The Reckoning 

So the final reckoning this month sees us able to put around a third of our income into savings which is a great result ! The grocery challenge was very successful with spending of £93, including MasterShoestring's school lunches. This was helped by the fact that for over half of the month the schools were on holiday, so he ate cheap leftovers for lunch rather than school dinners. With school back and GCSE examinations next month I think the grocery budget will go back up to normal, which is around £170 a month. If I can keep it lower I will as there are still plenty of courgettes, apples and berries in the freezers and rhubarb to come !

The school holidays also meant that we underspent on the PETROL and TRANSPORT categories of the budget, but that just means that we have something saved towards those months when it is a bit more expensive. The high savings rate was also helped by the fact that there was no Council Tax this month. That will start back up again in May and will be £14 a month more expensive so I shall have to re-jig the budget at some point.

Medical expenses were quite high this month as I bought eye drops and vitamins at a bulk rate, so that meant a large outgoing in one month to save in the ones to come. We also spent quite a bit on getting the vegetable garden ready, but this is budgeted for and will save us money on food costs later on in the year. (Fingers crossed that the wet snow predicted for today does not harm the seedlings already in the ground! We have covered them with fleece but cannot remember a year when it was this cold so far on in the spring.)

Next month we have 4 family birthdays and a new broadband and telephone deal to find, fingers crossed we can still make it a thrifty month !

Jumble Sale Haul

The first sale I went to was no good and they were packing up the hall as I arrived but the second was much better.

I love traditional Irish music so this was a great find !

Imagine how pleased I was when I found a second CD !

Then I found some jazz albums which I also like.

This has a few tracks I haven't heard before.

This was the bargain of the sale as not only was it a 3CD set but it was in the original packaging and in very good condition so that has been popped in the gift cupboard ! Maybe I can persuade someone to give it to me !

Aldi v Lidl

Part of our challenge to 'live on a shoestring' is to keep the grocery budget as low as we can. After this month's challenge to eat up as much food in the pantry and freezers as we can we have started to run low on lots of basics so yesterday I went to do a larger shop ready for the start of next month.

I debated whether to go to Aldi 9 miles away or Lidl 10 miles away. In the end I went to Lidl which takes less time to get to as the road is a dual carriageway and I did not have so much time. I went to Aldi this month and thought that it had gone very upmarket, so I was interested to see if anything had changed at Lidl.

When I arrived it was impossible to park in the car park, there were so many cars waiting that they were queuing out on to the road. I was in a hurry so took a chance on parking on the road and hoping that I would not overstay the free limit. I was very quick going around the store as they did not have many of the things I wanted !

I also noticed that quite a few of the prices had crept up so they were closer to the normal prices in Tesco. I think that I did save on the shopping but because of all the things they did not have in stock I then had to go and pay nearly the same amount of money again for the missing things in Tesco. For this reason I think that Lidl is going off my list of preferred places to shop and I'll go back to making a once a month trip to Aldi at a time when it is not so busy. However, I also think that I shall start keeping a price book so that I can check that with the added cost of travel it really still is cheaper to shop there !

Frugal Friday

It has been a very busy week here at Shoestring Cottage so no time for shopping, which is quite money saving unless you are missing out on loss leaders in the stores because you haven't the time to fetch them !

I got several good books from the library and downloaded a free ebook for the Kindle. We washed out plastic bags for re-use and reused foil. We cooked ahead and made bread and several meals for busy nights, this not only save money but sanity as well !

I had one egg in a box which had broken so instead of throwing it away I made 5 fairy cakes to use it up. I got a free Sunday a paper and a scarf and some books when MissShoestring started to clear out her stuff ready to move into her own flat !

I found the time to take the cash box full of pennies down to the coin counting machine in the supermarket and got a shopping voucher for £7.60. I don't usually use coin counting machines as they take a around 10% of your money as a fee for doing the counting. However, I knew that a trip to the bank to get bags was not going to be possible and the box was getting too full to shut, so I decided convenience was a good thing in this case !

