The Christmas Challenge. Time for a review.

I got a little bit done during the last week. I embroidered two more little tops and I am working on a navy, grey and cream blanket. That is a bigger project but the evenings are cold and once a blanket is a reasonable size it becomes a project and knee rug at the same time!

I am also posting some more pictures of Mum's recent rugs and hats.

It is three years since I started making Christmas gifts in January and worked at it all year. The first year I learned some big lessons!  That year my cupboard filled up and up and in November I was feeling quite smug when I decided to get everything out to have a look at what I had.  As I spread things all over the floor I was amazed at what I had. And how much! I even took photos! There was only one problem. I had enough pink, rose and pretty things for every woman on earth and virtually nothing for men!

The next year I did better. I had a mid year review. Armed with a list of everyone I need a gift for I got everything out and grouped things into gifts. I used large snap lock bags with peoples names on them and made up gifts from what I had. Then I wrote a list of who I had a partial present for and who I still needed to make something for.  That gave me direction for the next months.
So that is where I am up to now. It is almost mid year (already) and time to assess what I have and what I need to do.
It is amazing to do as already I have forgotten things and it starts to come back to me that I have a lot of soap gifts and I know for sure more presents for women than for men.

I know I am not the only one on this, several of you have said how men's gifts are harder.
So next week we are going to have a post just on ideas for gifts for men!

If you have ideas and have had success stories with mens gift then please add them into the comments next week and hopefully between us all we will end up with a massive number of ideas! That will be so helpful.
If you have photos of gifts you have made for a man (we will include teenagers) then please send them in and I will include them in the post.
You can do this via the Facebook page or email me at brinkzi21@hotmail.com

So my suggestion is to have a review of what you have so far, sometime in the next month. This gives you the rest of the year to fill in the gaps.

And we will try to come up with lots of ideas for men that are achievable and suit different interests.  I look forward to seeing some of your ideas and hearing your success stories. I just gravitate to making pretty things and if I don't stop and realise it I end up with nothing for the boys.

I hope you are having a great week! Can you believe we are almost half way through the year?
Today I am grocery shopping. I don't need much as I am using things up from the freezer. We have had some creative meals from bits and pieces so that's progress!
See you on Friday! xxx

The Vicky Challenge. Look in different places.

My Vicky Challenge went pretty well last week.
Some of the things I included:

I cut Andy's hair which  is $45 locally.

Made lunches and fishing day picnic $150.

I made a huge amount of pumpkin soup in the crockpot. Froze portions. I will say $50 savings based on ready made soups in the supermarket.

That was my lunch most days.

I made 36 large pumpkin scones. These are $3 each at our local bakery.  $90. Ridiculous I know!

Made 45 serves of wholesome baby food. Saving $100.

This is $465 right there.
There are lots of little bits and pieces that saved too. But they are the main things.

I find it really interesting to find out what things cost! Mimi made a good point the other day when she commented about the wool wash,  how beautiful it smells and what a good job it does on woollens. Now you could take your blankets etc to the dry cleaners instead. I wonder what that would cost? Similarly when I wash the quilt or something like that... people pay a lot to have things professionally cleaned. I need to take notice of just how much these things cost as I always am happy to do these things myself. You save much more than you know most probably!


This weeks "extra savings" is to look in new places in the supermarket. I love to look in entirely new places and try different shops, wholesalers, spice markets and so on as many times we can find a huge price difference. But today I am just talking about in your usual shops where you often buy groceries.
My most regular place at the moment is our local Woolworths supermarket. When Aldi is closer to us it will be Aldi.

We all are creatures of habit. Most of us even go the same way around the supermarket every time and do things in the same order. It is easy to go onto "automatic pilot" and sail around looking in the usual places, getting the same things.
Every now and then I like to take a heap more time and REALLY LOOK. Often you will find the same things in different departments, in different packaging and at different prices!
For example chicken. Chicken is in several departments. First there are the cooked chickens. They are the rotisserie chickens and very good and fresh in our supermarket.  It is currently mostly cheaper to buy a cooked chicken than a raw one!
Then there is a section of roasted items and you can buy part of a cooked chicken.
There is raw chicken in the deli department, plus cold roast segments, sliced pressed chicken, crumbed chicken...
Then there is the meat department. You can get all kinds of cut up chicken plus whole or marinated whole birds to roast.  Mostly it it cheaper to buy a whole chicken than two breast fillets, for me in my location at least.
Then there is the freezer apartment. You can get every type of chicken imaginable, fresh, roasted, sliced, crumbed...
Then there is canned chicken.
Usually in our supermarket the raw chicken in the deli department is much cheaper than the exact same thing in the meat department. Just wrapped differently.

