Happy Frugal Christmas from Shoestring Cottage

Happy Frugal Christmas, everyone! This post will go live on Christmas Eve, by which time I am hoping I am in control of all the preparations and our celebrations are under way.

I hope that you are all well and happy, whatever you choose to do, and whether you mark the season or not. It is easy to forget that some people choose not to celebrate this festival, whilst other folk are struggling financially, feeling lonely, working flat out or missing loved ones. 

I feel very grateful to be able to have a small gathering with my family, particularly my parents. My dad has had a fair few health problems this year but he is still with us and will enjoy being with his noisy granddaughters, sitting by the TV with his glass of wine.

I braved Sainsbury’s yesterday at 7.30 am, to buy all of the last minute bits I hadn’t been able to pick up during my regular shop at Lidl. It was already super busy, as a lot of people had obviously had the same plan. However, I managed to nip in and out relatively quickly, before it got too chaotic.

I’m not a fan of crowds at the best of times and, as you know, these aren’t the best of times! Still, it’s all done now, and I won’t need to do another food shop until all of the leftovers are gone.

A little favour to ask…

Before I go on, I have a small favour to ask. I have been nominated in two categories for the SHOMO awards  that are dependant on votes. If you have a few minutes, I would love it if you would vote for me! The link is below.

Vote for your favourite money blogs and influencers of 2021 in #SHOMOS People’s Choice awards

Here are a few of the things we have done towards a frugal Christmas this week.

Five frugal things for a merry, frugal Christmas

Christmas lights

One of the free things we like to do at this time of year is to walk around the neighbourhood checking out the Christmas lights. We have a house in the road opposite us that really goes to town, decorating their house and the one next door to raise money for charity. 

They had even decorated their son’s car this year, and we spotted it driving away as we arrived. I included a video of this on my Christmas YouTube video, which you can see here.

Carols in the car park

We also attended a carol service in the car park of a church nearby. This was great as it meant that we could take the dog! The vicar is a fellow dog walker, and he was the one who told us to go along. 

It was a nice community event, with free tea, hot chocolate and cakes. They even had a local opera singer helping the singing along!

As lots of people don’t want to be indoors in a crowd at the moment, I thought some Christmas carols outside was a nice idea.

Bedroom DIY update

I was determined to get the last of the painting done in the bedroom before the year was out, so this week I did the final piece of furniture. This was a tall chest of drawers, which was plain pine. It looks so much nicer now that it is painted white to match the wardrobe, which I did a few months back.

This means the bedroom makeover has finally been completed! I did take my time doing it, upcycling one piece of furniture at a time. You can see my journey in full on YouTube here. I worked out that it cost just £270 to do all the painting and purchase curtains, bedding and accessories to complete the look.

I am very happy with the result, and will be moving onto the small guest bedroom in the new year.

Selling my excess books

You may have seen my bookshelf declutter recently. I cleared out loads of books, including about half of the many, many yoga books I have accumulated over the years. 

I sold quite a lot of them on Ziffit*, but kept the ones with more value back to sell myself on eBay. This week I made time to list them all, so that I could put them out of the way.

It only took me an hour or so, and hopefully I should make a couple of hundred pounds back on them. Some of them are actually limited editions and quite valuable now. The most expensive was going for £90!

Still buying second hand

I am now almost at the end of my second hand year. This January, I won’t be doing my usual no spend month (although if you want to start the year in a mega frugal way, have a look at my post from last year). Having bought only second hand for the whole of 2021, there are some things we really need to buy that are quite tricky to find second hand in good condition.

We need some new sheets for starters. Although I have found them second hand in the past, they don’t pop up very often. I will be buying some in the January sales.

However, in the meantime, I did manage to pick up another second hand duvet set for the lodger’s room from eBay. This is a barely used set, originally from Matalan, and goes with the decor in that bedroom.

Second hand will still be my default position in 2021, even if I am occasionally buying new.

So that completes my round up of frugal things for the week. I hope you have a very happy, peaceful and frugal Christmas doing whatever you enjoy. Bye for now!

I’m linking up with this Cass, Emma and Becky in this week’s ‘Frugal Friday’ linky.

*This is my referral code. Get £5 extra when you trade in your old CDs, DVDs, games & books @Ziffit using my unique code I0LMLPHCY. Limited offer – first 10 customers only.