New felt bookmarks

My newest creations in the bookmark arena are dogs.  The Scotties are really easy and quick to make and I had some spare tartan card to package them up which I think suits well. 

Today's charity shop finds

So chuffed with my finds today.  20p each for the baskets, I might use the one with handles in the bathroom but the others I got for doing mini hampers.  So cheap.  The measuring cups will be so handy to have in the kitchen and they were 2 for a pound.  I also got a chick lit book written by fern Britton which looks good.  Happy happy.

Sunday 23rd June 2013 -money saving and money making

We have been so blessed, and I'm so thankful.  After the shock of my hubby being made redundant landed he was so lucky to have been offered a job after as little as 3 weeks.  I've never seen someone work as hard to get a job either.  I'm truly blessed with a hard working husband.  We cut back on everything when the redundancy happened but I feel we should always be frugal and watch our money.  Who knows when this could happen again, hopefully never again.  Everything costs a fortune since the recession.  Here are some of the ways I save money and make money

🌟I started doing all my shopping at aldi

🌟I meal plan and down brand on my shopping

🌟I make gifts for birthdays and Christmas

🌟car boot sales

🌟sell things on eBay, gumtree

🌟use freecycle

🌟shop at charity shops, jumble sales, etc

🌟do market research surveys to earn vouchers to put towards Christmas

🌟point schemes like nectar, boots advantage and run a cash back account online

🌟generally do without myself, I rarely buy clothes for myself or go out 

🌟run a vegetable plot in my garden

🌟I always ask myself when shopping...is this a need or a want 

I'm sure I do many more things also but these are just some of the things off the top of my head.  

Star wars themed birthday gifts

So I find it really hard shopping for interesting and unique gifts for the men in the family, gifts that won't break the bank.  It's usually smellies or DVDs, very boring.  I decided for my brothers birthday this year that I would do something star wars themed.  When I searched nothing cheap came up.  It seems star wars  memorabilia is on the up and up.  I did find a tshirt that was only about a fiver on eBay so I bought him that with some eBay credit I had.  I've been doing a lot of bookmarks lately so I found a template for an r2d2 one that was very intricate and a lot of hard work but it came out fab and cost nothing as I had all the materials already.  I needed a book of sorts for the bookmark so I found a black notepad at the pound shop for a pound, haha who'd have thought it eh...and a friend kindly printed up a vinyl sticker saying star wars for free that turned a plain notebook into a star wars notebook.  All this teamed with some of his fave sweets came to about £6.50.  Very cheap but I think it all looks like it could have cost more, what do you think?

Bargain of the week

Can you believe this baby's play mat was only £2.  For that price I wasn't expecting the lights and music to work but they do.  I have always and will always be an advocate for charity shops and car boot sales.

Quote of the day

Teacher gifts

So it's getting to that time of year where teachers presents have to be bought.  I personally appreciate all the teachers have done for my children but I want to give gifts that are nice but frugal.  I've made some presents in the past and they have gone down well.  I'm sure teachers like getting chocolates, smellies and wine but they must end up with a lot.  I like to come up with something a little different too.  This year I'll probably still buy choccies but with it I'm going to add a teacher bookmark.  Made from felt, very cheap to do and cute too.  I've been making apples and I'm also going to do some owls and add 'THANKYOU for making me wiser' on the packaging.  I'll post photos of the packaging I'm going to come up with later but here's some pictures of the bookmarks and some other bookmarks I have done.  I also did horses for my daughters birthday party bags.  Easy to do and promotes reading, everyone needs a book mark.

Frugal times...understatement!

We have been finding that because of this recession that we are in that it gets more and more expensive to live. We are pretty frugal as it is but things are gonna have to get REALLY frugal now. Unfortunately my hubby has been made redundant. The company he works for went into administration and for the first time since he was 13 years old he is without a job. I've been thinking about overhauling my blog and make it into more of a crafty, stay at home mam, money saving theme, I might even rename the blog. What I will do is blog more often and I've said it so I have to now :D what my blog will be also will be a record of how we survive this redundancy and how we manage it. Scary but we can do it, we have to really.