Travel Fund

(image from dailyrecord.co.uk)

Aberdeen

I have an account designated as a Travel Fund in my bank line up: it started because I needed to save £450 for the EFG's sixth form bus pass.  The account still sits there, even though the last bus pass is bought and paid for, and there is the grand sum of £5.10 in it!

It occurred to me at the weekend that I had missed something out of my budgeting when I was doing all that at the start of the month.

We are going to have a pretty major trip somewhere to take the EFG to university in September!  It may be as local as Lincoln, which we could do in a day, but it might be Aberdeen or Aberystwyth, Keele or Reading.  The first two I am sure are going to involve an overnight stay, and Aberdeen would probably need several nights, as well as a tank or two of diesel....this is going to cost me!

She has also been invited on "visit days", and would really like to attend the one in Aberdeen in March.  At first estimate, this is going to cost about £500 for the train fare and one night in a hotel for the two of us! Since this might very well be the place she decides to spend the next three or more years, I do think she deserves the chance to have a look around, however briefly!

So I reckon I need to aim for about £1000 in that account, one way or another.  It might not entirely cover the cost of a long trip, but it would provide a buffer in that month.  This is in addition to the already planned savings, and will have to be siphoned off from other things as and when that is possible.  Once I find out what her firm and insurance acceptances are going to be, I might be able to modify it, but whilst Aberdeen remains a possibility, I think I had better aim high!

And the winner is..............

Each person's name was put into a margerine tub [we're a bit frugal here, remember?] and if they had commented more than once, they got the appropriate number of slips of paper with their name on it.....and the YFG swooshed them all around a little and then she pulled out:

Simplesuffolksmallholder

who blogs over at Frugal In Suffolk.  The prize doesn't have far to travel this time!  

Please get in touch through the comments and leave me a note of your address, which I won't publish, and then the wee parcel can be winging its way to you early this week.

Hope everyone is having a good Sunday: I have had a short nap this afternoon and now I have just lit the fire and got the dinner started.  Looking forward to Sherlock later xx

Giveaway with a difference

Today I am hosting a giveaway.  

But you can't do anything now to enter - it is a slightly different kind of giveaway.  

If you have commented on this blog so far this year, 2014, your name will be put in the pot tonight, and the winner will be announced later on today.  No new commenters today will be included.....sorry.

(image from countryliving.com)

If you have commented once, you will have one entry, but multiple comments will attract multiple entries.  When I announce the winner later, I shall however leave the prize as something for the winner to blog about and then I can link to their post.  

Fantastic bread

Thursday night, I read this blog post from Lucy at Attic24 and knew that I had to have a go at this bread. I could almost smell the delicious aroma through the internet - we really need smelly-vision these days!

Yesterday morning, I copied down the recipe and had a batch of the dough in the airing cupboard by 8am.  It looked OK, nothing special, but it certainly wasn't a lot of work.

When we came home from gym last night, and had had our tea, I brought the mixture down and it did look a little gloopy, as Lucy warned that it would.  But I duly heated up my oven and my casserole dish, turned the gloop out onto a floured piece of greaseproof paper, and shaped it.  That, I think, is one of the key aspects of the ease of this dough - I shaped it - I didn't knock all the air out of it and knead it and then have to leave it to prove again.  I could see large bubbles of air in the dough, and there they stayed. By just very gently shaping the dough, all that air is captured and preserved.

I cooked it.  Wow.  It smelled lovely whilst we watched Silent Witness, and then it was tasting time!

It sliced up well and shows off those large air bubbles.  The slow rise seems to give it a special something.

Half the loaf disappeared in very short order as plates, knife and spread were brought in to facilitate munching for supper.  I suspect bread and jam were eagerly anticipated for breakfast this morning, and I have been told that I can certainly make that again!

And for a bread with just four ingredients, and hardly any hands-on time at all, I think I could manage to make this part of our repertoire.  You just have to think ahead with regards to the time needed in the airing cupboard!  

