Mumsnet Talk

Hi All! A lovely shiny new thread with a super snazzy title .

Fluffycloud-Thanks for the tip regarding firewood at Aldi. This is brilliant news for us!

All-There are some brilliant christmas present bargains to be had in Aldi. I bought various things including a lovely wooden train set for £9.49. Probably also will get my cards and wrapping paper from here.

Rarelyunreasonable-Pretty sure an oven even for 30 mins uses masses more energy than a slow cooker all day. Baked potatoes in the slow oven are cheap and delish!!

Put some stuff on gumtree yesterday so hoping that goes...

Cremegg Hello, how was Majorca? I hope you had a fab time.

Adora, it was lovely, thanks, but I found it very expensive, compared to say the Algarve or Canaries. DS and I were on a Bed & Breakfast deal, but we needed about 50 euro a day minimum, just to cover lunch and dinner!

We came back to a beautiful, sunny, crisp day in the North East, but my goodness, is it cold! Brrr!

Glad you had a good time, CremeEgg. It does sound rather pricey, but not sure of the exchange rate! But you enjoyed it, so it was worth it.

Mixed affairs here - was given a substantial amount of money yesterday that was owed me, but have just bought a new mattress for EconomyBoy as we want him to move into a single bed after xmas. That was £65. Then my electric toothbrush's battery has died a sad death (no amount of charging will keep it going for 2 minutes) so have had to replace that.

CremeEgg sounds lovely!

Betty we don't have an Aldi - our nearest one is over 15 miles away through awful traffic so it seems a false economy!

Adora - I hate plumbing related things, they really stress me out. I haven't managed to phone the insurers yet, but the shower no longer seems to be leaking - so hopefully it will all dry out.

Anyone got any experience of dehumidifiers?

economy - there is always something isn't there? I am fed up of things needing replacing/fixing or whatever. Grr.

Yesterday was a NSD
Today I just need to buy bread and milk, so about £2 spend later on.
Tomorrow I will need to do a top-up shop, probably about £25.

We did a little shopping at the weekend, DDs spent £15 on Bank of Mum between the two of them, plus £25 on Christmas shopping from the same sorce. OH paid in the supermarket, he's now stressed about me using the joint account for groceries so paid on a different account. I didn't see how much the groceries were, but he bought a nother garden umbrella so more than I would have spent.

If this link works it gets you 50% off Beefeater after 6.30pm

Fluffy that is a good deal! If only my kids were a bit older, they would have a meltdown if I didn't feed them before then

Adora - your DH sounds worse than mine if such a thing is possible!

DH has astonished me today by managing to negotiate almost £30 off our Sky bill each month. He is never proactive about things like this.

Today has ended up being a NSD as I didn't get to the shop for milk and bread. I might go and do my top-up shop once the DSs are in bed rather than trying to go tomorrow - likely to end up spending less and remembering everything I need...

Day 2 of attempting to be frugal! Withdrew the weekly food budget in cash for the first time - a small thing, but it makes such a difference in realising where money goes and the value of it. Was a bit and need to get to Aldi!

also organised a milkman. It's more per pint, but until I'm capable of buying ONLY milk from the supermarket and not spending £12, it's cheaper. Also much more convenient than trailing toddler and soon-to-arrive DC2 around.

thanks for the link fluffy. Sadly we're also on 5pm teatimes (and 7pm bedtime joyously!).

Hi all, haven't posted for a while
Welcome rarely and betty- I use our slowcooker atleast twice a week, and we LOVE it. Mostly do stews, but have done curries and pie fillings too. I usually keep mine on low setting unless I forget to turn it on until lunchtime and leave things to simmer for 8-10 hours. House smells lovely too
Would be very interested in cost of getting your fire up and running. We've been allowed to have an open fire/wood burner by landlords, but they won't fund it as they don't deem it necessary.

Acquired an extra chicken this weekend. A friend found a chook in her garden, and all local enquiries came back blank, so I have her! My dad might want her to go with his 2 when he gets back from hols, if not we'll keep her and 4 will become 5!! DS1 has named her Ketchup

Spend £11 in Asda today on some warm bits for DS2 as they have a George clothing sale on.
DS1 and DH have a D&V bug at the moment, and DS2 is cutting 6! teeth at the same time, so not much food is being consumed here at the moment

Hi guys!

Strangely excited with all this frugal living, anyone else getting quite a buzz from it?!

Aliba-shame about the Aldi not being close by, I'm lucky I have two and one is really close. However well done on the saving with Sky!

Leilandri-having chimney swept tomorrow for £35. After this just cost of fire guard (can be bought for a little over £10) and some logs etc. Aldi sell them but you can have them delivered which is cheaper in long run...

Doing a massive ragu in the slow cooker tomorrow!

Did my weekly shop today for £68 which is for 4 people (2 adults and 2 kids) and included nappies, meat, wine etc.

