Is this writing really big?
I am going to really really try to update this blog now! I have found how to do it on my phone (I think) which realistically is the only way I am ever going to manage it as my laptop died some time ago.
We are a family of four now, woohoo!! We welcomed another little girl, Hazel, in July. All goes well now settling into our new life and finding new routines. Will has also started a new job which is local and not based at home, yay! But it is also a couple less hours a week which amounts to about £200 less a month, so some economising is called for. Hopefully that is where this blog comes in.
At the moment I'm just trying to spend as little as possible and find areas, particularly food shopping that we can just cut out. We have bought a breadmaker (£10 from bhf) and are baking all of our bread now. All of our jams and pickles are made for the year, from our own garden and the local hedgerows, so the plan is to stop buying any spreads, condiments, pickles etc. We also bought a blender from bhf as ours died last year so can make houmous from dried beans and peas for our lunches Thankfully autumn and winter are seasons for one pot meals so there are a lot of soups, stews and caseroles on the horizon. Lately the garden has been our biggest expense as we are still getting set up for growing our own, though this year we managed to live off our own veg exclusively for two months over the summer. We have dug two more very large beds and will be buying a polytunnel in spring, so a large and expensive order of manure will be necessary before the end of the year
Day to day we all live fairly cheaply. To be honest during the week me and the girls rarely leave the village, and at the weekend we prefer pottering about to spending money going places. We will just have to see how things go this month and will know by the end whether we need to come up with a more detailed plan of where to cut back.
For the mean time, hello, happy to be back!
These sunflowers were in our garden, casualties of the recent storms.
Great to see you Jess. Congratulations on the arrival of Hazel.
ReplyDeleteAutumn and winter are the best for spending less money on food in my view, I am happy to eat soup for lunch most days and I love a good stew.
Thank you. We are settling in really well, so fast she seems much milder than her wild sister!
DeleteYes, I think it should be easier forming new thrifty habits this time of year when you're winding down for hibernation already.