We also got some free stationery and printed out lots of free past papers for MasterShoestring's GCSE revision, only a couple of weeks until the exams begin and he has requested a good supply of chocolate biscuits in the cupboard to help with revising ! So I think the shopping bill may rise this month !

I hope that you had a good, frugal week !

Cooking, Biking and Surviving

The only time I have come across the Hairy Bikers was when I was looking for low calorie recipes for MrShoestring but on Saturday I saw their autobiography in the library and thought it looked interesting so got it and brought it home !

Well the story is far more riveting than any cookery programme I have ever watched. I finished it in 2 days and with renewed respect for them as people as well as cooks and travellers.

If you haven't read the book it is called " The Hairy Bikers. Blood Sweat and Tyres" and I would thoroughly recommend it. Now that it is finished I think that I shall keep an eye out for their other books and search to see if any of their old programmes are available to view.

It is always nice when you take a chance on something and then discover that there is a whole world of interest that you have overlooked, so I shall be looking into the world of the Hairy Bikers with a bit more interest from now on.

I shan't spoil the story for you in case you want to read the book but I will say that they have overcome a lot to get where they are today and I know their Hairy Dieters Club is helping a lot of men lose weight !

Slow Cooker Bolognaise Sauce

This wonderful, very forgiving recipe has formed the basis of two suppers this week when I've been away at supper time, once as the bottom of a shepherd's pie and once as what it is supposed to be for, spaghetti bolognaise. I had never previously cooked meat on LOW in the slow cooker without a bit of pre-cooking first but this works very well !

1lb mince beef

1 onion

2 cloves garlic

3 beef stock cubes

200ml red wine or stock

2 tins chopped tomatoes

4 tbsps tomato puree

2 tbsps mixed herbs

fresh ground pepper

a bay leaf

Mix all the ingredients in the slow cooker and add a couple of handfuls of red lentils if you want the meat to go further. Leave on LOW for 6-7 hours and enjoy !

So simple and really good !

Good Reads

I did very well at the jumble sale on the book front and I am going to keep this pristine copy in the gift cupboard fro MrShoestring's birthday. It looks very exciting and interesting and once he has finished reading it, I can have a look !

I saw quite a few copies of this book at the sale and in the end got it to make up my selection to 5 books so I could get the special price of 5 books for £1 ! We have enjoyed CJ Sansom's historical thrillers so I hope the writing is just as good in this story about the Spanish Civil War.

I thought that I had read all Nevil Shute's books so I was intrigued to find this reprint of a story I have not heard about for based duringWorld War 2 in France. I am looking forward to reading it !

This was another book I had not read and MrShoestring enjoys Bill Bryson's writing too, so this will be enjoyed by both of us !

Finally, this Nora Roberts' romance will be saved for a time when other people eat chocolate or ice cream, sometime next holidays when I feel like a bit of escapism !

All this for a bit less than the cost of 2 lots of reservation fees at the library !

April Challenges 4

Mr Shoestring left his beloved hat on the train this week so we had to break the clothing ban to get him another one. He was very fond of his old hat and it is also very practical, keeping the sun and rain off during his long commute so I did not feel too bad about shopping around and eventually ordering one online which cost around half what we paid 5 years ago.

Shopping wise I was just over the target amount this week at £12.90, we were running out of bread flour and a few other things so I had to push the budget a bit. The challenge to eat up what we have is still going well and I can at last see at a glance how many lots of apples, berries and courgettes we have to use up rather than just thinking there is a bottomless heap in the freezer.

The warm weather has meant that people have not felt like eating some of the things on the menu plan, so the soup, for instance, has been frozen for another time ! A bonus from the warm weather though is that the tomato seeds and cucumber seeds have germinated already and I have been able to put the celery plants I grew from the remains of 3 old ones, out in the greenhouse.

I managed to go to a jumble sale on Saturday and spend only £1.50, 50p on an old egg poaching pan and £1 on five paperbacks, which I thought was a very good price ! There is one more jumble sale next week so I'm hoping it will be a good one too !

