A Thrifty Way to Cheer Up Someone's Day

Coca Cola is currently being sold in cute 'enjoy a Coke with' bottles.

Why not cheer up someone's day with their name on a bottle?

Happy Easter

Happy Easter one and all! Hope everyone has eaten lots of chocolate for breakfast and has a wonderful day full of fun, food and family.

Bunny ears from my Mum, because you're never too old...!

Twelfth Night

January 6th is Twelfth Night, or if you're superstitious, the last day to take down your Christmas decorations. But don't bin everything just yet! Here are a few things to save for a thrifty Christmas next year.

Cracker decorations- can be used to seal packets for some homemade treats next year:

Christmas cards- cut out to make gift tags:

You can recycle any leftover cards at Tesco supermarkets:

Long pieces of ribbon can be saved to wrap around smaller presents next year:

PS There are also some great Christmas bargains in the shops at the moment, to get you prepared early for Christmas 2013. Stick it all in a clearly marked box and you'll be laughing next year. Here are a few I found:

Waitrose 2 tier cake stand, £0.69:

Lindt Irish Cream Truffles, again in Waitrose, £1.14 (these are also available in special edition stracciatella flavour, yum!):

M&S Christmas dinner party invitations, £50p:

Happy crafting and sales shopping!

Mince Pies

You know Christmas is nearly here when you eat your first mince pie! So here's a recipe to make a batch and get that 'Christmas is coming!' feeling...

Ingredients:
225g cold butter, diced
350g plain flour
100g golden caster sugar
280g mincemeat
2 tbsp of milk
Icing sugar, to dust

1. To make the pastry, rub the butter into the flour, then mix in the sugar and a pinch of salt. Combine the pastry into a ball, adding a tbsp of milk if necessary to bring the dough together, although it should remain firm. Knead briefly.

2. Preheat the oven the 200℃ (180℃ for fan ovens)/400℉/Gas Mark 6 and grease 18 holes of two shallow muffin trays.

3. Roll the dough out on a floured board to around half a centimetre in depth and, using a cookie cutter slightly larger than the muffin tin circles, cut out 18 'bases' and press them into the tins.

4. Fill each pastry base with a couple of teaspoons of mincemeat. Be careful not to overfill.

5. Gather up the remaining dough from the bases, roll out to the same depth as previously and this time use a cookie cutter around the size of the muffin tin holes to make the tops. I used stars and hearts, but you could make full lids or use any shape you please.

6. Brush the tops lightly with milk (or a beaten egg if you prefer the glazed look) and bake in the centre of the pre-heated oven for around 20 minutes, or until golden.

If you want to make these in advance, they can be frozen after step 5. Mince pies make a lovely gift or treat to take to a friends, if you can resist gobbling them all up.

PS How do you eat yours? Hot? Cold? With cream? With brandy butter?

Magazines on a Budget

I decided to treat myself to a house magazine subscription for the renovation project to motivate and inspire me. Magazines aren't cheap though, especially house magazines, but fear not, a thrifty solution is at hand! You can save up your Nectar points or Clubcard points and spend them on a magazine subscription as a treat (or maybe a gift for someone?) see here for Nectar or here for Clubcard. Even better, Clubcard have deals on 10 popular titles at the moment, meaning you need even fewer vouchers to pay for your 'reward'.

I went for Real Homes, which is a bit out of my little house's league, but inspires me to try and get the look on a budget.

But having already read this month's Real Homes and after a long day at work, I found myself in the magazine aisle and happened upon Style at Home, which at £1.99 was far less bank breaking than most magazines. I thought I would give it a whirl and I am sure glad I did. Style at Home features people who spent a few thousand pounds on a kitchen renovation (not hundreds of thousands!) and suggests buys from Next, Wilkinsons, Dunelm Mill and other places I might actually afford to be able to shop. I would definitely recommend it if you need a bit of inspiration on a budget!

Any magazine suggestions that will inspire the thrifty renovation are most welcome, please!

Bread, Scrub and Fun in Folkestone

We've just got back from a weekend in Folkestone, Kent celebrating Dave's Mum's Birthday. We had a lovely evening of improv comedy, an audience-participation trumpet piece and samba. This was followed by a beautiful sunny day today walking around Sandgate and Folkestone and having a delicious lunch. I thought I'd share a few photos of the things I made and we did over the weekend.

A loaf of bread for this morning to get us in the mood for real breadmaker week:

Home made scrub as a little Birthday gift using Mrs Thrifty's vanilla scrub recipe:

Walks along the beach hoping to spot Davina (formerly Dave) the Dolphin (see Wikipedia):

Photo slideshow 'this is your life':

Walking up the zig zag path on our way to eat delicious Nepalese food at Gurkha Palace

Hope your weekend was lovely too!

Home Made Travel Journal

This year, Dave had a travel/holiday/cycle themed Birthday- including lots of new cycling kit and some books about new routes and places for us to go. I also wanted to make something, so decided to make a travel journal to replace our old one, which is full of notes, pictures and ideas:

I got a notebook for £1.29 from WH Smith:

I then wrapped it in the brown card that comes from the inside of a roll of wrapping paper to give it some strength and had fun cutting out and sticking various images from leaflets, magazines etc:

I also cut out little strips of the photos that you often get on an index sheet when you get photos printed and scattered these around:

And finally, wrapped it in sticky back plastic (not that you can really see it in the photo!) to make it a bit more durable for our travels:

I had a quick scout around Amazon and there are some lovely ones- magnetic closure, cute and quirky and Moleskine, for example, but I think you can't beat a good personalised gift for £1.29 (however much I may adore Paperchase)

Now we just need to book a holiday!