Some of my best ever meat buys have been from the freezer department. Which means I missed out for a long time as mostly I never even looked in the freezer department!

Helen told me that she got ready chopped veggies marked down so cheaply it was cheaper to buy them than cut her own.
That was a !!! moment as I never look in pre chopped veggies. I assume they are going to be much more expensive. And they are UNLESS they are clearing them!

These are the kind Helen got and they were so cheap they beat everything else! Who would have thought? So now I check every time.

So lesson learned! Now I look in the prepared vegetables and also frozen vegetables! You never know!

Our supermarket has several areas to look at regularly for mark downs. But it is tricky. Bakery type items are usually on two special shelves in the store. But sometimes they are marked down right where they were put out in the first place, sometimes they are moved so everyone sees them. Sometimes both. I look in each spot.
Some fruit and veggies are bagged up for fast sale. Big bags of anything are usually $3 and sit at the end of one of the rows. But sometimes they are in some random place, maybe someone else was doing the markdowns? So I look right around.

Like chicken the fish is in several areas and for vastly different prices.
Cheeses and meats are also something that varies so much one area to another.
Something like ham can be $40 a kilo if packaged and sliced but about half that in the deli department and half or less again if you buy a whole piece of ham and cut it up yourself.
A piece of beef or corned beef roasted at home will give you lunch meat at a fraction of the cost of buying actual lunch meat.

I have had some real surprises and you never know what you will find. But look in the places you never look and include the places you assume will be more expensive. Things change...  prices change, they move things! And ask. "What is the best time to come in for meat mark downs?" and such questions. I have found they just tell you and are really helpful. One person in the meat department told me the usual routine is mark downs at 2 pm and again nearer closing. So I shop at 2 pm and yes they re usually making down! It isn't a coincidence I am there at mark down time. I plan my day around it.
Having time to look when you shop can be a huge saver. The things I find! It is amazing.  What a difference it makes!

How did you save last week? As we start a new week I have soup going and we are doing things around the house as it is a public holiday for the Queens Birthday. And the sun is shining even though it is really cold!  Have a lovely day. xxx

Feather your Nest Friday, 10 June, 2016.

It has been a busy week! Also cold and wet! Most of the week was stormy and much of Australia had severe storms and floods.  Here we were fine and the rain is good for the farm but others weren't so fortunate. I hope everyone is safe and sound.

Some of the ways I saved money were:

Last weekend I made the last of my cheap bananas into more cakes and shared those around plus added to freezer and the weeks lunch box meals.

This weeks soup was pumpkin as I got a lot on a good special. Pumpkin is hard to cut up that is the only downside! Usually this takes me ages and my arm is sore so this put me off.
So I listened to Jamie Oliver and did it his way. We had a roast Monday night and before I turned the oven on to pre heat I put all the chunks of pumpkin in the bottom of the oven. It was already cut into big chunks... (I chose those as easier than whole pumpkins!)

I cooked a big leg of lamb which we got several meals and lots of cold meat from for lunches. I left the pumpkin in the whole time and also after I took the lamb out in the residual heat.

Next morning I got it out. It sliced like butter! And the soup turned out darker and richer. It was wonderful. I added two sweet potatoes and onion to the soup. I do all soups in the crockpot.

Before I blended it at the end of the day I fished out a couple of cups of the pumpkin and set it aside.

Soup was my lunches plus I got ten containers to freeze and I gave Chloe three of them. 

The next day I used the pumpkin I set aside and made three dozen large scones (biscuits) to go with soup meals and snacks.  They turned out so nice! You can add a cup of mashed pumpkin to your usual recipe. I did two large cups over the recipe x four. (eight cups SR Flour)

I am truly hopeless at scones. For years I tried and could not make them. My Nan stood over me and watched and said "these cannot fail" and they still did. 

So to my scones I add egg plus extra baking powder and now they rise! This was the cure.

Most of these were frozen. Andy took one a day to work. The girls got some. I ate them for breakfast...

The next day I had two crockpots going. Butter Chicken in one which made two meals. And baby food in the other. I used lamb bones, sweet potato, potato, pumpkin, carrots and broccoli.  At the end I added a cup of pasta and let it cook in the juices then removed it and set that aside as a little addition to meals for Harper. Last I removed the bones and left a little bit of meat on them as she will also sit and chew a bone for about an hour!  Then I blended the veggies and meat.  I got 45 portions! 

