Live on £4000 for a year - Part 2

bails

You're more than welcome Pirategirl.
I'm sorry Grandma, I forgot to congratulate you on the birth of Freya (I love that name).

Frugaldom

Hi folks, I disappeared back out into the garden for another couple of hours and then came online to do some important research - about gardening and self-sufficiency. Got sidetracked by the following site: http://www.selfsufficientish.com/

It has some great tips for all types of gardeners, even those living in flats! I now have a list of things I need to do and one of them is to find a babybath to turn into a small pond! The guy on the site got his for £2 from the charity shop! Apparently this is quite a frugal way of stopping the slugs from stealing your newly planted food as it attracts frogs. I know for a fact we have frogs in the garden, I had to lift one out of my strawberry pot the other morning when I went to water the garden! :rotfl: My list of thin gs to do in the garden has grown! Build the greenhouse, lay the slabs, plant the willow (I have now been out and taken about 30 cuttings to make a "fedge" (fence/hedge) that will produce a constant supply of kindling and enough canes that I'll can sell bundles to the basket weavers or, take up basket weaving! Must get some marigolds, helps attract beasties that'll eat any greenfly and I must plant more garlic, as it deters loads of other beasties from eating your veggie patch.

I'm still counting up how much stuff I would need to buy for the 6 months and HS is finding it quite funny trying to work out how many trolleys it would take and how big a van would be needed to cart it all back home again.

Marru, my interest beater is being used for my life insurance policy, but I still can't afford a private pension. I do pay my National Insurance and did a forecast before the HMRC took down the pension forecasting section of their site for revamping. I guess I need to keep practicing frugal living and hope I have a house bought and paid for by the time I retire, as I haven't a clue how I'd manage to pay private rent. I have just over 20 years to work this one out. Hmmm....

Made 2 trays of 'Twinks' whilst the oven was cooling from dinner tonight and have stripped the chicken to get another meal out of it tomorrow - probably curry. But I have a confession to make: I binned the carcass without making stock because I have about 8 litres of the stuff in the freezer.

Wonder what time my greenhouse will arrive tomorrow?

Marru

Hello again,

This is not exactly frugal living but I want to share my latest child rearing gadget that is the cutting edge technology and boy does it work .

Ok - I bought a cow timer from eBid (I had £3.- in my PP account from a survey and used it to pay for the timer so as far as I see, it was free). No it is not to time cows it is a timer that has this cute cow sitting on top and turning as the timer turns. I have few issues with DD that I was hoping this timer to help with like: sitting down and eating food instead of messing about, getting dressed in the morning and finding a story to be read before night night time.

Yesterday she was messing again with her food and I put this cow in front of her and said that when this cow turns to look at you and rings your time is up and I will take your food away (she knows the rules that if the plate is not empty - no pudding), I set it up to go off in ten minutes. And a miracle happened. The plate was empty in record time. As it worked so well I kissed her, hugged her and thanked her and gave her a lollipop (that also was hidden in the bread maker) for her pudding. Today I didn't need to use it for food but I did use it to get dressed before going out and it worked again. I was just able to stand there calmly waiting. All I said that if I have to take her to the car in her pants she won't be able to come for a walk with me and the Dog and has to wait in the car, that AND the timer and madam was dressed.

So very frugal little gadget and what a difference it makes in our mundane little lives. Plus it is very nice to look at.

She is now tucked in bed and I shall go downstairs, turn the telly off and sit in nice and quiet house with a book sipping some herbal tea, lovely!

Night night

Marru

Edited: Nyk - try freecycle for the bath. I offer mine every now and again and so far no takers. I am sure that in your neck of the woods there is someone trying to get rid of one. Talking about freecycle - got a play house to put into the garden for DD (a tenty type of thingy ), need to pick it up tomorrow morning :T.

wornoutmumoftwo

Morning all,

Had a busy weekend, spent an absolute fortune but not as much as I would have if I wasn't part of this challange.

Busy in the kitchen, made home made fish fingers which the boys and their friend wolfed down (I would go as far as to say they prefered them to Mr B. Eye).

Made loads of twinks hobnobs, both normal ones and choc chip (waited for the mixture to cool right down before adding broken chocolate, and they were a real hit.
I got about 60 out of one batch (my record - it's usually about 30ish).

Been doing lots of gardening, my seeds are growing nicely and had a bit of rain over the weekend which seems to have helped a little.

We are going on holiday to Butlins Skeggie at the end of the month so we have been spending money on bits of pieces; I had to get a new digi camera (got the tesco cheapie for £25 and it's the best camera I have ever had).

Bough a camcorder off Ebay for £50, brand new and should do us fine.

I also had a major hard drive crash at the weekend with my external 500gb, it's dead:mad:, fortunately I had my boys pictures on a disc but I have lost everything else.

My brother bought me a hard drive a year ago but it's newer then my computer can cope with so has been stuck in a box, but I have now bought an external enclosure that will enable it to work with my pc (fingers crossed), again off ebay, via quidco for a little cash back.

