Bargains, Coupons and Plans

I splurged the other week when I was in Tesco, they had the latest edition of Gardeners World in a bargain bag with gardening gloves, six packets of seeds and a year long '2 for 1 entry' card to gardens all over the UK.  As we are going to the Eden Project soon and this was included as one of the 'gardens' it really did make sense to have this particular splurge.  It's £25 to get into the Eden Project for an adult, so my £6.75 purchase price of this special edition was well worth it.

And of course I have now have some more vegetable seeds to add to my ever growing stash, the flower seeds have already been sown, as this year we are working on expanding our planting to attract bees, ready for next years bee keeping plan.

We spent Monday morning planting shrubs in Nut Wood and already this is having the desired effect, the place is suddenly alive with bees, other insects and of course this in turn has meant that more small insect eating birds are to be seen flitting in and out of the nut trees.

It's nice when a plan starts to come together  :-)

Of course, as I used to blog about on a regular basis, we still get our money off vouchers from both Tesco ....

... and M&S for using our credit cards.

(We still pay the amount owed off in full every month to avoid interest payments.)

Obviously the amount we are getting has gone down significantly and will be going down even more from now on, but a couple of months ago I did persuade Lovely Hubby to make a large company purchase on the M&S card and then pay it off with company money hence the large amount of M&S vouchers this time ... every little helps ... to quote the other supermarket   ;-)

In our push for self sufficiency we have done brilliantly with vegetables and not too bad at all with fruit but obviously there will always be things we can't produce ourselves, so we have decided that coupons, vouchers and all the money from the sale of vegetable plants and surplus vegetables will form our money pot to buy the things that we can't produce ourselves.  Just things like various flours, brown and basmati rices, pastas, olive oil etc.   In that way hopefully we will be self sufficient with food, because the foods we can grow ourselves will finance the foods that we can't grow ourselves.

Anyway enough for now, time to get on with some chores in any shade that I can find.

Sue xx

Winter, a lingering season .....

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Winter, a lingering season, 

is a time to gather golden moments, 

embark upon a sentimental journey, 

and enjoy every idle hour.

John Boswell

So many folk start to feel 'down' at this time of the year, the long dark nights are drawing in, the days are short, cold and damp, and venturing out can seem like more hard work than it should. 

 But we should remember these long dark nights mean we can cosy up by the flickering flames of the fire, or simply luxuriate in the warmth of a house with the heating ticking over in the background.  We can snuggle down for the evening wrapped in woolly jumpers, dressing gowns or fleecy blankets and watch the television or a good film on Dvd.  We can turn to favourite well read books and lose ourselves in the comforting familiarity of our favourite written words.

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Big mugs of coffee, tea or hot chocolate keep fingers toasty and the tummy warm, and decanted into a flask can make venturing into the great outdoors a more warming experience come the weekend.

It's not a time to feel too down .... it's a time to replenish the batteries, to take stock of all we've accomplished over the course of the Summer, and think about all that we want to accomplish once these dark nights begin to lift at the end of December.  

Mavis and Suky have the right idea, once teatime is over and the last walk around the paddock finished, little wet doggy feet and tummies are rubbed dry and we all snuggle in the warmth of the house.  They snuggle in their beds while I make my evening meal and then we all retreat to the warmth of the living room, long evenings and lots of doggy cuddles make short dark days much more tolerable.

We might be hurtling rather too quickly to the end of the year but with endings come new beginnings and we all love those ..... don't we?

Sue xx

Flicking a Switch ..... or Keeping Warm the Cheaper Way

It's been cold here this morning, and I mean really cold, so much so I was almost tempted to flick a switch and set the central heating in motion ..... almost!!

Instead I decided to go out to the wood store and bring some more logs and wood into the house.  There was already enough at the side of the log burner to have a fire tonight, but I don't like filling up the log basket in the dark, spiders, moths and screeching birds make for an eerie time late at night, and anyway wood at room temperature burns so much better and warmer.  So I thought I should stock up now so I could light the fire early to warm up the house.

