No-spend January/Frugal February - the no-spend challenge continues

[roguepixie]

OK - am attempting to start the second thread ... hope this works.

Some useful freebies for everyone here:

Free full size handcream if you agree to be a tester

Free Aquafresh travel sized toothpaste

Free sample of Colgate

moomoo - want a fitted sheet for the mattress (as hate having to remake bottom sheet every morning (I am soooooooooo lazy) but will definitely have a look. I never think of looking there. Thank you.

Oooooh, fishy, my birthday is mid-July . We may be spookily connected . DS's rooooool.

swap the naan bread for pitta bread toasted - it is not as greasy and much much cheaper

polycotton fitted sheet for a fiver

Hi, have caught up

Slipped off the wagon today as I had arranged to meet a friend for lunch, so spent £20 on petrol, about £10 on coffee and lunch and er, £6 on buttons

Plus it's pay day today, so we are having a chippy tea and probably a few beers.

Congrats to fish

I cheat when making pizza and use the packet bread mix that you just add water to - about 50p in Aldi.

Syncro health

You can get vitamins for £5.01 and Calcium for £5.25. Use the code DT500 when checking out at it will take £5 off, so the vitamins will end up being delivered for just 1p or 25p.

Thanks for all the brilliant rhubarb ideas all - am going to be going rhubarbtastic this weekend Am strangely intrigued by the mackerel and rhubarb recipe too...

Top tip here too - for those of you with lego obsessed kids (my DS1 is totally obsessed) if you join the lego club on line they send a free quarterly lego magazine to your kid. DS1 loves it when he gets this in the post. And its free, free, free

Roguepixie, TK Maxx do sheets and towels and they're often very good - I've seen Sanderson and other comparable brands in there. I wish I had a local TK Maxx - I furnished myself with a service of Spode Blue Italian plates and bowls once. Always worth checking there for bakeware before anywhere else.

Did a big Aldi shop, but since we still have a lot of the store cupboard stuff from last shop there two weeks ago, I bought different stuff and spent a lot less than the rather scary amount two weeks ago. £75 on loads of veg, fruit, meat, juice and beer. I managed not to buy a single non-food item (e.g. clothing, stationery etc) by walking past muttering 'don't buy random crap. Don't buy random crap.' Pretty sure I got some odd looks. I'm planning on making lots of soup and casseroles to freeze, this weekend.

After reading this thread, I now want to buy some rhubarb!

Can I join, I dipped in and out of old thread but couldn't keep up fully it moved to fast!

My husband got made redundant 23/12 so we are beign very careful at the moment! and really want to save and clear soem debts!!!!!!!!!!

Hi peppa

I'm taking DD and her friend swimming tonight and will look into getting her a loyalty card for the leisure centre so that might save money as she seems to go swimming there a lot lately.

Wow - finally managed to catch up... Thurs and fri my days at home so not so much time to mn! Just markig place for now, back later...

Mmmmm thanks reckoner! Will try that next week.....{checks meal planner} no week after!

Fishpond - Congratulations on your little boy.

I was doing well with only £2 for school lunch spent until dh phoned and tempted into getting wine for a cheese, crackers and wine night. Oh well, it is the weekend.

On the plus side I got a nice cheque from the car insurance today.

Dh and I are also starting our post-christmas diet too, which means I am cooking the same amount for our evening meal and instead of dividing it by 2 and scoffing at all at night, I am dividing into 3 and saving the 3rd portion for my lunch the next day, which means we lose weight, save money and i only have to spend 2 minutes microwaving to do lunch.

No spend so far, have made myself a couple of absolutely delicious meals today which are going down nicely. My little sister (15) is coming over to stay tonight and she is veggie so going to fix up some homemade Mac n cheese with peas and corn. Although we will have a small spend later on a frozen yogurt treat, only about $3.

That will be my only spend today. I don't anticipate any spending all weekend either.

DD and friend swimming £4.70 (for both) and £5 for a loyalty card which should save DD 50p on normal charge every time in future.
And £1.80 on a small bottle of Coke and a Twix. Grr.

I use that Hugh FW magic recipe for pizza, too, reshape. Going to use it as flatbreads next week. The River Cottage Veg book is brilliant (and cheap on Amazon) - have had it a few months and make something from it each week. The tomato and mozzarella risotto is really simple and yummy as well.

Anyway, friend bought coffee today, so no spend from my wallet. However, I did win a couple of ebay auctions for cheap dungarees for my Hulk Baby of a son. I don't count them as frivolous purchases, as he does need new clothes. And it's much cheaper than buying them new in-store.

