Frugal Friday

Although this was quite a 'spend' week with all the annual car expenses we always did well on the frugal front, which is why we have all the annual expenses saved up for !

First off the garden is still producing well and inspire of the damp weather we appear to be keeping ahead of the slugs ! This week we picked blueberries, blackberries, cucumber, tomatoes and courgettes. The pumpkins are getting very large and there is still plenty of spinach, chard and kale, which I shall have to get around to freezing.

We continued to eat well and spent only £8.11 on groceries this week. We made tortillas, bread, quiche and a spare quiche case to use next week. Also breadcrumbs, chocolate brownies, blueberry muffins and yoghurt, all delicious ! The free cheesecake from MissShoestring was also very much enjoyed !

The boiler seems to have been repaired for £8 and we now have a reliable engineer for next year's service. I also saved £15 on a car insurance policy, I needed to look early as the insurance is up whilst we are away on holiday and I wanted to get it sorted so I don't have to worry about it lapsing. I used the Tesco Clubcard vouchers to order a free annual subscription to Landscape magazine. I've had this before and really enjoyed it. We don't get so many vouchers now that I don't shop there so often , so this seemed a good way to spend the few we do have. I also ordered 2 free cinema tickets from Nielsen and a £Amazon voucher from Swagbucks, but those have not arrived yet. I also downloaded some free Kindle books and started a free course on Mindfulness which I'll need for the next part of my training.

I finally found some wild sweet peas with seed pods during a walk so I took some to dry at home. I love that purply-pink they have and they grow anywhere, so I'm hoping to plant some next year. I've looked in to buying seeds but they are quite expensive, here's hoping the free ones work ! We went to a free jazz concert last Sunday, it was beautiful weather and the band was good, so a lovely Summer afternoon out. It was very popular and the Memorial Gardens were packed, it was lovely to see so many people having good time, there was dancing on the paths! Finally, we enjoyed our free behind the scenes tour at the Houses of Parliament, a real once in a lifetime experience !

Looking back I thought that the week had been quite miserable because of all that cold, wet weather in the middle of the week, but actually it has been quite good, I hope yours was too !