Key Safe

On Friday night I went out to do some work and MrShoestring went off to collect MasterShoestring. He had changed into shorts just before going and left his house keys in the trousers, you can guess what happened, they were locked out when they got home !

Rather than waiting for my return they got into the house through a skylight, a dangerous operation which I am sure I would have vetoed had I been around ! So after this little adventure we decided that we needed an emergency way to get into the house.

Previously we have left a key with a neighbour, but a few years ago the house sold to a family who are often away so that is no longer a good option. What MrShoestring came up with was a key safe in the shape of a wooden log that could be stored in the wood shed.

These cost quite a bit to buy so when MrShoestring was able to make one out of an existing log I was well pleased ! Now we have a key safely hidden in the wood shed, so no more dangerous scrambling around on roofs !

Kilo euroScrubby

I bought one of these earlier on in the week and it arrived in the post yesterday, just in time for the weekly house cleaning. I had seen a review of the product on the blog "Tracing Rainbows" and Angela had tried hers out for a whole year and given it her seal of approval. I got it for free using an Amazon gift card from Swagbucks but the normal price is £3.70. Normally I buy sponges in the poundshop for cleaning the bathrooms and doing the dishes, but liked the fact that this product was biodegradable and needed no other cleaning products, a bit like micro fibre cloths.

I tried it out in the bathroom on the sink and was impressed, it removed all the limescale spots without me needing to add a cleaning product, so when the latest bathroom sponge is worn out this is the only thing I'll need and I won't need to buy or make bathroom cleaner anymore either.

I've decided that I'll use the next lot of Amazon gift cards to get some more of these and try them out in the kitchen next time, as it says they can scrub vegetables and be used as pot scourers as well, so that would be great !

Frugal Friday

The lovely weather has made it feel like Summer rather than the middle of April this week, so I have been feeling in a bit of a holiday mood, in spite of being the first week back after the holidays ! However, still plenty of money saving going on !

Last week's grocery shopping was under £12 in total but they did have good quality cheddar cheese on offer for £4.54 a kilogram, which is around 50p cheaper than the tasteless cheap cheddar so I got 2 packs, one for this week and one for next. Normally I would have stocked up and put some in the freezer, but decided to stick to the grocery challenge and only buy what I could fit into the challenge budget. I also got a free paper and magazine at the supermarket.

I fetched the next book in the series that MrShoestring is reading from a library in a neighbouring village when I was passing rather than pay a reservation fee. I also ordered cinema tickets using points from the Nielson shopping survey. They arrived this week, so we'll be picking out a film, I fancy the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society but we'll see what MrShoestring says !

For the very first time ever I made fresh homemade pasta. I don't have a pasta maker and cutting and filling all the little rounds and waiting for the pasta to be ready and then trying not to allow it to stick together took around 2 hours in total. Everyone said how delicious it was and the recipe did make a lot, but I'm not sure I have the stamina to try it again !

I earned enough Swagpoints to order another Amazon gift card and used it to buy an ebook and some cotton scrubby things that were recommended over on the Tracing Rainbows website. I want to see if they will be good for sink and bath cleaning rather than using sponges which have to be thrown away.

I had a great visit to a jumble sale and am looking forward to visiting 2 more this weekend. We also got a free Sunday paper and I gave MrShoestring a home haircut. This saved money and time ! We ate quite a few leftovers and I made some make ahead meals for the freezer to have on nights when I couldn't be home or was home late. This worked very well and I will definitely be doing it again next week.

How was your frugal week ?

Ten Things to do on a Beautiful Spring Day

With the weather turning so nice, yesterday was a day for leaving routine behind and enjoying the lovely sunshine. Here are ten things we enjoy at this time of year :-

1) Sitting in the garden

2) Reading outdoors

3) Going for a walk after supper

4) Drying laundry outside

5) Opening the windows and allowing the fresh air to blow through the house

6) Admiring other people's magnolia trees

7) Planting some seeds outdoors

8) Eating a picnic

9) Eating ice cream after school

10) Telling friends and family abroad all about our lovely weather !

