Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

foxgloves

@Blackcats - I think I may have overdone it on the water, as the scales said I have only dropped 0.3kg this week. That'll teach me to try & get one over on the scales!
@Suffolk_lass - I think coffee would have been more effective than all that water & herbal tea. I have a birthday not too far off, plus there's Easter, so I am already thinking how I can enjoy some treats without the indulgences spilling over into too many additional days. 
@Jellytotts - 'Advantage' is the one we use. There are other similar ones but we have been sticking to the brand we used on our previous cat.
@Humdinger1 - I agree with that statement about not being able to outrun a bad diet.......though tbf, I couldn't outrun a geriatric tortoise on National Go-Slow Day!
F

foxgloves

Evening m'dears,
Despite a pretty poor forecast, the rain never appeared, so I've managed a decent session out in the greenhouse, which is one of my happy places. Today's small money saving wins:
*Boiled an egg for breakfast & remembered to pop 2 extra in to make best use of the gas ring.....one for Mr F's packed breakfast & one to go in tomorrow's kedgeree.
* Another small incidental saving of energy when I discovered that out of 3 loads of laundry, only 4 items required ironing. I don't like ironing, so that was a result.
*Mr F is on one of his occasional very late shifts so took all his food with him. I didn't put anything on the meal plan for myself as thought I'd see what I fancied eating. I decided on spicy couscous with prawns, peppers, celery & spring onions plus a bit of turmeric & chilli. Very nice, & a couple of use-it-ups dealt with.
*Did a survey.
*Potted up first tray of tomato seedlings, bottle-cloched them & they will grow on in the greenhouse now, along with the chilli plantlets. They will continue to have a bubble-wrap blanket until the nights get warmer.
*Potted up aubergines but they will be indoors a little longer, as aubergines can get sniffy.
*Sowed cucumber seeds. Now in my little heated propagator. While doing this, I could tell Mr F is spending less on takeaway coffees. I usually sow cukes a single seed to a recycled takeaway espresso cup but had only got two! Never mind, I subbed in a few yoghurt pots for the rest of them.
*Pulled forced Spring rhubarb. Prepped & baked it in the oven with a bit of sugar to make a good amount of compote which I like on porridge & with yoghurt. I love taking off the forcing crock & seeing the pink stems with their lime green leaves. My crock has broken into 4 pieces from the frosts (it's quite old) but Mr F reckons he'd like a shot at mending it, which will be fine by me if I can get another year out of it.
Well, I need to go & freeze all those pots of rhubarb now & wash a pile of pots, then I'm going to choose a film to watch. It's really lifted my mood getting seeing some progress in the greenhouse today. Several of the trays of flower seeds I sowed recently are coming up. The 'mystery seed' still isn't doing anything. It might be too old, in which case I will just chuck it, but I am curious as to what it is. It is so very unlike me not to label it, so at the time, I must have thought its identity would be obvious. It looks like foxglove seed in terms of its size, but it is black instead of the usual brown & as foxgloves self-sow with ease in our garden, I wouldn't to to the trouble of seed-collecting unless it was a special variety. I just need a single seedling to pop its head up & I should be able to ID it. Free plants, whatever it is!
Oh yes, Weigh-Day. Already mentioned it was just 0.3kg off this week, a total of 3.6kg for the month, which is a teeny bit under 8lbs. I'd have expected a little more this week, as I did do a lot of walking when I was out hunting for Soot but it is still a downward trajectory which is the main thing & I do find weight loss slower post-menopause. 
Enjoy your evenings. It's so quiet here without Mr F booming away!
F x

Humdinger1

@foxgloves your comment about geriatric tortoises reminded me of the story about the snail who ordered a customised red Ferrari.  He was very particular about having an S painted on both sides.  On delivery, the garage manager asked him why: the answer 'so that I can hear them all say "just look at that S-car go" '.  The old ones are the best, no?! Anyway, some tortoises are surprisingly speedy.  Love Humdinger xx 

foxgloves

@Humdinger1 - Lol, wish my Dad was still with us. He'd have loved that.AND he'd have said, "The old ones are the best" too.
I didn't know tortoises could be speedy. I've only met one & it bit me.......although to be fair, I did put my finger in its mouth to see if tortoises have teeth. I don't really know what it did have in there, but it certainly delivered quite a chomp.
F x

foxgloves

P.S Re tortoise incident, I feel I should add that I was about 9 years old at the time, it wasn't last year or last week or anything.
F

Starlight_at_Sea

We have a tortoise in our extended family, who is not only surprisingly speedy, but also climbs over quite challenging terrain - found him atop a large pile of laundry the other day! 

Makingabobor2

Love reading about all your gardening adventures. I wish we had room for a greenhouse. 

foxgloves

@Starlight_at_Sea - On top of the laundry? What a little tinker! Funny though.