Heard a rumour yesterday that Toby Carveries do all you can eat breakfasts for £4. Which, for a treat, is bloody marvellous! Especially if you go as late as you can and treat it as a brunch! Think kids eat free too? Might google this now to see if I'm talking s*$t

Ali well done on the Sky deal. Companies here don't need to do deals, it's very much a charge- as -much -as -we -like market and if one customer cancels there's always another one. Trouble is there has been, for a good few years now, lots of ex-pats on fantastic packages, in addition to the handful of mega rich families who essentially keep the country running.

Today I did a top up shop, £21. Had to chuck out a fair bit of food this morning because the fridge has gone wrong again. No idea what's wrong as we've been waiting almost 2 years for the engineer, every we phone they tell us he's on the road and will be here in 1 hour. I think they're telling porky pies. OH actually bought a replacement, so I can still keep stuff fresh. The freezer section works beautifully, it's just the fridge part that periodically heats up.OH can't accept that it's just broken so insists on putting the fruit juice and butter back in that one when he took it from the other one.

That's me done for a few days, I plan to use up what's in the freezer then remove the offending item from my otherwise functioning kitchen

Costco are now online, if you aren't a member they charge 5% more but they can be a lot cheaper than the shops for big purchases so it balances out.

Check out amazon for catering size teabags, coffee etc. I've found goose fat for my roasters half price delivered for free.

Glad to read these positive posts about slowcookers. I'm thinking of buying one but people either rave about them or say they're bunged in a cupboard gathering dust!
Is it worth spending a bit of money, or are the cheap, value versions just as good?
I keep looking on my local freecycle groups but no joy so far.

Anyway, yesterday sold a DVD on Amazon so £3 incoming!

Today just need to top up Oyster and buy milk and veg.

boer Ours is either used loads, or gathers dust for a few months. Am not 100% convinced. Have you tried putting a Wanted ad on freecycle?

I think I paid around £30 for my slow cooker from Argos. And it's a big'un. It doesn't get used every week, but a couple of times/month at least during winter.

I am trying to fight the urge to buy a steam mop from Lakeland. Our kitchen floor gets filthy and the mop and bucket combo just doesn't seem to do much. £60. I must resist...

RarelyUnreasonable Thanks! Yes, I'm doing one today

economymode Thanks, I'll try freecycle first, then will look at Argos, etc.

Our slowcooker was the asda £15 one but it's only 3.5ltr. I wish I had the 6lr one sometimes but for just doing gammon or a piece of pork a big one would be too big.

If we had kids I'd need a bigger one really. It's pretty old technology really so I dont think it matters really if it's a branded one or not.

Got all our christmas cards from card factory, and DH's from Asda who are good for "nice" cards. I went into Clintons which was heaving this time last year but was empty today, I'm not surprised at £5 per card!, same card was £3.50 in Asda.

Dont forget to check Aldi's Twitter site tomorrow, If they have a £5 voucher it will be announced on Twitter.

Can I join in please? We are expecting our first baby in March, and I am working full time because my mum is away on holiday (she owns her own business and I step in) and if I dont keep on top of it, I will just waste spend it and thats no good.

Hubby got his hotel money from his recent trip back from work today, unexpecedly and in cash- and he has to put his mileage in and he gets that too so thats something back. We are putting that towards our baby monitor.
I also got a voucher from asda today for £1.06 too.

I have had a NSD so far but i have to get fuel for my motorbike, so thats going to be about £6.
I think If I can come on here, and tell you all what Im spending then I might be good!! Hubby is on board with the saving money thing too, he loves checking our asda reciept for overcharges so he can get his £2!

economy steam mops are £35 in b&m bargains - also v tempted!

Our slow cooker was in the Argos sale and about £20. Any good recipes you can recommend?

Ooh, I'm tempted by a steam mop now as well, RarelyUnresonable .

what is b&m bargains? Off to google...

There are a couple of slow cooker threads on food. A really good one was started by vicarinatutu.

I love my slow cooker. Slow cooker rice pudding is amazing! Cheap pudding rice, sugar and milk (UHT is fine IME) cook for 4-5 hours on low and all the milk sugars caramelise to make creamy rice pudding.

I also do a cheap broth / soup thing with roast leftovers our the end bits of deli meat that our Morrisons sells (£1.18 for 200g which is all you need). Throw that, a fried onion and any veg (fresh / frozen) in the slow cooker with some stock. Put it on low for about 5 hours. An hour before you need it throw in a few handfuls of pasta and serve with bread. Makes loads and costs very little.

Planning to try pork in cider with apples this weekend.

Hello Little welcome

Never used a slow cooker, so can't help -sorry. I may buy an ice-ream maker if OH's business picks up long term. DDs want one of the plastic toy style ones, Christmas adds on TV, but I won't waste good money on plastic tat when I could get a real one. Bought socks for the DDs, but they've been horrid so I'm hanging on to them for now.

So, £3 on the roads
£8 on socks for horrid children DDs
£12 on top up shop.

Tomorrow shoud be an NSD.