Things to do in Britain

We have just applied to host some foreign students in the Summer holidays and as part of application had to list 5 activities we would take any visitors on which they would associate with being in the UK. I came up with a list of a few but then saw the list that the students had :-

1) Eat fish and chips

2) Have afternoon tea

3) Eat a Cadburys creme egg

4) Go on the top deck of a London bus

5) See a bobby on the beat

6) See Big Ben

7) Watch the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace

8) See the White Cliffs of Dover and eat a stick of rock

9) Go to Harry Potter World

10) Visit Windsor Castle

I'm not sure whether all of these are still uniquely things you can do in the UK ? What would be on your list ?

Jumble Sale Success !

On Saturday I drove to a neighbouring village which had to postpone its jumble sale because of the snow and it was a good one ! All the paperbacks were 40p and all the CDs were 20p ! I got 4 books including the one above. I really enjoy the Miss Read stories of village and school life and this Christmas compendium includes a few short stories which I haven't read. One of the books was in mint condition so that has been stored away in the gift cupboard.

There were other items in mint condition too, including a pair of wool socks and a silk scarf. I paid 40p for each of them and they have been popped in the gift cupboard as well. I broke the clothing ban and paid 40p each for a pair of brown tights and a brand new pair of slipper socks. They were such a bargain I couldn't resist !

I also got 6 CDs, one of which was no good as when I looked inside the case it contained 2 CDs which were not at all related to the front cover, so those have gone in the charity box and I have learned that you must open the case and check what is inside before buying ! The other 5 were fine and 2 of them have become my new favourites !

The final items I bought were some tiny figures for my course and a basket to make a birthday gift basket for someone. All told I spent £4.50 and purchased 16 items making an averaged cost of just over 28p an item. Which only goes to show that jumble sales are still worth it if you go to the good ones ! There are 2 more next weekend so I hope that I am just as lucky there !

April Challenge 3

So the April challenge is still going well and I only spent £11.63 on food this week. I did have to go over the shopping list a few times and make some substitutions and decide to wait until next week for a few things but I still think that we will be well fed.

Here is the menu for main meals this week:-

Sunday - Meatloaf, courgettes, roast potatoes, apple pie

Monday - Lentil lasagna, mixed vegetables, leftover apple pie

Tuesday - Vegetable curry, chapattis, chocolate cake

Wednesday - Beanburgers, buns, sweetcorn, leftover chocolate cake

Thursday - Leek and potato soup, bread and lemon cake

Friday - Homemade spinach and feta cheese pasta, tomato sauce, rhubarb crumble

I'm working late this week so the bean burgers, vegetable curry and pasta have already been made and put in the freezer for taking out later on. Then I'll add a few loaves of bread and some cakes whilst I'm at home today to help with quick meals later in the week. Being able to cook ahead means that we still save money on nights when I might be tempted to use convenience food. One of the interesting things about the challenge though is that no matter how much produce from the freezer we seem to use up there still seems to be lots in there !

More Seed Starting

Of all the seeds we started in January only the lettuce are really doing well. They have been planted out in the garden under the cold frame and are growing well. The radishes are still alive but very leggy and the tomato seedlings which were in the greenhouse have mostly died. So I have well and truly learned my lesson now, not to start seeds too early !

However, this weekend has been ideal. Yesterday we made a plan and so far have planted peppers, more tomatoes, cucumbers, aubergines and courgettes indoors. We have started some leeks, turnips, french beans, peas and beetroot in the garden. Then in the greenhouse are some herbs and broccoli and butternut squash.

We have never grown butternut squash or aubergines before so fingers crossed that everything germinates and the warm weather continues. If it does then later on this week I'll plant some more lettuce and radishes !

Make Do and Mend

We have several of these chairs from IKEA but now they are getting on for 10 years old they are beginning to need a bit of attention.

