It’s hard to please some of us eh? It was too cold and we’ve been praying for some sunshine, longer days, and brighter spirits.
Now that we are promised a mini heatwave of three days of glorious weather similar to Mandeville in Jamaica or even Ibiza, we are trying to make the best of it. But boy, do I feel sleepy!
I think it’s a combination of the brilliant sunshine and too much juice in order to compensate.
We haven’t at all lost sight of our quest for frugal living and so every penny counts. We are plugging all the holes to make sure that the Jamaica trip comes to fruition. As a result, here are some of the frugal things we have done this week:
Car Wash
On Sunday I noticed how dirty my car was and considered taking it to the car wash. When I thought about it, however, I figured we could save some money, enjoy the sunshine, and wash the car myself. Of course that £15 I would have paid, is going towards my trip to Jamaica that I’ve been singing about. The car looked shiny clean when we were done. The only problem is the vacuuming of the inside and the vacuum I used didn’t have enough suction for even the tiny pebbles that get brought into the car on our shoes.
All in all, it was good fun and the car is squeaky clean. Do you ever wash your own car? I should have a car wash fund set aside. As long as the weather is good, I will be doing it myself and be saving.
Shopping for fruits
A quick trip to Tesco this week found us looking for some fruits that we could prepare and chill to have in the evenings while we enjoy the sunny weather. It alarmed us when we saw little pots with chunks of pineapples for £2! We were sure we could find whole pineapples for much less than that! And sure we did find them. Large whole pineapples were priced at £1.50 while the smaller ones were for £1.00.
I bet a lot of people buy the little pots for pure convenience as they held about one portion each and could be taken in lunch boxes etc. I think because a lot of people find it difficult to peel the pineapple, they opt for purchasing the prepared ones and paying way too much for it.
It isn’t really difficult to peel the pineapple and we’ve done a brief video to show you.
We bought one of each size and peeled them ourselves, cut them into slices, and put them to chill so that everyone could enjoy some fresh fruits. Years ago we bought this handy little tool on Amazon. It cores and peels the pineapple at the same time and is very easy to use. I can also use a knife as I am used to doing this back in the Caribbean.
Risotto and Parmesan
This week the 14-year-old learned how to make Risotto at school and loved it so much she asked if she could make it for family dinner the next day. Well, after I gave the go ahead, I realise that we didn’t have any parmesan at all at home. Not wanting to disappoint her, I bought the smallest wedge of parmesan I could find at Aldi.
When she was finished, however, I realised that we had quite a bit of parmesan left. We don’t use that cheese very often so instead of allowing it to sit in the fridge and then throwing it out when it started to go off, I decided to grate it, bag it, and freeze it. This way, the next time she is ready to make risotto, we would already have the parmesan and won’t need to go out to get more. That’s a small saving of at least £2.00
BBQ Weather
We’ve been looking out for the sunshine for weeks now. Afterall, it’s almost May and watching the Commonwealth Games put us in the mood for a proper BBQ as we saw how well the athletes were doing.
Unfortunately, the British Spring weather was putting a damper on our spirits so we decided to prepare everything for the BBQ until the weather would cooperate. This meant preparing a batch of jerk marinade which would then be used on the chicken and the rest refrigerated. After getting the meat ready and freezing it, we finally had the perfect weather today for our first small BBQ of the season. Many more to come and we have the marinade waiting. Here’s the recipe we used to make our own jerk marinade rather than buying it from the shops.
It was delicious, to say the least. And knowing that we already had all the ingredients we needed to make it, was an added bonus.
Aviva and Tesco
This week I got a lovely little letter from Aviva informing me (and no doubt, countless others) that if we sign up for a paperless account within 30 days, we would get a £10 Tesco e-voucher. Of course, I signed up and look forward to receiving my voucher in the post.
The Biggest Savings
I think my biggest savings will come from using Topcashback to purchase our holiday flights and accommodation. Watch this space and I will keep you posted on this exciting news. I bet it will be over £600!
I’m linking up with Cass, Emma and Becky in this week’s ‘Five Frugal things I’ve done this week’ linky. I love linking up with Cass, Emma and Becky on sharing the frugal things we’ve done. It gives me so much encouragement to see what they’re up to and I hope that you get to check out their posts too for money saving ideas.
I would love for you to share what frugal ways you’ve been living recently.
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