Every week I share five frugal things that I’ve done during that week just to show you that the small things you do all add up to a great frugal lifestyle where you can learn to live a fabulously frugal life.
Before I start though, as always feel that I should say that being frugal to me is about getting the best value for our money – it’s not about doing without for us or about not having nice things. We all have different financial situations and we’re all frugal for different reasons. 😉
1) Guess what? I’ve got some super cheap flowers to share with you!
I got two bunches of these amazing flowers reduced from £8 to 40p! They’re so bright and colourful and they’re currently in two vases in my kitchen brightening it up!
2) Last weekend, I had a few potatoes that needed using up as I’d bought them to make some mashed potatoes for a midweek roast but we had a change of plan thanks to some bargains we found in the reduced section. The potatoes had been sitting around for a week so they were at the stage where we needed to use them or lose them. 😉
Rather than waste the potatoes, I peeled them and sliced them as finely as I could and made a cheesy potato bake which I added some onions, garlic and some bacon and Mr Frugal and I had that for a lovely lunch.
There was still some potatoes leftover so I kept on with the sliced potatoes the theme and made a Spanish tortilla omelette with some peppers, onion and cheese which was equally as amazing as the cheesy potato bake and was perfect for lunch on Monday.
3) I took Miss Frugal out to a pretty quiet industrial estate near us for a cheeky little practice drive on Sunday morning now that she’s 17 and desperate to pass her test.
We noticed a little old man at the end of one of the lanes picking blackberries from the bushes so once we’d finished with our lesson (which didn’t take long as we’re keeping them short so we don’t fall out ;-)) we grabbed a bag for life from the boot and picked some of our own. We managed quite a haul and I had grand plans to make all sorts with them.
Last year we made blackberry vinegar and Autumn crumble tarts so I had high hopes for this latest batch. It wasn’t to be though and I ended up soaking them overnight on Sunday to clean them and get all the grubbies out and by Monday night they were in the freezer as I realised there was no way anything remotely creative was going to be happening with them.
4) We still haven’t put the heating on properly* despite the cooler weather that we’re seeing at the moment. We’re lucky as our house is quite a warm house in general so we’re always able to hold off on the heating for a bit longer than a lot of people.
* We did put it on last Saturday afternoon for half an hour just to take the chill off.
We do have a table in the corner of the living room filled with blankets so we can get snuggly when we need to but I don’t think anyone’s used them yet so far this Autumn.
Also, our little blanket table is looking a bit worse for wear so it’s on my ‘project’ list to give a makeover to when I get a bit of time.
5) For ages now, I’ve wanted to paint the walls in our bedroom white, or at least do something with the super ugly ‘feature wall’ that I decided to paint deep plum on a whim one day. I’ve just not got round to it but it’s definitely on my list of things to do!
Until recently, we had three canvasses above the bed that we were never that keen on but they matched the wall colour so we learned to live with them. The larger of the three fell down in the middle of the night a few weeks ago – it thankfully missed hitting either of us but did give us a scare.
We decided not to put the canvas back up which meant we needed to take the other two down too, leaving three ugly marks in the wall.
Something needed to happen to cover up the ugly marks but knowing that I want to paint the room, I didn’t want to buy anything because I don’t know what will fit when I get around to painting (currently scheduled in for the end of this month when I have a week off) so instead, I turned to Pinterest. I searched for ‘free Autumn printables’ and found three pretty prints that I printed off and stuck up with some washi tape.
I know it doesn’t really go with the walls but it does look quite pretty and I much prefer it to the holes in the wall that they’re hiding.
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I’m linking up with this Cass, Emma and Becky in this week’s ‘Frugal Friday’ linky.
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