So healthy, with bone marrow and broth....  not a drop is poured away or wasted. In the shops this is $110 worth of baby food approx but I think this is much healthier than bought stuff. 

I freeze in muffin trays, then trip them out into large bags...

I love to be able to do this and I love that it is so appreciated too. 

We had a left overs night.

I cut Andy's hair. 

With a voucher I scanned I accumulated a heap of Coles points towards a gift card.

Otherwise the usual stuff... made all lunches, used up left overs, made gifts etc.

Some of the ways I got ahead:

Lots added to the freezer. 

A birthday gift made ahead of time.

A few things added to the present cupboard.

I built up my pantry with:

10 cans of evaporated milk. A large packet of teabags. 12 rolls of garbage bags.

Today I am feathering my nest by just cleaning and tidying. Lots of cooking and activity seem to leave me with cleaning and organising to do. (ok, mess.)

The next two weeks I am having a freezer challenge. It is full to the point if I find great specials I can't fit them in there! There are so many odds and ends... half a cup of cooked rice, a huge bone from the roast lamb and 101 random things!  My challenge is to make most meals from all of this and to use my grocery money just for fresh veggies, milk etc and the rest of the money I would normally spend to go on adding to my pantry. So getting ahead!

I will write down the meals as I go. I am planning baked rice custard from that rice to begin with.

How was your week? How did you build up your home, get ahead, save money...?

Have a great Friday and weekend. I am working on a new blanket I started and embroidering a deer onto a little top. Also making a chocolate birthday cake for a gift. Staying in and staying warm basically! xxx

The Christmas Challenge. Show and Tell for May.

Our May Show and Tell is a little late as I went to the farm last week!

I love seeing what you have all been making and hearing how the present cupboards are building up! We are nearly at the mid year point!  It is a good time to have a review of how we are going and also think what do we have covered and what do we need to be working on?

Because of being a week late I am trying to fit this all into one post and go on to other things next week or the month will get away from me! Also I feel a bit disorganised so I truly hope I haven't forgotten anyone! Please tell me if I have and it is not on purpose that is for sure. I just had many weeks of photos and I didn't write things down as I should!

Firstly Maria made a giant Diabetic recipe Fruit cake. Beautiful and could be a gift or for everyone at home!

She is working on rugs for her Grandchildren. Maria is crocheting them in strips which she will join at the end. These will be beautiful gifts and her Grandson has shown so much love and appreciation  for anything Grandma makes. So he is going to love this and feel very special.

This is something not to be underestimated. I found that the girls loved it when I made them clothes or nighties. It made them feel special. They knew I had made this for them especially. It was always a special reaction. And since I have found the same thing with rugs I have made and given away (and also cakes actually The person can't believe you did all this for THEM. It is a beautiful thing!

Mel C (if you are reading Mel I am thinking of you and hoping you are recovering from your dentist visit and resting!) ...
Mel had a really busy and productive month! She made lovely candles in teacups with saucers...

Mel showed me her gift cupboard and it is looking good! So beautiful to see things you have made all lined up and ready to give. She also made heaps of preserves and I love the presentation!...

Mel also made soaps and many other things I spy in her present cupboard!

Leigh has made bleach dyed t shirts. This is a really good idea for young ones/teenagers which can be a harder group to make gifts for! Plus Leigh has a tutorial! See here. This is so helpful, I love it! Thank you Leigh!

Mimi has been making lots of things! Have a look on her blog at the edible glitter which is just gorgeous. Also the pegs, cards and divine gift bags...

Mimi has provided a free print out so that you can make your own crafts with these pretty miniatures... here. 

Fiona has been making pouches for kangaroo babies (joeys) and currently providing towels, which she hunts for at op shops, to a lady who hand rears baby wombats! This is Fiona bottle feeding a wombat!  

She is about to make more pouches. As we have kangaroos at the farm I have a strong imagine of joeys jumping into the pouch and what a warm happy place a pouch is! What a beautiful thing to do Fiona.

Vicky made a beautiful gift and sent it all the way here to me for Harper! It is a pink glittery Tutu!

The same day it arrived I took it around to try it on her!

Perfect fit! Thank you so much Vicky it is so lovely!

Jen in NZ has been very busy. She finished a rug which is for her daughter when she goes into a big bed!

How beautiful and how warm also!

Jen makes amazing things from felt. This is art really more than craft!  Amazing work.

