A Year of Living Frugabulously

Lula-Hula

polesalot wrote: »

I'm extremely envious of your holiday fund . Looking good!

Trip to the gallery sounds great. You won't even notice you're cycling there and I've always found the coffee shops in these places do lovely cake

Thanks Poles,

it will take a bit of practice before I can cycle that far, but the cake will make it worthwhile .

Holiday fund does look good, but I will be taking DDs £150 camp trip with guides out of there, so not quite so plentiful as it appears.

Karmacat

Its difficult to budget correctly when you see bargainous stuff, isn't it ... people have all sorts of complicated ways of dealing with it, and I must say, I don't - I just let it go, oops.

Hope you have fun in the wellies!

Lula-Hula

Oh yes KC,

I always have fun in my wellies. It was gorgeous out in the garden & I got loads done.

The pink greenhouse frame needed to be moved again. Basically, it's not fit for purpose being a softwood. the lightest breeze & it blows over, inpsite of being weighted down by bricks so I've been thinking how best to make use of it & concluded that if I coud just get it through the teeny gap between 2 bushes, then it could go in the secret corner where the tables & chairs hide.

It wasn't an easy task, naughty pink greenhouse put up a bit of a struggle & as for that laurel bush, well it was positively obstructive :mad:.

It became a battle of wills, laurel pushing out all it's branches & me trying to hold them back whilst dragging greenhouse frame through it. At one point it became wedged & I became quite concerned at ever being released from the bush, & feared having to call DD ( mobile in pocket thankfully) to come & rescue me.

It was a lengthy duel, but eventually I won & only because I wielded the secateurs in a threatening manner. I manged to get the pink greenhouse where I wanted it & it's now half hidden from view & sheltered from the elements & the perfect place to put all my pots, bottles, bits of wood, watering cans etc. If the cats want to sleep in it, that's fine by me, it wont tip over now .

After that tussle, I decided to do something a bit less confrontational so got on with raking up leaves & twigs, moving compost bags around & checking to see what's growing ...

A whole 3 rows of onions & garlic, that's what :j I'm amazed, they're about 4 inches high & look really healthy .

I found 3 crocus peeking up through the grass too, so can't wait for them to bloom.

DD going shopping with friends tomorrow afternoon rather than the club that night & other parents are doing taking & collecting so my car stays in the garage & I don't have to use any fuel.

I've made my first survey claim of the year, so that's a £10 Amazon voucher heading my way soon

The excitement has been somewhat tempered by needing to buy DD a new guides top, so that's £20 I have to pay .

Aah well, my lovely new undies & fab new frock have arrived & they fit perfectly so I'm very happy.

No workouts tonight, my knee is still feeling very strange, but I reckon the greenhouse wrestling must have burned a few calories & I'm still doing the early morning yoga stretches. Back to the daily march again next week & no staying late at work so I don't have time to walk.

No more chores for me this weekend :j; one load of laundry & a teeny bit of ironing doesn't really count.

I have soup to make & scones to bake, books to read, dvds to watch, lie ins to have, walks to go on, sewing projects to start & birds to count.

How very fabulous, & rather frugal too

Have lovely days all
xx

EssexHebridean

Deeply jealous of you doing the Big Garden Birdwatch....actually, deeply jealous of you having a garden in which to watch birds - *sighs* - oh well, I WAS watching Long tailed...umm, this may be tricky - bloomin' silly word-censoring things on websites! They are Long Tailed Birds of which I speak, and not the Duck-type ones! Smaller than that, mega-cute, look a bit like Tweetie Pie only more natural colours... hope that'll do the trick.

You have a pink greenhouse? I might need to do some reading back, I can tell......

Karmacat

Great gardening news there! You have onions? Did you plant them from seed, or are they sets? Own onions would be brilliant.

Cheery_Daff

Ooh lula, some FAB gardening there! jealous of your pink green house

We're going to do the garden birdwatch tomorrow (although frustratingly I just peeked out of the window and in my tiny garden there was a blackbird, dunnock and a wren all within about 2 feet of each other :rotfl: :rotfl: They'd best come back tomorrow!)

Lula-Hula

Mmmmm I didn't wake up until 8.30. Well, the alarm went off at 7.30 but I turned it off & turned over. I leapt out of bed to put the kettle on & got my BIG weekend coffee mug out of the cupboard.

Cat is always hungry in the morning & also has the very strange & somewhat disturbing habit of barging into the bathroom & trying to jump up on my lap when I'm err on the loo

I checked my phone for the most recent word game events & Grumpy has come up with another 80 pointer :eek:. I won the last game (after a 5 in a row defeat ) by about 7 points & he doesn't like it. You can send little messages & they are usually along the lines of 'eat that' or 'loooseeerrrr'. I played the word 'moue' & he responded with 'bullet' & the message told me that's what I'd get if I played any more silly words :rotfl:. So, I replied that a 'moue' is a type of french cow .


Cheery - I'm hoping that the ninja woodpecker might make an appearance, I heard him again yesterday. Our regulars are wood pigeons ( very tasty so I'm told ) mapgies, starlings, robins, blackbirds, jackdaws, crows, blue t!ts & parakeets.

EssexHebridean - I'm pretty sure you can just go to to a local park to do the count, I'm just looking forward to having a valid reason to do nothing other than sit with large mug of something & look at stuff .

I think you may have to go back to previous diary for the introduction of the pink greenhouse character. Personally, I wouldn't bother unless you've time to fill; I think there was quite a lot of ranting about colleagues, buying of laptops ( many) & the odd bit of debtbusting.

I had a mad moment one day & decided to use up a can of pink paint that had been sat around for ages; by painting the garden picnic bench pink. I'd seen it in a magazine & it looked great. The 'greenhouse-that-nearly-was' was made from the frames of 2 of those canvas type wardrobes cobbled together & along with some sheets of acrylic that my dad gave me I was going to turn it all into a greenhouse. Trouble is, it's a bit unwieldy, too large & flimsy & needs a permanent location. It's much better used as storage for now & I may use the sheets of acrylic to construct a cold frame.

I have kept my old diaries in my subscribed list & one day I might brace myself & read back through them. It will be quite sad to read posts from lovely people who are no longer here ( sarahb123, gwen80 & Bowski to name a few, were great friends) as they really did contribute so much to my life at the time & their support & encourgagement through various dramas & situations was truly instrumental in helping me get to where I am now, both financially & personally.

People have to move on, life changes & one day I'll probably fade away from the hallowed halls of MSE. But NOT yet, so put that bunting & the party poppers down thank you .

Cannot find a recipe for butternut squash in any of my books so will have to go off on a hunt to find one.

Got to get up, bye for now
xx

taxi73

your weekend sounds fab..and you're garden too

vasseur

What sort of butternut squash recipe are you after Lula?

Lula-Hula

Ah sorry polesalot,

I missed a word out there, I meant to say butternut squash soup :drool:.

Not to worry now though, I found one, made it - although I added a good sprinkling of paprika to give it a zing - & it was sooooo tasty I had 2 bowls for my lunch :rotfl:.

The weather had turned all grey & cloudy by then so I chose not to venture out to the garden & consquently I have been incredibly lazy this afternoon, lounging about on the sofa, reading & watching dvds.

I finally got around to making some scones, my first ever attempt & they are rather 'short'. Very shallow indeed, so DD insisted on sticking two together. The ingredients were meant to make 12 & I knew I'd rolled them out too thinly when I had put the first 12 in the oven & still had loads of dough left. Aah well, they taste fine .

DD had fun out with her friends & as I forgot to give her some money for tea it didn't cost me a penny.

I've not been counting NSDs, but I know I'm getting a few