1) The best Christmas present I got last year was my trusty soup maker which I’ve used at least twice a week since I had it. This year I thought I’d ask Mr Frugal for something else useful so I asked him for a breadmaker as I think that will come in really handy for making dough for pizza dough, doughballs and flatbreads which I’ve started making more since I’ve been off work. He went Christmas shopping for it the other day and texted me to tell me he’d found a half price bargain in a shop in our town that was closing down – it had been the display model but he said it was in great condition and wanted to know if I was OK with that as it was a gift.
I was totally OK with it as he got it for just £30 which was half of what he’d budgeted for it and meant he bought me some of my favourite perfume which was offer of the week in Boots so also half price at £30. I was good with the rest of my pressies too because I knew he’d want to spoil me a little after the last few month so I made sure he knew exactly what I wanted and that they were all practical things – he bought me a wooden board for my photos (that I *may* have already used) and a macro adapter lens for my camera that I can’t wait to get out and play with. Both quite practical I think and not a handbag in sight.
2) I won’t go into detail about our Christmas Dinner today (read about it here on Meal Planning Made Easy) but I did want to share with you that we’ve decided not to buy a fancy pudding or cake as Master Frugal has been baking on his own this week and he has a new speciality – chocolate cake traybake! It’s so delicious that Miss Frugal mentioned it would be nice as a pudding for Christmas Day and Mr Frugal seconded that straight away as we often feel a bit let down by the fancy puddings you can buy that taste very blah.
Master Frugal is so proud but he’s not the most confident in his skills so he made another cake and took it to our friends to see what they thought. They rang us to tell us how amazing it was so he’s now much more confident and can’t wait to get cooking for the big day.
Edited: Here’s his recipe!
3) My new freezer arrived this week and it’s much larger than I thought. It was my Dad’s second freezer and I had thought it was a normal under counter freezer but it’s not, it’s quite a bit taller so it’s now sat in our garage half filled with my Iceland shop from yesterday – the rest of the space is for my batch cooking which I’ll start right after Christmas.
Its arrival wasn’t without drama though! As Mr Frugal tried to move it into place in the garage, something fell and somehow the plug socket got in the way and smashed off the wall. Our TV and everything from the living room run through that socket (to avoid wires in the living room) so that was a disaster for Mr Frugal who spent the next half an our frantically ringing around for an emergency electrician. He found one with a slightly less than extortionate call out fee and after a sit in the dark while he fixed it, we were back on.
Well I say we were back on, everything but the heating was! Or boiler was showing a system interrupted error code which we couldn’t fix ourselves. This meant a call out to British Gas who couldn’t come the same day as it was already 7pm by this point but they did get out to us the following afternoon to fix that for us – thank goodness we have their Homecare policy as it would have been awful paying an electrician and a heater man the week before Christmas!
4) We popped to the Metro Centre this week as we had a certain Apple Product to buy for a certain young lady for Christmas and we saved 10% by handing over my student card. You can find out how to get one without being an actual student here but I can tell you it’s well worth the 15 minutes to save in places like Apple and New Look.
5) I’ve made a few last minute gifts for my friends using my Family Christmas Traditions poster maker which makes a lovely quick and easy gift as you can print it out at home. I’ve framed them in some lovely ornate frames that I got from the pound shop which look much more expensive than the pound they were!
What frugal or thrifty things have you done this week?
Emma and Becky and I would love to make this linky into a place to share all of our frugal ideas with each other but we are taking a break this week from the official linky. If you do join in this week then leave your link in the comments and I’ll pop over to have a nosey at what you’ve been up to. 😉
By the way, the very lovely Kelly won the Hotel Chocolat hamper last week for this amazing recipe! We’ll have lots more prizes in the New Year so do come back in January with your frugal and thrifty posts.
Don’t miss out on future posts like this – receive updates directly to your inbox by email by adding your email address to the box on the top right of this page and hitting subscribe. You can also follow me on BlogLovin or Networked Blogs and I’d love to see you over on my Facebook page and on Instagram.
Image credit: Shutterstock, Gstockstudio
