1) Despite the heat, I'm still loving soup for my lunch and I've had it three times this week. ;-) I bought a pack of pre-chopped soup mix from Asda in their reduced fruit and veg section so it worked out at around 15p a portion.Even at full price these pre-prepared soup packs work out as good value although it is a little waterier (is that a word) than my version of spicy butternut squash and sweet potato soup but actually I do quite like it that way.2) We went to the car boot sale last weekend and managed to get Tri-ominoes for the bargain price of 50p as our old and battered … [Read more...]

1) Last weekend when it was ridiculously hot I bought some cheap reduced price lemons and lovely Miss Frugal made me some homemade lemonade as she knows how much I enjoy her lemonade.  She usually makes mint lemonade but we didn't have any mint so she just made it plain and it was so refreshing.Not sure it was worth the clean up in the kitchen that she left me though!Also, you can tell she's grown up with me blogging as she made the lemonade, took a photo of it worthy of Instagram and remembered to tell me what she used to make it!  Then she told me I owed her £5 which is our … [Read more...]

1) Last weekend poor little Buddy was scratching himself a lot and was clearly uncomfortable so I called the vets in town and got an appointment for him to see what was going on.  Our vets charge £29 for an appointment plus extra for any necessary medication so when I found out he had a bacterial infection that was going to need steroids and antibiotics as well as at least one follow up appointment I knew I was looking at an expensive bill.  The receptionist mentioned a monthly care plan that I could take for him which would give me unlimited appointments for free along with free worming and … [Read more...]

No Spend Days How many days a week are there where you can honestly say that you haven't spent a single penny?I bet there's not too many because, most of the time, it's actually quite a hard thing to do unless you really focus on it.  But if you could manage just a couple of days each week where you make a conscious effort not to spend any money at all then imagine what you could do with the money you save.I've written before about how we make no spend days work for us as a family so I won't go into too much detail today but basically, on a day I want to be a no spend day, I'll try … [Read more...]

Last week we were lucky enough to have a lovely family break in Milan which I was going to tell you all about in another post but I decided to work it into this week's five frugal things post because it was such a frugal break yet such an enjoyable one.First of all, I'm going to tell you how much I paid for it because it was an unbelievable price for what we got!We traveled with Easyjet and paid £435 in TOTAL for four of us to fly to Milan from Edinburgh and stay for four nights in a four star hotel with breakfast.  The price included everything but transfers and insurance (which we … [Read more...]

1) We renewed our family railcard earlier in the week when we decided at the last minute to travel to Edinburgh airport by train rather than drive.  The family railcard took the price of the rail travel down from £220 to  £120 so it was definitely a worthwhile purchase, especially considering we need to travel by rail to Gatwick in October.We love travelling by train as it's so much more relaxing than driving and we have much more space - and we don't have to stop every half an hour when one of us needs a wee!2) I had a lovely wander around the charity shops last weekend and I … [Read more...]