@Makingabobor2 - Yes, it's very useful for starting seeds off & growing the more tropical stuff. I grow quite a few outdoor tomatoes, but always have 6 planted in the greenhouse too, plus 3 growbags containing cukes, peppers & aubergines, then chillies & additional peppers are grown in pots & squeezed in wherever I can fit them. I also grow a row of basil in the greenhouse bed in front of the tomatoes. It does well in there & I've read that it helps keep aphid numbers down. Coriander does better in there too, I find & extends the season for growing it. One end is completely taken up by an enormous pot containing a grapevine which my Mum & Dad bought me when Dad had finished helping Mr F put the greenhouse together. The greenhouse wasn't an expensive one - it was a housewarming gift from Mum & Dad 21 years ago, as Mum was a very keen gardener herself & she knew I'd make good use of it. I could do with a new bench, but haven't budgeted for one this year, so I'm hoping it will keep going until next Spring.......or until I spot a good sale price on them in the autumn.
Do you have a coldframe? There are all sorts of posh timber-framed lovelies around, but a basic aluminium one with a lift-up lid does the job perfectly well & even that would help with keeping seedlings sheltered until it's warm enough for planting them out or with over-wintering things. 
F x

foxgloves

Morning Campers! 
Today I'm mostly going to be talking about energy bills, but to show I'm keeping the money saving faith, I can tell you that today's small wins will be:
*Checking on the veggie seedlings I potted up yesterday & finding that they all seem to have survived that crucial first night in a colder environment.
*Watering, feeding & pruning all houseplants, especially those in the conservatory, as all except one in the Man Cave (therefore looked after....or not by Mr F) have survived the winter & should come into lush growth with a bit of help.
*Using some of the rubber chicken I divvied up the other day for a stir-fry tonight. It is a use-it-up affair....the chicken, a pepper I sliced & froze a couple of weeks ago, some carrot batons I froze last week when it was clear we had carrots which weren't going to get used plus the last of a rather elderly packet of wholewheat noodles which I bought on a 3 for 2 ages ago, so that was 6 packs into the pantry.
*Sourdough proving ready for baking this afternoon.
I'll get other stuff done too, but as & when as I want to watch at least some of the Privileges Committee grilling of you-know-who this afternoon.
Right, now onto energy bills. Received monthly billing statement yesterday & have sat & crunched the figures this morning:
Compared to last month, we have used £7.04 LESS electricity & £27.37 LESS gas, giving us an overall bill of £34.41 LESS than February. We have had a cold spell during this billing period, but recent days have been warmer. Our thermostat is still set at 18 degrees from 6am - 10pm & much lower at night (so effectively off) & the warmer temperatures outside mean the heating is being triggered less frequently.
Total amount charged for the month = £194.47. Our new DD is £173-73, so given that this is only £20-74 short of this month's bill, & with a significant reduction in use imminent between April - end of September, I am hoping that it won't need to increase for a while. Interestingly, when I accessed the Cephalopods' new forecasting tool, their suggested DD amount was £240, but they also say that it is new & not yet always accurate. Having worked through the figures, I am not minded to increase our DD from
 £173-73 unless I notice from my regular monthly monitoring of our account that it is necessary. 
Out of interest, I compared this month's bill of £194-47 with the same period last year. In March 2022, we used £110-26 worth of energy, so an increase of £84-21, equating to roughly a 92% rise if my calculations are correct.
Of course, while we know that our energy use always drops off significantly during Spring & Summer, which is when we'd traditionally be building up some credit for the colder months, there are some variables hovering around which make predictions/planning more difficult. e.g The energy market remains volatile......will there be a rise in prices when various countries begin filling up their gas storage facilities again? And when are the global price reductions about which we keep hearing actually going to impact consumer tariffs? We are told that the price cap is less than expected, but that just means that increases won't be as horrendous, not that our tariffs are actually falling. Also, inflation.....we have been told that this would fall back a lot by summer, yet this morning  there was a News item explaining that it has actually reversed this month & gone back up. And will the oil & gas industry just be greedy & keep prices unnaturally high for their own profits because it is easy to obfuscate this at a time when we are all expecting the worst re inflation & bills? There are a lot of variables here & I wish I felt more confident that our current DD will remain stable for the rest of the year. And let's be honest, it's not 'remaining stable' that we really want, is it.....the bloody things need to be coming down for all of us. 
Ah well, that was my monthly energy bill number crunching session. The big band of rain which appeared on yesterday's forecast for Wednesday hasn't materialised & although there's a chilly wind, the sun is shining, so I think I will pop out & do some garden jobs before lunch.
Take care frugalistas,
F x

Cheery_Daff

Good number crunching there. I did our electric meter reading this morning, and have used less than last month but I suppose that's hardly surprising.

My greenhouse is an absolute tip at the minute 🙄 just a giant mess of pots, soil, fleece, and I even found a mug in there the other day that I clearly just abandoned the last time I had a cuppa in there, which was probably, I don't know, about August or something 🙄😂

My staging is really rickety - it's the innards of one of those plastic greenhouses, repurposed as shelves in the proper greenhouse. It's often in imminent danger of collapse, and the space could stand much wider shelves - these are slightly higher than they need to be, so they don't push back against the walls properly either, so things sometimes fall off the back.

I promised myself I'd make some new staging out of pallets this spring, but let's see if that actually happens... 🙄😂