Tuesday 10 January 2012

Sealed Pot Challenge


Well here it is - my sealed pot for the great Sealed Pot Challenge started by Sft over at SFT'S TRAVEL, MORTGAGE FREEDOM, 101 AND LIFE GOALS Blog.  I wanted a pot bought from a charity shop this year and when I walked in our local Hospice shop and saw this lovely bread bin for just £5 I thought what better receptacle (and the charity gets a £5 donation too), with 'bread' being one of the slang words for money in this country it's highly appropriate too.



Lovely Hubby drilled a couple of holes in the lid and then filed them together into a slot that it just the right size for £2 coins, which is what we are saving again.  I used strong double sided sticky tape to fix the lid in position and then another strip around the outside edge to fix a ribbon in place, doubly stuck - truly a Sealed Pot.  I emptied Spotty Jug (our temporary 'sealed pot') into this and guess what....we already have £92, I see next Christmas being a very good one!!




Unfortunately, I have had to play one of my Jokers already!!  I'm gutted, I went out yesterday to try to find a good supplier for milk, no milkman would ever be able to negotiate our pot holed 2 mile farm track without setting off on his return journey with a van full of butter instead of milk.  As we drink only Skimmed milk I knew I might face a slight challenge.

First I called to a rather posh village shop and found that instead of catering for the villagers with 'proper' food they seem to be aiming at some passing tourist trade with 'coffee to go', fancy jars of jam, wine and champagne and bags of pasta at ridiculously high prices.  I enquired about their milk and found they only sold it by the single pint for 65p.  I bought one in case that's all I could find, but they said they don't order in especially for customers.  This attitude actually annoyed me, how do they expect to stay in business when they don't actually cater for the people that could keep them in business.  So I moved on.

Next stop the village post office that I use in the next village, this was much better, as well as having the Post Office counter they have shelves of everything you could possibly need in an emergency, true a lot pricier than the supermarkets, but they are a newsagents as well AND they sell milk in two pint cartons for £1.20.  As they only had one carton of Skimmed milk I bought that and had a word with the owner who was more than willing to regularly order me four of these, to be picked up by me every Monday and Friday - result.  I pick up my first batch of four on Monday as he has already placed his order for this week. 



So .... I needed more milk, rather than drive for miles to gether single cartons from here and there I  bit the bullet and drove to Asda, merely 2 miles from this shop and got myself four large 4 pint cartons.  Two are now safely in the freezer and two in the fridge.  I do think we need to get our milk consumption down slightly, we seem to go through two pints a day on our breakfasts and hot drinks, slightly excessive.  I have tried black coffee but to no avail, maybe drinking less coffee would be better for me anyway.  The ideal would be to get us down to only needing a single pint a day.

So only 10th January and already a joker played...... not good!   I am also proving useless at January being a No Spend month, out of ten days I have only managed four No Spend Days.  I am staying firmly at home for the next few days to improve my average and get on with the packing.  Due to my tour of the shops yesterday I only managed to get one set of drawers and two cupboards in the kitchen sorted and packed up, so guess what I'll be doing again today. 



Oh, I will have to have a little break at 2.15pm to watch Escape to the Country, todays episode is supposed to be the one that we participated in.  Maybe I should have kept quiet until I have had chance to see just how bad we come over!!  Oh well....if you watch....no laughing (or if you do please don't let me know about it !!)

Added in - I  watched it while I was having a break and the pigs were definitely the stars of our little bit of the show (although Lovely Hubby is very good too)!  It took them FOUR hours of filming to get that little bit of television history!!

Sue xx

18 comments:

  1. Oooh! now I shall have to go and set my TV to record E-2-the-C as I shall be out.

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  2. Even though you have used a Joker, at least you have secured the milk, so it wasn't wasted.

    Escape to the Country, you say ;-) I quite like that program, you get to see sunshine in January.

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  3. Oh I'll have to tune in - am sure I can find some baking to do around that time so I can do that and watch you at the same time - call it multi-tasking :)

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  4. I rung mum from work and asked her to record it for me. I hear that Lovely Hubby was on there :) how exciting.

    The joker doesnt't sound great so early on but hopefully you will get away with not having to use it for some time now. You are still finding your feet in the new village so oput it down to that :p I would want to take my business elsewhere too, their loss if they are not prepared to help you out hey! x x x x

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  5. Shame that your hunt for milk was such a chore, just watched you on the telly and you came over well.............I even got a little over excited and exclaimed "I can see chicken world!"

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  6. I was on my laptop and watching it at the same time, I looked up and saw your husband, I thought I recognise him and then they went on looking at houses so I didn't see it all.

    To save money on milk could you buy full fat milk and water it down, I have done this.

    Just like to say that I don't comment much but I read your blog all the time and love it. Good luck with your move. Pops

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  7. Hi..me and iris just watched alan and the piggies..she was soo excited to see him and them..fern will watch it in a bit..
    love
    sara,fer,iris

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  8. Oh, I've only just got in and missed it. What channel is it on so maybe I can watch it on catch up???

    That shop sounds as though it deserves not to succeed. You could always keep in some UHT milk in case you run out.

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  9. hi just watched it and made my hubby watch too,go sue,"even if it was just a littlle of you" alan done well, bless him! tv fame eh! xx

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  10. Your hubby has a great accent! I bet the couple didn't expect the pigs to jump up on to the trough!!!

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  11. I have joined you on the sealed jar challenge and so far we have about $2.50 in small change. I have just bought a Cinderella money box for the purpose, we would have to take a can opener to it to get the money out and I have convinced "the men" we will be rolling in money for Christmas on December 3rd.

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  12. I hope it wasn't a Berkshire shop or Milkman!!!I was rather disappointed you weren't interviewed for your reasoning and experiences behind your E2TC! Enjoyed seeing LH and piggies and a glimpse of you and the chickens!! Have to say I didn't think the couple on the programme were moving to the country for the same reason as you, all they seemed to want was 'a view'!! Couldn't imagine them having a wonderful animal menagerie like yours,I couldn't see them mucking out animals either!! Good luck with the continuing (or continous!) packing!!

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  13. Oh I didn't see your TV time ! I'm sorry that you are facing obsticles and hope you can over come them with your lovely style !

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  14. Thanks for all the lovely comments, I was SO relieved that all the interviews with us weren't shown. They filmed for about 4 hours but really a lot of what we chatted about wasn't really right for the show.

    It would have been nice to see in the polytunnel on tv, we did quite a lot of filming and chatting in there, it was full of young plants and looked a lot more appealing than it does now flapping in the wind waiting to be dismantled after all the high winds last week.

    The lovely Large Black pigs were, definitely the stars of the show and it was lovely to see Maud and Martha again.

    Sue xx

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  15. Oh, I found it and watched it. The pigs were beautiful and your OH has a lovely voice.

    I am amazed at these people with all that money moving to the country. How could those last two houses not please? I would think I'd died and gone to heaven, although the first one was like a mausoleum. Some people are never satisfied.

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  16. It was lovely to see you all in the programme. I want to know why those Londoners were not looking for a bit of land. She was supposed to have done a Masters in Sustainable Agriculture and wanted to use it for a new career. How can you do that without a bit of land of your own?

    We had some tv folk come into school to film something. I couldn't reconcile the hours spent filming with the few seconds of footage shown in the finished programme.

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  17. Oh I am so sorry I missed the show. I know I would have enjoyed it. Maybe there will be a repeat.

    I am hoping to join in on your sealed pot challenge this year - just got to move house first and the pot will be chosen.

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