Make do, Mend and Minimise in 2017

[Deleted User]

Making Do - making stock from a chicken carcass to make soup for lunches for txt few days.

Minimising - tired and forgotten odds and ends of veg from the fridge for the soup so they get used and don't end up in the compost bin.

Mending - He Who Knows managed to knock down a frame with photographs of the littlest grandson on the day he arrived and break the frame, but he's fixed it and it is back up on the wall now.

Lynplatinum

Evening All

Firstly, welcome Kemiera19! A friendly bunch on here without whom I would not have managed to achieve my dream of moving to Cornwall! :A

To simplelivingcottage congratulations on a brilliant job - I wish I could knit like that but I simply cant! Fantastic job!

Make do??? Not sure if this is where this should come but ..... recently a friend and I went for lunch in a posh restaurant in Fowey. We were splashing out in my case on my once a month meal out. Well we were cuddly middle aged ladies - quite smartly dressed but in no way posh. We had the most terrible service - we had to ask for a menu and ask if we could order and the waiters seemed more concerned with trotting off for a chat in the kitchen than serving anyone. At the end they got the bill wrong! I e-mailed to complain and got offered a free lunch or dinner for us both! (How can I put this? Weellll - I'm among friends - lunch there can be about a tenner if you order right - plus drinks - so of course I opted for dinner!!!) We had a three course meal + wine + coffee - the latter two we would have been happy to pay for but they insisted on it all being complimentary - must have been worth about £100. The service was exemplary, as it was to other tables and so I would now, go there again! The food was delicious - including an amuse buche of mushroom velute with a mushroom beignet (yep folks its that standard of food - cant make my computer put in the French accents -sorry). So it was makinging do of the highest sort! I e-mailed them the next day to tell them of the improved service and to thank them and to offer to change my Trip Advisor report. :rotfl:

So my message to you tonight is, as Martin says ' Complain, complain, complain!'

Mend: have trimmed back my passion flower today as it is attempting to take over my washing lines and shoot suckers out all over the garden! Have also unpacked all the fruit and veg that DIL and I bought yesterday - I know she thinks this is a waste of time but it really does save money in the end and wastage - for example - she leaves the potatoes in a plastic bag and sometimes remembers to rip the bag open a bit (therefore the potatoes go rotten quickly and make even the OK ones smell) ditto carrots (whereas I decant them into brown paper bags saved from shopping trips!)

Minimise: overlapping with the above - I have minimised waste of fruit by taking it from its package and putting the most ripe ones to the fore so they will get eaten first! Have also done 2 bags of shredding (like Jackie O I wonder where all the flippin paperwork comes from! :eek: )

Frugaling otherwise - my friend that I stayed with had some sweet peas in a vase from her garden but she was going away the day I left so she gave them to me to enjoy and as she would not be there to appreciate them - wasnt that kind and thoughtful?? :A

Also brilliant shop this week of £36 to feed 3 adults; a child that eats at least 1/2 as much as said adults and 2 large and daft dogs! Also several NSDs since I last was on here but need to find diary to count them. What I do is each night note NSD in the corner of my diary for that day!

Anyway off to read another thread!
Nite all

house_elf

Evening Peeps,

Minimising....I have been buying suculents needing tlc, and yesterday got a pack of 6 plants for £5 from Lidl, (when buying cheap wine). :rotfl: I have planted the plants in a large vintage sink in the garden, so no random pots hanging around at the moment.

Make do......I have used up lots of stuff from the fridge and freezer for meals today. Going on hols on Thursday, so need to use up what's in the fridge.

Strange 'make do'... I have sold DM flat, and wanted to mark the occasion. Unfortunately, did not sell flat for huge amount, so bought my momento on eBay instead of posh high street store!

Mend....I have altered a skirt for me and trousers for DH. Feels like new additions to our wardrobe for our hols! Also Assembled 2 planters for the garden.

bettertogether

Hi all

Busy week here - it's payday week and we've decided to try out the envelope system this month, hoping it saves us some money and so we've been planning that out.

We have a couple of social events this week - my OH's leaving do and a friend's engagement party - normally I'd be out shopping for something to wear but instead i'm wearing a black dress i've had in the wardrobe for years to one and a very old black playsuit to the other so that's kind of make do!

We were given a new colander by a family friend who'd just got married and been given it as a gift - that's gone in the kitchen and our old one is getting repurposed into a hanging basket at the weekend The OH has also rescued some bike wheels that had been abandoned nearby and is planning to attach them to our front wall and use them to support our climbing plants (hoping to be gifted some passion fruit or ivy plants!). He's been busy planning on building us some window boxes out of old pallets (another roadside find!) too and I found some herb plants on special offer that will go in those.

I've had a pretty significant clear out of my wardrobe in order to minimise and so that's all gone down to the CS although I do need some more work clothes as my new office is v corporate so my current clothes don't quite cut the mustard unfortunately! I'll be looking in CS shops this week to try and add some smarter tops and dresses to supplement what I already have.

My OH is starting a 30 day no TV or Video Game challenge (I didn't even nag!) and has written a list of alternative activities. I actually think this is a great idea and so we will be doing that as a family too - that means no tablet, no tv, no tech essentially; although I will still have my computer, camera and Instagram as I use those for my blog, that being said i'm setting myself a rule to have those all switched off by 9pm.

Trying to 'minimise' my weight and unhealthiness too so we've started doing yoga as a family, making the most of the lighter evenings by all going to the park together and running around outside, and we are looking for some places to go camping. OH made the chinese pork from the One Pound Meals cookbook last night - the egg fried rice was a hit but it turns out that none of us like pork belly *oh dear* so that actually ended up being a bit of a waste!