We're not planning on doing anything expensive this weekend. I have a load of meal vouchers for the BHS restaurant (we're dead classy, us), which we might put to use. Or take a walk round Blenheim Palace grounds as we both have season tickets (£19/year - you buy a day ticket for everything (yes, it's £19 per person per day) and then upgrade it to an annual pass at no extra cost - great value for buggy-pushers in and around Oxford.

Very nearly a no spend day for me today. Every Friday I take myself and my DS's off to my parents for "Nanny Day" which involves trashing their house, and eating everything in their cupboards We went for a walk with their dog today, past a bakery (fatal) and DS sweettalked Nanny into buying him a cake. Trouble was she had left her purse at home, so I ended up 90p out of pocket! Still not bad I suppose for breakfast and lunch for me and both DS's and tea for the 2 boys aswell

Lovely tea tonight of forgotten-at-back-of-freezer corn on the cob, manky old sweet potatoes cut up into chips, and Morrisons Savers bacon chops :)
The chops are a bargain for any Morrisons shoppers, look for their savers cooking bacon, and if you are lucky some packs have large chop sized pieces instead of the little bits. A cheaper version of gammon as only 75p a packet

Thanks for the pizza recipes. I do (sort of) make my own most weekends, but I currently use a packet mix and just add water. Wil make a batch of dough this weekend for the freezer, DS1 can help, he likes kneeding things!

No spend day for me today! And an added bargain in the shape of random extra 2 packets of crackers and one of oatcakes in internet shop delivery...

Not so good yesterday - £1.70 on a latte and £50 on very late xmas present for SIL that I was hoping to spend more like £30 on. But overspending on buying nice presents for other people doesn't feel so bad.

Made biscuits this eve, and planning to take them down to old friend I'm visiting tomorrow, instead of flowers I was going to buy at station, so that's a saving, and got leftover dinner for lunch on the train journey.

Now, I need some creative suggestions for no or low-spend stuff to put on the wall... We recently moved and having always rented before don't have many nice things to put up. It is feeling very impersonal and dull. One of my friends used to have colourful moroccan leather shoes pinned in a curve on a wall; looked awesome. I'm wondering if I have anything interesting lying round the house that I could do something equally inventive with... Or I have several Ikea frames that need filling if I can think of something I already have to fill them with?

Happy weekends all!

ivy, thanks for that idea, sadly I had already bought the naan but I will get pitta next time, although I bought two naan for 79p...is that good?

dinky, I signed my DS up for that when I ordered his Christmas lego. I had to order it from Denmark as I couldn't find it in the UK. It cost less than here and you earn points towards a discount and you get the magazine for the DC - excellent service.

reshape, thank you for that info. My DSIS gets her body lotion from there and she gets some really good brands so I don't know why I don't think about going there more? Thanks as well boffin for the link to Sainsburys - again, the supermarkets often do much cheaper versions of this kind of stuff.

Did the roganjosh for dinner as planned (really trying to keep to plan now) and did lemon rice to go with. Had the mississippi mud pie for dessert - it makes such a huge pie that we will be eating it for days ... oh, the hardship

This may not appeal to you but I once saw on a renovation show that some people had a few extra frames with nothing to out them in - the designers did some abstract layers of wrapping paper / tissue paper on complementary colors and it looked fab. Really artistic!

Mackrel, what about bright paintings by the DC in klip-frames?

ooh you guys are quick! I like that idea a lot fishpond - thanks! reminds me I saw some gorgeous wallpaper quite recently that was like moroccan tiles that would work well like that. And I have some very pretty printed silk fabrics I bought abroad actually and have never done anything with (because I still can't sew well enough!) that might work really well in a frame.

rogue - thanks also; one to bear in mind for a bit later though I think - DD is only 18mo and we do a lot of drawing but it is just crayon scribbles and ripped pages at the moment. I haven't dared used paints yet!

Will remember the Denmark lego website for future reference Rogue - thanks!

Mackrel - frames can cost a fortune. We did up our house last year and had lots of bare walls to cover - we found getting old posters (in good condition mind you) or unusual posters (in our kitchen we have old food art posters - Bisto, Buitoni, Martini and Piper Heidsick - which we had framed) which look excellent. OR you can do what we did for another wall - huge canvas, lots of plates of paint and all members of the family doing hand prints on the canvas. Looks fab - and unusual - even though I do say so myself.

Xpost - Mackrel, do the hand print thing - or the foot print thing. Your DD will LOVE it. Just put loads of newspaper and a plastic sheet down on the floor first. DS2 was just 2 when we did the handprint thing and LOVED it.