Frugal friday...

A lot of folk seem to be doing "Stoptober" challenges, and SFT is continuing her "Stretch It Out" for the month of October as well. "That Supermarket" have sent me a load of "£4 off when you spend £40" vouchers, which is most kind of them, but I'll not be using many of them! We do need a new paper shredder for getting rid of personal documents etc, and I have a voucher for a saving off electrical products too, so I may be able to combine the two in that spend...

My plans for the month are to continue to stash as much money from the food budget away as I can in our Clubcard Plus account. In spite of taking some cash out of it for spending money at Ludlow we were chuffed that we'd still managed to spend under our grocery budget last month - you might remember that the CC+ is where we save a good chunk of our holiday spending money so the more we can amass in there the less we have to save by other means!

Sunset at Sidinish, North Uist

Last weekend was distinctly frugal - and about time too after the last few weeks! I worked an additional day on the Friday, the Saturday was a combination of foraging (rosehips, crab apples, blackberries and quinces) and rugby, via a trip to the farm shop for the bulk of our shopping.  Sunday we popped to the fairly-local outlet shopping place as I have worn through the soles of my trainers (which I use all the time for walking - they're super-supportive and far lighter than my walking boots for pavement based walks) so they needed replacement. I've had my moneys worth from them - they've done me for 18 months and goodness knows how many miles, and in any event they were free from a lovely friend in the first place - thanks Cheri! I found a pair which fitted me well for £38 - a fraction of the price I would have paid for them on the high street no doubt.  Other than the trainers the only personal money I spent all weekend was £1.65 for a half pint of beer at Brentwood Rugby Club - bargain!

Harlow Saints - 2011

The rest of our Sunday was spent cooking - a crumble to use the last of the apples we brought back from Devon, along with the blackberries we foraged on saturday, extra crumble topping was whizzed up at the same time and has been frozen for future use. Also muffins for Mr EH's breakfasts, and flapjacks for mine, and a big slow-cooked pot of lamb stew - which stretched the neck of lamb we got when we bought the whole lamb into 4 meals. I also cooked a root-vegetable bake - we had assorted root veggies needing used after our purchases at Ludlow, so I julienned beetroot, swede, potato and carrot and layered them up, doused them in cream & milk mixed, topped with cheese and breadcrumbs, and threw them in the oven while the muffins cooked - a large one did a meal on its own for one night in the week, and the two smaller ones accompanied sausages.  I love weekends like that when I cook up a storm and pack the fridge with meals for the rest of the week - it makes life so easy when you get home after a long day!

Crab Apples...

The other "Frugal win" this week was hitting £250 in our "Virtual Sealed pot" savings account. This is purely from stashing away the odd pennies and pounds from our current accounts. When I started saving like that I had no real ideas what to spend it on, but now we've decided that we're wanting to squeeze in an extra Hebrides trip in 2014 - so it will be put towards that. A great incentive to save more, too!

Robyn