Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

pennywisepoundstupid

Well done on shopping from home and saving your pennies, now wondering if i could do something similar as a bedside table lamp.Job for tomorrow xx

foxgloves

@ziggy2407 - Photo of finished knitted wrap as promised x

@Four_Seasons - Chunky-weight yarn, size 6mm needles, 40 stitches (I think!), re length....132 cm of pattern & an additional 2cm of garter stitch at each end. Heart charms from the shop which rhymes with 'toys'. Oh & dentist was fine, thanks x

F

foxgloves

Greetings Money Savers!
All I want for this week is for it to be productive. I would like to be sitting down on Friday evening feeling that I've moved a few things on & made progress. Off to a good start. Today's small wins so far:
*Two loads of laundry done & pegged out to (hopefully) at least partially dry for free.
*Free fitness clearing our wildlife pond of gunky overhanging & submerged vegetation.
*Finished knitting my friend's wrap (above) last night. Have this morning sewed on the charms & packed it away in the presents stash. It will be presented in a gift bag with some 'cosy night in' items  - a paperback novel, a nice bar of choc, some upmarket coffee.....that kind of thing. As I already had the yarn (leftover from a cardi I knitted) & only had to buy the charms, the wrap has cost me 46p to knit!
*Rubber pork duties - a £10 roasting joint from our market butcher which did us a roast dinner yesterday.....now divvied up for hot pork cobs with apple sauce tonight, pork hash with sweetcorn tomorrow, a man stew & some sandwiches., so £1.25 per portion (£1.11 if man doesn't eat all the man stew at once!)
*Did my regular Monday morning budget updates - moved money from the Dentist/Optician Pot to deal with last Friday's dentist bill.......the scarier of all the appointments & the biggest part of the bill draws inexorably closer......
*Did a couple of surveys  - Feb's PA total currently stands at £26.49, so I will hopefully finish the month with a useful amount for a savings pot. Other sites very slow. I don't do many at all, as need to have a balance between maybe earning a few quid more than I do now, but taking up quite a lot more of my time in the process.
*Another couple of my books added to Mr F's Z*ff*t pile which seems to be an ongoing collection with no actual z*ff*ting going on yet.
*Have opened a new bundle of washable make-up wipes from my stash to have a proper go at using them instead of buying cotton wool pads. I do use the washable ones for my face, but have still been removing eye make-up with cotton wool balls, which seems to defeat the purpose. I'll see how I get on over the next couple of weeks.
Other money saving things which will happen today:
*Two baths from one lot of hot water......I ought to let the Beloved have first bath really, as I've been close-up & personal with green pond water, but 'ought' is one thing, & being first person in with maximum bubbles is quite another!
*Knit more of the self-patterning socks I'm making for Mr F for the presents bag. Free, as it was gifted yarn.
*Start next book from my pile which is one my friend has lent me.
*Got everything out on my desk for tomorrow, ready to do my regular mid-month budget check-in.
I think that will be everything. It felt really good getting off to an early start today, so I am aiming to keep this up for the rest of the week,
Love to all,
F x

lucielle

Always wanted a pond.  When my mum went out she'd come home to holes all over the garden where I'd dug one.  I'd have to fill them in again when she hit defcon 4.
L

Makingabobor2

Our pond is starting to look a bit full of algae, think its time we cleaned it out and put the UV filter on for the sunshine. DH keeps putting it off. He says he loves his pond, but he hates the maintenance involved. 

Love the wrap, its a beautiful colour

marionmgcars

Love the wrap, that will make a beautiful gift with the extras you are adding.  The colour is gorgeous.  We have been eating out of freezer to compensate for spending on lunch out on Friday to meet my brother on his birthday.  I’ve enjoyed the challenge.  

Four_Seasons

Hi Foxgloves, Your wrap looks lovely such a beautiful colour, thank you for the stitch/length of wrap have ordered some self striping yarn, cant wait to get the needles clicking x

ziggy2407

foxgloves said:

@ziggy2407 - Photo of finished knitted wrap as promised x

@Four_Seasons - Chunky-weight yarn, size 6mm needles, 40 stitches (I think!), re length....132 cm of pattern & an additional 2cm of garter stitch at each end. Heart charms from the shop which rhymes with 'toys'. Oh & dentist was fine, thanks x

F

Gorgeous colour, stitch and will be a fabulous gift - well done!

Moorviews

What a great start to the week! You have done very well stretching out the pork joint. I need to do the same thing with brisket that I slow cooked yesterday. It’s so expensive these days! I feel as though all the thriftiest cuts became so much dearer once the chefs started promoting using them. I think I might try weighing out portions rather than just doing it by eye; I suspect I am somewhat overgenerous when serving up meat portions for Mr MV. 

I am sure your friend will be absolutely thrilled with that beautiful scarf!

foxgloves

Morning all, & thanks for your nice comments about the handknitted wrap. Very quick & easy to do. It never fails to amaze me how many resources are lying around in our homes doing nothing until we suddenly spot a re-purposing/shopping from home opportunity.
@makingabobor2 - We don't really have much pond maintenance to do. Ours is not a big pond & we made it for wildlife, so as long as no idiots (like Yours Truly!) go & stab a garden fork through the bottom necessitating purchase of new liner plus a lot of work, it really only needs to have pond weed & annoying duckweed scooped out a few times a year which is a 10 minute job once the big overwinter overgrowth & leaves have been removed, as I did yesterday. I'm sure people who have fish, fountains, filters, etc, have a lot more work than we do. 
@Moorviews - Yes, I know what you mean about weighing out portions now that meat is so expensive. I don't tend to weigh out roast dinner portions unless we are trying to lose weight (which we will be resuming shortly) but I do weigh when I am dividing up the leftover meat for making further meals. I've mentioned before that we had a very old-school cookery teacher  - I can remember learning about portion sizes for planning meals & meat was 4 oz or 110g per person.....unless it was mince, in which case because other things would be added, such as for bolognese, cottage pie, etc, should be 2oz or 50g per person. I told Mr F this & he looked as though I was planning to starve him! I think that with wartime now a distant memory.....(my Mum would have been 87 this year & she was just 9 years old when the war ended, although rationing did continue into the 1950s), we have all become used to much larger portions/servings of everything. I weigh leftover roast meat out partly to make sure I do actually have sufficient to make what I've planned....I know that with everything else added to it, I could make fajhitas or a stir-fry with as little meat as 50g per person, but I do allocate more than that. I like t make pizza & I know that just 50g of leftover chicken or beef shredded up & tossed in fajhita spice makes a perfectly nice Mexican-style topping along with peppers, onions, tomatoes, jalapenos, etc, so that's a good way of getting another day's main meals from just a very small amount - there's only two of us, however, we're not feeding a family.
F