Playing catch up

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 22 February 2011 in charity shopping, chickens, growing | 3 comments

Apologies for being a little quieter than normal recently – after my busy work weekend, I had lots of exciting plans for yesterday but all of them went by the wayside in favour of sitting. Ahh, sitting.

Anyway, so today has been catch-up day, as well as supposedly being a normal work day and having to go to Leeds ont’ bus to do some stuff regarding our old house (which we’re *still* trying to sell) – busy day! I started clearing out the chicken coop and had lots of fun with Lime, my favourite of our girls. While she was moulting, she was a little more distant than usual but today she was with me the whole time, including climbing out of the nest box’s open flap to sit on my knee while I cleaned in there (and then came for a wander around the garden under my arm when I went to reprimand our barking dog). I think/hope we’re going to be reasonably logical/hard-hearted with the hens in general — they’re food producers not pets — but I think Lime is firmly in pet territory now. The others still might end up as soup or in a curry but she’s going to be around for the long term.

After that, I potted on the honeyberry plantlets that arrived over the weekend. You know last week when I said we were done for fruit for 2011? Well, I was wrong – I’d forgotten about the honeyberries which I’d bought as part of a big order in November — I only remembered when Fiona mentioned getting one herself on Twitter last week. Anyway, now I have three little ones in pots. I’m not sure where they’ll end up – they grow to about 4ft tall but I’ve filled my 4ft+-tall spots with the fruit bushes from a couple of weeks ago. I doubt they’ll grow that big or even big enough to fruit this year though so I’ll have a little while to figure it out. They’re definitely the last of the fruit for the year though. Except for the cherry tree which is due in a few weeks. And anything else that pops up.

Speaking of popping up, my heated propagator stuff is starting to poke through! My cucumbers said “7-21 days” for germination but have started to appear at 5 or 6 – lovely strong shoots. A couple of tomatoes have made it through too. Away from the heated propagator, today seems to have been the day for my cauliflowers to germinate as well. I am perhaps more excited by all these green shoots than I should be ;)

That (and some work) was all this morning and this afternoon I’ve been in Leeds – at our old house, at the bank and picking up misc things from Wilkinsons (including the last of my soap making supplies – woo!) – and I had a little time for a spot of charity shopping too. I actually looked at clothes in one place – I decided I couldn’t hide from temptation forever and I’ve had a number of good things from there in the past – but didn’t buy anything. I did see a top that I might of bought in a more spend-hearty type – it was nothing special, just a basic t-shirt thing, of the type I wear a lot and already have a lot – but now it wasn’t worth wasting a clothing credit on it — it wasn’t that special and I don’t need it. I think I’m experiencing a mental shift when it comes to buying clothes – hurrah!

I did buy one thing from a charity shop though – a cute little lunch box thing for £1:

Apparently “miko cat” is Boots’ Hello Kitty homage/rip-off but whatever, it’s a black cat (the very best type of cat) and it’s cute. When I brought it home, John clasped it to his chest and asked if he could have it for his pencils. I reminded him that he lost my last lunchbox so no, but we could use it for our pencils.

Now I must go as a I have a wonderfully delicious chocolate-coffee mousse to eat. If you just raised your eyebrows at the thought of a “wonderfully delicious chocolate-coffee mousse”, stay tuned – I’m hoping to post the recipe tomorrow :)

A rubbish swap

Posted by louisa on Sunday 14 November 2010 in charity shopping, frugal | 0 comments

We went to Southport yesterday to see my mum & dad.

We returned with:

• 8 empty egg boxes
• a 2ltr ice cream tub of baked & crushed egg shells
• 4 20 year old gallon demi johns
• several small glass jars for preserving
• 5 or 6 children’s DVDs (newspaper freebies)

We should have also brought back some logs & some kindling but it was too dark/wet to get them from the garden, so we’re leaving them there to season instead. They’ve also been collecting screw top wine bottles for our home brewing escapades but we forgot to collect them.

