Frugal Living: Did you miss me

Well hello I am back online a little later than expected but I am back none the less. Well what have we been up to here at Tilly towers. You may remember Ben and I spent the weekend at Lee's last weekend. We took a lovely walk from the bus stop to his house and ran in to this fine family on our way.

Yummy dinner is served

Mummy, Daddy, and Baby

Daddy seemed a little protective so we did not stroke them but we did stop and watch them for a while and had a chat with them so very beautiful and so nice to see the whole family out for dinner together.

I have decided to try my hand at growing some veg again. I gave it a miss last year as I had been disheartened by my attempts over the previous 2 years but have decided to have a go. I've done my research this time around and am starting off small. I am attempting potatoes, tomatoes, and mushrooms this year and if all goes well I will add a couple more to my selection next year. I have worked out where the sun rises and falls in my garden so I know the best spot for growing and I have got myself some new gardening gear all ready. I got 3 bags of compost and a compost bin, a water butt, some secateurs, hedge trimmer, seeds, mushroom growing kit. Now I don't want you all worrying that I have spent a fortune because I have not. 3x 70l bags of compost from Tesco for £10, a composter from Tesco £20, a water butt from Tesco £20, secateurs from Tesco £2, hedge trimmer from Tesco £30, seeds from poundland £1, a mushroom growing kit from poundland £1. Tesco also have a sale on at the moment 25% off all gardening items so what should have cost £82 cost me £61.50 plus I got clubcard points which works out as 61p and cashback at 6% which works out at £3.69 through quidco so a saving of 24.80. Plus I used the £30 I got paid from money supermarket for my post 30 ways to save £1. So my actual out of pocket expenses works out at £27.20 so not nearly as bad as it sounded at the beginning. I will let you all know how I get on and blog my progress along the way.

I have also been doing lots of knitting and reading and have finished the first book in the 50 shades trilogy and am half way through the second book. The xmas scarf is almost finished and when it is I will start on a second probably the one for Lee in his favorite colour Black. I was given a lovely selection of cheese cakes by one of my neighbors the other day and the banana was my favorite so I will be attempting this myself sometime in the week once I have the recipe. Her daughter has been making cheese cakes as part of her school work over the last few weeks and they were sick of the sight of them and wondered if myself and the boys would like a few which was very kind of them.

Today has been lovely not to hot but not cold either. The sun has been shinning so we decided to get out the house. We took all 3 boys to the park for a little bit and then took a nice walk up to splodges where the younger 2 boys played for a few hours whilst Brad went and did a bit of train spotting. Splodges is a local soft play center where we live it is a short walk from our house and if you time your visit right you will often find you are the only people there giving the kids the place to themselves. It is also reasonably priced at £3.50 each and there is no time limit like you get at some places so its a nice little treat for the boys and it does not break the bank.