That Was (Most of) The Week That Was

 The thing about living in town in an all mains gas/electric bungalow is that for the first time since 1979  we have no alternative self reliant heating or cooking.
Anyway, with dire warnings of a cold winter and possible problems with electricity supply (something to do with no spare capacity from power stations), I suggested we go and get the gas ring from the beach hut. Now we have the gas cooker out in the caravan and the gas ring indoors, I don't feel so vulnerable, but I will be so glad to get back to the country where we will have a wood-burner and hopefully, eventually, a propane-gas range cooker.

There had been some high tides in Felixstowe near the hut,by the looks of the stones washed up onto the prom and a strange phenomenon............. loads of oyster shells washed into the corners by each wooden groyne.

The weather on Wednesday was awful - rain all day. We didn't get out for a walk at all. I just made a card for the wedding next month, read and then started writing my Penny Pinching News letter which is due to go to friends for January 1st . A very lazy day.

 It was Col's blood test on Thursday morning (platelets are up a bit again thank heavens) and then in the afternoon we got out for a 2½ walk - up to Asda and back and no sitting down halfway. Definitely the furthest he has walked since he started feeling poorly a year ago.

Today he is off out for Brunch with ex work colleagues and I haven't got much that has to be done so will get on with finishing the tapestry glasses case or reading.

I've actually abandoned quite a few books recently, yesterday  the new Ann Cleeves, Shetland series - Cold Earth. I've been spoiled by the TV series and the books are completely different. "The 12.30 From Croydon"  is another of the British Library Crime Classics but the story is told from the point of view of the murderer -hate that! "Antidote to venom" was another the same. A friend had told me about a crime series set in Canada by Louise Penny but I couldn't get into the first of these "Still Life" so that went back unread. I wanted to read "A Woman's Place" by Ruth Adam but had several other books at home I preferred first so it went back but it's still on the shelves at Broomhill so I may borrow it again.

 This is the latest photo of our grandson Jacob which daughter has sent, now 5 months old this is his first time on a (rather too big for him) swing. What a difference from the poorly little fella back in July. Can't wait to get down to Surrey soon to see him properly.

Thank you for comments, I shall mention nothing about the country across the pond and just say welcome to another follower.


Spending up-date in Low/No Spend November
Milk, veg and other bits from Aldi, bread and bits from Asda and fruit from the greengrocers £16.50
That book 50p
Pack of 4 gas cartridge thingys for the beach hut gas ring. £8
Boiler repairs £80 Aaaaaagh!  ( That's rather spoiled the low spend plan)

£299 +£105 = £404

Back when something exciting/interesting/noteworthy happens
Sue

Lack of excitement and Frugal Friday

Nothing exciting has happened but I'm back anyway and thank goodness the weather is 100% better than yesterday.

I popped to Saxmundham this morning for Tesco and Post Office. Not a lot of shopping needed this month as we need to empty cupboards as much as we can before the middle of March but on the other hand I hate seeing the cupboards getting low at this time of the year when the weather could still turn nasty.
I'm still going round cupboards looking for things that I can give to the charity shop and packing other stuff that we won't need into boxes.
We've had 2 quotes from local removal companies, either will be OK to use and both can supply boxes well before moving day to give me plenty of time to pack.
I've also been making a list of all the people and companies we will need to contact, then I'm giving Col the job of finding all the phone numbers.

In between other things this week I've got well ahead by making some Christmas cards for my Penny Pincher Paper penfriends

Also been making a note of where we've stretched the pennies this week, thought I might make this a regular thing on a Friday if I remember.

Found 2p on the ground in town
Made 4 large portions of soup from 3 tired carrots, a small onion and a tin of tomatoes.
Ate leeks, beetroot, Brussels sprouts from the garden and apples from store
Col took the shower to bits, descaled it, fitted a new washer and got it working properly again.
Free heat from wood all week
Bought new shoes in January sales, saving £20
Found Tesco Christmas 7 cheese selection reduced to £2 and mince pies to 37p for 6.

Shall I list the non-frugal things? Nah!

Many thanks for comments yesterday. I think it's going to be a huge help to hear from other people reading who know someone going through exactly the same treatment as Colin. Thank goodness for blogging.

Back Tomorrow
Sue

Advent 16 = Small presents already sent and messages to penfriends

Picture 16 of my advent photos for you is a pile of small presents.

 I've written before about my Penny Pincher Penfriends.  We all used to subscribe to The Penny Pincher Paper which was privately published monthly by John and Irma Mustoe in the 1990's. They appeared on TV in a series called Scrimpers presented by the actor Ray Brooks ( Not Superscrimpers which was more recent) which was on TV in the mid 1990s followed this with a Book and the monthly newsletter. I wrote for the paper for a couple of years ( no pay sadly!) and when they retired a few of us who had subscribed or written for it managed to keep in touch. We've been taking it in turns to write a letter for nearly 15 years now and we do little Christmas presents for everyone  They've probably all arrived by now I hope.

