Frugal Friday

A quieter frugal week this week as MrShoestring and I were both away at different times visiting family and friends. We still did all the normal little things, which is just as well, as yesterday we got an enormous repair bill for the car ! We are driving to Italy next week and as the car is over 8 years old we thought that we better get it checked out. I've broken down in Italy in August before and did not want to repeat all that trauma and expense ! Anyway, 3 new tyres, several suspension things, a CVS joint and the brake fluid needed replaced before they said that it would be safe to drive across the Alps ! Fortunately, we do have car repair savings which paid for it all, but we have the savings because of all the little things we do every week, the sorts of things which are listed below !

I ordered cheaper Vitamin B12 capsules instead of just buying them at Holland and Barrett, I paid the same price but got 250 capsules instead of 100. We picked early apples, blackberries, the last of the blueberries, cucumber, courgettes, marrow and tomatoes. I made chutney with the marrow and some of the apples, it smelled amazing !

We also made bread, tortillas, rolls, soup, tomato sauce, iced ginger cake, date and apple flapjack cake, fajitas and pizza. We painted all the woodwork on the outside using trade quality paint ourselves. This paint is expensive but lasts, which means we have to paint less frequently. I weeded the driveway and out down cheap salt instead of weedkiller to stop them growing back.

I got a free dental check-up using our tax credit exemption card and re-used some aluminium foil. I downloaded some free ebooks for the Kindle and renewed books at the library online rather than driving in specially to do that. We enjoyed a couple of films using MissShoestring's Netflix subscription rather than going out !

I hope that you had a great week too !