And look at this! Jen found a baby pram for $1. She did it up, made a mattress and little blankets for it.

It is for her daughters Birthday! How beautiful. She will just love this Jen. It is bargain of the century and just so sweet. I love the little blanket.

Jane finished a shawl she was making that is now for her sister. Also a soft toy and some cards. 

I love the colours and pattern of this shawl. Also her husband built a gate between them and the neighbours and the neighbours were so pleased with it they gave them an amazing amount of fruit as thanks.

Kelsey found a heap of old magazines and has been using the beautiful images to make cards...

They are beautiful Kelsey!

Also she made her Grandmother a birthday present...

Her Grandmother loves cats so she made cat coasters in the colours of her Grandmothers decor. Well she loved them! And the card and gift bag look beautiful. Just lovely.

Jen in NC knitted her daughter a sweater... we would say top or jumper.

This is amazing knitting unlike anything I can do! She also knitted socks and made cards...

AND she finished painting her bedroom and also made bed side rugs herself. I had to post a glimpse of how pretty her room looks.... (and what a paint job too!)

Rachel has been knitting. You might remember one time she found pure wool in an op shop but it was tangled so they gave it to her for free! So here it is untangled!

Normally I zoom in on things but who is going to cut out that kind of scenery? Also her husband put the hat on the fence post for the photo. I thought thats the kind of thing my Dad would do.  Beautiful work Rachel.

Plus socks in progress...

I have to say that I get just as much pleasure seeing things in progress as complete.

Mum made a heap of gifts and warm hats and rugs for charity as well.

Currently it is really cold and this is the weather to think about giving warming things to people who need them. 

Thank you so much to everyone who sent in photos and wrote. I have tried to represent everyone but could not use every photo or this post would go on forever! 

I hope there is inspiration here for everyone.  We will have a June Show and Tell so get busy on your projects as I would love to see them.  And lets get to the middle of the year having made great progress on making our own gifts and also homewares, donations etc as well.  

See you next week with what I have been making and some ideas on how to progress through the next months and achieve our goal of a full present cupboard! 

It is raining here and I have a big pot of lamb bones and vegetables on to make baby food.  And soup for lunch that I made yesterday... as soon as I make up some pumpkin scones. This is a stay at home and indoor day which I love! I hope you are having a great week!

xxx

The Vicky Challenge. Doing the best with what you have.

I am very happy with the last week! 

For my Vicky challenge I counted:

My cooking including three dozen banana muffins and a huge cake. The muffins alone would have been over $100 in the shops. I am counting $100 as I made so much, filled the freezer and lunch boxes and gave some as gifts.

All work lunches for the week and fishing picnic for the day $150.

My beautiful shoes and necklace plus other op shop buys put me in front by over $500. 

The mushrooms... we picked over $150 with going by the shop prices. Many were given as gifts but some of the savings were still in our house so I will count $20.

Andy had a specialist appointment. Annually he has a series of heart tests. Several years back he found out by asking the right questions he saved a lot at this appointment. This time he asked and it saved over $200. It pays to ask! (that is to ask can this test be bulk billed? Can this test be done anywhere else that it can be bulk billed? etc.)

I don't know what my embroidery and crochet is worth exactly... but in the shops I saw a hand crochet granny square rug for $99 and the baby shops have pretty little tops for over $50 each. I paid $5 each for the ones I embroidered Harper. So for my rug and tops I did last week I will say $200 value generated in gifts.

This is all adding up to almost $1200. Which is mind blowing! Things sure add up especially when there is a whole variety of sources like last week.

Our extra savings ideas and thoughts this week are from Vicky...


Having the best or doing the best with what you have:

I recently had the opportunity to speak to a young couple that are just starting out and seeking advice on how to get ahead early on as both come from families of spenders rather than savers. They have opted to do things differently and really just needed a little nudge in the direction they want to go since both seemed very sincere about wanting to escape the pitfalls they feel their parents have been in.

I told them mindset is the biggest part of anything and there are two big ones:

Having the best

Doing the best with what you have

They come from families where everything had to be the best or most expensive, keeping up with the Jones's if you will. They work umpteen hours of overtime each week and if I understood right, pretty much own nothing. A home that will never be paid for, a vehicle that could get repossessed at anytime and the payment would equal a mortgage payment.  Things, things and more things all high priced all "the best". 

Things that never have tags taken off, never get used still in the box all for the sake of having them. 