I'm feeling guilty because I've failed to send cards to D in Michigan and P in Canada - whoops. If you are reading.... HAPPY CHRISTMAS to you both and to your families! My other penfriend W lives on a windy Scottish Island and a present and long overdue letter was sent that way a few days back, I hope it gets there as their ferry and planes keep being cancelled due to the awful weather. I received a letter and gift from W    (Thank you W, had to smile at L having to eat bought marmalade because you sold all the homemade! )

Honestly, what a hopeless penfriend I am! Using the blog instead of writing. Tut Tut

Thank you once again for the good wishes in comments, very much appreciated.

Back Tomorrow
Sue

Another chilly day

Listening to Ken Bruce on Radio 2 this morning made me so glad that we have a wood burner and no central heating. People were contacting him about putting on or NOT putting on their central heating. He always says that he doesn't put the heating on until much later how ever cold it is. If we get cold it is very easy to just light a small fire. A bit of newspaper, a few of bits of kindling and a couple of bits of pallet plus a log will do to warm the room. Then the fire can be left to go out again. Easy Peasy. I HATE being cold, and yes I have got a cardi on as well.

Thanks to Morgan at Growing in the Fens for the Beetroot Chutney recipe. I made 9 jars this morning and it looks really good. I managed to do it without getting in too much of a mess- beetroot is mucky stuff! According to one of my preserve cookery books:- A Chutney is pulpy and a Relish is chunkier. So my recipe for Red Hot Relish last week should correctly be called Red Hot Chutney, but it doesn't have quite the same ring to it.
I had planned to do Greengage jam on Friday but not enough of the gages are ripe yet so that will have to wait a week.

Thanks to Buttercup I have now I have been side tracked into re-reading some of my old copies of The Penny Pincher Paper and I haven't looked at them for several years so that will be a happy evening

I was just walking back across the field from checking chicken water before dark when I had a thought
"Maybe Frugal living at our age is knowing that you could live on less than you do but not having to, because for many years you did live on less than everyone else did."

Thinking about plastic and Big Brother, Plus a biscuit recipe.

  I was looking at some different blogs yesterday and came across a challenge that takes place in Australia each year. People sign up to not buying anything in plastic for a day, a week or  for the whole month of July. It is to bring awareness about the huge quantities of plastic waste ( estimated to be twice the size of Texas in the North Pacific alone)  that drift in the oceans, wash up on beaches and cause problems to so many areas of the world.
I don't think I have heard of this challenge via Friends of the Earth so it must just be in Australia.
Signing up for a day would be pretty pointless I reckon, a week would be easy but a month would be difficult without a way of buying milk in anything other than in plastic bottles. Is there anywhere that still uses glass? - No milkman delivers anywhere near us. This is the website if you want a look.
 http://www.plasticfreejuly.org/the-challenge.html
 I can remember when the Co-op stopped giving out plastic bags for free and now it is quite the norm to take our own reusable bags everywhere. But why are so many things, that could be sold differently, sold in punnets or on plastic trays? I shall give this more thought. It's good to be nudged to think about different things sometimes.

This morning I made a double batch of Peanut Biscuits - enough to last us for ages. I have 3 main biscuit recipes that I use and this one I've been using for years, ever since I saw it in THE PENNY PINCHER PAPER many moons ago.
 Basic Biscuit Recipe
8oz Plain flour         }
1tsp baking powder }     sieved together
Pinch salt
4oz butter
4oz caster sugar
1 egg

Plus one of the following : 2oz chopped nuts/ 2oz coconut/grated zest of a lemon/2oz chocolate chips.

Rub fat into flour, add rest of dry ingredients then add beaten egg, mix to bind.
 Roll out as thin as possible, cut into rounds, put onto greased trays and bake for 170C, Gas 5 for 10 - 12 minutes, until just changing colour. Put straight onto wire trays to cool and crisp up.

I also made my usual weekly two loaves of bread.
Him outside started the job of putting down the wooden shuttering to make edges for the new path along the back of the house. He is taking it steady but seems to be fine.
Then he had to go up to Ipswich Hospital for  the pre- angio-gram check, blood tests etc. ( apparently an angio-gram could cause stroke or heart attack! - Oh Heck).
The sun shone for a while this afternoon, which was nice as we hadn't seen it since last Friday.
Dinner tonight fruit and vegetable curry, rice and home made naan bread.. When there isn't much home grown veg around I chuck in some chopped apricots and prunes to bulk it up a bit, tastes delicious. Tonight there was more fruit than veg!
Now about to watch something about a man avoiding everything that could be leave an electric trace  or on-line footprint,on channel 4 news - due to the news about secrecy being breached by USA. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU AND READING THIS!!!

