A sober October, plus other money saving things

Welcome to my round up of my thrifty and frugal week. I firmly believe that the small things really do add up to big savings, and I am ever vigilant not to waste money. In this way, I can stay home, work for myself and have more time to do the things I enjoy.

This month is going to be a sober October for us – read on to see why!

A spot of bread making

This week I made my first ever sour dough loaf! I have only recently discovered how much I enjoy sour dough and have been buying it from the bakery section of Lidl. However, it is quite expensive!

I had been thinking about attempting to make it myself for a while but wasn’t sure quite where to begin. Then, a lovely lady from my Facebook group offered to send me some starter, and I decided to take the plunge.

In case you didn’t know, sour dough bread uses a fermented flour and water mix to make it rise, rather than commercial yeast. It makes for a crusty and chewy loaf with a subtle tangy flavour. It is brilliant toasted as it goes really crunchy!

I was amazed that my first attempt made a perfect loaf! Maybe it was a fluke, as my next attempt was a bit heavier. I clearly need to practice.  Anyway, making it myself was half the cost of even the Lidl loaf, so I will be making it regularly from now on.

Sober October

My youngest daughter decided to do Sober October to raise money for a cancer charity in memory of her grandma. We are in such a bad habit of having ‘just one glass’ of wine, but almost every evening! We thought it would be a good idea to join in too, just to make sure we could!

To help us on our way, middle daughter bought us a bottle of alcohol free gin. It makes quite a refreshing drink! To me, it isn’t the same as an actual G&T, but it’s not bad, and gives us something other than a cup of tea to have in the evenings. However, it costs slightly more than actual gin, so I won’t be buying another bottle myself! I will stick to fruit juice.

Not drinking alcohol, even if it is just a supermarket bottle of wine, will definitely save us money, though, and hopefully help us to lose a few inches of belly fat too!

It’s the first time we have taken part in sober October. Hopefully we can get to the end of the month without cracking! It certainly won’t do us any harm.

A second hand bargain – like mother, like daughter

I popped into the charity shop with my oldest daughter this week and she managed to pick up so many items of clothing for work for £2 each! She was really pleased.

But her biggest bargain was this huge Laura Ashley lamp she spotted, for just £6. What a great find! These sell for £100s on eBay.

More vintage tea towels

At the same charity shop, I found a huge box of unused vintage tea towels. You may have seen a couple that I bought in last week’s round up. At 50p each, I decided it was worth buying more, so I got another four!

Mr S said it seemed a shame to use them, as they were clearly somebody’s collection over a number of years. I think it is a shame not to! There’s no point keeping them in a box. They are somebody else’s mementoes, not ours and they are useful.

Dog food in bulk

Archie the fussy cockerpoo has finally found some kibble that he will eat more than just a couple of times. I may be tempting fate, but I decided to see if I could buy it in bulk to save a bit of money.

I ended up getting two boxes containing 6kg of food each, which were on offer, plus two large packs of the hide and chicken chews that he likes. It worked out much cheaper to buy it this way. 

We need to let him go hungry when he is fussy I think. He won’t starve himself!

The website I used was vetshop.co.uk if you fancy a look.

So those are my frugal efforts this week. Let me know what you have been up to in the comments below, and if any of you are doing Sober October. Also, don’t forget to pop over to YouTube to check out my latest money saving videos!

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