Charity shop bargains

Here's some of this week bargains

Some lovely silver earings £1.75, some books for Stella £1.50 and some wooden and unusal knitting needles £1 the lot.

I also manged to bag a brand new yoga bag with mat, block and strap for the grand some of £3 and much to my amazment, when I tipped it all out, I found a yoga DVD hiding at the bottom of the bag.

It's a good thing.

It's a good thing that I don't mind being froogle as some things are sent to try us and I thinks one of them is a mobile phone that dosen't want to work. It's been having a bit of a tanturn for a couple of weeks and I hapened to mention it to Pete in the passing. 5 mins later I was informed that a freind of ours has a nearly new mobile up for grabs and do I want it. Oh yes please and oh joy oh joy. Actullay she had two and offered me the pick of both.
I've had to move my number, from one servise provider to another but in the process I've gained 300 free texts and £1 credit bargin.

Productive Weekend

This weekend we have been very productive. I've been busy trying to learn how to knit. It's something I've been meaning to do for years but never quite get round to it. So what has spured me on all of a sudden I hear you ask well It's the lovely Clare at "Border Stories " fault. A few weeks ago she posted a lovely photo of her little boy wearing the most fab stripy jumper and I thought I can do that, so out the needles have come again and this time I'm determined to do it.

Kyle and I also cleaned out one of the the food cuboard. I must admit it one of those jobs that I've been avoiding for the last few months. I gave the orders and Kyle did all the sorting out. We've filled the recycle bin with old glass jars and found a couple of horrors lurking at the back of the cuboard but it's all clean and done know.

Pete has been busy fixing up our green house for planting out the seedlings. We aquired, the greenhouse, from a friend who waited months for one to be posted on freecycle only to find out that he's moving and the new house's garden is to small for it. Pete's never put one together so last weekend he was given a crash course in green house building and this weekend, while shoping for seeds, he managed to blag a load of free wood for the base. All thats left now is to wash the glass and pop it in and hey presto a lovely green house and all it's cost is a tube of silcone.

That's tea sorted.......

I got a rather nice surprise today five boxes of Cauldron sausages were delivered to my door step. I forgot that I was due some more to taste test and that they were coming today so that's tea sorted.

Taste testing or doing consumer surveys is a great way to get free bee's out of company's. I've had several lot's of soap powder, washing-up liquid and fabric conditioner. I only do the eco products so there isn't as many opportunities as for non eco ones but I still do ok. This is the first time I've done food and I'm hoping to do more over the next few months.

My veg box also can today and I was rather disappointed to find that the company that supplies their organic free range eggs has stopped doing them. It seems the cost of the organic corn has shot up in price so the company has decided to pull the organic line. It's such a same there eggs were one of the reasons I went with this box scheme.

Pasties

I made a quice tonight for tea and had rather a lot of pastry left over so rather then throwing out the pastry I decided to try and make some mini cheese pasties for the lunch boxes tomorrow. They turned out rather well If i do say so my self and makes a nice change from sandwiches.

I'm also on a mission to use up all the veg box before the new one arrives on Thursday. I love my veg box. I get realy excited before it arrives as I can't wait to see what I've been brought.

Frugal Visit and a lovely dog walk.

One of my favorite thing to do is to find froogle visits for me to take the children on and one of our favorites is the Baltic Centre for Contempary Arts. Evey Saturady and Sunday, betwween two and four, they have a open crafts for children. We've gone a couple of times and realy enjoyed it and been quite creativein what we've done. So yesterday I thought I would take Stella along to the craft and pop in to see the Yoko Ono exhibit. The craft went well. Stella did a lovely drawing of the Baltic which is know exhibited in the childrens centre at the Baltic. Then we decided to go and see the Yoko Ono exhibit. It wasn't up to much. In fact if you have kids don't bother. The one bit that looked fun, a glass maze, was only open to over sixteens plus quite a bit of the exhibit was only open to over eighteens, so all and all a bit of a dissapointment.

On the plus side I did come home to find Pete and our friend John had erected our free, thanks to John, green house. Can't wait to get the glass in so I can get on planting.

To day has been much better. We took the dog for a walk around a small dean that has just been cleared outside the village. I took Stella's carmera but had it on the wrong setting so the pic's are rather blured.

Are BOGOF's frugal?

I went to the vets yesterday to pick up some flea treatment for the cat and dog. When I got home I discovered that the flea treatment must be on a BOGOF. Woooohooo, I thought, free flea treatment. Just what a froogle lover like me wants or is it. Problem with this is that when my six month old border collie takes her next growth spurt she'll be under-covered and I'll be left with flea treatment that I don't need.

So this got me thinking about BOGOF offers and are they frugal or are they just a big con. I know some are fab, like buy one toilet roll get one free or buy one chocolate bar get on free. But there are some rather silly ones, take food for instance. If you live on your own do you relay want the BOGOF cucumber? Would it not be better for them to offer the cucumber at half price, saves money and proberly waste. What I've also noticed is that it makes me want to buy things I don't relay like or need. Take Eco products they never seem to be on offer but the big branded goods do. So the froogle side of me wants to buy them but the greenie in me screams nnnnnnoooooooo. At the end of the day the greenie always wins but it does get you thinking that maybe this is just another way to get you sucked into buying all the things that you relay don't need.

Where to start?????

I've been meaning to start a blog for the last six months but life just seems to get in the way of my creative ramblings. My main purpose in staring this blog is to talk about how I live my life and the adoption of a Froogle life style. Maybe that will change once I get started as you never quite know where that yellow brick will end.