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