Challenge shop 2

Still using the Co-op for the grocery shopping this week, to spend the £5 voucher I got for the previous lot of shopping, so I had to organise myself to do the shop yesterday, because that is the day I go to the town where the Co-op is, when I collect the YFG from school to go to gym......so it meant I couldn't buy anything chilled or frozen because it would be 5 hours before the shopping arrived home.

No photos today, since I was in  a hurry to get the tea when we got in from gym, so you can have a wee list instead:

3 loaves wholemeal bread, reduced to 73p each = £2.19

1.5kg Strong plain bread flour = £1.19

Co-op Savers 500g grated cheese = £2.65

Punnet plums = £1.50

Large head of broccoli = £1.20

Bag Chantenay carrots = 0.90

Bag braeburn Apples = £2.00

Savoy cabbage = £1.00

One Courgette = 0.75

Small punnet clementines = £2.50

Two small bags potatoes = £2.50

The grocery challenge part of the shop therefore comes to £18.38 but I wanted to make sure that I received another voucher for next week and was able to spend the one from the last shop, so I added two £1 shower gels to the basket, and made it over the £20 - £20.38.  This activated the voucher and I received £5 off this total, meaning I actually paid £15.38 for this week ahead's shopping.

I shall have to buy some lunch meat for the girls' sandwiches, but I can do that and still come in under the £25 budget for the week.

The items bought represent what I need to make the dinners on the meal plan until next Friday, as well as items for baking and some fruit for lunchboxes and snacking.  When we have eaten all the fresh veg, we will move over to the frozen stuff I have stashed in the freezer, and there is also tinned and frozen fruit, so just because I have not bought masses of fruit and veg does not mean that we won't be eating plenty!

Watching the numbers

My box of washing powder is empty.  I blogged about it here and explained how I hoped to get 100 washes out of the box, which said it was a 50-wash box.  

 

My tally chart tells me that I managed to get 78 washes.  Not quite the 100 I was aiming for, but more than half again what the box promised.  Quite a good result, surely.  An extra 28 washes.

And my duration estimate was a little more accurate - it lasted just a few days shy of the two months I had hoped to manage.

And so the next box has been started on today, with the date on the side and a tally chart marked on the front.  Can I stretch this one any further whilst still getting our clothes clean?  We shall see.

(image from auntbessies.co.uk)

And more counting.  The girls have enjoyed their Co-op hash browns each morning this week since they started school on Tuesday. [Couldn't find a picture of Co-op version so Aunt Bessie came to the rescue - the actual hash browns look very similar to hers but I should think hers are a bit pricier]  There were 18 in the pack, and each FG had three each morning for three mornings (2x3x3=18) and the pack cost me £1, so the 6 breakfasts cost around 15.6p each.  They had them served with a squirt of ketchup, and said that they were quite filling.

Comparing meal costs is useful when trying to reduce spending.  Comparing one brand of cold cereal against another is not terribly useful when you realise that actually, cold cereal is overall an expensive breakfast.  A poached egg on toast could cost a lot less than a bowl of overpriced premium brand cereal, porridge is exceptionally good value, and these hash browns are not bad at this rate.

Watching the numbers is a bit of a habit now!

[Edit to apologise for two pictures from Aunty B - Blogger is playing up a little and I can't get rid of one of them!]

Welcome, friends

(image from temptationgifts.com)

A quick post this evening to say that I have noticed a few more people dropping by lately, and some of you are even making the odd comment - it is lovely to have you here, and a very warm welcome to you all.  You will find us a gentle group of souls, I hope, and we look forward to hearing from you more in the days ahead.  I hope that 2014 will be a good year for us all.

The January meal plan went up this morning and my next plan is to review the blogroll on the right hand side - I keep finding all these great blogs that I want to share with you all.

But that is a job for tomorrow - I have to go and make cheese scones for the YFG's lunch box now!

Have a great night/day, wherever you are xx