Spending sparingly in early Spring - frugal friendly folk gather round.

[Justanothermile]

New 'fred

Greyhound we have a Uniqlo opening in Mankychester in April - I will have a look. I have been told their cashmere & merino jumpers are good value too.

Em I have been binge watching the F1 thing. I can take or leave F1 but it has been fascinating.

Sea I love Kew. If I lived in London I would get a yearly pass & spend my whole time there.

French Patisserie flour (T45) makes a good substitute for American cake flour. You can periodically get it in Aldi.

I’ve been watching death note (anime version) and atypical :o and watched some random thing about huge families which makes me wonder why the fuck I can’t cope with only three 😳😂

Ggreen it was great fun. Had a lovely lunch out too. Today will be a lsd just spinning to pay for. Am going to make a carrot cake later too.

Ah wreck, what a shit time you are having. ((Hugs))

Spendy day as taking mil and pil or for birthday lunch.

Wreck I’m sorry you really are having shit luck this week. Hopefully you can get onto Hmrc and get to the bottom of it on Monday

Day out today will be wet. Tickets were £20 on special offer and we are taking a picnic so hopefully any additional spends can be limited

I’m hoping my credit card transactions catch up on Monday. I can see that oven and freezer payments have been made but can’t see the £50 refund. Hoping not to have to go back to the store again and grumble at them.

Have a lovely frugal Sunday folks. Life enjoy you lunch out

Sea I’D love to go to Kew. Your picnic sounds lovely and the magnolias looked beautiful

Sneaky have a look at Fetch for petfood and see if you can find a first time buyer code on the net

Morning all, it's very breezy here can hear the wind howling past the house!

Need to pop to town later and want to start planting a few seeds.

Eggs 🍳 for brekkie 😁

See, I do live in London Unescorted but Kew is still about 1.5 hours to get to from my place as I am on the completely opposite side of the city! Still an easy day trip but lots of other green spaces are nearer so it’s not worth a pass for us (I’d love it though).

How old are your dc Thats? My dc got really into picnicking last summer when we were mostly in rural Scotland and had to take picnics as there was nothing to buy! Personally I like a nice range of salads (rice salad, Greek salad, roasted peppers) maybe some crusty bread and cold cured meats, oh and crunchy crisps and fruit, but good ole’ sandwiches are practical and handy if you are making it from store cupboard stuff. There’s a lovely tradition here of everyone from school going to the ‘village’ green after school on the last day of the summer term and having a picnic tea. Literally 300+ people last year. I made a fancy stuffed bread and we all shared everything between families. It was so lovely ( I was still not back at work so just happened to go, I had no idea how lovely it would be or whether ds would cope but it was one of the best things I did last year). I’m booking the day off this year and crossing my fingers for good weather!

It was supposed to be my lie in today but this morning we realised dd has been mega-sick in the night so we both had to get up to do the clean up. Dd has had a bath and seems quite perky but is very cuddly and clingy. I have cleaned her room but still have to deal with her sheets and sleeping bag 🤢.

At least ds seems to have calmed down since yesterday.

We lost one of dd’s comforter toys on the school run last week - we had 4 identical ones on rotation (she sleeps with and takes one literally everywhere) but are down to 2 now. That’s not enough for my comfort as ds tends to need a lot of supervision when we are out so I can’t keep such a close eye on what dd is dropping! Jojo don’t make them any more so I’m scouring eBay. Need another 2 at least, I expect that’ll cost c £20. Fingers crossed I find them.

Ocado coming soon, £112. That’s with £12 of fancy dried fruit and nuts to make some ‘topping’ for DH’s cereal. It lasts several months though.

Meal plan:

Sun - cottage pie, carrots, sugar snaps
Mon - KFC-style chicken (hm diet version), wedges, hm coleslaw
Tues - minestrone soup (and for work lunches next few days)
Wed- pulled pork and jacket spuds, coleslaw
Thurs - pasta with salmon, lemon and pepper sauce, broccoli
Fri - chorizo and red wine risotto, green veg

I had to dodge branches on the way back and returned to a grumpy dh as the trampoline had blown over. He said it's bent the poles. Ffs.

I'm going to make a carrot cake today and possibly some cookies. Will do lasagne for dinner.

Argh sorry about pukey baby :(

Loving everyone’s meal plans. I bought stuff for sausage stew (heck are on offer in Tesco) and chilli, also we have a chicken to roast and then have the rest with a yellow sticker curry sauce.

I made banana peanut butter pancakes for me and DD2 this morning. Haven’t tried them for ages but my cobbled together made up recipe worked. Although I suspect with that kind of thing you can pretty much lob anything in and it’ll fry. :o

Also bought more ingredients for baking as we had a load of beetroot left over. Now we’ve started baking again we can start making snacks to take instead of buying so much crap.

I was also brave and posted in a relevant group about a very niche item that we want to sell. I don’t want to do eBay.

Batshit weather going on!

