditure. We don't include alcohol in our budget either because it's bought by each of us individually out of our weekly pocket money of £15 each. Otherwise everything else we buy for the house is included in our budget.

Right, that's War and Peace for today (or is it Anna Karenina?!?) so apologies. I'm off to attempt a bit more cutting back in the garden seeing as how the sun has just re-emerged.

Take care all,
Spigs

willhelpifican

hey how do i join for may? x

quintwins

willhelpifican wrote: »

hey how do i join for may? x

you just say can i have X amount for may please in big read letters


went to mr t's to see if they had any good deals on camping stuff (they did but not as good as lidl) while there i got 3 boxes of haribo sweets reduced from £5 to £2 and 5 packets of 8 breakfast muffins all reduced to 20p and a loaf for 26p i then had a dtd voucher so only acually spent £1.92 just had a bacon egg and cheese muffin for lunch as did the kids, they love muffins, it took alot of rearranging to get them in the freezer tho so i def need to start using stuff up

dinner is sherperds pie

InTheRed

In for a penny/In for a pound! Can I join in the grocery challenge this month?

£200 for May grocery budget please!

Thanks
InTheRed

willhelpifican

can you put me down for £120 a month (me and 2 cats + on a diet) 30 a week. For may will keep trying to lower it

willhelpifican

can you put me down for £120 a month (me and 2 cats + on a diet) 30 a week. For may will keep trying to lower it

NickJW

I haven't had many spends recently - a couple of pounds here and there in the shops. I've been living out of storecupboard and freezer, and have had a few cheap picnics in the glorious weather, whilst catching up with friends.

Sooo...My total spends for each store are

£5.19 in Mr S
£6.20 in Mr T
£1.70 in the greengrocers
£1.40 in a number of corner shops

£14.49 in total

My week continues until Tuesday (payday), so I hope I can manage. My fridge is bare - I've got Easter eggs, Goose fat, and cranberry sauce
Freezer is emptier, and cupboards are full of just spices and not much else.

I'm craving a proper supermarket shop, but to be honest, I haven't wanted to buy too much fresh produce, because I don't want to waste anything in case I go out during the bank holiday periods.

Welcome to all the newbies