This Weeks 5 Frugal Things on a Friday

Hello Dear Reader,

And welcome to the first frugal Friday of 2019! As I've posted several times before, I will keep writing this kind of post for as long as you are still interested in reading it. My life is very repetitive, doing the same thing week in week out, all year long.

I have made a couple of New Years Resolutions, one's that I feel are achievable and are able to be slotted into my life easily. The first one is, I have started to ride to work again, something that I haven't done for a long time, I was making lots of excuses, it's too hot, too cold or the classic, oh I don't want to get attacked by a magpie today!

The other one is I want to complete is Ilona's 1000 miles in a year challenge, Ilona writes over at "Mean Queen, My Brilliant Life on a Pension" and I just love her. She is a strong, independent woman who does as she pleases, is kind and generous, walks everyday, is very frugal and crafty and is living a splendid, simple life. I have been reading her blog for a very long time and she has inspired me to get off my butt and start walking and riding every day.

Now 1000 miles works out to be roughly 4.4 km per day, that is totally do-able for me, the two dogs walks (little one in the morning and longer one in the afternoon) tallies up to be 2.67 km and the bike ride to and from work is 4.08 km in total, so on a daily basis I will easily make my target. On the day's I don't work I will complete another walk along with the dog walks to meet the target. That's the plan at this stage.

Now on with the frugal stuff.

1. Re-used the vanilla pods from the last batch of homemade vanilla essence to make some more. I split them in half to expose the seeds and poured over some more vodka. We just buy the cheapest vodka there is, I get about 3 big bottles of vanilla essence (about 350 ml) from one bottle of vodka. This is the third time these vanilla pods have been re-used, one week in and it is colouring up nicely so I think there is enough oomph left in the pods. I generally leave the vanilla pods to soak for 3 months before I use the essence.

2. Rode to work on Wednesday, and I intend to ride today, yesterday morning just as I was leaving for work, it started to rain so I had to put my bike away and drive to work instead. Of course it stopped raining as soon as I got to work.

3. Made another loaf of light rye bread, I think I over proved it, as the top didn't rise well, it really doesn't matter, it is still delicious. I cut the loaf in half and freeze it so it stays fresh and none is wasted.

4. Ironed and re-rolled some really pretty wrapping paper from Christmas, it is from T2. My beaut kids gave me a lovely glass teapot plus some tea blossoms for Christmas. I just love them. The teapot came in a big black box wrapped in oodles of beautiful tissue paper, in total there were 14 large sheets of tissue paper, plus the lovely bright paper the box was wrapped in. Too pretty to throw away.

5. Picked the last of the cherry tomatoes from the garden, I will use them in a recipe I saw on Jamie and the Nonas on Wednesday night. I rarely watch TV but anything with Jamie or Nigella in, is not included in this plan.

Over to you, how did you save money this week and have you made any New Year resolutions? I'd love to know.

Have a lovely day,

💕Fi

One Year Ago-A Before and After # 2

Two Years Ago-What we bought, spent and ate this week