Once we do get the house warm it holds onto the heat really well thanks to the excessively thick insulation in the loft and the Aga ticking over twenty four seven.

Two loads of wood like this and I was happy I had more than enough wood to last the afternoon and the evening.

Oh, and did you spot the little visitor in the top two pictures .....

... I thought I saw movement as I stepped back with my bowl of wood and when I stood still and watched he started hopping about.  A cheerful little chappy in his red waistcoat.  He made my day.

After all the gathering and carrying of the ood and then stacking it beside the log burner I was lovely and warm so I didn't end up lighting the fire but I will be lovely and cosy tonight .... and hopefully somewhere outside in his nest or den so will my little feathered friend.

Sue xx

Going To Work On An Egg

 

When you have a Lovely Hubby that has mastered the art of cooking the most perfect poached egg on toast ....

 

 

... it would be very rude not to start each weekend morning with said breakfast.

 

Eggs, the most complex and yet most simple of foods and we are so lucky that we get to eat eggs laid by our very own little flock of chickens.  The taste is absolutely amazing, and until you have tasted the eggs laid by true free ranging happy hens you have not tasted an egg at all.

 

 

 

We've been keeping birds for over five years now and we never tire of that magical moment when you go to the nest boxes and lying in the straw is an egg or two, this photo is our very first egg photographed for posterity. 

 

What a lovely way to start each day.

 

Sue xx

 

 

Keeping it Simple - Getting Rid of the Big Boys

 

 

In a couple of years when our master plan comes to fruition we will have to keep all expenditure to the absolute minimum, no regular monthly outgoings for anything but the absolute essentials and it is with this in mind that we are starting now to pare back the things we are setting up for the house.

 

 

 

One of the first things that was crossed off our list and banished from our lives was BT. 

 

We have had years and years of shoddy service, of lies over the phone and being made to wait in for engineers that turned up late or not at all.  Now I'm not saying it is the ground workers that are to blame, if you ask my opinion the company has just got too big for it's own boots and thinks it has everyone over a barrel because they need their service.

 

Well ..... not us. 

 

We have set up Satellite Broadband for our internet use and we have brilliant reception on our mobile phones for telephone calls.  It's all we need.

 

 

The next big boy to leave our company is Sky TV.  The price has crept up steadily over the years even for our most basic of packages, usually only by 25p or so, they obviously think you're not going to notice if they keep it small.  I got it back down a couple of years ago by phoning and threatening to leave then, so simple to do and even if it only saves you that 25p a month for a couple of years, well worth doing.  But now we have decided why continue paying the £48.75 a month that it has been costing us when for an initial payment for FreeSat box and dish installation it can all be ours with no monthly fees. 

 

So we bit the bullet and organised the installation for this weekend and we will be free of the second Big Boy that has been sharing our lives and costing us money.  For a one off payment to install the dish and squirrel proof cabling to the house, and the purchase of the FreeSat box, (which in total comes to less than £1,000) we will have television for just the cost of the TV licence.  As Sky was costing us £585 a year, this is less than the cost of two years Sky viewing and it will be ours for good, with a reasonable selection of channels and recording and pausing etc capabilities.

 

The reason for the sheep picture at the top of the post?

 

Well firstly I didn't want this to look like a BT or Sky advertisement on anyone's sidebar for the day, and secondly, we had the sad job of ringing the farmer who has his sheep in our field on Sunday morning to let him know that one of his lovely ladies had died during the night and two of the others were coughing.  Sadly he reckons she died of pneumonia, such a shame she as was only into her second year.  We pointed out the other two that were coughing "that nice looking one over there and the great big one" we said ..... "that great big one there is the Ram" said Will the farmer with a grin on his face.

 

 Ooops ..... shows how much we noticed .... in our defence it had no horns or anything visible (at first glance) to show us it was a boy!!

 

 

It's lucky no big animal sees our little Suky as a threat because she was in with them the other day, she pushed her way under the fence and went and stood next to her favourite .... the great big one!!

