The "baby" of the family is 26 today, so Happy Birthday A. She is practice manager of a local opticians and is the only one of our three who has stayed living locally.
I often seem to start Monday by baking a couple of loaves of bread. Today I also made a marmalade cake, a few scones and some iced buns. They are ready for Wednesday morning when we have an open kitchen morning for any members of The Suffolk Smallholders Society who want to pop in for coffee, cake and a chat. After that I turned some cheap bread into breadcrumbs and dried some of them in the Rayburn oven to store in the freezer. This afternoon I had a battle with a roll of Christmas paper as I wrapped the Operation Christmas child shoe box. I love finding things to put in it but always find wrapping the box and lid is the hardest bit!
Him Outside was off to the doctors for a review of his tablets this morning and also popped in to see one of his customers who he hasn't been able to work for since early summer. She has a list of jobs that need doing- weather permitting. This afternoon he was at our neighbours to do some more shrub clearing and also tidying up the damage done by the wind last week.
We've had a good sunny day today, although I think it is several degrees colder. I got a load of washing dry which leads me onto Day 4 of 30 ways to save £1.(see them all here)
4. Re- read the instructions for your washing machine, could you use a shorter cycle?
With electric prices about to go up again this could save a bit of money. If you don't have the instruction leaflet it's probably available somewhere on the web. As I dry my washing outside I have turned down the spin speed on my washing machine and I hope this saves a bit of power.Heating water is usually free here either via the wood fired Rayburn or the solar thermal thingy, so I use a 40 degree wash which takes an hour and a half. My washing machine is quite old and I believe newer machines have shorter cycles. I have got a 30 degree 30 minute fast wash cycle and debated that running this twice would be less power than my normal wash cycle, but it would need me to be in the right place at the right time to reset the machine. Just 1 30 minute wash at 30 degrees is not enough for Him Outsides dirty work stuff.
