Make do, Mend and Minimise in 2015

Lynplatinum

Hiya All

Not many of us on here today! Well, manged to sort house out and give it a good 'bottoming' as a friend of me mum's from up north used to say! Then went to Mr T's and got some cracking YS bargains :j - 5pm seems to b e about the right time :-) I went for some smoked paprika and and wholemeal pasta but pootled round to the YS sites in the store it yielded - brioche buns @46p; rhubarb @ 62p; some very naughty but nice chocolate cookies with hazelnut praline inside @ 25p! Started out with £5 + Tesc!s voucher for £2.50 - I currently had £10 of them and would never use em for the double up thingy cos, despite it being double up - the offers usually apply 2 two or more folks or a family day out or clothes (dont need any) or china etc (dont need any) or some electronics (dont need any!) Came away with change + cream cheese on Special Offer and Filo pastry (the one sort I dont make) also on offer! these will be used to make a spinach and cream cheese filo pie when a veggie friend comes round to visit! Some filo will be left to freeze! Yea! :j

Purse now shut for food budget for the week! Entertainment budget (£10) is a new one for this week. Managed to 'tilly tidy' £1.13 from last weeks food budget + £2 from last week's entertainment budget.

hope you all had a good day too :A

mcculloch29

Fell asleep in my chair earlier and I'm now awake, half watching Andrew Marr on Yesterday.
Weather still warmish up here, it does get a lot colder than dahn Sarf, as my sister ALWAYS reminds me when she comes up here from 'balmy' South Wales.
I am so pleased with my latest money saving acquisition. I often batch chop onions in my food processor, which is lovely, but BIG. Now that Dr C. (DS) has left home, my food needs are less.
I was therefore delighted to be offered a manual mini food processor this week. It's operated on a pull cord system and it's absolutely brilliant. Really fun to use.
It only does a small amount at a time but it does it so quickly and efficiently that it is ideal. It's Zyliss too, so very well made.

To test it out I used the Aldi Super 6 onions (39p for a kilo!) and I now have a portion of onions ready chopped for the next time I need them.

Here's my review.

Dr C. has a slightly smaller version of this type of manual chopper that he took with him, which is almost a third of the cost.

vulpix

ey up

The weather has turned a bit colder here today too,and it's raining.Good for the garden.

Sold a door which |i bought for 99p for £25 so that is the start of my next saving up.I can't think of anything that we need at the moment.I shall possibly use my selling stuff money for the back garden when it is made.

The builder is here with more boy band members.He has a lot of young lads on apprenticeships.He is very good with them,they do a good job.

Stepson has done a fab job for me too.Lots of DIY that i can't do anymore as I struggle to hold the drill as I have arthritis in my hands.

Today I think I will be mostly brewing up for all these lads.

Val,I made your bean recipe for lunch yesterday,with butter beans though as that is what I had.will make it again,I enjoyed it.

FPK internal post! just the job.It is not a large piece and will fold and fit in an a4 envelope.

Lyn you are on fire with your mmming.I try but the food is difficult for me at the moment and a couple of pounds have snuck on recently.I have no routine.Maybe now school is back things will settle down.

With the building work I feel we are spending too much.We are not it is just me who struggles to spend an amount over about £10

Vx

Synonymous

Hi everyone, I've been lurking around this thread for a while and have a question for you lovely MMMers

I've just decorated my bedroom and want to make some cushion covers for my meditation area. I've gone from a wine red to navy blue, and have some red flat sheets I no longer need. Has anyone tried the Dylon fabric dyes, and do you think navy would colour over a red? I have two sets of plain red bedding that I'd like to re-purpose and this would be a good start!

Many thanks for any advice

GreyQueen

Synonymous wrote: »

Hi everyone, I've been lurking around this thread for a while and have a question for you lovely MMMers

I've just decorated my bedroom and want to make some cushion covers for my meditation area. I've gone from a wine red to navy blue, and have some red flat sheets I no longer need. Has anyone tried the Dylon fabric dyes, and do you think navy would colour over a red? I have two sets of plain red bedding that I'd like to re-purpose and this would be a good start!

Many thanks for any advice

Hi, I've done quite a lot of dyeing over the years. Firstly, unless you start with white, or colour-strip the item beforehand (which has mixed successes) the resultant colour will be what is already + dye colour = new colour.

Wine red + navy = purple-ish.

Also, depending on the fabric itself, whether it is a pure fabric, eg 100% cotton, or a blend, such a polyester-cotton, will change how the fabric takes up the colour. Synthetics are mostly petroleum derivatives and they are dyed as the filament is extruded, rather than the fabric is woven and then dyed in the cloth.

Even pure cotton is normally sewn with a polyester thread, so it's common to have that refuse to take up the dye and the stitches remain the old colour. On bedding this is less of a problem than on a garment, of course.

Given that couloured duvet covers/ curtains can often be bought for less than a pkt of Dylon (unless you already have it) and that you have to run a few cycles on the washer to use it, it's probably going to be a lot more economical to look for a used item in navy than try to dye your burgundy sheets. HTH.