Have a good week all!

RainbowHippie

Simple living cottage, the socks look great, what a useful and satisfying skill that must be to have I love to crochet but sadly it's not the best fabric for socks!

Bettertogether sounds like you've been having a very busy and productive MMMing week - very impressed at all the creative 'upcycling' going on!

Well i've not done very well at all with my planned week of NSDs! I've managed three over the last week rather than the planned five, because of two activities (a food shop and an evening out) which i'd arranged for the same day being rearranged to separate days, and our oven started smoking and smelling of a nasty electrical burning :eek: on Tuesday, so we had a very nice and efficient man come to look at it and fix it on Wednesday. That cost a bit but better than having to shell out for a new oven i suppose! And it did save me having to spend anything this weekend as i was able to bake cakes and gifts for two friends' parties. Hoping to do better with the NSDs this week!

Make do - made a massive batch of falafel and have been eating them for lunches all week. I've also been using large yoghurt pots to pot on some chilli plants that needed more space.

Mend - the oven, plus been continuing to work my way through my sewing/mending pile. I converted an old valance into a spare fitted sheet for our guest room as we only had one sheet to fit that bed, so that should be helpful. Still a fair bit to do though, plus i want to use some scrap fabric to turn a huge bean bag into two or three small 'cube' seats for the lounge, since at the moment it is too big and just gets in the way.

Minimise - I've been out attacking the garden in advance of OH's birthday gathering this weekend, it had been getting a bit overgrown as work had been so busy i had very little time for it. It's now looking much better but need to wait for the green bin to be emptied on Wednesday before i can continue. Managed to get lots of photos taken and stuff listed on eb*y over the last couple of days. Also arranged to donate my mum's old bike to a local community project who mend and sell old bikes to help fund themselves while teaching the young people they work with some useful skills. It will be good for it to be used and will free up some space in our garage. They also do cheap parts and servicing so i can get my own bike fixed up at the same time! OH has asked if i can get him a bike for his birthday so hoping this will lead to some fun (and free!) cycling adventures

Have a good week all, happy MMMing xx

calleyw

Hello,

I was wondering if any of you fab people could help me make do.

I have 3 pairs of jeans and they are now all about ready to give up the ghost on the seam on the inner thigh. Any idea how to make them last a little bit longer. As other wise these jeans are ok.

The only thing I could think was to butcher one pair of jeans to make patches for the others and use fabric glue.

I posses a sewing machine not that I am much good with it. But its paid for itself with the patching and making do I have done in the past with it.

Thanks in advance.

Yours

Calley

Sayschezza

I am no expert but I don't think I would use fabric glue as it may be a bit scratchy especially where it is. If you have some old cotton fabric anywhere you could machine a patch on the inside so it couldn't be seen so that you wouldn't lose any pairs. You could try it on 1 pair first to see if it works.

[Deleted User]

Mending - computer went 'blip' the day before yesterday and just wouldn't talk to us so He Who Knows (who never discards usefulness) got an old one down from store and reconditioned this one with bits 'cannibalised' from it! We live to chat another day!

Making do - using up cartons of UHT milk near their use by date rather than buying in fresh.

Minimising - blackberries that had suffered a bit in the awful weather on Sunday by giving a huge bag to a friend to use immediately which she split with her mum so they weren't wasted, we'd already got a big tub in the fridge from Saturday!

fuddle

I've been saving the caps off the milk cartons to thread into long strings that will make up a fly curtain for the greenhouse.

I've cut a milk carton up to make seed labels.

I'm hand sewing scraps of material to make a pillow case for my scruffy 'cuddle cushion'. I sleep with it at night and have done since pregnancy number 1. It's how I use up a spent head cushions to get a little more from them until completely misshapen or flat.

YorksLass

simplelivingcottage wrote: »

Finished my dad's Motorbike socks yesterday. He had previously bought them thinking they would be fine but they were to chunky in the foot part, so I made a sock to attach at the bottom with DK wool instead of Chunky. Photo here.

Fab idea!

fuddle wrote: »

I've been saving the caps off the milk cartons to thread into long strings that will make up a fly curtain for the greenhouse.

I remember doing this at primary school back in the 1950s with foil milk bottle tops and we used them to decorate the tree instead of tinsel. Oh, the joy when you had a red or gold one instead of silver. Remember too the hm paper chains and paper "lace" snowflakes. Later in the 1960s we had a teacher who took us for German and she showed us how to make an angel from folded coloured paper - wish I could remember how but the years take their toll on the little grey cells!

Minimising: Patio pots with spring bulbs in have been weeded and put aside for next year and 6 others emptied/cleaned/put away (contents were either dead or dying) and I'll be planting them up in Sept/Oct with new bulbs.

More minimising: In my yarn stash I found two balls of crafting cotton that I know I didn't buy so must have been "gifted" but I can't remember who passed them on. Anyhoo, they've been knitted up into 4 decent size dishcloths. I also found an easy mosaic slip stitch pattern in a stitch pattern book and I'm using that to make bookmarks from small scraps of 4-ply yarn. I'll keep a couple for myself, some will make small Xmas stocking fillers and the rest I'll pass on to our local hospice for their Xmas fayre in November.

Even more minimising: Reduced premium paid for this year's holiday insurance by using an MSE-mentioned website - saved just under £60. :)

Mending: took up a pair of jeans for DD.

More mending: Used up scraps from fabric stash to line knitted trinket pouches (another donation to hospice fayre).

Making do: Home baking instead of buying ready-made which in turn minimises cupboard stocks. And using up odds and ends of food, as usual.