The Reckoning

So the very wet day yesterday gave me the chance to go through the accounts and see how we have been getting on this month. I was very glad to find that we can put some money in savings, a few hundred pounds in fact, which was great.

Not so good was going over the grocery budget and I shall be using all the stuff we have left to try and keep next month's spending as low as possible. The March menu plan meant that I spent a lot at the start of the month and then did not make some of the meals on the list. April's plan is based on using up what we have and with 2 weeks Easter holiday for MrShoestring and MasterShoestring we should save something on transport and school lunches.

An expense we had not reckoned on was travelling to a funeral, but that is what the emergency fund is for and I am glad that we have it so we don't have to worry when unexpected things happen.

I also travelled a lot for placements for my course but was able to keep this spending neutral by offsetting it with money that is earned extra to the budgeted income, for instance by doing surveys.

MasterShoestring really needs a haircut and at his age will only go to the barbers, but he has decided to wait until the end of the school holidays to get it done, so that is a saving as well.

I also boosted the gift account this month by posting off two parcels of books to Ziffit, so that extra amount was welcome.

There were no big bills needing paid in March and there aren't any due in April either. the council tax is going up by 6.5% and we start paying that again in May so I have to re-jig the budget a bit to take that increase into account. There will also be some national insurance to pay next month once I have submitted a self-assessment form for tax. So with that on the horizon it is just as well that March has been mostly a frugal month !

Good Friday Frugal Round Up

Here's hoping the weather is a bit better than yesterday when the rain came down in stair rods ! Traditionally we work outside all morning on Good Friday, but this Easter I think the ground is too wet. So we shall just have to stay inside and make some hot cross buns to eat for supper !

I did take advantage of the supermarkets selling cheap vegetables to pick up some carrots and parsnips for Sunday, at only 33p a bag. I also menu planned and shopped for April having done a huge stock take of what we already have. I only spent £34.65 and the aim in April will be to keep this as low as possible.

I went to the library in the next village on my way somewhere else, to collect some books for MrShoestring and so avoided the reservation fees.

I also used book tokens and Love2Shop vouchers from the postal survey to pay for some things I need for my course next term. This effectively meant they were free.

There were some good offers in the Kindle free books, the complete works of Charles Dickens and the complete works of George Macdonald. So I got those, ready for reading in the summer on holiday ! Even I couldn't get through that many novels in 2 weeks !

We have a funeral to attend next week, 400 miles from home, so we researched the cheapest way to get there and the cheapest way to stay when we arrive. We shall also be packing picnics and helping out with lifts etc. in effort to help others too. Funerals are an enormous expense and I do think there should be more information about how to save for them or get just the basic services you need. It is a difficult time to be thinking about saving money but unfortunately I think that people are often paying more than they should.

I hope you have a happy start to the weekend !

Naturally Dyed Easter Eggs

A fun thing to try over the Easter days is to dye some eggs using things you have around the kitchen. Add some vinegar and salt to make sure the colours stick and get ready with plenty of recipes to use up hard boiled eggs when you have finished using them for decorating or egg rolling.

I've used red cabbage, beetroot, turmeric, onion skins, spinach and coffee powder in the past and depending on how long you leave the egg in the solution you get pale or darker shades of a colour.

 For each colour put 4 cups of water in a pan and add 2 tablespoons of vinegar and 2 tablespoons of salt. Add the colouring ingredient according to the list below and bring to the boil. Use a spoon to add an egg and boil for 10 minutes to get a hard boiled egg. If you want a deeper colour, take the pan off the heat and leave the egg submerged in the solution for 15 minutes or more.

Here's the amounts you need for colouring:-

red cabbage 1 cup; beetroot 1 cup; spinach 2 cups; onion skins 1 cup; turmeric 2 tbsp; coffee 2 tbsp

Good luck and don't be surprised if your red cabbage turns the egg blue !

Chocolate Nests

I have broken the 'bread' theme which I've had for recipes for the last few weeks as Easter week calls for these little beauties, made either with cheap cornflakes or shredded wheat or both !

280g crunchy cereal

225g milk chocolate

100g dark chocolate

50g butter

4 tbsp golden syrup

72 mini eggs ! (or fewer if you don't want 3 in each nest)

Lay out 24 paper cases and crush the cereal in a bowl. Melt the chocolate and the butter together, either in a microwave or over warm water. Once it is melted add the golden syrup and stir. Carefully pour the chocolate mixture over the cereal and mix. Put a tablespoon of the mixture in each case and divide any remaining amongst the cases. Use a teaspoon to make a depression in each one. Arrange the mini eggs in each nest and chill until set.

