I’m so sorry if you’ve already seen this post or if you left a comment last week but the whole post got eaten by my blog over the weekend so I’ve had to redo it. Hope that’s OK, Cass x x
1) This one is going to make us sound a bit greedy but we like our food here so don’t judge. Along with my usual batch cooked meals I often have ready made pies in the freezer for a quick and easy meal when I don’t have time (or energy) to cook. I used to serve two pies each (not for the kids obviously) because that’s what my Dad used to serve when we had pies when I was growing up and I just did it without thinking. We always used to leave half a pie each on average or we’d eat the pies and not all of the mash and veg so it was clearly too much for us but for some reason it just didn’t click. This week we had pie and mash for tea with veggies and as I had a lot of veggies that I’d bought reduced that day, I cut down to just one pie each with some mash and a big pile of veg. It was more than enough and it got me thinking a bit more about portion sizes which I’ve not really been monitoring too much lately. It’s all well and good planning meals and batch cooking but I really need to focus more on my portion sizes and to use more veg with meals to bulk it out cheaply and healthily.
2) I’ve been going a bit loopy at home recovering from my op so last weekend, I made Mr Frugal take me to Hobbycraft to find me a new hobby – one that would be easy to learn and would help me feel at least a little bit creative. I was torn between the crochet aisle and the watercolour aisle but in the end I went for watercolours as I’d love to learn and even if I’m not very good I think I’ll have fun trying. I started off with some watercolour samplers which were half price and would give me a good idea if I was going to like painting that way.
I totally did!
I bought the pack that was completely for beginners but I loved learning how the colours mixed and how they worked and even better, I now have a whole stack of gifts for people if I can find some pretty frames. I know they’re not good enough for actual Christmas gifts but I think sometimes it’s nice just to give a gift to make someone smile and some of these quotes made me think of people I know so they’ll be getting them as a gift for no other reason than they are who they are.
3) We’ve had a very quiet half term this last week and haven’t spent any money at all on days out or activities with the kids. I generally set aside a bit of a budget for school holidays so we can do at least a couple of days out but with me not being well and the kids seeming to be so tired in the last week or so we had a chat and decided that this week was going to be a chill out cheap week. We’ve had a great week with lazy mornings, and relaxed days and I think it’s been just what we all needed. We’ve not had a boring week by any means as we’ve done lots of fun things at home together (like the project in the photo below which will be revealed tomorrow in time for Halloween) and we have been out – just not on big trips.
Sometimes I think we can overplan our lives with trips here and there, days out and even after school activities when in reality we all need some down time and this week has been ours. The fact it saved us money has been an added bonus.
4) I bought lots of fruit reduced the other night at Asda for ridiculously low prices as they had so much to sell off when I was in there. They had everything from mango chunks to their fruit platters so I bought a load and made smoothie packs to store in the freezer – I think I spent about £3.50 but I came away with a lot and now that it’s all nicely divided up, it feels like a brilliant bargain. I’m thinking I’m going to write a separate post on my freezer smoothies so watch out for that!
5) I’ve made a start on our family advent calendar for this year and I’m so pleased that it doesn’t include any chocolate or presents. It’s all about our family Christmas traditions and will involve presence and not presents (I’ve been dying to find a way to get that phrase in somewhere since I saw it on Pinterest!)
What frugal or thrifty things have you done this week?
Emma and Becky and I would love to make think linky into a place to share all of our frugal ideas with each other so hwe’d love tou to link up with us this week.
Five Fabulously Frugal Things I’ve Done This Week Linky rules
We’d love you to join in with us by sharing what frugal and thrifty things you’ve been up to this week – whether it’s an Instagram picture (#5frugalthings), a blog post or even a video. Just add your link to the linky at the bottom of this post.
You don’t have to share five things you’ve done, anything thrifty or frugal that you’ve been doing is perfect.
We’d like to make this a great little community linky so it would be brilliant if you could comment on a couple of the other blog posts linked up. We’ll make sure that we comment on all posts and if you have a Pinterest friendly image then we’ll Pin your post to one of our boards too.
You’re more than welcome to copy and paste the badge above but it would be even better if you could let your readers know that you’re linking up with us by adding a little line to the bottom of your post like this one:
I’m linking up with this Cass, Emma and Becky in this week’s ‘Five Fabulously Frugal things I’ve done this week’ linky.
We’re looking forward to seeing all your lovely thrifty posts!
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Image credit: Shutterstock, Gstockstudio
