1) We’re away on holiday to Milan next week (biggest bargain break ever) and I’ve been saving for our holiday spends.  This week I’ve cashed in my loose change vases that I keep on the kitchen window sill (£18), my holiday savings jar where I save notes and try really really hard not to raid it on a regular basis (£125) and emptied my holiday savings bank account for the rest of my spending money.  I’ve said lots of times that I want to travel as much as possible this year and the trips we’ve booked have been great value but its the spends that can break the budget so I’m trying really hard to save what I can when I can.  I then wandered around the travel agents and post office in town before buying my Euros for the best rate I could find.

2) I’ve wanted to get my nails done for ages now but I didn’t know how I’d get along with long nails as I’m always doing something with my hands (usually typing away).  Acrylics were going to cost me £25 which is a lot, especially if I didn’t like them so I decided to invest in a set of false nails from Boots for a fiver to try them out.  The nails themselves were easy to apply and felt very, very secure which surprised me if I’m honest.  The problem was that I hate having longer nails as they felt so so restrictive.  This was them when I first put them on:

I filed them down to a rounder, shorter shape but I just couldn’t get away with them so I took them off.  You could look at this from the point of view that I wasted money on the false nails or that I saved money on the acrylics.

3) I’m loving fresh flowers at the moment but it can be costly to keep buying them which is why I often pop to our local Tesco around 9pm to see what the reductions are on the flowers.  These are my bargains from this week:

75p for a beautiful bunch of flowers that are still going strong days after I bought them!

4) Boots have an offer of of 3 for 2 on various make-up products so when I popped into to buy my regular Rimmel #InstaFlawless I ended up buying three rather than just one.  It might sound like this isn’t thrifty but it saved me money long term as I know this is a product I use daily, especially in the Summer due to the SPF 15 protection which I really need as I’m so fair.

5) Meal planning has been a bit of a bust this week thanks to a fractured scaphoid (Master F), two rounders tournaments (Miss F) and two late meetings at work (me).  For the most part though, even without sticking to the plan I had, we’ve still done well and have used up what we have in rather than being tempted into takeaways or extra trips to the shop.

As always, we’d love you to join in with us by sharing what frugal and thrifty things you’ve been up to this week – whether it’s an Instagram picture (#5frugalthings), a blog post or even a video.  Just add your link to the linky at the bottom of this post.

You don’t have to share five things you’ve done, anything thrifty or frugal that you’ve been doing is perfect.

You’re more than welcome to copy and paste the badge above but it would be even better if you could let your readers know that you’re linking up with us by adding a little line to the bottom of your post like this one:

I’m linking up with this Cass, Emma and Becky in this week’s ‘Five Fabulously Frugal things I’ve done this week’ linky.

Don’t miss out on future posts like this – receive updates directly to your inbox by email by adding your email address here and hitting subscribe. You can also follow me on Twitter, BlogLovin or Networked Blogs and I’d love to see you over on my Facebook page and on Instagram.

The post Five Frugal Things I’ve done this week {26th May 2017}…. appeared first on The Diary of a Frugal Family.