A couple more knits, Christmas, & cheap eating for the very healthy

The slippers that I made for myself the same as Will's are finished, and very warm they are too! I also finished a nice thick pair of socks with a roll top  - these are very comfy and I will definitely be making more pairs.
We also got news this week that our power bill has gone down from a whopping £132 a month to £44. We have been paying the higher price for over a year because that is what Ecotricity estimated for a house our size, so we knew we would  be racking up a credit, but with all of the washes now (one a day because of Ivy's nappies), and having the heating on more for Ivy, I was surprised to find our power consumption was still so (relatively) low. A big help as with the extra washing our water bill has gone up, though only by a few pounds. We try to save water by using the morning's bath water for the nappy bucket, and a couple of toilet flushes, but will have to look into what else we can do.


W have been decorating the house ready for Christmas. Will likes to do it nice and early - we've had Christmas music on since Halloween. We have quite a lot of decorations, almost all of which are either homemade or hand-me-downed, and it's always very cosy and familiar seeing some of these old friends come out after a year. There are a lot of decorations on our tree from my childhood. Ivy has loved it and had a fairly major laughing fit at one of the shiny foil decorations.

I'm not sure what, if anything we're doing about presents this year. We don't like to buy new things and every year have paired it down more and more. There are a couple of little bits we are going to post to people and I have a couple of projects in mind for Ivy. Will and I rarely get gifts for each other as we get each other little things throughout the year. I have saved some rose petals from a bunch of flowers we were given a couple of weeks ago, so I think I will use them in packaging.

Lastly, I am going to make a really good effort to be cooking healthier and lighter meals for us. Will and I eat very well on the whole, even when we consider ourselves to be eating poorly, we are pretty healthy really, but that just means that when we eat badly we feel terrible. I still have a few lbs of weight I gained during pregnancy that I'd like to lose, and our food bill is coming to 3 times what it needs to. Today for lunch we had vegetable & chickpea dumplings with tofu & wakame miso. I estimate that the whole meal came to about £4.00 including condiments, and there was tonnes, enough for dinner as well. It was also all organic & veg from a local farm, so no compromise on quality. Can you beat that?