Monday Thank-yous

This blogging is fun, I keep getting some lovely comments and finding people with the same books on their shelves is good. So thank you to Karen, Mean Queen, Frugal in Derbyshire, Pam, sft and Dc  and  anyone I've forgotten for all the input. Still only one other person who has heard of The Penny Pincher Paper and that was buttercup do you have a blog buttercup? She asked ( I'm guessing a lady :) ) if I ever wrote for the Penny Pincher Paper ( see yesterdays blog) and the answer was yes. I wrote bits called "From a Suffolk Smallholding" every other month for a couple of years and was quite upset when John and Irma Mustoe gave up and the Paper stopped. Although I reckon it took a lot of time to put together a 30 page Newsletter every month. I have also been writing on and off for about 15 years for the Suffolk Smallholders Society Newsletter. I just love writing.
Yesterday I got on my soapbox and |I really shouldn't do that as I sound like a grumpy old person, But I think I'm only grumpy now and again. At least I HOPE its only now and again.
Watched the Countryfile  7 day weather forecast yesterday and they are saying we will be back to cold and frosts by the weekend which is a worry as the plants in the greenhouse are getting quite big. The cucumbers are in 4 inch pots and have teenie baby cucs appearing, so I shall have to get them out into the polytunnels soon and then cover them with fleece if it looks like freezing. Cucumber seeds are so expensive as because we sell them I only buy the F1 all female variety. The tomatoes will need moving into bigger pots if I can't get them out to the tunnel soon.

Yesterday we went a few miles up the road to a regular fortnightly car boot sale,  we took a shopping list as we needed to look for some things for the new campsite loo/ shower. Luckily  we found everything :- a rubbish bin with a swing top lid =£1, two pine-framed small mirrors =£2.50 each, a tall plastic jug for 50p which will do for the loo brush( that I already had), a mop bucket and mop = £3 and finally a pine shelf unit =£1. Unfortunately all this frugal luck was somewhat spoiled today as I had to order a couple of non-slip door mats and a 'slippery floor' sign from Viking- the office supply company. When running a business you have to - Think Health and Safety at all times!! - Our public liability insurance is one of our biggest costs.
I also found 6 sheets of peel -off stickers for cardmaking for £1 for all six, I could have bought lots more card crafting stuff but had to be very strict with myself. And my final purchase was a couple of sets of old but unused commemorative stamps - over £3 worth of stamps for £2. They just need making up to the right amount to post at todays prices with a few 1p stamps.
Him Outside got the best bargain as he found a complete set of really good quality drill bits for £5 ( about 15 various sizes in a proper case). A couple of weeks ago he broke a masonry drill bit while fixing the campsite loo to the floor and had to buy a new one which was £6 just for 1 !

On a Sunday Soapbox

I was browsing in blogland last night while watching that programme " Should British people without talent be on TV" when I came across a blog where somebody was saying how they didn't want to join in the £30 for 30 tips thing because the things they did were not what other people did and they didn't want to be seen following the crowd and "making up" tips just to get the money. ( I couldn't find the blog again and not sure where it was)
Surely the whole point of Frugal Living is that everyone is different, everyone has different reasons to live the way they do and different ways to do it. Probably one persons frugal tip is another persons extravagance and vice-versa. But that doesn't matter, it is up to individual choice.
Our reasons for being frugal are over on the sidebar and so is the way we do things. We've often been told we are lucky for owning a smallholding but we are old and started way back when houses were cheaper and we were able to buy cheap, do them up and sell a few years later. We did this 5 times including living in a caravan for a year with 2 children under 5 and working late every night on a house that had been declared uninhabitable by the council. But we made choices to do that, like buying childrens clothes at jumble sales and not Mothercare as was the norm at the time. Later when the children were older we choose not to holiday abroad, even though they said all their friends were, and camped in this country instead. We choose not to have new or even newish cars and we were lucky because Him Outside can turn his hand to most practical things. Yes, we were lucky as we didn't have debts and a big mortgage and we were able to pay it off early but we choose not to buy things that we couldn't afford. Our first new sofa was bought only a few years ago and we've been married for 34 years! but that was our choice. Yes, we were "lucky" that my Dad died a few years back and left us some money to build a kitchen extension and to modernize the house to make it more fuel efficient so it was cheaper to live here, but we choose to do that rather than go on a cruise or whatever. We are so lucky to have a choice and I know some people will say they have no choice to do what they do and I'm sure that's true and that's the sad thing about the world. But we can only do what we do and as far as I know  we don't upset anyone doing it. So I shall carry on being frugal in our own way and enjoying it.

On a much lighter note I had a reply to a blog last week mentioning The Penny Pincher Paper and I was so excited to find someone else who had heard of it. ( Apart from my 6 PPP friends - Hello Sandra, Alison, Mary,Janet,Jill and Gill !) It was a small privately published newsletter that ran for  around 5 years. Produced by John and Irma Mustoe who appeared in the VERY early series of Scrimpers in around 1992 or 3. They then did a book and followed that with The Penny Pincher Paper. I have no idea how many people subscribed to it, but as lot's of different people contributed their own ideas on living better on less, it must have been several dozen at least. So is there anyone else who subscribed out there? The Mustoes  were frugal because they loved travelling, so they choose to live simply in other ways to afford their world travels. Everyone is different. Which is  a good thing as it would be a pretty boring world if we were all the same.