1)  This is a sad day for me!  I went to the shop last night, got all excited when I saw the Radio Times was out and then saw the price of it so put it back on the shelf!  Since when did the Radio Times cost £4.50 for the Christmas edition!!!

We don’t watch TV much at all so it’s a total waste of money for us but I would have bought it if it had been a bit cheaper as we like to look through it and highlight what we want to watch.  We can just save a fiver though and look at the TV Guide we get with our TV package.

2) While I’ve been ill convenience foods have been a bit of a necessity because I simply haven’t had the energy to cook things from scratch as much as I’d like to have been doing.  I’m feeling a lot better now though and even though I’m still not fully recovered, I can at least spend a little more time on cooking which makes me happy.  You might have seen this photo on Instagram this week of my first homemade Yorkshire Puds in a good few months….

The kids likened them to wonky veg and said they now preferred Aunt Bessies!  I’ll wean them off Aunt Bessies gradually and they’ll be back to loving my wonky puds in no time!

Joking aside though, there are some foods that I will be keeping in my freezer though because the convenience outweighs the extra cost when I have to fit so much into my day.  I’ve always been a fan of frozen chopped onions and frozen mixed veg but I’ve now discovered you can buy things like frozen chopped butternut squash which is not much more expensive (if at all) than fresh.  It’s no less healthy and saves so much time – especially considering I love it in soup.  I actually roasted a fresh butternut squash for soup this week to see if I could taste the difference and considering the extra effort that took, I prefer my own version where I just throw in some frozen chunks.  Red onion is another staple in my freezer now as is frozen packs of rice because again, the cost difference is negligible but the saving on time is huge.

3) I made spaghetti bolognaise this week and it was a total triumph considering the fact that just after I started browning the mince, I realised I only had one tin of tinned tomatoes in.  I hadn’t even checked as I just assumed I would have seeing as I buy them in bulk when I put my Approved Food order in each month.

As I was searching in the cupboard for the tomatoes,  I came across a tin of Heinz tomato soup that’s been in there since before I got my soup maker for Christmas last year so I decided to go with that and the one tin of tomatoes that I had in rather than send the kids to the shop.  Everything else I did exactly as I normally would and it was delicious.

4) Mr Frugal went in the loft at the weekend to get our Christmas decorations down and it seems like we’ve lost quite a few of them!  I say lost, they can only be up there in the loft as that’s where we put them all last year but as we were both suffering from that silly bug that’s going round we decided not to spend too much time looking for them and to have a bit of a minimal Christmas for decorations this year.  We have our tree and about half of the decorations so we added some new lights and we’re happy with that….

We also have a few other bits and bobs that are around making the house look lovely and festive but we don’t seem to have our homemade Christmas wreath, our window lights, our fibre optic tree and all the homemade cards that the kids have made over the years.  As I say, I’m not concerned as I know they’re up there and I am liking the more grown up feel our decorations have this year in the living room.

I couldn’t resist making something to hang on the door in place of one of our wreaths though….

It’s just a small fallen branch I found wrapped in some ribbon with some cute ornaments hanging from it.  I have another set of the ornaments in the kitchen too on my tacky tree (the kids name, not mine) as I love the vintage feel.  They’re not vintage at all though – I bought them from Tesco for £5.

5)  Remember our new settee last week?  Well I’ve finally persuaded Mr Frugal to redecorate the living room properly and to paint over the yuck magnolia and get rid of the orange wallpaper that I once thought was lovely.  We went white!  Yes, plain white on all the walls and for those of you who think it might not work, it totally does.  I won’t explain why we went white as you can read all about that here but I will say that the decision meant that we painted our whole living room and our little hall for about £20 and it’s made a huge difference.  It looks lighter and brighter and so much nicer!

What frugal or thrifty things have you done this week?

Emma and Becky and I would love to make think linky into a place to share all of our frugal ideas with each other so hwe’d love ou to link up with us this week.

Five Fabulously Frugal Things I’ve Done This Week Linky rules

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.

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Image credit: Shutterstock, Gstockstudio

The post Five Fabulously Frugal Things I’ve done this week {9th December 2016}…. appeared first on The Diary of a Frugal Family.