Preparing for Winter V

VintageHistorian

It's been very autumnal here in Essex today so I took the opportunity to make a batch of chili. Made 7 portions, all tucked away in the freezer now, looking forward to having it with baked potato in the coming months!

Frith

This isn’t really money saving but I’ve found it interesting - Lidl are selling little weather stations. They look like an alarm clock but also have a digital reading of the temperature inside and in your garden, plus a maximum and minimum feature. You put a wireless sensor outside. £5 at the moment.

I’ve also washed all the jumpers and hoodies here that haven’t been worn for months.

I need to...

Gather wood from the clearance over the way

Order a few tonnes of logs

Try and save for a new front door (existing one was old and warped when I moved in - 19 years ago!)

Pretty much in order for power cut supplies and clothes except I’ll be looking round for new charity shop coats.

Laura_Elsewhere

mrs_motivated wrote: »

It's much cooler here in the Midlands today, I've got jeans and a sweatshirt on for the first time in months. I love 'seasons' and look forward to winter and then Spring every year, although summer has been a little to hot for me this year.

Same here (W.Midlands) - I get really excited by the approach of autumn and the dropping of the temperatures. For the first time last night we actually had a light throw over our summer duvet (we did still have the window wide open, of course )... definitely cooler.

I've been meaning to sort the little freezer for ages - rented flat, with a very small kitchen so the fridge-freezer is only about 3/4 of the usual front-to-back, so although we have a freezer, each drawer is nowhere near as deep or wide or front-to-back as most. But I finally went for it last week and catalogued what we have so that we can use it up.

We have a lamb recipe we love, a stew done in the slow cooker, and we realised that if we have it with baked potatoes to fill us up, we can use the lamb stew and its rich gravy as the flavour, not the filler, so we no longer 'need' big lumps of meat in it. We experimented and got it down to jsut 90g of lamb, snipped into little snippets and flash-fried, so a really big surface area of the browned meat for maximum flavour - that 90g does two of us, as well! I knew i had quite a few 90g portions in the freezer, bagged separately, but it turns out I have about 1.3kg of lamb! So I shall probably get the big slow-cooker out in September and make a massive batch to freeze as 2-person portions. We usually use a little 1.5-litre slow-cooker, but i do have a great big 5-litre one.
We now have one drawer of the freezer that is specifically for home-made ready-meals like this. We used to buy ready meals from Tesco in quite nice green and cream plastic dishes, so we kept the dishes and they are ideal. We can stack them two deep, three high, and three wide in the freezer drawer. That's 18 ready-meals!

MandM90

Have made a wee bit of progress on my list:beer:

House
- Get curtains up in the living room. Need to paint it first!
- Have chimney swept,
- [STRIKE]get firewood delivery and firelighters[/STRIKE]
- [STRIKE]Buy scented candles [/STRIKE]
- [STRIKE]Plug Nest thermostat back in when heating comes on again [/STRIKE]
- Guttering repaired/clean - Have got a quote, just organising date - will do windows too
- Boiler service
- Re-silicone shower and bath
- Scrub tiles and get rid of icky stuff - Did the tiles in shower at weekend
- [STRIKE]Put electric blankets and throws on beds[/STRIKE]
- Ideally, decorate dining room so we can enjoy it for the winter!! - Decorator coming to quote for whole house tonight
- Wash curtains

Car
- Look into winter tyres
- Check fluids
- Clean (just because it desperately needs it!)

Self/Family
- Box up Summer/Autumn capsule wardrobe and choose items from what I already own.
- [STRIKE]Buy extra tights (only have two pairs)[/STRIKE]
-[STRIKE] Buy cheapo cold/flu meds (otherwise DH will get sniffles and panic buy a load of branded stuff in London!)[/STRIKE]
- Get out winter coats and wash. Put light ones away (I barely wore my lovely mac this summer as was too warm for coats!)
- Mend any things that need mending, replenish moth repellent thingies
- Sock inventory (DH and DD) - DH has done his
- Polish shoes and boots, send any to be repaired that need it
- [STRIKE]Reorganise Cupboard Of Shame[/STRIKE]

Garden - Autumn
- Do one huuuuge weed before winter
- Move plants we want to move
- Cut back/prune plants that need it then
- Plant spring bulbs
- Turn off outdoor tap
- Cover up/put away furniture
- Change over window box plants to winter flowers
- Tidy shed

fuddle

Does anyone have any recommendations for winter/thermal tights?

Metamorphic_Furniture

Hello, I've been lurking. I agree with many of you that there has been an Autumnal smell in the evenings the past couple of weeks.

Also, I'm sure I heard a flock of wild geese flying over yesterday. I'm down in the New Forest. Last year I didn't hear them until October, as I screenshotted a post on here by Doveling on the 18th which contained a poem called "Something Told the Wild Geese" by Rachel Fielding, thinking what a coincidence as I had heard them that day.

Lovely poem, so thanks to Doveling for introducing me to it (can't remember which thread it was).

Something told the wild geese
It was time to go,
Though the fields lay golden
Something whispered, "snow."

Leaves were green and stirring,
Berries, luster-glossed,
But beneath warm feathers
Something cautioned, "frost."

All the sagging orchards
Steamed with amber spice,
But each wild breast stiffened
At remembered ice.

Something told the wild geese
It was time to fly,
Summer sun was on their wings,
Winter in their cry.

DKRobert

Without sounding weird, just wanted to say I've been lurking in this thread for about a week now & really appreciate the helpful info coming out of it, thanks everyone.

Olliebeak1951

Definitely need to have a 'use it up' from the freezer to make space for some HM Winter Soups. Had to literally STOP myself from stocking up on veggies today as I remembered, just in time, that there's no space in the freezer for any tubs of soup .

littlecal

fuddle wrote: »

Does anyone have any recommendations for winter/thermal tights?

I've been using Primani 200 denier, found them really useful last winter. They also do velvet lined leggings

Primrose

Why is it we all look at our freezers this time of year when all the crops start flooding in and find we never have enough space for them?

Happens every year here. Either we grow too much or we don,t menu plan efficiently and regularly enough to run down whats stored.

Really must do better ! We grow too much soft fruit for two of us for one thing for a household that doesn't often eat desserts.