Frugal Friday

So, a tight, penny-pinching week to make sure we hit February with money in the bank ! With our eyes on the garden for this year I sprouted tomato and lettuce seeds. The tomatoes are a bit leggy but I'll re-pot them and they will be fine ! We also sprouted and ate some cress and I've got a new lot on the window sill, which I started yesterday.

We made tortillas, refried beans, salsa, chips, roast potatoes, roast vegetables, baked potatoes, pasta bake, mashed potatoes, bread, quiche, pumpkin soup and a plum cake as well as pancakes and granola for breakfast. I made vegetable stock from peelings and took up a pair of trousers which MrShoestring got for his birthday but were too long.

We got several free papers from the train commute MrShoestring does into London and downloaded lots of free magazines and a free ebook. We reused foil, plastic bags and margarine containers and changed MasterShoestring's mobile phone plan to one with more data and which costs £18 less a year.

I did the February bulk shopping at Tesco and used the 10p a litre off fuel voucher which I got at a different Tesco, which I pass when I am working, to buy the petrol, as it was 3p a litre cheaper than our nearest one, so effectively 13p off a litre !

I sent another lot of books off to Ziffit and think this will be the last parcel until I package up MasterShoestring's GCSE revision guides in the Summer. Everything else we want to keep ! I earned over £27 pounds from musicMagpie, which was a quick service, but we don't have anything else to send at the moment. So quite a bit to add to the gift account as well as sticking to the overall spending budget for January.

Now to order vacuum cleaner bags, printer cartridges and all the other little things we decided we could manage without last month !