Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

Onebrokelady

foxgloves said:

Morning Campers!
Thanks for all your positive comments about the gardening content of my diary. I do tackle everything very much from the point of view of money-saving & sustainability, so that is why I include it. As I said, it used to be a big area of over-spend (& overdraft!) back in the Spendy Era, so much like my regular frittering on all-things vintage, it has had to have a significant re-shape as I transitioned away from borrowing into the era of economic responsibility. Mr F seems quite keen to get this year's plan drawn up showing which veg is destined for which beds this weekend, so I should soon be able to tell you what food we are aiming to grow. At the moment, things are just where I'd expect them to be - the chillies have been sown, the rhubarb is sprouting, the sorrel is putting out some good new growth, enough to add a few of its lemony leaves to salads, our October-sown garlic is sprouting (just 2 cloves were no-shows) & the greenhouse-sown rocket I started off in the Autumn in re-used grow bags is still providing fairly regular cuts.
Anyway, today's small budget-helping stuff:
*Cleaned the house using minimal products & washable cloths. Mr F said he was happy to run the finned vacuum around when he gets home (he is on an early finish today), so I wasn't going to let that offer pass. I did vacuum my piano though!
*Prepped & blanched some carrots which were getting to the bendy stage. Now frozen & certainly sufficient to put with a roast dinner at some point.
*Made wholemeal bread - well, almost....it's in the tin working through its 2nd proving.
*Wrote out a new library wish list including a new title on money-saving gardening - also the next 2 novels in a crime series I am enjoying - MC Craven's Washington Poe series, set up in the Lake District. 
*Checked for surveys - none so far today. 
*Postie brought me 2 vouchers - one was for 20% off at the shop where one would go for a new body - well that will be useful for our city centre trip later this month, as I will be able to stock up on moisturiser. The other was a voucher for £5 off a cafe at a garden we are already planning to visit soon. 
*Updated grocery budget. So far, both Week 1 (Sainsberg online) & Week 2 groceries (Waitbl00m) have come in at below our weekly target spend. I am pleased about this as this is a '5-week month' for grocery shopping (it's just the way our budget cycle falls) & I haven't budgeted any extra as I think this encourages us to overspend, then we still end up with a lower-than-is-useful amount for the final shop. I am sure that writing the monthly master meal plans is having a positive effect & Mr F says he definitely agrees.
Time to go & find some lunch. That will no doubt trip Soot off to come in search of food. They had their elevenses biscuits today, crunched them & took themselves off. Ten minutes later, they were back (both of them), in search of their dinner!! Ash had the grace to give this up as a bad job, but Soot spent ages scouring the floor tiles to demonstrate that he was in such a state of starvation that he was hoping to find a couple of tiny crumbs of something which may just be sufficient to sustain him until cat dinner time! Her is such a trier.....although not as much of a drama queen as my first cat, who would at that point add in a couple of entirely fake little tubercular-sounding coughs in the hope that I may take pity on a poor weak cat clearly about to breathe his last. And no need to feel sorry for him, as much like Soot, he was built like a brick outhouse!
Wishing you all a decent Friday,
F x

Tubercular sounding coughs 😂😂😂

Debsnewbudget

Mike Craven’s Washington Poe series is fantastic.  I felt quite bereft when I finished the last one. 

foxgloves

@Debsnewbudget - Me too, & I took it from @ziggy2407's post that there might be a new one on its way, so I checked & it appears the latest in the series will be published in June. I will have to make sure I get my reservation into the library in good time so as to get on the list. Thanks dear @ziggy2407for the tip-off! I love Tilly. She is soooo clever, yet has no social filters & it is so refreshing. Washington Poe is a good character too, I think. His mouth sometimes gets him into trouble & that has kind of been my life, lol.
F x

foxgloves

Afternoon February 3rd Frugalistas!
Not much to report today & it hasn't been a no-spend day, but there could have been a lot more spends, so it is nice to be able to post & say I have kept the faith.
*Visited a museum attraction in our town, mainly to see a couple of interesting local archaeological things that are there at the moment, but we also went around the main galleries, watched the associated historical context films & enjoyed our morning very much. It used to cost £7 to get in, but I discovered that local residents can now get in free, so it was an enjoyable FREE morning, & thus even better.
*Can report gift shop restraint - only bought 2 pencils, which I need because most of mine have worn down into tinies or have (presumably) been robbed by Ash. 
*Also exercised coffee shop restraint. There is a very nice cafe at the museum & we had planned to call in, but as we have various days out this month when we will almost certainly be buying coffees, we decided to call into our favourite indie bakery & pick up a couple of their cakes to take home, so that we weren't paying for coffees too. That will have saved over £6 on our Personal Spends.
*And there was yet more restraint. Today was the first of a series of indoor artisan craft markets & I had thought we might trickle on over after the museum. Decided not to - there are plenty more to come & it's always best for me from a temptation point of view to visit such places with a mission - i.e choosing a present or some nice cards, etc. So instead, we popped into the charity bookshop where I found a poetry book from my list for £2-49. I think I'd have to say that was a pretty low-spend day on the whole.
*AND.......a saving for the grocery budget because Mr F had apparently planned to swing by the C**p for some beer & because we were busy yakking, he forgot to turn off & didn't remember until after lunch, lol. I wonder if he will crack & go back out.
*My January survey earnings had landed in our bank account so I have added my PA earnings to my Personal Spends & my Ips*s cash-out to our Leisure/Entertainment pot which is building beautifully for those opera tickets. Checked briefly for surveys but nothing doing, so I will wait until Monday.
Well, it's Mr F's cooking night & he's doing something with BBQ pork steaks from the amazing butcher 'Fill your freezer' offer we got the other week, & I have no plans more energetic than reading some more chapters of my book & making progress on knitting across the back of my cardigan, having successfully created the first armhole.
Enjoy your weekends, all.
F x

foxgloves

Yep, he's cracked, lol.
F x

PennysIntoPounds

Ha hope Mr F enjoys his Saturday night beers, what a lovely and sensibly restrained day 

Sun_Addict

Soot’s antics do make me laugh 🤣 You can’t blame him for trying. My young cat is obsessed with cheese and appears from nowhere whenever I get it out of the fridge desperately crying feed me 😆

foxgloves

Thanks, @PiP, he did! We started watching a German crime series which required concentration, so I only progressed my knitting by about 4 rows. 
@Sun_Addict - Yes, he is a funny boy. They both are. Soot is a clever cat - a fast learner with anything involving food. Ash is a little monkey - very mischievous & always on the cadge for little tastes of human food. He loves cheese too.

Well today's main money saving aspect will be that it will almost certainly be an NSD, as we are not going out. Mr F is making one-pot goulash again to use up some spare stewing beef from the freezer & the last container of last year's french beans. A jar of my bottled tomatoes will also be going into that.
One useful task we are definitely doing today is planning out our vegetable plot for the year, culminating in a definitive list of what we're going to grow & a drawn-out plan of where everything's going to go. 
I will also find some recycled envelopes for sorting all this year's seed packets into months of sowing from later this month through March, April & May, as well as repeat sowings of certain things like salads, spring onions & coriander throughout the summer.
Coffee & a quorn sausage bap first, though!
Wishing everyone a peaceful day.
F x

themadvix

What’s the German crime series Foxgloves, please? 

Good idea to segregate seeds into months for sowing - I’ve made a note of what to sow when but envelopes are an excellent idea.

foxgloves

@themadvix - It's called "Close to home: Murder in the coalfield".

Well that's this year's food growing planned & Mr F has drawn up a plan showing our vegetable plot & what is going where.
We will be growing:
Garlic (already coming up from Oct sowing)
Shallots
Potatoes (first earlies)
Aubergines
Chillies
Peppers
Tomatoes
Cucumbers
Lettuces - various types
Rocket
Carrots
Radishes
Cress
Spring onions 
Courgettes
Tromboncino
Guatemalan blue squash
Pumpkin
Cavalo nero
Pak choi
Chard
Basil
Coriander
French beans

We also have our perennial food plants to maintain - pear tree, blackberry, rhubarb, strawberry troughs, sorrel, globe artichoke, grapevine & herb bed, as well as growing on the redcurrant cuttings our friend potted up for us last year.
Seed packets (including flowers) now all sorted into labelled envelopes according to sowing months.
Well, despite it still being too early in the season for most sowing & growing tasks, we both felt so motivated after this morning's planning that I went straight off to sow a punnet of cress on the kitchen windowsill & Mr F has put the seed potatoes into egg boxes for chitting on a sunny cat-free windowsill.
And now I genuinely do intend to spend all afternoon sitting near the radiator reading my book! 
F x