Hide them until you want them all eaten as they will disappear quickly !

Getting Rid of Cookery Books

Now that MasterShoestring appears to have outgrown most of his food intolerances I decided to spring clean the recipe book shelf and post a few off to Ziffit to earn some money for the gift account.

This was the first allergen-free cookbook I got, about 10 years ago. Although you can see that there are lots of recipes marked the only things I regularly made from the book were hummus and felafels. I have got recipes for those two things in other books so it was time to let it go and bless someone else with it !

Last year I also got at least three budget cookbooks and I haven't cooked a single thing out of any of them. Some of the recipes were too expensive, like the 'Family Feasts for a Fiver' book. 

I need a whole feast for £5, including a pudding ! 

Some books, like the one above, just had recipes that were too fancy for our tastes so those were added to the Ziffit pile. 

I could have felt a bit guilty about getting those books and not using them but then I remembered that I had got them using Swagbucks vouchers, so no out of pocket costs, just my time. The library did not have the books so I could not check them out beforehand, otherwise I would have known that they were not good buys.

The 'Home Economics' book has just arrived in the post, so fingers crossed that having checked this one out of the library, got it for free using Swagbucks and identified ten cheap recipes in it, that I will actually use it sometimes ! I saw another blogger writing that she thought the recipes in this book are too expensive to cook entirely on a budget of £35 a week, for a family of 4 and I would agree with that. However, there are enough cheap ones to make it useful I hope !

Have you got a favourite cookery book that you would recommend ?

March Challenges 4

So I don't think the menu planning challenge has worked so well ! I spent £17.72 at Lidl this week and an extra £3.62 at Tesco, so I'm over-budget for groceries this month by £5.05 ! This was mainly the fault of driving right past Lidl on another errand and thinking that it would be a saving to go in rather than make a special journey for next month's groceries. So in that sense it was a saving, but not until next month when I won't have to buy so much !

We have got quite a bit of food left and I am determined to start running down the fruit and vegetables in the freezers, ready for next season's bounty. I did make a start on doing that this week but the summer fruits crumble I made was so sour MasterShoestring's face nearly turned inside out it was so puckered up when he tasted it. I shall have to remember to add a lot more sugar next time I make one !

I did buy a joint of meat for Easter Sunday as well, so that will be a nice treat. I finally went to a jumble sale this past weekend but having paid my entrance fee found there was nothing to buy. I had made a special trip as I remembered that this was a good one in the past but this weekend there was very little on the stalls and nothing we needed or could have used for gifts. I think this is the third or fourth time I have been disappointed so I wondered if people are just getting rid of less stuff or selling it rather donating it ? I am mostly interested in buying books and music so I also wondered if there are fewer copies about because people are downloading stuff rather than buying hard copies. Whatever it is I am going to have to re-think my trips to jumble sales, don't know if car boot sales might be better ?

On a more positive note I got an excellent haircut at the barbers after lots of hairdressers refused to cut it as I can't have it washed due to allergy problems. I was really beginning to think I would have to cut it myself again ! No clothes bought this month and another packet of books sent off to Ziffit to boost the gift fund. I had depleted it a bit by buying tickets to the Chinese Terracotta Warriors exhibition in Liverpool. The tickets are for MrShoestring to give me for my birthday later in the year !! The tickets were already sold out for a lot of dates so I thought that I better get some now before they we're all gone !

Off to think about some challenges for April !

Palm Sunday

Today is the start of Holy Week and if you haven't already thought about what you are going to be doing and eating next weekend, Easter weekend, then now is the time to do so ! Are you visiting anyone ? Are you having visitors ? Have you planned all the meals ? Planning now, means that you avoid last minute expenses and can relax and enjoy the long weekend.

Remember Easter is not about spending money on chocolate eggs but in rejoicing in all the goodness around !

Today we shall be making our bread cockerels and beating the bounds, the children are very nearly all grown up but they don't like it when we say they are too old for the family traditions ! Things do change though, now they won't eat all the raisins off the ceremonial palm crosses as we walk around !

Enjoy your day !

Earth Hour 2018

Today is Earth Hour day and tonight at 8.30pm people all over the country are being encouraged to turn off their lights to show support for energy saving.  Some big landmarks will have their lights switched off to make the point on a larger scale.

Being frugal with energy and other resources is always a good thing but if you would like to do more, than use this link

https://www.wwf.org.uk

to make a promise not to contribute to waste of all different sorts on the World Wildlife Fund website.