 

Sue xx

Friendship and Keeping it Simple

I've decided to keep this theme of 'Keeping it Simple' running as a thread through my Blog posts.

 

 Mainly because it helps keep me focused and keeps it on my mind and after all this Blog is really just my online diary, that you all choose to read it is brilliant and you are very welcome here, but the things I write are aimed mostly at me, so if I plug away at this it will, hopefully, become even more ingrained even more second nature and even more the way I want to feel about all the things that I am and do.

 

I had a nice couple of hours with one of my Blogging Buddies the other day, just a simple lunch with lots of coffee and chat, catching up on our lives since our last meet up.  It didn't cost us much, just a wee bit of organisation and a couple of emails.  We had lunch and then walked back to our cars and stopped off at a lovely little antiquey/junky shop that Karan knew of.  We both made little purchases, just small things that made us happy, mine was a lovely bunch of old wooden spoons for the princely sum of £2, including a Spurtle to join my other one.

 

They are already safely sat in a jug in the new house waiting for the day when I will reach up to grab a spoon to stir whatever pan of soup or stew is bubbling away on the Aga.  A simple thing to do but each and every time I do so I will think of that day, that lunch and time spent with a friend.

 

It doesn't cost a lot of money to have happy reminders, and rather than a naff ornament something useful and simple is for me, the order of the day.

 

They are photographed outside not because of some arty farty moment on my part but because it was so dark in the house the camera just was not picking them up nicely, the minute I stepped outside to photograph them I just had to grab the Rosemary plant that Karan  bought me on her very first visit to see me a few months back .... an edible memory of friendship too :-)

 

Sue xx

Christmas Wrapping Bought

 

I'm keeping it simple with the Christmas wrapping this year, well I do every year but I used to have a shop and then a Farmers Market stall so I could always pilfer bits and bobs for wrapping from my craft supplies.  Now in our efforts to keep it simple I've sold all my crafting things, (well they weren't going to be used any more by me and there are lots of crafters out there who threw good money at me for them and I had decided I would rather buy myself a house!!) so I decided to spend a little to 'tart up' my presents.

 

This lot cost me just £4, wrappings are currently 'Buy To Get One Free' in T*sco at the moment AND I spotted that they have a box of Value Range 12 Christmas crackers for just £1.  Nice shiny glossy crackers, with a motto, a hat and the naffest of naff little plastic gifts in each one.  But what's to stop you carefully opening one end of each cracker and removing the plastic gift and inserting one of your own or even just a couple of Quality Street sweeties instead.  These crackers do not seem to be available online, maybe they want your money by only having the glassy £10 a box packs on there, so do look out in store for them. (It would actually cost you more to buy a kit to make your own crackers than buy these.) 

 

But this year I don't think I'll bother with crackers at all, if anyone really wants a paper hat I'll make them one 'a la The Good Life'  .... from the newspaper pile near the log basket.

 

I toyed with the idea of wrapping the pressies in newspaper or glossy magazine pages, but on finding a large roll of brown paper it seems a shame to waste it, and as we have virtually no decorations to put up  the little gifts we have bought for our Christmas Day visitors will sit under the teeny Christmas tree from last year (it's survived wonderfully outside in it's pot all year and will move house next week) and make our living room look suitable festive.

 

The sticky tape and the bows were £1.50 each, so I got all three for £3 and the sticker book just £1, not bad at 1p per sticker and as the presents I've bought are quite small these will cheer them up no end.

 

Our only other expenditure this year has been another £1.50 on a pack of mini baubles for our little tree, he's still too small to be able to bear the weight of our normal baubles which will be piled into a couple of bowls and dotted around the place.

 

The main decorations for the house will be cut from our woodland just before the big day, there are lots of bushes laden with berries but we will only be taking a few sprigs of these as really I consider them wild bird food, and we have a wonderfully big Holly bush directly opposite the kitchen window which will be tidied up just in time for Christmas Day as will some of the ivy.

 

What have you got planned up to now?

 

Sue xx