Yesterday was pretty spendy, as expected.
Asda £88, but £20 of that was books, with 24 tins of chappie (makes me heave) and diet coke, as well as food.
£38 in lidl. Mostly bakery!
£42 in Dunelm, this was fabric for gcse textiles, I have taught dd1 to patchwork traditionally, not the whatever-it-was she did on the machine at school!
£104 in the pet shop. We have 2 little boy guineas, an indoor cage (as the weather is shite) for just now, as they're babies, and some food and bowls etc.

So, my baby girl is 11. She is truly over the moon with her gifts, and adores her guineas.

Crazy weather here. 70mph winds (apparently) sunny and cold. Currently high tide I think. News alerts not to use the roads on the south coast as super high tide and high winds mean debris will be flung over the sea wall.

Hiii

Can I join?

I'm saving up for my first house deposit and i'm finally back to trying to save properly. After a few months I'm finally back in the 5.2k region and have another 3k which I don't have access to, but it's been built up with £25 a month which I didn't even notice.

A huge chunk of my money was going on private therapy, but after 2 years and 2 months I feel like I'm ready to take a break from it.

I'm still a student studying for my second degree and I live alone and I've been spending stupid amounts on food, mainly just comfort eating.

I'm going to try to stick to £43 a month which is £10.93 a week. I've withdrawn the money and will just use that for this month.

Recent spending:
£115.65- A BTS concert ticket for my sister
£28.25 for sweets also for my sister.

Payments going out this week:
Gym =£24.47
Rent = £141.44

I also have completely stopped buying clothes since October '17, which I've kept up with minus £2.90 this year on the 15th of jan when I lost my gloves.

Welcome orange! Aaah BTS. For DSD’s birthday she is going to see them again, we also got her a life size cut out of her favourite :o

Weather is beautiful here, but I haven’t been outside. I just want to sleep.

Planning an amazon order to make it to free delivery, there are a few kitchen things we need and a science book for DS’ chemistry.

Hi Orange, that’s amazing progress on the clothes I’d be rich if I could do that

I need to buy some 6th birthday presents for some birthday parties that ds has been invited to - rare occurrences! The first is for 2 girls from his after-school dance club (they’re not even in his class so it’s really sweet of them to invite him). What is a good bet for a 6-year old, but ideally not likely to get from someone else? I don’t know one if the girls st all, the other is a bit of a tomboy I think. Spend up to £10 each but ideally a bit less

Had a fairly low cost weekend here. All spends were accounted for, £63.48 on fuel and £57 on food. We really wanted to go out but realised we just couldn’t afford it so treated ourselves to a Sainsbury’s Create your own Pizza (within shopping budget) and some cider. However, the lady cooking the pizza split it very slightly when taking it out of the oven so gave it to us for a £1 anyway, ideal. Get my PIP tomorrow which is £239 but £120 is earmarked to put in the mortgage account as we are slightly short to pay the mortgage on the 16th. 😬

@Christmas How about something like a Sylvanian Family baby? £6.00

www.amazon.co.uk/Sylvanian-Families-5066-Silk-Multicolor/dp/B00HRRAZPO/ref=sr_1_10?keywords=slyvanian+baby&tag=mumsnetforum-21&ie=UTF8&qid=1552232003&sr=8-10

or a Crayola Deluxe Friendship Bracelets set. £6.99
www.amazon.co.uk/Crayola-Deluxe-Friendship-Bracelets/dp/B00MV1YR6O/ref=pd_sbs_21_13?psc=1&pf_rd_p=18edf98b-139a-41ee-bb40-d725dd59d1d3&_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_wg=bH7Je&pf_rd_r=R4WMN68AASY1FHVATWVE&pd_rd_i=B00MV1YR6O&pd_rd_w=Wa3XA&tag=mumsnetforum-21&refRID=R4WMN68AASY1FHVATWVE&pd_rd_r=c4991b5e-434a-11e9-aaff-27d05f5ca95c

Craft kits, Lego, books (Hollie Webb or the trouble with daisy series were popular here) playmobil are all safe bets sea

We ended up being in town ages

Spends;

£2 in charity shop
£15 school trousers
£14 Poundland
£4 savers
£10 lunch

£54 lunch and drinks for 6. I baked and mil had ice cream do we went to theirs for pud. Frugal and yummy.

All of those suggested sea. Bag of sweets plus a fiver?

Nsd but forgot to add that I spent £16 on yoga leggings yesterday.

Just watched the Imitation Game again. So sad

That bracelet set looks great thanks Orange! I think I’ll do that. I think craft is a winner... I love stuff like Lego but there’s not much available for a party budget, whenever I’ve looked before. I also like an Usbourne ‘fact’ book but that’s better if you know a bit about the child's Interests.

So much clearing up to do tonight . How do we make so much mess every weekend?

I sobbed buckets at the end of that film wolf :(

I spent €8 last night on drinks for myself & my cuz, we got treated to the others we had.
€75 odd in Aldi
Forgot yogurts for ds so spent €7 more in centra on chocolate, yogurts, and 6 snack sausage rolls

£2.50 tea with friend. Off for a run with dh in a min- weather windy and snow/sleet/hail , hope it can hold off for half an hour.
Glad dd had good bday, how was the unicorn cake, it sounded amazing. lonely
Hiorange sounds like your doing great at frugalness.
sea hope no one else gets the Sicky bug.
Take care in the wind everyone.