Make do, Mend and Minimise in 2015

Prinzessilein

Afternoon all!


I am making presents for Christmas.....currently doing the knitted handpuppets for the OCC boxes (hoping to put two in each of my 4 boxes...so the girls can get a friend to play with them too)...then I will be making Christmas cards (I cross stitch them.)...left over Aida will be used for bookmarks, and I still have a couple of Perspex coasters which can have a stitched insert (I bought the coasters a few years ago at a small craft shop....I think I have a few key rings in the box too)......and I have four red napkins that I saw and thought they would be stunning with some holly leaves and pine cones embroidered on them for a St Nicholas gift (6 December) for a young couple going to have their first Christmas together.


It's a fasting day today......and I did a make-do lunch of Courgette and Tomato Auflauf (a sort of souffl! omelette)...using up an almost-past-its-best courgette and a few wrinkly tomatoes.........tonight will be baked fish and veg parcel with fresh herbs from Mum's windowsill herb garden.


The sky has gone really dark and there is thunder threatening...perfect background for the Hitchcock film this afternoon...I will settle down with my knitting basket....I never 'just watch' TV, I always like to have something to do.

[Deleted User]

We celebrate Nickolaus too, from when we lived in Germany and the children in the village put a shoe outside the front door on the evening of the 5th December and the elves filled them with sweets, nuts and oranges if the children had been good and pieces of coal if they hadn't!!! We still send each other Nickolaus gifts, usually sweeties, even though the girls are both in thier 30s now, it's a lovely tradition!

silvasava

Breezy & sunny here but the black clouds keep scudding across - not rained tho'
Made a raspberry jelly up with some of my stash of raspberries from last year in it - topped it off with another jelly made up with half water & evaporated milk & whisked (my boys used to call it Bubble Jelly). I've realized just how much of last years fruit I have left in my freezer & fingers crossed it looks as if its going to be a good year this year too.
Planted up my two window boxes with red geraniums 'cos it gets the sun at the front and they dont seem to mind too much if I forget to water them. A load of washing done & out on the line and a joint of lamb for tomorrow defrosting. We're having DH's favorite tonight - Carbonara so he'll be a happy bunny.
Had a nice chat with my next door neighbour - i don't see her often 'cos she's working. They're having the front of their house cladded & it looks really nice (but expensive!!) I'm so pleased that she loves her home 'cos TBH before she moved in it was looking tatty. Doesn't it make a huge difference when you've got nice neighbours.
Just 'pottering really although I'm out tonight with some friends to see a trio at the local BL club to see if they're suitable for a New Year's Eve 'do' at the sailing club. Seems funny to plan for so far ahead but if we don't get it sorted soon the prices will rocket and the choice will be more limited.
Enough wittering - off to get DH a cuppa - have a good day all x

[Deleted User]

good afternoon chums just back from doing my first food shop of the month.Spent £23.21 but topped up lots of things I needed and I am hoping I won't need to shop for a good 10 days or more now .My fridge is stuffed full of fresh fruit and I also managed to get quite a bit of veg.Lidls oranges were a big bag for 99p and I eat at least a couple a day as a rule.They also had lots of greek bits and pieces and I stocked up on crackers and pate etc. After spending around £12 in there I went onto w8rose and hit it just as they were reducing some chicken so I snaffled a pack of rosemary and lemon chicken thighs plus 8 really meaty drumsticks.I have kept a couple of the thighs out and they are in the remoska for dinner tonight with some salad the rest were portioned up and put in the freezer.
Very pleased with my YS stuff from W8rose and have a good few dinners sorted for the coming days ,plus of course I had my freebie latte and a saturday newspaper for free as well,win-win today for me:) The sun is out at the moment but its still a bit on the breezy side.DGS texted me to say he had put his ticket money into my account for the tickets I bought to see the Sinatra show in August at the Palladium so I am quite pleased as I had forgotten about that so I am up in my bank account as well :):) DGS is a lovely lad, but a bit forgetfull at times when it comes to coughing up I think his Mum must have given him a nudge
Right I'm off to sort out the veg to go with the delicious smelling chicken thats wafting up the stairs
Have a good weekend chums what ever you are doing
JackieO xxx

fuddle

I was too late to the reduced bakery last night so started the day without my knocked down croissant this morning. just about to get some oats soaking with chopped strawberries for tomorrows breakfast.

Intersting reading about money being a substitute for time etc. It certainly is. My budgeting is all over the place because I havent the time to work at making my money go further. Now my money buys me time savers which doesnt make my money go further! Its very frustrating but I am in the process of clawing my old ways back.

Time is everything. I'm time poor and because of that I'm resource poor. a person with spare time and the health to make that time work for her/him is a very rich person indeed.

[Deleted User]

Oh yes I'll agree with that. If I was working we wouldn't be able to grow all the things we do and I wouldn't have the time to make all the things I make from the things we grow. We would be paying out much more than we do for goods not nearly so nice and not nearly so good for us. That's without factoring in the satisfaction factor of opening up a jar of homemade blackberry jelly on Christmas morning, you can't pay for that can you?

GreyQueen

fuddle wrote: »

Time is everything. I'm time poor and because of that I'm resource poor. a person with spare time and the health to make that time work for her/him is a very rich person indeed.