MasterShoestring has one in his room as his desk chair and with all the swinging on the legs he has been doing the joints had become so loose that he was worried that they next time he was swinging he might fall off backwards ! (I know that he should not be swinging on the chair, but all that rhythmic activity seems to help with the studying !)

Rather than swap it for another chair he asked MrShoestring to fix it ! He had complete faith that he would have everything to do it at once and he did ! Wood glue, screws, clamps etc. all found in the workshop and the chair was fixed in 10 minutes. He then took MasterShoestring off for a haircut whilst the wood glue dried !

This is the third or fourth thing MrShoestring has mended this week, so I'm pretty happy !

Frugal Friday

Another Friday and thanks to the glowering weather and the need to help with GCSE revision this has been a low spend week ! It has also been spent mainly cleaning, so not a great many actively frugal things were done !

I was pleased to get a few new books from Freecycle, some of them were very nice Michael Morpurgo paperbacks so those will be donated to the school library. I also downloaded a free book on to the Kindle and used it to while away the waiting time at the dental hygienist. We get the cleanings at a discount as we belong to a plan that pays monthly across the year. I also asked her to polish my teeth as well, which was an extra service that she hasn't included before. I guess I'm learning that it doesn't hurt to ask !

I have had good luck at the library the past few weeks and have been enjoying several new books which otherwise would have cost a fortune to buy, I didn't even have to pay reservation fees as they just happened to be on the shelf ! We got a free Sunday paper as well.

I washed out plastic bags that have been storing fruit and vegetables in the freezer and now have quite a few stored away for re-use this summer. We also re-used foil and used up some odd ingredients in the pantry. 

MrShoestring needed a new electric toothbrush and having researched the model we wanted I bought it at a discount price on eBay as it did not come with a charger. That was good as it meant we could re-use the charger from the old brush and it saved us £5 on the cost of the new brush. MrShoestring also repaired his slippers using stick on soles. I thought we should throw them away, but he thought that buying the soles for £2.78 was more cost effective !

Next week school starts again and that means it is going to get very busy for us so I cooked and froze some bean burgers for quick meals next week and will do some more cooking ahead this weekend.

A nice surprise in the post was some free bee-friendly wildflower seeds from the local council. We planted some last year and they did very well, so we're hoping for another nice display this Summer.

Here's to some lovely weather for the weekend !

Researching Telephone and Broadband Deals

This week I have been thinking about how to lower our phone and broadband spending. It was prompted by the fact that we have lots of unspent minutes on our mobile phone plans, which offer up to 250 minutes for free as part of our £5 a month deal. I have only recently been gifted a mobile phone and I do not use it much, but it seems to be an expected thing for the course I'm on, so I was grateful for the gift. As a result of all those unspent minutes I decided to cancel the Anytime free calls deal we have with our broadband and phone package, this would save £8 a month. Since the billing works a month in advance the change won't take effect until May, which will be just 1 month away from when we can switch. This prompted me to have a look at other deals available.

It was serendipitous timing as the following day I got an email from our current provider to say that the deal price was increasing by £1 a month in June. I definitely do not want to pay more, so used the moneysaving expert  website to have a look at how much it would cost to get the same package we have now somewhere else. I did not sign up for anything, as I still have more than a month to decide.

Well, the day after that, I got another email from our current provider saying that if I signed up again for 18 months then not only would I avoid the price increase but would save £15 a month as well ! I was very tempted, as sometimes switching can mean that the service is a bit intermittent for a few days afterwards and the switching date is right in the middle of MasterShoestring's exams, so no internet access for getting at past papers, revision materials etc. would be very inconvenient.

However, I made myself calculate how much this wonderful new deal would cost over the course of a year- just under £300, whereas I could switch to another provider and get the same services for under £200. This is too much of a saving to ignore, so I deleted the email promising the wonderful saving and closer to the expiry date for the current deal will use the figures I have collected to call them and see if they will match the cheapest deal I find at that time, if not I'm switching !

Spring Cleaning

It was so wet on Monday that I could not do any jobs outside and had to start the spring cleaning. I really I like sunny weather for cleaning as it helps dry the floors that you've washed, but at least it wasn't cold !

