Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

PennysIntoPounds

I spoke too soon, had to wear my trusty fingerless gloves when out this morning- and for sitting using the laptop in the morning 😭

badmemory

My heating never goes off.  Obviously on a thermostat.  I have found my arthritis is worse if I am either cold or too bundled up with clothes.

MrsCatz

 I have doubled up the duvet on the bed as it is getting colder here in the evenings. The start of this week it was clear and 5 degrees overnight. Soup maker has been retrieved from the larder and layers now my friend. However it does make for gorgeous foggy mornings and pretty sunrises. 

Had to crack out the heavy winter scarf and sort out the gloves and hats. 

foxgloves

Hello Diary Readers,
Thanks for all your comments & contributions, which really are what makes a diary, aren't they, as it wouldn't be much fun coming on here & talking to myself. Hope everyone's had a decent day.
Quite productive here except for the fact that the new part from the boiler obviously didn't arrive in time for an appointment today, so I have my fingers crossed for tomorrow. The temporary fix means we are ok to use it, but it will be good to get it done & be able to pay the invoice & get that out of the way too from a budget point of view.
The budget-friendly stuff today has been:
*Garden pickings - courgettes & blackberries.
*Used a big ripe tromboncino as well as a litre of the fresh chicken stock I made to make a batch of soup. Just got to find some room to freeze it now as both freezers are jam-packed.
*Made tomorrow's packed lunch & breakfast.
*Sorted out my library wish list. 
*Did a few budget updates to clear the decks for Big Budget Day tomorrow. 
*Reallocated the last bits of the Holiday Expenses underspend then split the final £28 between our Personal Spends.....after all, it was us being sensible while we were away (thought certainly not abstemious) that led to us coming home with some money left.
*Wrapped an early October birthday present/card so as to post today as the recipient is away for their birthday & I was worried about our present (& money) being wasted by sitting on the doorstep for a month. It should defo get there now with a few days to spare to be on the safe side.
*A spare ball of sock yarn received from my sister which means I shan't need to buy one - I still have the 2nd pair of Mr F's birthday socks to knit & am intending this yarn to form a nice silver grey background with all sorts of use-it-up colourful stripes shopped from my own yarn stash. Someone's unwanted yarn is invariably another knitter's treasure!
*Very easy use-it-up pasta tonight as I intend to top some penne with the herby/garlic squash I roasted the other day together with some grated cheese. 
*Have stretched Week 4 of the September grocery budget for an additional week with the result that it has reduced October from a 5-week grocery month to a 4-week one. This has been due to strong meal planning as we've really been maximising produce we are still picking from the garden & existing pantry & freezer supplies. Despite this, the freezer contents aren't getting any lower - normal for this time of year, as I do a lot of batch-cooking with our home grown fruit & veg. Mr F mentioned a frozen turkey the other day & I could only utter a maniacal laugh!
Right, time for a some marching up & down the garden to boost today's steps to their goal.
F x

badmemory

Is it my imagination - but I don't remember any time (until a very few years ago) that a boilerman wouldn't turn up & have the part for your boiler.  Well unless you were foolish enough to have BG & then it was lets see how soon we can condemn this boiler.

PennysIntoPounds

Quite right having a wee boost reward to your personal spends 

rtandon27

Frozen turkey?! - Now I'm laughing!

I sent an e-mail to a well known turkey company to ask if they had any fresh ones available for CAD thanksgiving in October.  Sadly not, but he did offer to courier me a frozen one that I could then defrost slowly over the weekend!  Where did he think I was going to keep said turkey?  I have a pint sized british fridge - a small 1960's kitchen with a single sink, one bathroom/tub and live too close to a river with rodents to keep it outside on the bistro table!  I was almost tempted to tell him that my house from the early 1900's did not come with running water or electricity but that we did have an old fashioned fireplace where we could spitroast the bird. Technically true but the humour would have been lost on him!

Suffolk_lass

Still on hols in the far north, we unashamedly lit the log-burner both the evenings we have been in the cottage, and not out and about. That was after having found somewhere that sold reasonable sized bags for just under £6.

[It would have been a nice touch if the owner had included things like that in the almost £900 we have paid for a week's rental. Not even a part used bottle of oil, or an open canister of herbs. I found the stash of toilet rolls that the contract cleaner had hidden. While it is self catering, it is supposed to be like a bnb!]

I came on to comment on the lack of freezer space you referenced @foxgloves; I have been expanding my bottled jar preserves in my larder by roasting squashes like courgette and starting-to-rot butternuts, then blitzing them and putting them in sterilised screw-top jars and popping them in the oven that I warmed to 120 to sterilise the jars, to let them cool (and the lids to pop). I then have the makings of a courgette or butternut soup that I can liberate with the basic mix of carrot, onion, celery, stock and seasoning, without paying the cephalopods to preserve all of them in my packed freezer. I have some 1 litre jars I acquired that with new bands and disks I am confident will work well. 

Goodness knows what our garden is doing in our absence. Hopefully the lovely couple feeding our stealth cat are stripping the produce (I told them to help themselves!)

foxgloves

Gosh, that was a bit tight, @Suffolk_lass! All the self-catering cottages we've stayed in which have had fires or log burners have included logs &/briquettes for at least a couple of nights, ditto loo rolls. At £900 pw rental, it's not as if these basics would be of profit-gobbling proportions. Good idea to bottle squash. Thanks for that, though I don't think we will need to do it this year as have planned so many meals from freezer stores.
I don't know if you are planning to drive home via the A1, but if you are, & like us you prefer to return at night, do be aware that there are overnight closures from just north of Ferrybridge Services. We had an awful journey back from Northumbria last week as the complicated diversion put in place did not work & whichever route taken simply took everyone back to Ferrybridge roundabout. Even a police car of stuck police officers at the Services. Between us (& another police officer & a group of similarly stymied drivers), we managed to find a route back into North Notts which avoided the A1 which defo meant ignoring sat-nav & using my much laughed at (by Mr F!) old road atlas. We had to go back North quite a way (northbound A1 also closed) then across to the intersection getting us onto the M1 & we were fine from there. Journey great until this problem. Closure not flagged up sufficiently early for southbound drivers simply to choose another route. Should have been 3hrs 5 mins from Bamburgh to home. Took almost 5 & 3/4 hours!! I bet now I've typed all this, you weren't planning to go this route but it was so awful (unless they have corrected the diversion signs) that I thought I'd flag it up to you.
F x 

Humdinger1

Yes, diversions I've seen lately seem to have been planned by escaped cryptologists with a grudge against humanity.