:T Never was a truer word spoken, fuddle.

I've often seen, in my own life, and that of others, how lack of time causes sub-ideal choices. Such as you pop into the convenience store on the way home from work, because it's already past 7 pm and you've been out of the house since 7 am, and you know you're way too tired to cook a proper meal from the ingredients you have already.

And you've had a carp day, so you sling sugary rubbish into the basket as a consolation, and pay premium prices, and go home and snack, whilst the proper food is wizening, rotting and drying out in the fridge and fruitbowl.......

Then you are too tired to wash the supper dishes, plus the breakfast dishes, and fall asleep on the sofa, waking hours later with a crick in your neck and an un-brushed mouth like a monkey's armpit. You stumble off to bed and oversleep, then stagger around in the morning, among 2 days+ of unwashed dishes, trying to find something to eat and something clean to wear and to get to work on time and in a suitable condition so that you look like someone who could be trusted to do a job of work without mucking it up............ and you knock stuff over and break things and mop the spilled milk with a cloth which you forget to rinse repeatedly and you will come home to a stinking kitchen...........

Yup, been there, done that, got the tee-shirt.

Our model of working for others outside the home is a historical anomaly, isn't it? For most of human history, your home was something you worked in, and from, not somewhere you left to earn currency to pay for. And the working-for-others-for-cash model is only a few hundred years old. And was set up with the idea that the person working away from base all day was a man with a woman holding the fort, the baby and everything else together at home.

I know grown women with jobs and families who have wept tears of frustrated exhaustion when a trusted appliance like their washer or dishwasher has failed on them, they rely on them so much.

Don't have any pat answers, other than to look at everything you do in this life, and ask yourself if you can get away with not doing it at all, doing it less frequently, getting others to do it for you.

vhalla1478

Evening Everyone; how I agree with those last few posts and especially with your last paragraph, GreyQueen. I remember when I used to come home from work and have to get the dinner on, sort out the children, clean up before I even dare take off my coat or sit down, in case I fell asleep. I ended up being extremely organised because I really, at that time, couldn't afford to buy convenience food, even if I liked it, which I didn't, and in any case I didn't want my children eating rubbish. This was in the days when there was no family credit etc and the family allowance was just a few £s. Therefore, from quite early in my career, I was planning meals, sewing for other people on top of doing a full time job, which was pretty stressful as at that timeI was working with the mentally ill for Social Services. The bliss of not having to be up at the crack of dawn now to get everything done is immeasurable, although I can't get out of the habit of rushing round first thing in the morning doing my chores and I still feel guilty if I oversleep!

Here's something for when you're in a tearing hurry in the morning - far nicer and so much cheaper than the bought ones!

Fruit and Honey Cereal Bars - Makes approx. 12

300 grams porridge oats, 70 grams Demerara sugar, 3 tbsp. thin honey, 100 grams mixed, dried tropical fruit, roughly chopped, 100 grams unsalted butter.

Heat the oven to 180 degrees/ gas 4. Line a shallow 20cm baking tin with baking parchment. Put the oats, sugar and honey into a large bowl, add the dried fruit, stir well.

Melt the butter in a pan over a low heat, then pour into the oat mixture and mix thoroughly. tip into the lined tin and spread evenly. Press down firmly with the back of a spoon.

Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes until golden brown. Leave to cool completely in the tin, then lift the baking paper to remove. cut into squares and slices.

Enjoy your evening, Folks.

Viv xx

candlelight_2013

I didn't go back to work until DD1 was 10 and DD2 was 6. Himself did permanent nights so was always home if the girls were ill, or had dental or chiropody appointments (the dreaded verrucas sp?)

Anyway when I arrived home from work about 5.30, the cry was "what's for tea". I don't think I took my coat off for the first half an hour. I had prepared the veg the night before, so that went on and whatever meat or fish we were having. It did get a bit too much for me and I had some panic attacks, so it was understood that when I arrived home, they would make me a coffee and I would sit down for half an hour and then start the meal, and things were much calmer.

Believe me I know how hard it is for any woman who works full time, uniforms to wash and iron, meals to prepare, homework to supervise and if you have had a really sh***y day at work, oh and of course the dog needs to be taken for a walk. Promises from said daughters they would take him for a walk (this is when they were older of course) never materialise.

Working ladies are worth their weight in gold and have my full admiration, and if you have to have a ready meal now and again so be it, it isn't a cardinal sin.

Candlelightx

misstara

GreyQueen, you pretty much just described my life a few years ago. I worked in a nursing home and was often working 60-70 hours a week, I lived off 'convenience' foods, the flat was constantly a tip and I generally was a bit of a mess. Now I still work a lot but have more flexibility, I try to batch cook so I have something just to heat up at the end of a long shift and I have learnt to do a bit of housework when I first get home from work as if I sit down and have a coffee first, chances are I won't move again.

I went to Morries today and spent £23.65 which included some YS meat. Tea tonight was cauliflower and broccoli bake (from the recipe on post 1) which was yummy, plenty leftover which will be nice with the YS pork joint tomorrow. I also got croissants and smoked salmon trimmings for a lovely birthday breakfast tomorrow.

Having a relaxing evening, OH is watching something that I have no interest in so am doing some knitting.