Sofa ... Before and After

This was the living room before I emptied the sofa and tidied up a bit for the Facebook Marketplace photos ...

... and this is it after the new rug went down and the chairs were delivered on Friday morning.

I absolutely LOVE the simplicity of the room now and the added space I have suddenly got.

And the comfort is brilliant ... can you tell how pleased I am  😁

 

Skint, but pleased.

Sue xx

 

My Lovely Lavender Sofa Has To Go

 

My gorgeous sofa has just been listed on Facebook Marketplace and I'm more than a little bit sad. 😢

Alan and Jason tried valiantly to get it up to the top floor of Alan's house, the idea was to turn the en-suite guest room up there into a proper sitting room for our house-sitters and future potential Airbnb use, but the tight turn into the room at the top of the stairs proved to be the undoing of the plan and they had to bring it all the way down again.  

For now the sofa is upended in Alan's kitchen while we put it's legs and cushions back on then and then hopefully someone will want to grab the bargain of the year.  We did offer it to my other son Simon, but I fear the colour was just a little bit too girly for the new home he is setting up for himself.

The new chairs with much better support for my back are being delivered tomorrow morning, I'm really hoping that they will be more comfortable for me.  I also had to go out and buy a new rug as this one just looks dreadful with the new colour scheme ... so it's all change after just seven months.

There's also a lot of sorting out and decluttering going on at the moment as we are doing a Table Top Sale next weekend and we are going to be literally loading Alan's car up to the gunnels with stuff that has been waiting in the spare room sine we moved in, and also things from the Lodge that I have been sorting through after realising that I really just do not need them.

Anything that I have not needed since I moved in is going and it's going to be simplicity all the way.

Sue xx

I Did Do the Maths ... and Carried on Cooking

 

You knew I'd do the maths after yesterdays post didn't you, yes I just had to ... the meal came to approximately £1.20 including using half a bag of the fresh mixed leaves from Aldi as the lovely green garnish.  I rounded upwards each time so I guess it's actually a couple of pennies cheaper.  It would have been even more cost effective to use a portion of ready cooked spaghetti instead of the noodles that I had to hand as I currently have some of the 20p a pack spaghetti in the jar.  This would have brought the cost down to just 85p even being very generous with the spaghetti.

The two trays of food above that went in the oven yesterday, contain most of the fresh veggies from the fridge drawer, I want to see how many meals I can make from them.  The one at the back contains an orange pepper, some red onions and some large very soft salad tomatoes quartered.  The front one is very similar but with red and yellow peppers, red onions and one white onion, cherry tomatoes and one large salad tomato.  The orange pepper should have gone into this tray and the red one in the tray at the back as I was making a red pasta sauce ... but I got confused  😕

They are both seasoned very similarly with onion and garlic flakes, lots of black pepper and some mixed herbs and then tossed in some olive oil.  The smell as they cooked was amazing and drew Alan into the Lodge to see what was cooking.

My first meal using some of the sauce and some of the vegetables plus a little bit of dairy free Greek Style cheese was a simple pasta dish ... and a cheeky midweek glass of wine.

And the leftovers all went into the fridge and I left the whizzed up sauce in the Nutribullet cup to save creating more washing up.

Sue xx

Do the Maths!!

 

My Low Spend Challenge is still going on in many ways, and although I decided not to push myself to post every day or even show every single shopping trip (I've had a bad couple of weeks with my back), I am still keeping the spending much lower than I ever have before.  And it's not just in the food department that I want to limit my spending this year.

The moisturiser in the purple tube ran out two weeks ago and I rummaged through the bathroom baskets knowing I had at least two of the one that I use in Summer with the SPF20 protection factor.  I found that I had four!!  It will be interesting to see how long these last.  

I should have realised that I would have more than two as I do watch out for these being on offer in Sainsbugs which it regularly is.  In fact I've just popped over and checked on the website and it's £5 off at the moment.  So buying four ready for future use saves an impressive £20 ... which is obviously what I did last time!!

I'm trying to keep my meals as simple but as healthy as I can both for my health and because the warmer weather of the last few days meant that I didn't want to be spending ages cooking over a hot stove, so something like this has been my current go to.  

Just simple sautéed onion, peppers and tomatoes with lots of seasoning and 'ready to wok' noodles or ready cooked pasta thrown in for the last three or so minutes.  With a handful of mixed leaves for a green hit of goodness it's a nice light evening meal or a very filling lunch.  And it's a very economical meal too with the noodles being just 79p for a double pack in Aldi (£1 in Sainsbugs) and only a quarter of a pepper, half a dozen cherry tomatoes and half an onion.  I haven't actually done the maths ... maybe I should ... but it's going to be around a pound for the whole meal.

See now my brain is screaming 'DO THE MATHS' ... I bet I have done before the day is out!!

Sue xx

Tinned Tomatoes at WHAT price!!

 

I was rummaging about in the cupboard the other morning looking for some tinned tomatoes to have on toast for my breakfast.  I had an almost heart stopping moment when I thought I was about to use the last tin, then I moved a tin of Black Beans slightly to the left and discovered a whole other double height row of lovely tomatoey tins ... phew!!

Breakfast was had and enjoyed and the leftover two thirds of the tin was decanted and put into the fridge ready to be used for another meal.  I can easily get three meals out of one tin of tomatoes, which got my challenge brain thinking ... how many other food items do I get at least three uses out of?

