Pepper seeds (Jubilanska and Marconi Rossa) are in my windowsill electric propagator and lettuce( Cuore and Winter Density) and parsley beside them plus our micro greens which were a Christmas present from us to us! I missed parsley from my seed order so I've used last years seed but as they are one of the worst for keeping from one year to another they might not germinate. If not I'll need new seed. The peppers are started as early as possible to give them every chance to ripen even though they will be put in a poly-tunnel.
My blog yesterday about Secret Santa gifts got several commentators agreeing that they don't always work. I'm hopeful that as it's just us, our children and partners, everyone will have some idea of what people like.
Thank you to Laura at No More Spending for her input regarding No Shopping Days. We live in the middle of open countryside so no shopping just means staying at home. I suppose if you go to work everyday surrounded by shops it must be harder not to be tempted to buy stuff.
Also Thank you to other blogging friends Karen, Jane, Pam, Bridget and Lizzy for comments and to Stacey At Mortgage Free Journey who is now reading my blog. Sft ( Saving for travel) said I was an inspiration which is a bit worrying!
Just to show we are not always perfectly frugal here are some of the stupid things we have done!
The year after we moved here we planted a small Christmas tree plantation of 50 trees. Christmas trees DO NOT like heavy clay soil - that's what we have here,so after a wet winter when they sat in muddy puddles we lost most of them.
We thought about moving a while back and Him Outside cleared out lots of "might come in handy" stuff from his workshop. When we didn't move after all he had to start collecting nails, nuts,bolts screws and odd bits of wood all over again.
About 5 or 6 years ago when my Dad died and left us some money we used part of it to buy a touring caravan. After using it for a year we remembered why we had stopped caravanning about 10 years ago, then we part exchanged it for a medium sized motor-home so we could have a touring holiday in Scotland. Then after one more year when we went right off traveling we sold the thing! No profits were made anywhere on all those deals. :-(
Three years ago we had a new kitchen extension built and alterations to the house. While we did it we lived in the conservatory, an old caravan and it's awning and a couple of rooms at the front of the house. After living in this muddle for 6 months we moved back in and being desperate to get organised before Christmas we bought a few things that we wouldn't normally have bought new, like 2 chairs that turned out to be too uncomfortable to use for longer than half an hour at a time and a horrible modern sideboard/cupboard for the living room which I'm stuck with looking at and hating everyday!
( No regrets about spending on the house extension as it was something we had wanted to do when we first moved in 21 years ago).
Then there are all the books I've had at various times, cleared out because of lack of space and then regretted later.
I could probably think of more given time but I'd better stop.
Hopefully we've learned all the lessons that can be learned about wasting money and none of the things we've done ever got us into debt.
Back tomorrow. I WILL keep frugalling!
