It wasn't until it was time to apply for a secondary school for Miss Frugal that I thought seriously about the huge part that friends could play in her happiness.Regular readers might remember that we were faced with the hardest decision we'd had to make since becoming parents when choosing what secondary school to send her to. We had to choose between sending her to the school all of her friends were going to which we knew to have poor education standards and even worse disciplinary standards, or to the local faith school where she wouldn't know a single person but would get a great … [Read more...]

Last week we had a lovely few hours at Mount Grace Priory which is somewhere we've been a few times over the last year or so. We all love it for different reasons - Miss Frugal loves that she can climb, Master Frugal loves the fact he can play football with his dad and I love it because it's often so quiet that there's just us there.As it's one of our favourite places, it seems fitting that the family photo that we took there was my favourite family photo of the month....My aim is for 2016 is to take one #FamilySelfie a week and then once a month, I'll share my … [Read more...]

Are you planning a family holiday abroad this year?We were planning a week in August (the only time off we all have together this year) but the prices were sky high so we ended up booking to go away in this country instead but Miss Frugal and I are having a cheeky long weekend away in the sun in April instead.  It was only us who wanted to go away really as the men of the house aren't fans of the heat or the travelling involved so we decided to get away for some girly time together - I told you I was going to do things that made me happy this year, didn't I?We got an AMAZING deal when … [Read more...]

It's been a while since I've written a siblings post so after yesterday's slightly miserable post, I thought I'd share some happy moments with you today. ;-)I used to join in with the Siblings project every month and it was always one of my favourite posts to write because it reminded me how close Miss and Master Frugal were, despite the inevitable petty squabbles they used to have.  I stopped joining in because the abundance of photos I used to have to choose from dwindled away and I only had the odd one or two photos of them together each month.The reason for the decline in photos … [Read more...]

This wasn't the post I had in mind for today but yesterday something happened that affected me much more than I would have expected it to - a local radio commentator died after a short battle with cancer.  His name was Ali Brownlee although it's highly unlikely that you'll have heard of him unless you live in the North East but he was a legend.He was one half of a team who commentated on the Boro matches on the local radio and despite never meeting him, his voice is just as familiar to me as any other voice I know.  Commentators are supposed to be unbiased and neutral but he was far from … [Read more...]