Synonymous

GreyQueen wrote: »

Given that couloured duvet covers/ curtains can often be bought for less than a pkt of Dylon (unless you already have it) and that you have to run a few cycles on the washer to use it, it's probably going to be a lot more economical to look for a used item in navy than try to dye your burgundy sheets. HTH.

Thanks GreyQueen, that is really helpful. I was wondering what situations you would say it's worth dyeing something? As you say, it's probably cheaper to buy the right colour so I wondered when you have dyed in the past and it's been worth the effort? Just curious!

GreyQueen

Synonymous wrote: »

Thanks GreyQueen, that is really helpful. I was wondering what situations you would say it's worth dyeing something? As you say, it's probably cheaper to buy the right colour so I wondered when you have dyed in the past and it's been worth the effort? Just curious!

Because of the expense of the dyes, and the multiple uses of the washer necessary (before, during, after with item and after without item to clean the machine) I don't often dye things these days. About once every 5 years if that.

The last thing I dyed was a corduroy shirt. It was given to me in new conditon, fitted well and I liked it and had use for it. But it was beige. I look atrocious in beige, as in really ill. People remark on how ill I look.

Sooo, I knew I faced a choice, as I'd pass over this shirt in its beige state; donate it or dye it. I wanted it burgundy so chose a machine Dylon is a colour which was called Something Red. It, and a white handkerchief I test-dyed with it, came out the same colour - a true darkish purple (i.e. not even slightly towards the burgundy side of purple, I went to art school and can mix and describe colours to an exactitude).

I made a complaint to Dyl0n to say if they are going to call a colour Something Red, it should be recognisably a red, not a true purple. They refunded the price of the dye. I don't particularly object to purple as a colour and suit it, just was ticked at being tricked into getting something other than what I'd chosen. I wore that shirt weekly for about 3 years, until it was so mended it was demoted to gardening. Then it eventually wore out completely and went for ragging and I was sorry to see it go.

I didn't regret dyeing that shirt, the dye held well although the shirt stitching didn't take up the colour. Overall, it isn't economic to dye most things, IMO, unless there is some great sentiment attached or you are using a black dye to revive several faded black garments at a time, which some people choose to do to make faded favourites look box fresh.

Larger items will probably take more than one packet of dye, if you're thinking of doing things like curtains, bedcovers, loose covers, etc. A sound towel which has suffered some catastrophe might merit re-dyeing in a darker shade, but I manage to get very good secondhand towels for 50p-£1, and am past my hair-dyeing interests, so would probably just demote such a towel to rough work rather than spend money dyeing it.

Some folks are very into matchy-matchy with things and might feel better if household items were made over into a uniform colour, but this isn't one of my foibles.

I tend to follow Shirley Conran's advice in her first SuperWoman book about choosing towels in sensible colours (dark red/ green/brown/navy) to avoid showing marks, and bedlinen in white, so it can stand up to hard laundry processes and always matches. I also now have a leather sofa (secondhand) and would be reluctant to go back to cloth upholstery, as it is so much less robust.

Synonymous

GreyQueen wrote: »

Because of the expense of the dyes, and the multiple uses of the washer necessary (before, during, after with item and after without item to clean the machine) I don't often dye things these days. About once every 5 years if that.

The last thing I dyed was a corduroy shirt. It was given to me in new conditon, fitted well and I liked it and had use for it. But it was beige. I look atrocious in beige, as in really ill. People remark on how ill I look.

Ah-ha, thanks for your reply GreyQueen, makes sense if it's a good quality/fit item - I can relate to that as I'm very tall. Many thanks again for all your help, going on the hunt for navy fabric now...

mcculloch29

I second what you say about leather sofas lasting GQ. My riser-recliner is pleather, (but was sold to me as leather, :mad:) and has worn badly.
My really -is - leather cream leather sofa is five times the age and looks unworn in comparison.:D

GreyQueen

I'm actually on my second 2nd hand leather sofa. The first was a well-worn castoff from a friend which she had for several years and I had for about 10 more. When it eventually became so worn that you could feel the wooden frame through the seat padding, I sourced an identical one from a chazzer, for one-tenth of the new price but in as-new condition. Offered the old one as a well-worn leather sofa on Freegle and had many potential takers and shed it easily. Have had new leather sofa since May 2012 and it doesn't appear to have sustained any wear and tear in that time. I'm expecting 10 + years from it.

I'm convinced leather is the way to go for upholstery, esp for those like me with small homes where everything works hard for its keep.

Today I have loitered around the place, bought a new electric toothbrush (with half-off sale price and Clubcard Boost voucher, got it for £7.50), and been to the allotment and the tip.

I've done some gardening, harvested some runner beans and some herbs and salad leaves. The salad leaves are self-sown chard, red and white. I'm subbing herbs I have for herbs actually in the recipe, to save money and save going into the supermarket. OK, it'll taste different but it's only me who is going to be eating it.

I have also harvested a few small sunflowers, the side-shoots off the main stem, and have them in a fancy jamjar and they look very jolly and joyous.