an Ostentatiously Austere October...join here for a frugal month ahead!

[PeoniesforMissAnnersley]

All welcome to join the MN frugaleers for another month of recording our spends, frugal wins and frugal fails!

NSD = No Spend Day (let's have as many as possible!)

LSD = Low Spend Day

Do they know whats wrong yet?.

Take care italian x

Not beside her being a bottle refuser she has no voice left that's how much she's been crying and screaming

Doctors don't know what to do at the moment

At times like this I pray.

It's really unfashionable to admit it though.

Just to report back that I did get the zelf and something else for 2 for £15 so thanks again frazzled. That covers the birthday tossy and my god daughter.

Have to go do some food shopping at some point today but am v tired. Seriously. Many late nights, no down time since 3 weeks...

Italian - is she pooing? Having wet nappies? Why was she admitted (sorry if you'd mentioned before... )? Hope the dr can figure things out soon...

Thats brilliant northender I would keep as it cost ye nothing, and you'll hamper after a second one now if you sell it.

Italian my ds refused bottles for over a month until we realised it was the formula in it that upset his tummy, I tried lots of brands of bottles before discovering that.
Dh wanted me to stop bf so that he'd be used to bottles, we stayed going though

Italian Poor you and DD. You might have mentioned before, but what exactly is wrong with your DD? I must have missed it. Is it simply because she is refusing bottles? Or do they suspect something else?

My DD just refused bottles full stop. I fed her for a year, then gave her a cup. By then, it was just a morning and evening feed.

LSD days a plenty but a couple of bigger spend days too.

Cool northender!!

Wow northender!

Italian thinking of you dd was bottle fed but hated it. She thrived when she went onto solids.

Meal plan for this week:

Spag bol
Shepherds pie
Stir fry (beef, fresh veg in a chilli, soy and ginger sauce)
Macaroni cheese with bacon (and left over cauliflower)
Jackets and beans
Tuna pasta with cheese and spring onions
Feta, pea and mint risotto

Alice the price of ink is ridiculous, I bought a canon printer because I thought the cartridges were cheap but I am now thinking they are cheap because they only have a small amount of ink in them

Karen I have never seen the refurbished ink in Asda, but will have a look as £5 would be a bargain

lists hope DD is a bit better today, I remember when DD was little and had vomiting bugs how everything smelt of sick and it was horrible. It gets right up your nose though, I remember walking round Tesco having left her with DH and thinking 'I can still smell sick'. Hope she picks up soon.

Italian oh dear, poor you, hope you have some answers soon. It is horrible when they are ill. Sending you love and prayers

I got all excited today when I got a fat envelope from Tesco with 'free samples' to try and I thought 'ooooo what have they sent me'. I had to laugh when I opened it to find 3 bodyform sanitary pads for me to try!

£9 on a flu jab today

Good grief FINALLY got to Poundland when they had those larger plastic containers with the light green lids on them. Every time I've gone in for the last couple months, it's just been the pink lids. The light green lids match my kitchen, so I am replacing old containers for these. A good price at £1 each!

So not a NSD, but then that was a given, as I had to go into town to get ds1's glasses, so parking to be paid anyway. Total of £15 spent today. £12 in Poundland, and £3 on parking.

Every little helps fanta!

Dinner for friend went really well last night. Spent £2 on two packs of butter and £2.75 on a cheesecake for pudding (£87.25 of my £100 challenge remaining).

Prawns, milk and washing powder bought this morning - £7/£80.25.

My menu for tonight is prawn, chorizo and butter bean tapas style dish with ciabatta to start, lasagne, garlic bread and salad for main and then I'm attempting the lemon sponge for dessert. Off to Aldi shortly to get the rest of the ingredients.

Nsd so far but off to a 40th tonite so will be a bit on drinks but I will only have soft as driving.

Question for those of you who meal plan... I meal plan though but due to v difficult work schedules at the moment, I'm having a lot of difficulty getting the time to cook. Eg I've not been able to do much last 2/3 weeks. Not sure how we've fed the family the last weeks but we did.

This weekend I'm free so I'm planning and cooking. Is it ok to cook as much as I can this weekend and just freeze meals that I can freeze??

NK5BM3 - of course, that's okay! Do whatever works best for you. I know quite a few people that do the bulk of their cooking on the weekend, to use it out of the freezer during the week. I do it on occasion as well. It's a smart way to organise, if that's what fits your schedule.

Yep I do that NK.

My kitchen is a shambles at the moment, but I'm making serious headway in reorganising it, so I don't want to stop and put it all back just to make tea. So I'm throwing in the towel (so to speak) and ordering pizza delivery, in order to allow myself the chance to keep working on it and finish it tonight after the dcs are in bed. If I put it all back now, it'll take forever to sort again. (this is waaaaaay overdue!!)

Feeling for all of you with poorly children. Hope they recover soon.

Spent £43 on underwear in M&S today but was desperately needed.

NK - should be fine to just make now and freeze for when you are busier.

Hoping for a NSD tomorrow.

There's nothing better than coming home from work and just having to warm up something you know is healthy and home made

I will point out that I used a 50% off voucher for the pizza, and it will feed us not only tonight, but easily lunch tomorrow (and probably lunch Monday for me as well). So at least I'm trying to be frugal in my unnecessary spending.

Lloyds bank have sent me a cheque for a £100 and cancelled my last month of fees for my business account because I emailed the ceo complaining they didn't shut my account down & it was accruing fees.

I'm going to put it into my savings account. We need furniture so I'm saving for the sales.

I'm going to do a ppi form tomorrow for all my old cc and a loan I had.

Think I might get a curry in tonight, our night outs cancelled so we don't need to buy wine as a gift.

Thanks everyone. Just reread my posts from yesterday and realised how miserable and exhausted I must have felt when I was posting. Today IS a better day.

DD seems to have recovered. Whatever it was was short sharp and nasty.

Dp has gone away but he'll be back in a few days. Planning some peaceful evenings.

My mum said she thought soup would be a good idea after all. She suggested taking us out to lunch but as ds (2) was in a difficult mood (i.e. likely to throw the cutlery and food at other customers) I suggested she bought food for us to eat at home instead. She got far too much so now have lovely cheese, salami, ham and hummous in the fridge plus she got us 4 pints of milk and a loaf of bread which will save us a top up shop.

So despite everything I said yesterday i think its going to be a NSD :)

£4 tesco
£10 petrol.

Nsd

Okay so common sense has taken over and we're going to cash in the iPad to get other things that we want/need. It would be lovely to have 2 iPads but we don't need it and this could prove really helpful. These threads help sooooo much :-)