Preparing for Winter V

Onebrokelady

RebeccaAnn wrote: »

We live out in the middle of nowhere and bread doesn't last us from big shop to big shop. We were buying loaves at the little village shop inbetween for around £1.50 and often they have none in.

This summer we decided to buy a breadmaker and picked 1 up for £15 off a facebook selling site. It is probably the best purchase we have made in years. We bulk buy a few weeks bread flour at lidl for around 65p and a large loaf only costs us about 44p to make. So the bread maker has already paid for its self when comparing the prices to the cheap versions we were buying before and the bread it beautiful.

Then there is the added bonus of the smell. We set the delay timer so that we come home from work to a fresh cooked loaf which is far better than any room sprays. Roll on the autumn food as I love using bread to mop up stews.

Anyway I am waffling but making bread has been completely worth it for us and there are lotsof second hand bread makers out there that have never been used so might be worth seeing if there are any in your area.

I have thought about buying a bread maker on numerous occasions but I'm worried it would end up as another gadget I wouldn't use,I like the sound of a loaf of bread for 44p though so might have to reconsider

Onebrokelady

Chloepad1 wrote: »

Hi everyone

I'm looking to replenish my woeful winter bed linen. Can anyone offer recommendations for somewhere to purchase some lovely new brushed cotton bedding? Dunelm looks lovely but seems expensive.

I bought a lovely set from Matalan last year and it's washed really well,it's stayed soft and is so warm and snuggly,I don't want to get out of bed in the winter :rotfl:

thriftwizard

Hello all, please may I join in? I have posted on a winter-prep thread before but am not sure whether this is the same one, and there's rather a lot to check back on!

For the last few years I've been ridiculously busy for someone who doesn't have a FT job. I've been caring for my lonely 92 y.o. mother 25 miles away, my ASD-ish DD2 (still at home & jobless at 23 & often rather depressed about that) and running my own little business, and all things domestic really went to h*ll in a handcart for a while whilst Mum was in & out of hospital & I was up & down our local A road just about daily. But she has now moved to a much better situation just 50 yards from my middle brother's front door, and seems to be recovering health, fitness & happiness-wise, and DD2 is also in a much better place, so I'm gradually clawing my way back to some kind of normality.

So - we've had a horrible draft in our living room since having the stove installed; our garden produces a lot of wood, so it made sense to replace the open fire with a much more efficient stove. It's multi-fuel but we only ever burn wood, so we can use the ash on the garden & the allotment. And I've just realised that the draft has nothing whatsoever to do with the stove, but with the fact that OH, bless his cotton socks, who is very security-conscious, carefully installed a window lock that only actually locks when the window is half an inch open... I only noticed when I went to replace the net curtain that one of our kittens shredded when chasing a particularly athletic fly. I shall be replacing that later this week - both the curtain, and the lock! (Sooner or later, the single-glazed original sash window, too, but not just yet; finding something that looks right on a 100 year old house isn't that easy. Or cheap!)

I keep a good store cupboard although we only live 200 yards from a decent (if expensive) supermarket; we're officially "semi-rural" although only about 200 yards outside the nearest city boundary, so our side-roads & pavements don't get gritted. However we're almost as far south as you can get without falling in, unless you go quite a lot further west, so snow is actually a rare occurrence down here & most years it doesn't even lie for ten minutes. It did last year, though, and we just hunkered down in our toasty living room, stove a-blaze, wrapped in wool blankets, and watched videos or played card games with a glass or two of Prosecco! As I'm just old enough to remember the winter of '62-'63, living on the western edge of Dartmoor, where we were snowed in for 6 weeks in a house where we couldn't afford to run the Rayburn central heating, this felt like luxury indeed.

I forage, preserve & ferment; all of which helped keep our village alive & healthy during that awful winter; no-one starved, and people did look out for each other. We did in fact have the District Nurse and the Doctor living locally, but people in the other villages fared pretty well too. I do sometimes wonder how we'd cope now, as people are so much less community-minded...

mardatha

I absolutely love the dark nights, and always welcome them coming back. Midwinter up here it's dark at half past three. But I don't like autumn, all the brown and orange colours and everything dying, I hate it. I would like summer to go right into winter

Onebrokelady

We are having our second go at summer here,it's been so hot today I went riding and got sunburn on the back of my neck
I have two lovely warm brushed cotton duvet sets for when it gets colder,I was going to put one on today but as it's warmed up again I decided to wait

VintageHistorian

I like both autumn and winter. I like the coziness of snuggling down earlier, and warming food like casseroles (with dumplings). But I also like the golden light on a sunny autumn evening, and I like seeing everything change colour, and putting the garden to bed for the cold season.

We only have one duvet, I just sleep on top of it in the summer rather than under it. Been back underneath in recent weeks but do find I'm kicking it off a bit in my sleep so clearly it's still a tad too warm some nights. Haven't taken the hot water bottle out yet.

Heating hasn't been on yet either. DH has two weeks annual leave coming up so I've asked him to get the boiler serviced during that time, just so we can be sure it will be okay in the winter.

[Deleted User]

I like Autumn too, I love the thought that the trees are going into hibernation to recruit their strength to grow bright new leaves and flowers in the Spring. I like rounded circles of life and Autumn is just part of the 'Life Wheel'. I love the smell of bonfires on the edge of the breeze, chrysanthemums in the shops, berries on the wild trees and bushes, frost on the grass, dark mornings and lengthening evenings, and clear nights where I can see all the stars. We really MUST get that wood burner sorted out quickly!!!

mardatha

Oh MrsL, I wish I could like autumn but I really truly hate it. I hate orange and brown too, even the colours drag me down. Once we get past Halloween though I'm fine.

thriftwizard

I'm always sad to say goodbye to summer, but I do love kicking through the leaves in slanting golden sunlight, picking up fir cones to dry for the stove, foraging around the hedgerows & preparing delicious treats for the coming festivities & the grey days afterwards. Unfortunately winter down here is usually just cold, grey & soggy, which doesn't appeal to me at all; I'd almost rather move north for the duration and have a proper winter! But the flip side is that we get spring much earlier.

Primrose

Using some autumn sunshine to start a few early clearing up jobs in the garden and get in a dose of vitamin D!
The cabbage white butterflies and wasps still around in their abundance. Just need to find somebody who can do a bulk delivery of manure so I can give the ground and my vegetable patch a good boost over the winter months.
I keep looking at the garden furniture and wondering when I,m going to have to bite the bullet and pack it away.

When the patio is cleared I,m going to wait for a rainy day, put on my waterproofs and wellies and get out there with some patio cleaner and give the paving stones a good scrub. Probably better done in spring but washing it down afterwards either needs to be done by more rain or before the hose reel gets packed away for the winter. My garden chore list seems to be growing by the day. There is also the fence preserving to be touched up and the bird table to be recoated! Jobs! jobs ! But once they're done I can slump in the armchair and watch the winter weather without feeling guilty.

The trouble with getting older is that when you start gardening again every spring it becomes physically a little harder to get going so I've learnt that getting everything outdoors in good order in autumn and doing a little forward planning makes it a little easier!