Charity Shop Pan

This week is Dave's Birthday and we spent this weekend celebrating. He wanted a cooked breakfast this morning, so I couldn't resist giving him one of his presents in advance- a Tefal griddle pan. The pan is a thrifty special- £4 from a charity shop in Cirencester, a lucky find. The cheapest I've seen a new one is £17 on Amazon and much as I love Tefal pans, this seemed like a bit of a boring way to spend nearly £20 (and meant I got him other more exciting gifts instead!) It's a little scuffed around the edges, but mostly pretty good :)

I think lots of people probably turn their noses up at giving second hand gifts, but I knew Dave would like it. I think a griddle pan is the most manly piece of kitchen equipment- other than knives- I see steak and bacon as very much his domain! I know it's a cliche, but it really is the thought that counts. Plus it's nice to give gifts that are about what we do and love together- building our home and most importantly, eating!

Big Little Girls' Reversible Bags

This month the little twin girls I used to look after as a nanny suddenly became not so little when they turned 5. I made them little reversible bags to keep all of those 5 year old's essentials in...

I found that making them reversible was more of a challenge than I thought... Any advice on how to stop the 'spilling out' of the inner fabric (see left hand bag in photo below) would be most welcome:

Despite the setback, it was still fun and I loved getting to use 'little girl' fabric. I haven't done any sewing in a while and Captain Sew has been gathering a bit of dust, so here's to getting back on track and trying some more ambitious projects!

Microwave Scottish Tablet

This weekend has been very busy with work and play and to top it all off we're off for a cycling adventure to Wales today, hurrah! Whilst Dave does important man things, like load the car and service the bikes, I am preparing the car snacks. I like to think that this is also a very important job.

I am most excited about nibbling on some of this Scottish tablet- a really easy microwave recipe, which I made for my friend's Birthday and Valentine's Day:

All of that sugar might keep me awake on the journey too! I know that making tablet in the microwave is probably sacrilege, but it was so easy and it set in just a few minutes, ready to cut into cubes. I only made half of the quantity from the recipe above and that was good for a bag for my friend, a bag for Valentine's Day and some leftovers for our trip.

This recipe is also good for using up any condensed milk you might have left over from Milk Jelly experiments.

Have a lovely weekend!

Happy New Year

Happy 2012 to all! It's been such a busy week I've only just had time to fill my favourite Christmas present- my lovely sewing box:

Here's to a crafty 2012...

Festive Greetings

Belated festive greetings to one and all! I am now very happy to be back in The Lodge after a hectic week...

We helped my Mum move this van full of stuff from Cornwall to Kent:

We were lucky enough to get a wardrobe that matches ours that couldn't be accommodated (thank you Mum for the wardrobe and Dave for assembling it!)

I was really chuffed to come second in our cake competition at work with my festive yule log:

We had a bit of a disaster with a swollen door on our shed, which now means we can't get in to access our tool box, so the furniture we got today (to store yet more craft stuff!) had to be banged together with a saucepan:

And we spent Christmas with our loved ones, who appreciated their home made gifts:

Cloth bag for Dave's sister, with lovely fabric from Country Threads in Bath

Denim Kindle case, also for Dave's sister (tutorial to follow)

Christmas tree decorations

Flower brooches for my sister

Thanks to everyone for our lovely gifts- one of my personal favourites was this Mr and Mrs Christmas knitted by my Nan, thank you :)

Hope that you all had a wonderful Christmas!

Christmas Pudding Truffles

I will start by saying that truffles are sadly not thrifty, but they are delicious and home made ones are certainly a lovely gift and much cheaper than their shop-bought equivalents. I have been making truffles for Christmas for a few years now, but this year I decided to stray into unchartered territory- Christmas pudding truffles (in look, not flavour, although that will definitely be next!)

I was quite pleased with the result, even if they were a bit fiddly and could have done with a flatter base so they didn't keep rolling away for the photos...

Ingredients:
250g (8oz) good quality dark chocolate
175ml (6 fl oz) double cream
50g white chocolate
Green roll out icing
Red writing icing
+ A lot of patience

1. Break the chocolate up into a heatproof bowl
2. Heat the cream in a saucepan on a medium heat until its nearly boiling
3. Pour the cream over the chocolate and stir until the chocolate has metled and the two are combined
4 Leave the mixture to cool (at room temperature for the first 15 minutes and then it can go in the fridge to speed it up a bit!)
5. Using a teaspoon or melon baller, scoop out into small balls
6. Chill the truffles in the fridge for an hour. Whilst they are chilling, cut out holly leaves from green icing
7. Gently melt the white chocolate in a bowl over simmering water and carefully spoon over the top of the truffles
8. Stick the holly leaves in
9. Once the white chocolate has cooled, dot on berries with the writing icing

The truffles will keep for a few days in the fridge, or you can freeze them after step 5 if you want to decorate at a later stage.

Star Cookie Christmas Tree

This weekend saw the first attempt at the cookie Christmas tree, made using these cutters from Lakeland. We were really pleased with it and hope my step uncle, aunt and cousins are too!

Cookie Recipe

Ingredients:

225g plain flour

Pinch of salt

100g sugar

125g butter, cubed

1 egg yolk

1-2 tbsps cold water

1. Sift flour and salt into mixing bowl and stir in sugar

2. Work in butter using fingers

3. Stir in the egg yolk and enough water to hold the mixture together, bring into a ball

4. Wrap and chill the dough in the frige for at least 30 minutes

5. Roll out onto a floured surface (to about 3mm thickness) and cut out shapes

6. Bake for 10-12 minutes at 180 degrees/Gas Mark 4

Lakeland use a different recipe on the back of the cookie cutter box, which also looks tasty. We cheated and cut the star icing out from some ready rolled icing for ease, but you could make your own to put on top. We then made a little base from a square of cardboard covered in foil and wrapped it up in cellophane to make it look a bit special: