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

Always get a bit when an employee does that Helena. I can't for the life of me understand why they care one way or another. I've worked at checkout, and honestly it didn't bother me one way or another. I was quite happy to run things through separately if need be - I still get paid the same amount of money, I'm still there the same amount of time. Why do they fuss over it? It's just not a huge deal. LOADS of people do it.

No heating on yet, and weather looks to be mild for the next week, so here's to avoiding the heating until the end of October.

No, never made a veg stock. I suppose it could be useful for soups as well, but just haven't done it.

Oh help, fluffy, we have led bulbs! That has led our house to be rated energy efficient!

Will write later. Am at work!

Veg or Chicken stock is great. I used it to make potato leek soup and it was v frugal.

Ohhelp I thought you meant covert as in buying things for Christmas and putting them away. Yes, this is my favourite time of year, from now until January/February). I've already been lighting candles in the evenings. I won't mention that I actually have Christmas music playing right now as it's a good "pick-me-up" for me. Struggling with a cold.

I just have to say: gathered up all the change lying around the house (including some that had been lying in bowls and in drawers forever, pennies had gone green), took it to the machine at Tescos and it came to £48!!!!

ohhelp

They save you loads of money. That's the best reason.

When we first moved in here the builders had put energy savers in all the fittings with ceiling roses and halogens in the downlighters, all 16 of them (I swapped them before we moved in, site manager thought I was odd).

I've changed 80% of them to led as I can afford them and our electric use has halved. That's partly the halogen oven as well. Even the fridge has an led bulb in it.

An energy saver is probably using 12w, an led uses 4w to provide the same light. New ones are coming out at 2w!. This would be perfect for chandelier type lamps.

After TV's and fridge freezers the lighting is the thing you have on for the longest each day, especially in the winter when it gets dark at 4pm.

I've found LED Hut the best for cashback and discount codes plus you get free delivery over £50. You can usually get 25-30% off plus 20% cashback. I bought some on amazon but they were really poor quality and they refunded me.

You'd need to an audit of what type of bulb you need in every room, add it all to the basket and add a discount code. I think MVCLED25 is active at the moment. You can find discount codes for them quite easily online.

Always order warm white, I put cool white in the utility and it's not nice.

Fluffy thanks for that info on the LED lights. That's something I need to look into.

Wow you are all putting me to shame.

Off to strip the bed and shove the sheets in the wash I think.

thedudesmummy that's fantastic. You're inspiring me to hunt round the house for coins now.

As for me I'm off to sit on the frugal fail naughty step. I thought bacon rolls would be a nice treat so trotted off to the local sainsburys where I got fresh bakery rolls for us, pain au chocolat for the children and The Sunday times. Just under £6 just like that on almost nothing .

Alice when I have left over baked potatoes, I cut them in half, scoop them out and mix them with grated cheese, chives or spring onions and bacon then put them back in the skins and freeze them wrapped in tin foil. Makes a lovely meal sometime when you don't feel like cooking. I am sure you could use the sausage in place of bacon if you cut it up into small pieces

Helena I don't blame you for running things through the till separately for the 3 for 2 offers in Boots. I do the same now, having got caught out when the computer deducted the cheapest thing each time so not maximising my savings.

I am hoping for a LSD today as I can probably get away with just bread.

lists oooh that sounds good, thanks!

I thought the Boots 3 for 2 took literally the third item free in decreasing order, it always used to for their Xmas stuff.

Karen, have you tried doing a roast chicken in a slow cooker, it is the only way I can guarantee to get two meals out of it (also have 2 teenagers). All the meat literally falls off the bones.

I need to look into LED bulbs too, I have threatened to remove bulbs from DS bedroom if he leaves them on in daylight hours!

It is nice Alice. DP went to a fireworks night last year with dd. At the end the baked potato van was selling off the last off the cooked potatoes for 10p each. He kindly bought me £2 worth. I spent a good chunk of the next day, scooping, mashing, grating and refillilng. They came out at the Christmas party in the end

So fluffy I can just change my ordinary energy saving lights to led lights? Ds has a table lamp on all night in his room so that would save quite a bit of money.

Nsd dp is washing the cars with my dad and I have to go trough DD clothes, they sure grow fast, my little baby is already 4 months tomorrow

Yep.

It's going to be an expensive day today as I'm treating myself to some new winter boots. In fairness, I got about 6 winters out of my last pair and they're in tatters now.

I'm bringing my Dad to a Mario Lanza tribute concert later as a birthday treat. I bought the tickets a few weeks back. We're going for a carvery lunch at his local which will be €10 - €15 for a main course and glass of wine. I've a box of choccies for him but I won 'em in a raffle .

Was fairly shocked at the babysitter but glad she replaced the items.

Tayto had to reread that a few times, as my first thought was "um, Mario Lanza has been dead for years!!" but then that word "tribute" popped out. Very cool! Enjoy the concert!

Just done a freezer audit and I've got about two week's worth of meals in there!

Now just got to work out what to do with it all!

574ejones DS did a lovely coq au vin in the slow cooker recently shame that he used all my remaining wine and yes, all the meat fell off the bones, but he had not done any vegetable to go with it, just mash, so it all got eaten. Also, it was getting late and everyone was starving. Next time I will make sure there are at least two types of vegetables to go with it.

I'd be grateful for a good 'ham in the slow cooker' recipe; I have seen it mentioned, but there seem to be lots of different variations of this.

I shall look at all our light bulbs too that need replacing.

As to heating, I just looked at my camping heater and it is actually a halogen heater. It works great, but it's rather small. For the house, we would need a bigger one. I shall take a look in B&Q and then do some research online.

Hi Karen
My ham in slow cooker is the nigella ham in coke recipe. It works. Turn slow cooker on. Cut onion in half (peel skin off). Put in cooker. Put ham in. Pour enough proper coke in to cover it. Leave it in there. That's it. If you want to glaze it then glaze it with some mustard and honey in the oven for 20 min or so. Viola.