That would be interesting to note down instead of just thinking about, doing and forgetting.

I don't know why this idea even came to me, but when I was out shopping later in the day I suddenly thought ... What is the price difference between the cheapest tin of tomatoes and the most expensive?

You know me I had to look!!

The ones on the left, picked up from Booths were £1.30 and the ones on the right picked up from Sainsbugs were still available at just 28p.

Wow ... that is some difference for the same sized can of tomatoes.  

I haven't opened either of them yet, but it will be really interesting to see if the taste difference is between the two in any way justifies the cost.  But I would be able to get four tins of the Sainsbugs ones for less than the cost of the others.

The big question is ... Do people actually buy these on a regular basis just as day to day tomatoes for use in pasta sauces etc?  I guess the taste test will tell me when I get around to it.

The slightly littler question is ... WHY did I buy two more tins of tomatoes when I had just discovered a row of eight in my cupboard?

And the teeny, tiny question tapping away at the back of my mind is ... How many other things are there that are so different in price that are just normal every day items of food stuff ... too many for me to buy and taste test I guess.  But it's made me think, and I will be looking a little bit harder at brands and prices next time I go shopping.

I couldn't resist showing you my little seedlings, not bad for six days since sowing.  It always pays to sow seeds a little later than you think you should.  I got home from Manchester yesterday and the Mizuna were up, then this morning all the other ones appeared.  🌱

Sue xx

My Growing Space Has Gotten Smaller and Smaller ...

A bit of sunshine and all us green-fingered folk are itching to get planting aren't we  🌳  

But there's an icy edge to the breeze at the moment, and although I got Alan to tip the three bags of compost that we bought last year into the new raised bed ready for some planting next month, I quickly covered it with opened out bags that it came in, weighted down with some leftover bits from building the bed last year so that the soil underneath can warm up ready for planting next month.

 I did pinch a bit of the newly opened compost to put into these little pots to start off some seeds though.  It was nice sitting in the sun on the patio dibbing away and sowing the seeds.  Mostly vegetables but a couple of pots of flower seeds too.  And that larger green planter in the background got some flower seeds sprinkled into it too.

Taking that top photo which shows the whole of my growing space for this year made me think back to my previous vegetable growing areas.

This one was when we lived in Oxfordshire on our first farm, this photo shows just the vegetable beds behind the house, we grew all our own  onions and potatoes here, the pigs used to love home grown potatoes.    We also had a 12ftx 25ft polytunnel next to the small pig enclosure and orchard and another assortment of raised beds behind where I was stood to take this photo filled with more onions, salad crops and lavender ... lots of lovely lavender.

This was the first growing year at our rented small holding, utilising the plastic beds that we had brought with us from the first farm.  The wind had kindly ripped down the polytunnel and left them all exposed for us to disassemble.  Here we just had about 5.5 acres, mostly given over to field and chicken enclosure.

And look who's photo I found in the same file as the last one ... a very young and pretty Suky.

And of course most of you will remember our small holding in North Wales before we moved back to England.  Lots of growing room on the hillside along side the little orchard and Summer chicken run. 

 With the green Net Tunnel, designed with a wire mesh bottom layer to keep the pesky hillside rabbits off some of our salad crops and with space for the Blueberries, so we could eat them instead of the birds ...

... and the polytunnel, filled with the tender indoor type crops, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, spinach, and delicate leaves etc.

These two tunnels were also 12ft x 25ft as it was a size that really suited us.

My new growing space is just 6ft x 8ft ... and that is the total floor space, the actual raised bed is much smaller. So I can see that I'm going to have to get very inventive this year.  My main plan is to use the wooden bed for salad crops... spinach, lettuce, radish, spring onions etc and then have some French beans in the small black planter on the opposite side, with some Bags for Life being lined up along side it for a few potato plants.  Oh and a couple of large pots for courgettes.

And of course I can't forget my little tin bath at the front door, which is very handy for snipping herbs from when I'm in the kitchen, so it adds another couple of foot of growing space.  I might put a few garlic cloves in here too, all that wasted space makes me want to fill it a little bit more.

My newly sown seeds were basking in the early morning sunshine when I pulled back the curtains this morning. 

Sue xx

How Do I Shop When I'm NOT on a Challenge?

 

So, how do I shop when I'm not on a Challenge ... well to be honest not that much differently.  

I didn't go out with a list this time, naughty me!!  I knew I wanted to 'stock up' on a few things but I just can't get my head around buying more than I need now.  I have plenty in the food cupboard, lots of tins, packets and jars so apart from there being not a lot of room to slide extra purchases in I just didn't want to over-shop at all.

Even with two bottles of wine this Aldi shop only came to £22.75, which I was really pleased about. 

 I did buy a couple more boxes of the Salt and Vinegar No Fish Fillets as I saw a label on the shelf edge of the freezer that simply said 'Cancelled' and had a little panic.  Of the five boxes that were there I graciously only took two leaving the others for someone else.

So my weekend treats were wine, dairy free ice-lollies, some new-to-me crispy nibble type things and my 'pathetic bulk buys' were two garlic breads for the freezer, two more packs of noodles and a bottle of lemon juice.

Then I lost my shopping mojo and headed for the checkouts, where I had a lovely chat with the guy on the till which made the whole shopping trip seem a lot nicer.  This sunshine is bringing out the best in people isn't it.

Sue xx