I love another car boot...

Been to our monthly car boot up at the Parkandride just outside Edinburgh - its never very big but I always manage to get some great stuff. Set myself a limit of £10 and spent £9.50...

Travel journal - £1.50 (to record my holidays - had £9.99 on the back!)
Bunch of plastic poinsettias - 10p
Banana scrabble - £1 (new - £16.99 in the Lakeland catalogue!)
Clothes for dgs 1 - spent £3 (including tons of tops for 20p each and 2 coats for 50p)
Tiny timberland boots for dgs 2 - 50p!
Sleeping bag for dgs 2 - £1
Red bodice for dd - 20p (shes out trick or treating with it on!)
Fashionable Checky shirt for dd - 20p
Xmas present (new - cant say as might be reading my blog!) - £1
Xmas present - second hand but looks like new - £1

Very pleased.....

2p stickers in Asda....

Popped into Asda for cat food (after spending a horrendous amount in Tesco realised Mr Fussy will only eat Tiger cat food!) and couldn't resist a quick peek at the reduced counter.....my heart nearly stopped......everything was 2p!

So got £24.68 worth of food for 36p - put most of it in the freezer (packets of cooked roast beef/chicken/turkey, quiche, couple of ready meals, curry puffs) 3 packs of butter in the fridge (earmarked for baking) will take the sandwiches to work tomorrow and have left enough snacks in the fridge for tomorrow, the savoury eggs didn't even make it to the fridge!

Woo hoo!

Need to knuckle down again......

Just came back from a fab caravan holiday at a Haven site (yes it was cheesey but had a great time anyway) - spent what I had budgeted for and more (long story but caravans we booked had no heating and had to upgrade)so that took a small chunk.
Got back to no food in the house so off we went to our new Tesco extra which only opened a couple of weeks ago. I had a £8 voucher off a £40 shop......
Note to self - never take dd shopping - she had cost me a fortune before we even got to the food department!
I don't know if it was being on holiday and eating all those nice things but my cupboards are full of "goodies" and heaven knows what meals I will be making! This is just what I am trying to avoid - making shopping a day out (even spent £10 in the cafe)It takes a while to settle down after a holiday...
So tomorrow is menu planning day - will see how long I can manage to stretch the food for! Once the goodies run out I intend to have a baking session and the my next foray into food shopping will be an on-line Asda order (found Tesco to be dearer)as real life shopping is just too expensive.
We have discovered a nice but dear butcher - this time got cumberland sausage, steak mince, lemon chicken olives and cooked roast beef cut thick for a dinner to try - cost £20 which seems a lot but if it tastes nice I am willing to pay a bit extra. However, I did notice there were none of the cheaper cuts of meat on display hmmmm....

Car boot

Have had a savings chat with oh and youngest dd - explained we were eating out far too much etc and I would be keeping more of a handle on our outgoings.....

Sunday - this time we boxed clever by having breakies before going to the car boot (or I thought we did!) Off we went - bought a tombola ticket for £1 and won a chocolate advent calender (still in date!) - into the xmas box. Then found a brand new large metal flask (still boxed) for £1. Bought some muffins for later on (£1.60) and that was all. Then went to another car boot at our local market and bought nothing at all there. Then came the hard bit, normally we always get a fish supper as they are really nice. Now because I had breakies I didn't want anything - but youngest dd and eldest dd how joined us were both hungry (hadn't had breakies) so I ended up buying them a fish supper to share (and 2 bottles of juice) Then oh decided he was hungry and I put the foot down - no way was I going to buy him something when he'd had a huge cooked breakies so made him pay for his own burger and coffee with his allowance (which instead of leaving in the bank as I usually do I got both our allowances out in cash) You could see he was torn - usually its always me that spends but it makes a change him actually having to use his own money - so dear reader, he bought them!

So re-capping - could have done without the muffins and made my own, could have saved more money by bring out juice - working on it a step at a time......

Saved by car sharing - £35.40
Housekeeping - £69
Extra Holiday money - £135.76
Food out - £9.60
My allowance left - £46
Household - £1

New car!

Feeling a lot better - tooth still giving me problems but going to the dentist on Monday for extractions so that will sort it!
2nd driving lesson went well (didn't cry - always good!) so booked another 10....
And.....bought myself a wee car! its a Fiat Sciento - bit of a carrot to pass the test but everyone persuaded me to get it to practice in - been looking at my own insurance for it and its do-able with a bit of financial juggling.
Talking about financial juggling.....going to have a re-think about how I keep track on spending.......have got a diary to carry round and am going to write down how much I have in each of my Freedom accounts for the following - Clothes, Entertainment, Repairs and Household. So before I whip out the old bank card to buy something I will check if I have enough in that particular account.Its funny how you get complacent about finances so I need to get back on track as I now will have extra insurance, road tax and petrol to think about (paid for the car in cash which was a good feeling!)

Saved by car sharing - £35.40
Housekeeping - £12
Extra Holiday money - £135.76
My allowance left - £47

Missing in action

No blogs I;m afraid - laid low in my bed with some awful lurgy and now coughing like mad - add toothache to the mix and I have not been happy - Driving lesson 2 tomorrow - bring it on.....