We took them surplus rather than “rubbish”. I forgot to take any jam for my part of the swap but took them fresh eggs from our hens and some of my leftover/spare veg seeds for my dad — I gave him some carrot, cucumber, cabbage, leek, salad onion, cat nip and cat grass.

As well as the swapping, we also got to have a run around on the sand dunes behind my old school and went charity shopping/second-hand book shopping. We got six books: two fiction ones, one social theory book on how mothers are scapegoated in contemporary society, Graham Chapman’s biography, one of Steven Pinker’s books & a book on the history of Bradford (irony!) – so later today I’ll have to find 3 of ours to get rid of now, as per my recent book limiting policy.

A distinct lack of seaside rock & candy floss but otherwise a good “rubbish” swap – lots of items set for landfill/recycling, will be put to good use!

Week off fun: apple pressing, egg pickling, bread baking & bean bag making

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 26 October 2010 in charity shopping, cooking, making, preserving | 0 comments

Hurrah! My week off has started well.

Last week was a busy one – working as usual during the day, then in the evenings, Tuesday through to Sunday, I was at Bingley Little Theatre for one reason or another (mostly rehearsals/show nights for the weekend’s studio productions). That ate into my fun making-and-doing time somewhat so I’m glad I’ve got the week off this week to catch up on fun stuff.

When I got back from the theatre at 10:30pm on Friday night, John had just started pressing some apples for cider. We had to give back the borrowed fruit press at lunchtime on Saturday so I was enlisted to help. We pressed until just after midnight then again for a couple of frantic hours on Saturday morning – got through about 40lbs of apples – about half-and-half from John’s Grandma’s apple tree and windfall from John B (who also provided the loan of the press). We’ve got 2 gallons of cider on the go now and there were a few litres left over which John’s drinking as juice.

Sunday was chore day – I cleaned out the chicken coop as normal and let the girls out into the wider (not fenced in) garden for the first time too. Lime and Blue were the only ones interested in exploring and they de-weeded/scratch-scratch peeked the bed nearest to their coop. I’ll definitely use them again for that before planting out time next year!

So to yesterday – my first full day off. It started slowly, stretched out in the sun with the animals and catching up on the weekend papers, but then I pickled some more eggs (this time it was garlic & pepper, recipe to follow) and tried a new bread recipe for the first time, a new dough recipe to make layered rolls. When I’m learning how to bake something new, I like to “grind” it – a video game term for doing a repetitive task over and over again to “level up” – so I’m going to make those at least every other day this week. Mmm, bread rolls.

Later on, after a walk with the Lily dog, I made a giant bean bag for said hound – using a very retro-cool single duvet cover I found in a charity shop in Guiseley on Saturday. It was easy to make but I’ll write a full how-to soon, mostly because I have several comedy photos of the cats and dog “helping”.

Today has had another slow start but I think it’ll continue with some soup making, maybe some biscuit baking, some jamming (since we did our once-every-six-weeks shop last night and had to pull some blackberries out of the freezer to make way for half price ice cream), and since my sewing machine is out, some more stitchery. Woo!

Bargain books and photo frames

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 31 August 2010 in charity shopping, frugal | 0 comments

Hope everyone had a lovely long weekend – we continued our fun/unfun activities from earlier in the week: blackberrying in the gentle rain (and then having to give up half my harvest to horses, to get them to let us out of their field) & relaxing on Saturday, 10 hours of decorating at the old house on Sunday, then our normal Sunday chores/lazing on Monday.

I made a few bargainacious purchases. First up, two books from a charity shop in Shipley:

Since my September will include both a first time fishing experience and a stretching of my limited woodworking skills (I want to make more planters and maybe a bench), these finds were both well timed. There were a number of similar fishing encyclopaedias available but this one, for £2, looked about the best. I suspect I can find a lot of this information online but I like browsing through books as an introduction to the subject.

At £5, the woodworking book was a little more expensive than I’d usually spend on a book at a charity shop but aside from the glue smear on the front, it looks brand new and has an RRP of £30 (Amazon has it for just under £18). Again, I could have found a lot of the information online for free but I’d much rather take a book outside for reference while working on something than my laptop.

Finally, while buying sugar soap & scrapers from Wilkinsons on Sunday, I spotted some basic clip frames on their super-sale shelves.

I really like the idea of having a lot of photos up on a wall but nice wooden frames are so expensive when you’re thinking about buying 20 or 30 at a time. Clipframes are obviously a lot not quite as pretty but far cheaper – these were frightening cheap to start with (at 60p for three) but in the clearance bay, disturbingly cheap at 10p for a pack of three. I bought all ten packs on clearance – 30 clip frames for £1. Now to fill them with some free prints…

Charity shop finds: two fruitbowls and a vintage cookbook

Posted by louisa on Monday 26 July 2010 in charity shopping | 0 comments

Another Saturday afternoon charity shopping in Shipley – and another few select purchases.

It was, stangely, an afternoon for buying wooden fruit bowls. The first one – the bottom one – was £2.50 from Scope, the second (and to be honest, nicer) one was £2.40 from BHF. As soon as I got back to John, he said “but we have a fruit bowl. And we don’t eat fruit” – which is largely true but I’d imagined using them as general storage bowls not fruit bowls, per se.

I also got a vintage cookbook from the crazy randomness that is the JOY shop. The book is apparently a spin-off from a Yorkshire TV cooking show in the 1970s and when I flicked through it in the shop, the first two recipes I saw were for candied ginger marrow and marrow & tomato chutney. Since I’m looking for different marrow recipes at the moment, I thought “ace! many marrow recipes!” and happily handed over my 50p. Turns out those are the only two marrow recipes in it. Ah well. There are some other interesting preserve recipes in it – and a section on homebrewing/fruit wine making too.

Charity shop bargains from Shipley

Posted by louisa on Monday 12 July 2010 in charity shopping | 0 comments

I did a little impromptu charity shop-shopping in Shipley on Saturday.

For the size of the town centre, Shipley has a good number of charity shops but I didn’t make a mammoth haul because like in most poor-er areas, the general stock tends to be lower quality – discount shop/supermarket clothes, and trashy books I’ve either read, got or wouldn’t touch with a second-hand bargepole. That’s not to say that bargains and/or super-cheap expensive goods aren’t ever spotted, it’s just less likely. In my experience in Shipley, the BHF has slightly better quality items than the others, while the Age Concern Community Action shop & JOY have the most random stuff. (JOY, the only shop away from the main market square, on the other side of the market itself, is stuffed full of stuff and definitely one for rummagers.)

Anyway, on Saturday I bought:

• a 100% cotton stripey cardigan. It’s a man’s one but fits me. It cost £3.45 (it should have been £3.50 but the woman was really low on change – I could offer a £10 note or £3.45 in change, using every last penny in my purse – she accepted the latter.)
• a basket for £3. I’ve wanted a few baskets for a while – for foraging, for craft stuff, for kindling. This one, which only arrived in the shop while I was in there, is more of a traditional shopper type — I used it for my shopping while I was in Shipley and it was great — and will be perfect for kindling as it is, or I can line it with pretty fabric if I want to use it for yarn. Or I could keep it as a shopping basket. Decisions, decisions.
• A giant measuring jug for 50p (not pictured), which was a great spot as I was on my way to buy a normal sized one for using as a chicken food scoop. (Up until now, we’ve just been using an old plastic tub but I thought we’d get a measuring jug to keep a better eye on how much food we’re putting in every day.) This bigger one means less trips between the feeder and the foodstore – great for lazy people like us.

Not a huge haul but the basket was a bargain – cheaper than the ones I’d seen on eBay and without having to pay for p&p, the cardigan will be useful for layering in the autumn and the jug is already in use.