2024 Frugal Living Challenge

leftatthetrafficlights

Up early so just thought I'd come on to say I hope you have a very happy Solstice!!  Love and light to you all 💕

Viking_mfw

Picked up *73* boxes of festive pork snack things from sainsbos as an Ol*o food waste hero, too late to be shared via the app as they are use by. I have a variety of neighbours and friends dropping by this morning to take a stack to freeze....

Nelliegrace

W.H.S. had their boxes of Christmas cards reduced by about 70% today, there was plenty of choice. 
We have some pretty cards for next year. 

Frugaldom

I'm so impressed with all the organisation here. Being of the countryside with animals to care for means not much opportunity for anything else so the shopping has been minimal. I need to check my Nectar card (probably after posting this here) and see what's on it. 

@Prudent it would be fab to see you at Frugaldom once the days are longer and weather better. Feel free to make use of one of the cabins, watch the badgers out the windows. I'm here now and there's a badger on the decking. 😁 We often hear owls here and can you believe there are still bats coming out done nights! I love watching the wildlife.

It's been stormy here for the past 24 hours and the power had been off at the house all day, website now showing midnight before power will be restored. Thank goodness for log burners.

Planning ahead for the 2025 challenge thread so watch out for that in about a week's time. 😊

I_Love_comps

Thanks @London_1 I managed to get a copy of the book Breadcrumbs and Banana skins from Amazon.   Even better is I did not pay cash for it , the money came from a voucher from doing surveys.

fionaandphil

@Frugaldom hope your power is back and it hasn't been too difficult.

Duchess2

Seasons greetings everyone. 🎄🥂 Hope you all enjoy your celebrations, whatever form they take. Here’s to more savings in 2025. Thanks for your support this year @Frugaldom. A relatively new poster but have read along for a while. Enjoy!!!!!

Prudent

@Frugaldom, I hope all is well with your power. Another windy day her (the towels are on the line!), but thankfully not stormy. 

I have just been out for a wee walk and noticed the traffic at the retail outlet was silly busy. I am thankful to be having quite a restful day. I made the annual Christmas cheese cake this morning. I love traditional Christmas pudding and cake, but OH doesn't so I make the BBC Good food recipe for malted chocolate cheesecake. It then doubles up as Christmas cake and Christmas pudding. as it is only the two of us, everything else just gets done tomorrow. Other than going out to a carol service this evening I am able to relax for the rest of the day.

Frugaldom

Good evening frugal friends, I hope everyone is feeling at least a little bit festive. Power was eventually restored after the outage but there were so many modems fried by the lightning strike that BT are going to have to send out many, many new hubs. Of course, being in the midst of changing to fibre and WiFi in our area, no telephones worked! It caused a ridiculous situation with the frail and elderly left sitting for a full day without power, heating or emergency contact communication after mobile masts were also affected. I've no faith in these fully digital systems, they have no back-up plan during blackouts. This has served as a firm reminder to be prepared for such emergencies. Simple things like matches, candles, fire lighters, kindling, split logs, solar lights, rechargeable batteries kept charged, ingredients for simple stovetop meals kept to hand and possibly even some form of mini generator or rechargeable power bank and a camping stove. We have most of that at the hut so being there at the time, I was oblivious to the power outage until seeing all the posts appearing on social media. 😆 

fionaandphil

Oh gosh that sounds like a very big outage Frugaldom. It does remind us all that we need to be prepared for the worst. We no longer have a proper landline as it's now digital and it does worry me, especially as mobile is dire.

Hope that you will have a stress free Christmas and New year. All the best x