To do the spring cleaning I make a list of all the rooms in the house and declutter them first. Then starting at the far end of the house I work my way from one end to the other doing 3 rooms every day until it is finished. I don't do the ordinary cleaning, which is done weekly on Fridays, but all the deep cleaning tasks, such as clearing hair out of the shower drains and wiping down the skirting boards.

Cleaning carpets and washing outdoor windows and woodwork is done in the Summer holidays as I need the extra warmth, which we should have by then, to dry the carpets thoroughly. I also wash loose covers and curtains then, as the weather is so much better for drying. It's been raining most of the week, so I was glad that it's only sheets I have to dry !

I clean with just the things I have on hand, with warm water, washing up liquid and a micro fibre cloth being my favourites. I also attach a cloth to a broom using elastic bands to get the cobwebs in the hard to reach places. I thoroughly recommend the micro fibre cloths as you can get them in pound shops now and mean that you can clean very well without using products.

I use vinegar for hard water stains and a long lasting mop that you can wring out and dry for cleaning floors. This works well on our wood floors as you must not get them too wet and I can wring out the mop to just the correct degree of dampness.

I should have all the rooms done by the end of the week and I'm looking forward to having all the winter dust gone ! Then hopefully some nice weather for all the rest of the outdoor jobs ! Just lately I'be reading about quite a few frugal bloggers who have been hiring cleaners but I'd rather do it myself !

The $21 Challenge Book

I got this book for free with a Swagbucks gift card after deciding that we needed to eat up some stored food in April. It is an Australian book, written by the two ladies who worked together on the Simple Savings website. I wondered about getting a copy when it was first published, but decided that I did not need it ! Now I have it, I think it is great !

The $21 Australian dollars in the title converts to just under £12 in pounds sterling, but as the book says, it does not really matter what level of spending you set for the weekly grocery challenge, you decide what works for you. This book will help you menu plan and use up all those obscure ingredients in the larder, it also shows you which ones you should let go of.

The book is divided into eight sections with the first few explaining what the challenge is and how to get ready for it and then a very funny section on how different people and attitudes might try and sabotage your challenge.

There is an excellent recipe selection and a really invaluable section on how to use up obscure ingredients. The other section I liked was one on substitutions which you can use if you haven't got something you need for a recipe to save having to go and buy it.

I thoroughly recommend this book and will be using it during my April challenge !

April Challenge 2

So I was quite proud of myself at the supermarket this week as I stuck to the challenge and only spent £11.17 on food ! I did wonder if going further afield to a cheaper supermarket or using the local market would be cheaper but having investigated both, discovered that on the basics I was buying this week there would have been no saving.

We have been eating quite well and everyone said how tasty everything was, so that was good. I have also used up some more apples, blackberries and courgettes from the freezer !

Here's the main meal plan for this week :-

Sunday - Meatloaf, roast potatoes, broccoli, apple and blackberry crumble

Monday - Lentil lasagna, courgettes, jam tart

Tuesday - Spaghetti carbonara, mixed vegetables, fruit muffins

Wednesday - Beanburgers, homemade buns, vegetables, victoria sandwich

Thursday - Leek and potato soup, buns, pumpkin muffins

Friday - Spinach and feta filled pasta, ratatouille, rhubarb crumble

Saturday - Tortillas, ice cream

I already know that I have planned too many puddings as we have plenty of crumble left over from Sunday, so I'll only make another one once that is all eaten.

If I can keep this up once school starts again we should be on our way to making a good saving on grocery spending this month !

Spring has Sprung !

I was very excited to see violets all over the lawn, the warm weather has brought them out !

I love them so much that I won't let the lawn be cut until they have finished flowering ! So I was even more excited when we spotted a few patches of these !

White violets, which I have never seen growing round here before !

This seems to have been a good year for flowers, in spite of the cold. We have so many patches of daffodils flowering which previously were just leaves.

Everything seems to have come out at once, but I'm not complaining, it's lovely !