 For every promise made Ariel have promised to donate £1 to the fund. So not only can you save some money on your electricity bill today you can also donate to a charity for free and pick up some sustainability tips, such as refuse plastic cutlery with your takeaway ! ( I didn't know that you get plastic cutlery with your takeaway !)

Anything we can do to cut waste is always worthwhile !

Frugal Friday

Another Friday and I am very happy because my course has broken up and there will be much less studying and more gardening for the next 4 weeks, hurrah !

There has also been very little spending as I have been too busy with working and studying, but my watch broke so that did need replacing ! The car also broke with a battery and a headlamp needing replaced, but MrShoestring did everything himself so that saved quite a bit in labour costs.

I changed books at the library and got a book in the post, which I'd previously paid for using Swagbucks, so no costs there. However, with a long weekend coming up I did fancy a few other things to read, so ordered them from the library rather than buying.

We got a free Sunday paper, which is great for lighting the fire after you have finished reading it and reused plastic bags after washing them out. I bought petrol on the other side of town and saved myself 3p a litre which is over 90p on a full tank. I also batched errands to save on fuel.

We cooked some meals using the slow cooker to save fuel and it has been warm enough some days to have the heating off during the day. I line dried all the laundry and made scones, chicken stew, spaghetti bolognaise, soup, bean burgers and quiche from scratch. We also ate leftovers for several lunches.

I was very interested in an article on the news about trying to avoid single use plastic as it is getting into the water supply, so MrShoestring and I thought we'd start to think of ways we could eliminate that from our shopping. We often re-use the plastic tubs etc. but for instance, the dishwasher tablets come in little plastic sleeves. so I'm sure we could do something to get rid of those, as that plastic just best thrown away. Could be an interesting challenge !

Meet the Frugalwoods

I was very excited to receive this in the post yesterday. It arrived just as I had no library books left to read and the Kindle needed re-charging, so I was delighted !

I ordered a copy using a Swagbucks voucher well before Christmas and although the book was only published on 6th March I still felt that it took quite a time for Amazon to send it out. It is a smart hardback book with a very high-quality dust cover, which I suppose you can expect from a book that costs over $20, so glad I got it for nothing !

I have been following the Frugalwoods blog for several years and thoroughly recommend it, especially the case studies where readers can chip in about how people can reach their financial goals, the latest one was about life in Australia.

I haven't finished the book yet but largely it is the story of how they achieved their financial goals through frugality and moved out of the city to a homestead in the woods. Not a goal that is possible over here in only three years, which is how long they took ! I think two urban US salaries helped with that as well as being quite savvy, for instance they knew how to rig up their own soda stream machine !

The real strength in the book for me is that it makes me question why I'm doing all the things I do and knowing that other people are doing them as well is very motivational !

I would recommend the book so far, but not at full price, read the blog instead !

SCONES = Quick Bread Substitute

Last night as we were fixing the car, (a new battery at a cost of £91 !), I didn't have much time to put supper on the table so I made a batch of quick scones instead of bread. This is the ideal recipe when you don't have enough bread or enough time.

8oz self raising flour

2oz margarine

enough milk/water to mix

Cut the margarine into the flour until it resembles breadcrumbs. Add enough liquid to make a soft dough, about 1/2 a cup. Roll out to 1 inch thickness and cut into rounds. Bake at 200C for 20 minutes.

This makes enough for 6-8 scones depending on how large you make them. With no sugar in they can accompany a savoury dish like soup or stew or have jam spread on them to make a quick pudding ! We had them with chicken stew to make a quick chicken potpie !

Car problems

Last week as I was driving home from a job I noticed that the night seemed very dark ! Was I perhaps wearing sunglasses ? Nope ! Did I not have the full beam lights turned on ? I had them on ! I puzzled and puzzled, until I reached the built-up area of the drive home and then the problem went away thanks to the street lights !

The following day I drove the car in the dark again and did not notice a problem as the route was through a built up area. However, on Friday it was just getting dark as I reached home and I noticed the reflection of the headlights in the glass door as I reached home, one headlight was not working !

After a good deal of investigation on the internet we discovered that £35 was the cheapest price for the replacement bulb we needed ! This is enormous compared to the cost of most headlight bulbs but the car is getting on for 9 years old and it isn't made any more so the parts have to be specially imported.

With some more help from Youtube MrShoestring fitted the new bulb in the snow on Saturday. It took a lot of strength as the little hatch where you access the bulb hasn't been opened for 9 years ! Good job his labour is free as it took a very long time to unjam it !

Now to fix the flat battery which made itself known just before the school run this morning ! We have a  3 year guarantee on that, so if need be can go and get a new one as I remembered to save the receipt and have found it !!

March Challenges 3

So it is the third week of my menu planning challenge. I only spent £6.08 at the supermarket on Friday and we have lots of food left, so much so that yesterday we had quite a funny lunch to try and eat up the leftovers ! Chocolate cake was part of it !

The meal on Saturday was not made as MissShoestring brought home pizza, garlic bread and 2 chocolate puddings. There was enough left for some people who shall be nameless, to eat some for breakfast ! Pizza for breakfast is not something I fancy but I suppose I should applaud the lack of waste!

The soup I made on Thursday night stretched to be part of the leftovers lunch on Sunday and MasterShoestring was out all day on Saturday so he didn't need lunch or supper that day, hence the leftover pizza on Sunday ! It's a good job we have a freezer so that I can keep all those ingredients I bought at the start of the month nice and fresh !

This week the plan looks like this :-

Monday pancakes, chicken sandwich, chicken potpie, leftover blackberry and apple pie

Tuesday boiled eggs and toast, leftover potpie, spaghetti bolognaise and strawberries

Wednesday scrambled eggs, cheese and pickle sandwich, quiche, potatoes, vegetable, steamed pudding

Thursday waffles, leftover quiche, soup and bread and cake

Friday toast, egg sandwich, spinach and potato curry, leftover cake.

This week I'm not going to make a plan for the weekend just yet but see what leftovers we have over the course of the week.

I've spent just under £140 so far this month and that includes school lunches. So well under the £170 budget and there is lots of food left for April when I shall really have to try and eat up all the fruit and vegetables in the freezer. The rhubarb is peeping through and reminding me of all the packets I still have !

Happiful Magazine

As part of my counselling course I have to read a lot about mental health and I have found that Happiful magazine as been a good way to learn quite a bit about different issues in a fun way and a not too dense way, this is good because after the course on a Thursday I sometimes need a break from thinking so hard !

You can subscribe to the magazine in the normal way and get a print copy in the post, but the thing I like about it most is that you can also read it free online via this link :-

www.happiful.com

There are lots of articles from the magazine on the website but if you scroll down to the bottom of the page there is also a link where you can read online or subscribe to the online edition for free and have it delivered to your in-box  every month. The stories are always uplifting and thoughtful and the magazine is well-produced, just like any other monthly glossy. The big difference is that it is not trying to sell you anything !

My favourite article in this month's edition was the one about the 'guide' horse ! Have a look and see what you think !

St. Patrick's Day

We have a connection to Ireland through my mother's side of the family and enjoyed a fascinating visit there a few years ago, so view St. Patrick's Day with a certain fondness. This was one of our favourite rhymes for the day when I was at school:-

One green shamrock, in the morning dew,
Another one sprouted,
and then there were two.

Two green shamrocks, growing beneath a tree;
Another one sprouted,
and then there were three.

Three green shamrocks, by the cottage door;
Another one sprouted,
and then there were four.

Four green shamrocks, near a beehive
Another one sprouted,
and then there were five.

Five little shamrocks, bright and emerald green,
Think of all the luck
these shamrocks will bring

There were actions to go with it too, but I think the family would look at me strangely if I tried it with them now !

Happy St. Patrick's Day !

Frugal Friday

Friday again and I think we had quite a quiet week on the money-saving front as I have been working on an assignment for college in all my free moments !

Last weekend we moved the lettuce, radish and tomato seedlings out of the window sill in the house and onto staging in the polytunnel. We did this because such warm temperatures were predicted for this week, so fingers crossed that they survive the big dip in temperature over the weekend. The only thing left indoors now are some alpine strawberry seedlings which are still too small to go into the big tunnel.

I spent very little at the supermarket and whilst I was there picked up a free local newspaper and a free magazine with a few interesting recipes to keep for Easter. We also got a free Sunday newspaper this week as MissShoestring gave us her vouchers, she only wants to read the paper online. We gave up the Sunday paper when we had a family as it was too difficult to read it with all of them round ! Now they are nearly all grown-up it was quite a treat to have one !

I downloaded a free ebook and went to the library in the next village to fetch MrShoestring the next book in the series he is reading, that saved us the library reservation fee. I also cancelled a library reservation I had, as it won't come in time now for the assignment I'm writing because the deadline is this coming week. That meant I got the reservation fee refunded.

We ate quite a few leftovers this week and I put half the vegetable curry I made into the freezer for later. We also made chapattis, bread, yoghurt, granola, sticky toffee pudding, peach cake, pizza, leek and potato soup, quiche and pancakes. We bought more potatoes from the farm shop at 40p a kilo, making this a saving on the supermarket prices.

MrShoestring changed the battery in my watch himself using a battery we had bought the last time I needed one as they are cheaper in multi-packs. Doing it ourselves saved around £8 as it is quite expensive getting the jeweller or Timpsons to do it round here.

We have a quiet weekend planned as I must finish that assignment ! Nothing like work for stopping you spending !

Saving Money on Fuel

The other day, as I was driving back from a job, I noticed that the petrol price per litre over on this side of town was 5p less than it was locally ! On a tank of fuel that would make £1.50 difference in price and over the course of a year add up to well over £50.

I have joined the free price alert service at

https://www.petrolprices.com

which tells you once a week where the cheapest petrol and diesel can be found in your area. But it wasn't telling me about the cheaper stations close to where I work, so I widened the search to up to 10 miles from home and they came up.

From now on I'm going to make sure that I fill up on the way home from work rather than locally, but I'm not sure if I understand why 10 miles makes such a difference. Looks a bit like pricing to match what they think people are prepared to pay ? Well I'm not prepared to pay more than my work colleagues so I'll take the cheaper price every time !

Do check locally and see if the same sort of price fixing is going on in your area, it could save you quite a bit of money !

Onion Bread

This is jolly tasty and can be made into all sorts of shapes, an ordinary loaf, a plait, even little rolls and best of all it is very easy ! Great with soup and as the cold weather is supposed to return at the weekend could be a handy thing to have on hand !

1 tsp dried yeast

2 tsp sugar

350ml water

1 chopped onion

550g flour (use wholemeal, white or a mixture)

25g oil

plenty of ground black pepper

Put the yeast and sugar in 50ml of warm water and leave in a warm place to get frothy. Mix all the other  ingredients together including the 300ml of water and once the yeast is frothy add that too. Turn onto a floured board and knead for 10 minutes, add extra flour to stop the dough getting too sticky. Cover and leave in a warm place to rise for 1 hour. Knock down and shape. Leave in a warm place to rise for about 20 minutes then bake at 200C for 40 minutes for a loaf or plait and 20 minutes for rolls. Leave to cool on a wired rack before serving.

Remember this is a savoury loaf so don't leave it lying around so that another member of the family tries it with jam ! Yes, that has happened !

The Year of Less

I got an email last week from the blog of Cait Flanders to tell me that this book had been reduced to £1.66 for the Kindle edition. I have a book budget of £3.50 a month to pay for bargains like that and library loan charges so decided to snap it up !

I've been reading Cait's blog since back when it was called ' A Blonde on a Budget' and so had wondered what would be in a book that wasn't on the blog. Well, this is divided into 12 chapters, one for each month of the year long shopping ban she undertook. It turns out that it is much more an autobiographical book than about saving money. If you are looking for ideas as to why people spend money, especially to meet emotional needs, well this is your book. However, if you are looking for ideas about how to pay off your student loan, this will only give you big picture ideas, rather than frugal tips.

I enjoyed the book because of the insights it gave into the author and how it shows that you can get through difficult times without resorting to retail therapy. It didn't take me long to read, a couple of hours at most and for that reason I'm really glad that I got it for a cheap price and for the Kindle. If I had paid full price I think that I would have been expecting a bit more for my money and would have been immediately thinking of selling it again as it does not contain any really new information for us. 

The other thing that was interesting for me about the book was that it gave me a good insight into how insecure some young people are and that makes them vulnerable to the advertising of products that always appear to promise a better lifestyle, more popularity etc. if you purchase them. The author also talks about her regrets in not learning all the skills her parents have, for instance basic car maintenance or sewing skills. That made me realise that before MissShoestring moves out we better check up on her basic DIY skills !

March Challenge 2

So I am not really sticking to the menu plan and think that we will have lots of food left over at the end of the month. For instance, having an unexpected Indian meal for Mother's Day means that the planned meal was not used. It doesn't really matter, as the ingredients can just be saved for another day. However, the other thing I had not reckoned on was that MasterShoestring would start going out with friends at the weekend, now that the weather has improved and that MissShoestring would put an offer in on a flat, which means that she is often suddenly having to stay in town when she had planned to come home. This means that over the past week I've had quite a few leftovers ! I also made unexpected sticky toffee pudding after discovering that MasterShoestring is very tired of blackberry and apple puddings having eaten them every week since September ! I had all the ingredients in the larder already and two helpings were eaten as soon as it came out of the oven !

I have re-jigged the menu plan for this week to take account of all the leftovers and meals not used last week, so now it looks like this !

Monday - pancakes, pork sandwiches, leftover pork roast dinner and leftover sticky toffee pudding

Tuesday - boiled eggs, leftover soup and bread, vegetable curry and chapattis, tinned peaches

Wednesday - waffles, egg sandwich, pizza and salad, steamed pudding

Thursday - toast, leftover pizza, leek and potato soup, rolls, oat biscuits

Friday - fried eggs, leftover soup and bread, quiche, potato wedges, ratatouille

Saturday - help yourself breakfast, leftovers, tortillas and salad, ice cream

Sunday - help yourself breakfast, leftover tortillas, roast chicken dinner and appal and blackberry crumble

I only spent £6.23 at the supermarket this week and it looks like that will be even less next week as I have everything in for the menu above !

A Lovely Mothering Sunday

I am enjoying a lovely day off today, admiring my beautiful bunch of tulips which the children gave me and looking forward to an Indian meal and cheesecake with cream which MissShoestring has arranged!

Mothering Sunday need not be an expensive occasion. The tulips are lovely but I would have been just as happy with bouquet of daffodils from the garden, which are just starting to appear and the meal is great, but anything I don't make myself is a treat ! I don't really need a card to know that I am appreciated the odd 'Thank you' and 'I love you Mum' are more than enough!

I found the survey in the latest edition of 'Good Housekeeping' interesting. It had asked mothers of all ages what was their favourite gift for Mother's Day and overwhelmingly people replied that a home-made card was the thing they liked best. Just goes to show that it really is the thought that counts !

Ten Free Things To Do This Weekend

1. Watch the Six Nations Rugby, technically this is not free as you have to pay the license fee, but it is a lot cheaper than buying a ticket !
2. Help a child draw up a revision timetable for their Summer exams.
3. Plant out the seedlings you have started into the greenhouse or polytunnel.
4. Go to the library and change your books.
5. Read free magazines and books online.
6. Clean the car, this costs a bit of washing up liquid and some water but is much cheaper than the car wash.
7. Go for a walk.
8. See or call a friend, with the free minutes on your phone !
9. Play with the kids or a pet.
10. Have a nap !

Needless to say we have all of these planned for today !

Frugal Friday

Friday already, but no snow this week ! It has been a fairly slow week as far as money saving goes but that means that we did most of the usual frugal living activities !

The most money-saving things we did were at the start of the week when we fixed a central heating fault and an electrical one ourselves. This was a double win, as not only did it save money it also meant that we got the power and the central heating back on a lot faster ! Made me glad that I have family around to help with these things !

One other very frugal thing I did was cut down a pair of sheepskin slippers which were too small into a pair of mules which do fit. All I had to do was cut the back off the slippers. That was quite hard work but better than giving away a pair of brand new slippers which I had been given as a gift.

We also got 12 weeks of free vouchers to get a free Sunday paper and downloaded some free ebooks. Another book that has been on my wish list for a long time was reduced to £1.66 for a Kindle copy so I  used the book budget of £3 a month to get it. I've lost the cheap price on books before by waiting too long before buying, so I'm glad that I snapped up a copy of "My Year with Less" before the price went back up.

We cooked a chicken in the slow cooker and had two suppers from that plus sandwich fillings and stock for soup. Then I also made a cheese soufflé, bean burgers and homemade buns, leek and potato soup and a quiche, as well as apple and blackberry pie, bread, yoghurt and hobnob biscuits. I also re-used foil and washed out some plastic bags.

We ate leftovers for several meals and MrShoestring and I downloaded free resources for teaching rather than buying them for work this week.

Phew ! For a slow week we actually did quite a lot !

Frugal Inspiration

I am always looking around for frugal inspiration and found a few, new resources on the internet which you might want to have a look at too !

The first are a couple of blogs, one written by someone who retired early, just like we are aiming to.

frugalinessex.blogspot.co.uk

There are some really, good posts about saving money on food.

The other is written by a lovely lady who sometimes posts often and sometimes has a bit of a break, so it is worth looking back through the older posts for a good read.

mandyschallenge.blogspot.co.uk

If you like reading blogs there are a huge list to go through at:-

blog.feedspot.com/frugal_blogs

I whiled away a snowy afternoon looking at all of these.

The other resource which is well worth a look is the free Tiny Budget Cookbook which is available to download here:

https://www.tinybudgetcooking.com/blog/eat-delicious-the-28-day-mealplan-and-cookbook

I hope you have fun looking for some frugal inspiration !

Malt Loaf

I have had half a jar of malt extract sitting in the fridge for ages so yesterday was the day for using it up!

3 tsps dried yeast

1tsp sugar

12 fl oz warm water

6oz malt extract

2oz black treacle

1oz margarine

1 1/2 lb flour

4oz sultanas or chopped dates (I used dates as they need using up )

Stir the yeast and sugar into the warm water and leave on one side to get frothy. Gently heat the malt extract, the treacle and the margarine together until the margarine has melted. Cool slightly then add the malt mixture and the water to the flour. Stir vigorously with a wooden spoon as this dough is too sticky to knead.

Spoon into 3 well-greased 1lb loaf tins and cover with a cloth. Leave to rise in a warm place for at least 2 hours. Once risen bake at 200C for 35-40 minutes. Turn out to cool on a wire rack and then slice and eat with lots of butter ! Delicious and sticky !

Update on LED Bulbs

At the start of December I wrote a post about buying LED bulbs from Poundland, saying I thought that they might be my 'go-to' place for bulbs now.

Well, the bulb in MasterShoestring's bedroom failed last night and although we had a very dim replacement bulb to put in straight away it was a bit inconvenient. So the £1 bulb lasted just 4 months, which is very poor value for money compared with incandescent bulbs or fluorescent ones. It will have saved some money because of the low wattage, but considering these bulbs are supposed to last years I think that is not worth buying another one.

I found one in Tesco, the equivalent of 60W, which cost £4.50 and comes with a 1 year guarantee. Fingers crossed that this one lasts a big longer than the last one and if not, at least I can return it and get another one free of charge. the guarantee has been put away safely just in case !

Where would you recommend for LED bulbs ?

March Challenge 1

So the March challenge is to stick to a menu plan and feed the family for slightly less than £5 a day ! I was inspired by Jane Ashley's book " Home Economics" but after looking at her menu plans realised that they would not be that popular with the family, for instance we don't want to eat chicken for tea 3 times a week ! So instead I turned to my copy of the Bernadine Lawrence book above and using some of her recipes and some of my own, came up with the following plan.

Thursday 1st March - pancakes for breakfast, leftovers for lunch, Spicy Bean Stew, Couscous and peaches for tea

Friday 2nd March - eggs, cheese and pickle sandwiches, Cheddar cheese and onion quiche, boiled potatoes, carrots and biscuits

Saturday 3rd March - toast and jam. soup and leftover quiche, tortillas, refried beans, salsa, strawberries

Sunday 4th March - toast and jam, beans on toast, roast chicken dinner and apple and blackberry pie

Monday 5th March - pancakes, chicken sandwiches, chicken potpie and brussels sprouts, leftover blackberry and apple pie

Tuesday 6th March - pancakes, leftover chicken potpie, red lentil flan and cauliflower, leftover pie

Wednesday 7th March - pancakes, egg sandwiches, bean burgers, buns, carrot salad and chocolate cake

So far we are eating less than I thought so not all of the planned meals have been made. For instance, instead of Spicy Bean Stew on Thursday I made soup from leftovers in the fridge and there was enough for lunches on Friday and Saturday too. There was also quite a bit of chicken leftover from last night, so I think some of that might go in the freezer for use in sandwiches later on in the month.

We have spent just over £100 so far this month stocking up for the whole month, so we'll see if I manage a budget of under £35 a week as I still have a few weeks of school lunches to pay for too !

Do you menu plan ?

It never rains but it pours !

After the trouble with the central heating we were looking forward to a quiet weekend, I had decided not to go to a local jumble sale as the roads are still quite bad and had planned a nice day at home. The pipes had melted with no bursts so we could top up the central heating properly and the frozen sink in the utility room had unblocked itself.

The morning was flowing along nicely until all the power went off ! No central heating, no cooking facilities, no back up heat, no internet to help solve the problem ! We had a new fuse panel installed ten years ago when we moved in and we know that it can be a bit 'twitchy', for example it will trip a fuse if a bulb blows. So hoping it was something simple like that, we set about unplugging everything  and turning everything off. However, it was the main fuse that had tripped and nothing would make it come back on. Now we have had this problem before because when it gets very cold, condensation forms in the motor which powers the garage door, that makes it unsafe to operate and you have to dry it out and then re-set all the fuses. So we tried that and it didn't work !

Then we noticed that the kettle in the kitchen, although switched off was still plugged in, could this be causing the problem ? Yes, when we finally got it unplugged the plug was corroded and so was the double plug socket ! The corrosion was probably caused by all the steam in the kitchen. Then MissShoestring helped us look up the cheapest place to get a new plug and double socket panel from on her mobile phone which still had internet access. MrShoestring went down the snowy drive to get the parts from Screwfix. MasterShoestring helped his Dad fit all the parts as the new metric sizes were not an exact match for our old kettle and even older socket space in the kitchen, so there was quite a bit of brute strength needed to get them to fit.

Finally, the main fuse turned on again and so did the fridge, the freezers, the central heating boiler and the internet router ! We boiled a kettle and were very grateful that we had been able to fix the problem at a cost of £4.62 for parts. No expensive call-out to the electrician and power restored ! We spent the rest of the day exclaiming over how lucky we were to be able to have a hot drink, cook a snack, write a blogpost and sit in the warm !

Now they say these things come in threes, I certainly hope that we have seen the last of 'breakdowns' for a bit !

Keeping Warm

Late last night saw me scurrying to the internet for advice as our gas central heating stopped working. It was a fault we normally know how to fix as it is to do with needing more water pressure in the system but last night we couldn't get any water into the system because the pipe had frozen. In the end MrShoestring went up into the garage loft and banged the pipe, it was just enough to dislodge some ice and a bit of water flowed into the system ! So it all started working again for long enough for us to go to bed in the warm !

It made me glad to know that we do have alternative ways of heating the house, including a wood burner and several electric heaters. However, it did make me think that maybe I should get a few more heaters as I don't think we have enough to keep the house warm if we had to wait several days for a heating engineer to come and fix things.

Whilst I was looking for information about what might be wrong with the central heating I was reminded that the boiler will be 10 years old in August and perhaps we should be thinking about replacing it soon. I researched wood pellet boilers and ground source heat pumps but they all seem more expensive to buy and run than a new gas central heating system. I don't think we need a new boiler just yet but if we plan ahead we can save up and find ways of lowering the cost, for instance by buying the boiler ourselves online and then just paying for fitting.

Hope you are all keeping warm !

Frugal Friday

So I changed the picture for Frugal Friday this week as it has certainly been a snowy week ! No school or college yesterday but MissShoestring struggled in to London to work. Brr, it has been cold. Most nights this week I have left the central heating on overnight just to keep it ticking over so the condensate pipe won't freeze and leave us with no heating in the morning. Not very frugal but I would rather be warm and save money elsewhere ! However, last night it got so cold that the pipe froze anyway and I had to get up and thaw it out this morning ! The house was freezing, but at least knowing what to do meant that I got the heating back on and it's warming up nicely now !

The snow has meant no journeys out so that has saved a bit of petrol at least ! Before the snow came I made a menu plan for March and shopped for it at Aldi, picking up a few missing items from Tesco. This has meant that we are well stocked up over the bad weather.

This week we made granola, bread, soup, quiche, yoghurt, tortillas, salsa, refried beans, curry, chapattis. mashed potatoes and crumble from scratch and also ate 2 meals from leftovers stored in the freezer. I got a free paper after supermarket shopping and when I finished reading it rolled it up to make kindling for the wood stove. We have also used free wood in the stove all week.

I got 2 free packets of seeds from the free subscription to 'Kitchen Garden' magazine and downloaded several free ebooks. I also got 5 books from the library and read a few free magazines from the library website. I am really enjoying that service as it means that I have access to all the magazines that the county subscribes to, not just the ones stocked by the local library.

The final frugal thing I did this week was save MrShoestring some money on his union membership by switching to another one. The new union has the same services as the old one but offers a discount for part-time working and a special new member offer of only paying £10 until September. That should save us just under £50 and then the monthly cost will be a £1 cheaper each month. This union also offers discounts on services and purchases so we meant be able to save a bit more once the membership card comes through.

I hope you had a good week and are staying warm and cosy !

The Reckoning

February was a short month and did not contain any big expenses for us, no annual payments, no unexpected outlay for parking or tree surgery so we managed to spend under £950 for the entire month, which is very little for us ! That meant that just over £500 could be deposited into savings for use in the coming months. That money is not all real savings as some of it is monthly contributions towards bigger annual bills which will fall due later in the year. Bills for the television license, which is going up and for car servicing and repair, so I have to be careful not to get too congratulatory as I know that the money is mostly earmarked for spending !

Still, I did resist the temptation of a jumble sale last week, but I suspect that was due more to how cold it was outside rather than an iron will to resist spending ! I was pleased that we managed to keep the grocery spending well below budget for the second month running. However, the grocery challenge cannot continue as it was,  MasterShoestring is getting hungry and begging for 'more meat'. He has even offered to cook a couple of meals and that is a sure sign that he thinks he has been getting 'slim pickings' recently !

I think the March challenge will centre around sticking to the meal plan I have made and not buying too many chocolate eggs for Easter ! We like to do Easter baskets and an Easter egg hunt, but now the children are not really children anymore I think that the chocolate amount can be cut back a bit and be replaced with a few homemade items !

How was your February ?