The friendly frugaleers natter on through November...

[blueteapot]

Hope you dont mind me starting a shiny new thread

Hello all just signing in spends today

£7.50 meds for girl cat
£27.50 in Pets at Home, £20 was on two big bags of Iams (now have enough to last 3 months or more!!) £7.50 was on a bird feeder and bird food, me and dd are quite into bird watching and after watching Autumn Watch felt like we should be doing a bit more to support the local bird population!

Have been at a Sensory Processing information day all day and feel slightly gaga as was a lot of information to take in! Useful stuff though, just really wish I had known about it from when dd was a baby.

Had nice tea of the salmon I bought with the Tesco vouchers with rice and veg.

Hiya everyone, haven't read back yet. Busy day today of soft play this morning (3.50 in plus 5 on lunch for the DCs as was disorganised and didn't realise we were going!), then spent 53 in lidl on a large shop, lots of fresh fruit / veg / fish etc and some nappies / cleaning stuff so did well! Trying to organise my return to work also which is a lot of ringing around.

Frugal and healthy falafel, salad and pitta for tea :)

Damn Boots and their cute children's pjs, I only went in for DD's free prescription and ended up spending £14! Stupidly let her look at the pjs when we got home, they are much too big, I got them to grow into, but now she won't take them off. I suspect tears before bed time!
Also went in Homesense to get a soap dish and 2 Xmas gifts. Bought a festive cake tin too, I've wanted one for years and always resisted.

Lilac If I gave my son a voucher for jumping in puddles he'd throw it at me. Do other people have less wordly children than me?

Good idea to keep looking and appying collie. You never know what might come of it.

I went to Lidl today and inexplicably came out with only the things I went in for. Too tight-fisted to spend £2.99 on 12 Christmas Crackers. Who knew?

NSD. I'll read through later. Going to make a spinach, new potato and Quorn curry now.

£40 in morrisons but €15 of that on flowers foe a friend who had bad news this week

ipsos Nope, my DC would have had the same reaction when young too

Carrot and orange soup for tea with crusty bread.

Ipsos I think our dc are the same age. Dd would be able to read it but I don't think she would find it particularly exciting not in the same way she would an actual present and then she would be bugging me straight away to do them all!

Need Phew! Glad it's not just us then.

Spotty Yes I could imagine that that could be the other risk. :-)

Idea of it was they could use one voucher a week or as a reward for good behaviour.
Mine would love permission to jump in puddles, she is a particularly easily pleased 5 year old though

It's similar to our summer holiday planner lila and dd loved that. I basically wrote loads of things on card and we stuck one on each day, some of them just watching a dvd with popcorn, she loved it.

Fuming with picky DS, who wouldn't eat much of the curry and ended up scraping half his plate in the bin. He knows we are on a low income; he knows about my fatigue issues and how making something we can eat for two nights in a row suits me best; yet he still causes hassle whenever I make a curry, chilli or similar. "Oh it's not the same as restaurant or takeaway". Bloody selfish teenager. From now on, he can make himself toast or an omelette, if he doesn't like what's on the menu, although even that will ultimately raise the food budget. Grr, rant over!

That's rubbish creme, he def makes his own next time!
I meant to say earlier that DH and I give each other vouchers for Xmas, not for anything er...like that but for things like a cup of tea in bed, that sort of thing.
DH came home with a good idea today - if you're buying anything on Amazon in the next couple of weeks then put it in the basket but check out on Black Friday as it may well be reduced.
He's also got well into taking leftovers to reheat at work, says it's much more interesting than a sandwich. I'll make a frugaleer of him yet!

I wonder if you could put them into a decorated jar or something and pick at random too.

Obviously that wouldn't work for splashing in puddles or anything seasonal, but it might work for other ideas.

Creme Teenagers are so bloody ungrateful aren't they?

I'm going to have a stab at spicy pumpkin muffins tomorrow after work (or maybe Friday), I have 3 squash that I need to use.

Honestly, I have just had enough of him turning his nose up at my food. And he expects me to keep buying packed lunch stuff, even though he's entitled to free school dinners, although he will have them sometimes now. I'm tempted to tell him to have his main meal at school and make himself something light when he gets in, before I cook. Then I can just tidy and wash up to my satisfaction, without worrying about him turning the kitchen upside down, once I've sat down for the night.

I'd flipping love to get a free hot lunch 5 days a week. Perfect time for him to learn to cook to a budget.

Need, I'm so jealous of all the lovely soups you and your family enjoy at night. I still make some for myself at lunchtime, but it would make things a lot easier if we could both have soup some nights for supper.

That just be tough creme especially as he is old enough to understand! Could you get him to do a list of meals he does like?

Maybe that's the way to go Creme. It's so much hard with teens to 'make' them do anything though isn't it? Works so much better when they are young, you are their world and they don't tower over you! It's usually DH that comes in later and messes up the kitchen after I have tidied it though!

Both of mine are in their rooms, they will magically appear 5 minutes before the apprentice starts and pour themselves massive bowls of cereal, using a litre of milk each

Funny you should suggest that, Spotty, as that's what I'd asked him to do about 5 minutes before your post! Great minds, eh? So we've discussed it and I've said I'll let him know the menu in advance and if there's anything he doesn't like, he needs to have his main meal at school and make himself something light. He also agreed to try having soup at night occasionally, which I was surprised by, in a good way.

Need, I really find this age hard, hard work. Give me a class of 30 Nursery kids over 1 teenager any day!

I do cheese toasties with soup to stop dh moaning it's not a proper meal

DS would live on cheese toasties, pasta and pesto, pizza and the odd burger, quite happily. I think he would be best pleased if I bought 7 different types of pasta and we had one of them every day.

Creme under normal circumstances I would tell him to eat it or leave it, but if you're going to end up scraping a lot of food into the bin / randomly cooking his own thing and the budget is too tight to accommodate that then I'd definitely get a list of approved meals off him and go with he eats more of his hot free school meals. What does he not like about them? Does he know how tight money is? Would getting him to plan the meals and do do a shop to a certain budget help?

Dh has just come in (this is normal for him). He's been in Scotland Monday and Tuesday and Wrexham today. Carrot and orange soup with crusty bread is fine, but I think he might have preferred a slow cooked beef casserole!