Fixing the Roof

All that freezing weather left us with a leak above the utility room as the mortar froze and thawed, froze and thawed. It has gradually been getting worse, but we couldn't fix it because after the weather was freezing it was too wet for any new mortar to cure.

Finally, yesterday made two dry days in a row and MrShoestring was able to go and buy mortar and get up on the roof. One of the good things about a bungalow is that you can just use a ladder to get up to fix the roof, much cheaper and easier than scaffolding.

It cost £11 for the bag of mortar which was used to re-point all the gullies on the roof, not just the one above the utility room ! When MrShoestring got up there he saw lots of other places where the mortar had cracked and then been swept away by all that heavy rain we have been having.

In a way we were lucky to have had that small leak as knowing we had to get up and repair that one meant that MrShoestring was able to fix lots of others that we did not know about !

If at all possible we really like to do house maintenance ourselves, not only is it cheaper but you know you have done a good job !

Frugal Friday

What a joy it was to have a sunny day yesterday ! Otherwise the rainy weather has kept us firmly indoors and that has meant that this has basically been a no spend week !

We needed a new specialist light bulb for the motion activated light at the front door and managed to get 3 bulbs for the price of 1 on special offer at Screwfix, so I only hope that we can remember where we have put the spare ones when we need them !

I got money off coupons from Tesco in the post, so instead of doing a big monthly shop at Aldi I bought just enough to trigger the saving at Tesco and will then do a £12 a week challenge for the rest of the weeks in the month. I don't want to spend £40 every week just to get the savings from the coupons they sent, but £6 off at the start of the month was good !

I finished my first ever sock from wool in the great stash and have started a second, these will be a Christmas 2018 gift ! We got a free Sunday paper, thanks to MissShoestring's vouchers and I used a Swagbucks Amazon voucher to get the 'Home Economics' book for free.

We took all our food and drink when travelling, which made for a lot of convenience and a considerable saving. The rest of the week I didn't use the menu plan as we had so many leftovers and people ate so much chocolate they were not very hungry at meal times !

I earned a second Swagbucks Amazon voucher and used it to get the $21 challenge book from Simple Savings. I read the first 2 chapters for free on the website and decided that I would quite like to have access to more of their "use-it-up" recipes. I also downloaded a free e-book and got 5 great books from the library.

Quite a good week really, now the weather needs to get warmer so we can get out and plant seeds !

Ten Tips to save money on the Motorway

1. Check your tyre pressure before leaving.

2. Check your oil before leaving.

3. Check the windscreen fluid, water and anti-freeze before leaving.

4. Check all the headlights and indicators before leaving.

5. Fill up away from the motorway.

6. At peak times use the M6 Toll road to avoid burning fuel in the long queues.

7. Bring your own food and drink.

8. Consider driving at night or very early in the morning to avoid queues.

9. Bring plenty of things to amuse the children.

10. Plan your route to avoid delays.

All of the above will not only save money but time and patience as well !

Frugal Travel

When it came to planning our travel for the funeral we needed to do it as economically as possible. Although we had money saved, it was in the emergency fund, we still wanted to spend as little as possible.

First of all we worked out whether or not it was possible to do the trip in one day. This saves a lot of money as you don't have to find overnight accommodation. The early timing of the funeral meant that this was not possible so then we looked for cheap options for an overnight stay. The cheapest choice is to stay with family of friends who are usually delighted to see you, we tend not to do this as our dietary needs are a bit complicated to ask people to deal with so we usually camp or use an AirBnB. AirBnB is our new favourite as we can usually find a whole flat or house for the price of one night's camping stay.

Next we investigated the cheapest way to travel and whether that is the cheapest for 1 person or 2. We looked at all options as although we try not to fly, recently flying has proven to be much cheaper than taking the train. Train travel is cheaper than taking the car for long distances if you can book around 3 months in advance, after that it gets super expensive. The tickets we needed would have cost over £600 each, which is just outrageous ! Air travel would have been the cheapest if I had just been going on my own as we would have saved the cost of airport parking. However, in the end we worked out that driving was the cheapest option of all. Often we don't do this as the 7 hour trip is very tiring, but sharing it between us would not be so bad.