A lot of my recent big purchases are one offs, and I will be much more frugal once my holiday is over if I am to have a chance of staying within budget - but if I don't then I am happy with the fact that I am (mosty) managing to reduce my outgoings and in a better financial situation because of the people on this challange.

shaz_mum_of__2

Janey51 wrote: »

However, I did re-balance the outlay by removing (on a daily basis) all the tea, coffee, sugar, pens, paper, toiletries and toilet rolls from the bedroom in the hotel we stayed in :rotfl:
:rolleyes:

I thought it was just me did this
:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:


Shaz

redglass_2

Grandma, thanks for the tip, I didn't think of that, and congratulations on Freya's arrival into the world. Marru, love the story of the cow :rotfl: - we frugallers are an ingenious lot! Your unwanted bath isn't white and small, is it, by any chance? (I've been waiting for one of those on Freecycle for ages!)

My garden is 'the size of a hanky' as my Mum says but I have potatoes, beans, kale and fennel in it, plus strawberries and basil on windowsills. I didn't grow any veg last year, only the fennel (because I love the smell and the flowers) and I'm really grateful that you lot have got me back into it. :T I'm now trying for an allotment - the council seems to have a policy of not responding to queries, but I'm going to keep on at them. If I have to retire early, and I think I might have to, the allotment could be my lifeline.

shaz_mum_of__2

Hi everyone

i was reading nyk's postings re stockpiling

The best advice i was given (on another group about foodstorage/stockpiling)

was

1. write a list of everything you buy regularly calculate your needs
2. clear a cupboard/get boxes for under the bed
3. prioritise the list
4. allocate a budget over and above your normal budget say £5 week
5. each week spend £5 on something from your list(try to buy things on promotion)
6. rotate stock and check dates

my list seemed huge as i included food,drinks,cleaning stuff ,medicines and things like lightbulbs and batteries etc Stocks do build up quickly and you don't miss the extra money

my motto is "pay half now,don't get caught out and pay full later"

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FoodStorageTheBasicsandBeyond/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/food-storage/

these are the groups i use you need to join ,both require you be "christian minded" but you do not need to be religious to join,food storage is practiced by the church of latter day saints (sometimes known as Mormons) don't let this put you off i am not at all religious but have found it really helpful,loads of recipes too


Shaz

bails

Allotments are a pain to get hold of but definitely worth it I think so hope you get lucky eventually Redglass. Ha ha, I was going to ask Marru for the bath too but I am more than happy for you to have it; if she doesn't have one then I'll keep an eye out for one for you up here (or are you on Bath already?).

Love the cow timer story Marru, ingenious and so glad it's working! :T If you're passing, do pop in...

Wornoutmumoftwo, sorry about your hard drive, what a nightmare! Even though you had to shell out for things it sounds like you still went the MS route :T

Nyk - is it here yet, is it here yet?! :j
Thanks for all the new tips, I've had that site bookmarked for a while but have only dipped into it so far, must read more.

Even though I am ropey from the weekend, I feel so good that I have given up work. A real weight has been lifted... I won't be able to do much today but I can plan for the rest of the week

I got a couple of frugal items over the weekend, as well as the paper - go me :rotfl:I went up the Home to get some of the plants they were giving away but couldn't donate anything as it wasn't open yet (I will do tomorrow though). It wasn't as great a haul as I'd hoped - the tomato plants were all gone - but I did get a few bits including some rosemary and basil for the herb garden. Anyone know what rosemary is nice with except lamb? OH's cousin is also a make-up artist so gets loads of freebies which she brought to the party on Saturday - I don't wear make-up but of course we had some And my mum gave me some more bean plants to replace the eaten ones yesterday (and I let her put slug pellets down as a temporary measure - have wanted a pond for ages though so great news about that!). Did I mention that my parents are amazing?

Frugaldom

Wornoutmumoftwo I'm really sorry to hear about your external HD failure, I worry about mine a lot as it has everything on it, supposedly as back-up, but then I end up working straight of that and forgetting the files on computer aren't up to date!

Bails, it hasn't arrived yet but the sun is shining again - it's been like this now for 10 days! I'm having to water the garden morning and night and I still haven't even got a water butt. The buckets were emptied last weekend.

Re the frugal pond, when I was rearing ducklings, I had a makeshift pond dug into the garden the big plastic storage tubs - you get them in places like Poundstretcher or B&Q but you need quite a few large stones to make sure anything that goes in can climb back out. DS made a pond for his goldfish from an old water tank that someone was throwing out and someone else I know made two adjoining using one of those fold up plastic moulded sand pits that kids get. With all this in mind, and assuming I can finish work that deadlines tomorrow, I'm going to rake for something to use to make a pond. Can't be too big as DGD is only 3 and needs to learn what she can and can't do near even a small one.

Trying not to spend as I really do want to balance out the overall budget as close to the six month mark as possible. We've got the electricity kind of under control but it's still fluctuating between 10 and 15 units depending on what's made for dinner and how much hot water is needed. 5 units extra for each bath - trying to encourage showers all summer. HOW does the OP manage on 3.5 per day?????

Catch up again at lunchtime.

bails

Lucky you with the weather that's fantastic! Overcast here again but not raining. Good ideas about the pond, OH made a lovely one at his parents and a wicked water feature with huge glass leaves so I'm hoping he'll do something equally ace here... I need a water butt too, my parents always had a couple of the old barrels when I was a kid so might ask them if they know anywhere.
I really, really need to update my spends; it's on the list for this week :rolleyes: