Shopping for 54p ... and Donating via Nectar

I thought I went out in a 'stock up the cupboards' mood, but it seems as though I find it hard to buy more than I actually need at the moment.  I did manage to get two each of almond milk, tinned potatoes and the various purees that I use, some vegetable stock pots and a bag of penne pasta, all of which have long dates on them.

I also needed a couple of birthday cards for my Mum.

At the checkout I remembered my Nectar points and decided to pay for the shopping with some of them, making this a 54p spend.

I picked up a selection of the free magazines on the way out, I don't usually bother  but there were stacks and stacks of them.

On the way home I called to Booths to pick up this weeks cardholder free gift, a tiny little chocolate bar.  It usually retails at £1.30 which at first I thought was ridiculous ... but it is gorgeous chocolate and I actually think I would buy this again as a very special treat.

When I got home my phone pinged and I had an email from Nectar saying that you can now donate your Nectar points to Ukraine via the Comic Relief charity, so I checked how many I had left and sent as many of them as I could ... you can only use them in multiples of £2.50 ... off straight away.

I am still thinking about the future of this Challenge but as you can see from my purchases I do think it's over and my blog will revert to day to day life, with budgeting, food and growing here at Lavender Lodge.  Thank you so much for all the comments yesterday, reading each and every one got me thinking so they were really helpful.  Thank you.

Sue xx

Shopping - My First Visit to the Shop in March

 

Six days into the month, and with a virtually empty fridge when Alan asked if I wanted to go to Aldi with him I was definitely going to say a very clear yes wasn't I. 😀

I had a list of seven items that I needed and had checked them out on both the Sainsbugs and Aldi websites to compare prices.  In Sainsbugs my shopping would have cost me £5.55 and in Aldi it came to £4.67.  It was a no-brainer and Aldi it was, and knowing that I had over £5 more to play with made me think what would I like as well as what did I need.

On my list had been:

Celery

Iceberg Lettuce

Tomatoes

Cherry Tomatoes

Peppers

Onions

 Flour

I added:

Grapes

Small Apples

Easy Peelers

Cucumber

and

one more bag of Flour.

I half expected it to be just over my permitted £10 a week food budget but I was prepared for that with the £19.09 of left over money from the first two months of this year in my bag.

As you can see it came to £9.78, giving me 22p change.

What a good result.

As soon as we got back I did my usual thing of washing, drying and putting into bags and bowls all the new foods.  It was a good job I did as some of the onions were a bit iffy!!

It's so lovely to see all the colourful fresh new foods for this week.  

There will definitely be no scrimping for meals with all this and the freezer foods that I showed you last week.  I need to try to remember to take some photos of my meals this week as I use up the new supplies alongside the old ones.

At the moment I am debating whether to spend my leftover £19+ on some long-life food items to perhaps help me combat rising food prices later in the year due to current world events, but I have been unable to commit to doing it yet. I think that this was on my mind when I bought the two bags of flour instead of just the one that I knew I would be needing soon.

 What would you do?  Save the money or spend it on pasta, rice and tinned foods?  

Sue xx

Shopping ... just for food honest ;-)

 

We called to Mum's yesterday and on the way home we briefly stopped at her local Marks and Spencer food shop.  It may not be the closest branch to us but it's the easiest one for us to get to, just a quick detour, a ten minute stop and then we can hit the motorway for home.

My £5 voucher was burning a hole in my bag and while I was close to a branch I knew I might as well stock up on the Garlic Kievs while I could ... I might have gone mad and bought some little cheesecakes too!!

At first this is what I wrote on the receipt when I got home.  The crossed off item is Alan's milk, obviously not a part of my Challenge.

But then I remembered that this particular voucher was counted as part of my yearly budget when I did the initial calculations, so I altered it to show £12 spent.  I was also able to use a voucher to get £3 worth of points on any food spend towards the next quarters award, plus of course I have just paid for the holiday on my M&S card so I should be in line for bonus vouchers that will be over and above my Challenge budget next time.  (My credit card bill is always paid off in full at the end of every month, so no interest is ever paid ... M&S Bank must hate me. 😂)

So this months total spend is £56.59, which although over the allowed £50 per month is in fact okay as I can take the £6.59 overage out of the money that I had over from last months really low spend of £24.32 ... phew!!

So I still have overage of £19.09 as an emergency back-up, and I can now put my £50 for March into my bag.  😀 

I'll take some photos of the fridge, freezer and cupboards today ready for the new Months Food Stash photos that I will post about tomorrow.  It will be interesting to see if there is much difference ... I think there might be.

Sue xx