Next thing to plan was food. Since our dietary needs are quite specific we wanted to make sure that we had enough with us to have 2 days food each. Planning this and putting it in the cool box at the start of the journey meant we didn't have to worry about not finding something to eat on the road and also knew that it was much cheaper than paying service station prices. We also took a travel kettle to have hot water for cups of tea and coffee.

Being organised is the key to saving money when travelling and we also used the petrol prices app on the way to find the cheapest places to fill up with fuel. Motorway service stations are for buying fuel only in emergencies since they can be up to 10p a litre for expensive than local stations.

Have you got anymore tips for frugal travel ?

Breathe Magazine

The first edition of my subscription to Breathe magazine has dropped through the letterbox and I really like it.

To start with the magazine contains no advertising, none ! It's like reading a very nice book. The quality of the paper is very high and the art work superb, there are whole pages with just illustrations on them which mean that you could cut them out and make A4 posters of the ones you like best. The other thing I appreciated about the art work is that at the start of each new section of the magazine they have an entire page which is printed in a single colour, no text at all. I thought these pages would be great to save for card making instead of buying fancy backing papers.

The articles are also very interesting too, most are quite lengthy so you get a chance to explore a topic thoroughly and there is no trying to sell you stuff, no fashion or must have home wares. I particularly enjoyed the articles on buying mindfully and stretching your cultural comfort zone.

At present the magazine comes out bi-monthly and there are teenage editions which particularly concentrate on mindfulness and withstanding peer pressure. I got my subscription free with Tesco vouchers but it is so good I think that I would pay for a subscription if need be. It is very different from other titles on the market and all the better for it.

If you want to have a closer look for yourself go to

www.breathemagazine.com

where there are a lot of articles you can read for free. Enjoy !

April Challenge 1

There are currently quite a lot of leftovers lying around ! In fact so many that they are covering up the kitchen table, the fridge is full and I have quite a large victoria sandwich cake covered in cream sitting in the utility room, as that is the only room cool enough to keep it, I can't fit it in the fridge !

With plenty of leftovers and two freezers still full of produce I think the April challenge should be an easy one. In addition to the ' spend nothing on gifts or entertainment' and 'nothing on adult clothing' this year, April is going to be the month of spending £21 a week on groceries, or preferably less ! I'm not going to include MasterShoestring's school lunches in the challenge and it is only going to be amounts spent on food that I shall be counting. The overall grocery budget also includes household items such as rubbish bags and toilet rolls, so I'm not going to include spending on those sort of items in the challenge.

That means that the £35.94 I have already spent for this week needs to come out of an overall budget of £84 for the 4 weeks of April. This means that I have £48.06 left to spend, giving a budget of around £12 a week. I have made a menu plan and barring unexpected events or hordes of guests this should work and mean that I can finally defrost one of the freezers and turn it off by the end of the month. Fingers crossed that this works and none of the produce has freezer burn !

The menu plan contains plenty of tasty meals, unlike an April fool I saw on someone else's frugal blog yesterday, which was suggesting replacing tins of tuna with tins of cat food and had pictures of what you could make to add to its authenticity ! I hope everyone realised that it was an April Fool !

Easter Sunday

We have a guest from Germany today so can imagine that we shall be singing this German Easter carol at some point.

The whole bright world rejoices now,
Hilariter, hilariter,
The birds do sing from every bough,
Alleluia, Alleluia.

Then shout beneath the racing skies, 
Hilariter, hilariter,
To him who rose that we might rise, 
Alleluia, Alleluia.

And all you living things make praise,
Hilariter, hilariter,
He guideth you on all your ways,
Alleluia, Alleluia.

To Father, Son and Holy Ghost,
Hilariter, hilariter,
Our God most high, our joy and boast.
Alleluia, Alleluia.

Where ever you are I hope you have a lovely day !