So while talking to this couple we talked about doing the best with what you have. Well for most of us this may not be a new concept but for these kiddos it was like a light being turned on. We discussed how it takes discipline to stick to a budget and how doing the best with what we have gets us ahead. Helps us achieve our financial goals. Helps us to be able to save and pay cash for things. Pay off mortgages early, have money in the bank for emergencies, with stand job loss and afford a stay at home parent or partner if we choose. Well they liked that idea since neither one had an at home parent and that was also one of their goals. And they don't want the financial pressures that their families experience even if they don't grasp that they are doing it to themselves. So I told them therein lies doing the best with what you have. Not letting the world tell us that an item that is still good or still works is no longer useful and should be discarded and replaced. And especially starting out this can be a good tool to keep in the toolbox so to speak. 

In terms that younger people understand better it seems I gently explained that if your making $12 an hour and you want the best tv they make and it's $2000 you then have to work a little over 166 hours to pay for it and that is before taxes are taken out. Is it worth it? 

And then I gave them some examples of what I did with doing the best with what I had when I first started out.

I had a 3 legged kitchen table that I screwed a piece of pipe to and covered with a table cloth.

An ancient toaster that belonged to my grandma, but it still made toast just not 4 or 6 slices just 2

None of my dishes matched, but they were all white so it was ok and is actually trendy right now.

And I made do with these because they were the best I had and I did the best with what I had until slowly I was able to replace them when the other legs on the table started breaking and the table would fall over with a little bump. The toaster only made 1 piece of toast instead of 2 and saved me the decision of replacing it when it just quit working. 

If you are in a spot where you are doing the best with what you have most of us have been there and can appreciate your fortitude! 

So whether we are new at the game or an old pro it never hurts to do the best with what have!.

XOXO

Vicky

I hope they listened Vicky! How many people have worked hard only to own nothing at the end of it all? I have known people who seem quite wealthy but it is all smoke and mirrors. In truth the car is hired, the contents are all on payment plans and the credit card debt and mortgage are incredible. They actually  own nothing! Now that is their choice. But if hard times strike what will happen to them? 

I love the saying "do what you can with what you have, where you are." we can all do that and our energy and creativity can achieve a lot!

How did you save last week? I hope looking back it was a great week and that we are set for another one!

xxx

Feather your Nest Friday, 3 June, 2016.

Welcome to June! For us that is the beginning of winter too.

This week I went to the farm to see my Dad for his Birthday. That is why I didn't post on Wednesday and also I have not replied individually to comments but I can see Kelsey did a very good job for me. Thank you so much Kelsey and everyone. I almost started replies then realised I would never get todays post up either!

It seems like it was a really long week as lots happened. Starting at the beginning...

 I did a lot of cooking on the weekend. Bananas were on a big special and I bought some that were further marked down. So I made a huge slab of Banana Cake.

Then I made three dozen Banana Muffins/cakes? (same recipe just in muffin trays) plus three giant sized ones.
Excuse my wonky icing. I froze a heap, sent them on the fishing trip for the boys, gave the girls some each...

I finished my pink and cream rug, finally. Mum is making a knitted hat with the left over yarn to go with it. This is going into the present cupboard.

On the way to the farm I called in to three towns. It is a three hour trip and I pass some lovely little places.  First I went to the Adelaide Hills and went to Aldi. They had some of the skin care I was madly chasing and marked down. Now I think I have enough of the foundation until next time it comes out too.

Then I stopped at a little tiny town that has a wonderful op shop. Oh my goodness I was so lucky! My favourite brand of shoes are Zierra as they are very comfortable and don't kill my feet! They had my size in a colour I love!  Plus I picked up a necklace for $3 because it was layers of pearls.
When Chloe saw it she pointed out it is Mimco and was a $250 necklace!

I also stopped at another tiny town and got fabric, curtains for Chloe, another necklace and two gorgeous cardigans!  

Happy day! I love what I got, spent a few dollars and feel spoiled. I think, apart from such treats for so little, op shopping has another effect. I basically never feel like going actual retail shopping. If I shop I imagine finding things in the op shop for a dollar or two and it basically removes all temptation. I have had my retail therapy, am thrilled, and I'm done. The shoes plus the necklace alone would be $500 plus in the regular shops. It seems silly! 

When I got to the farm everything looked green and lush and the fire was on.

Mum was cooking, as usual, and I had to take a photo of cakes she just took out of the oven.

There are almost always ducklings at the farm and I always visit them.

On Dad's birthday Mum made a Black Forest cake. Here it is before she put it together...

And after...

Also Mum had a lot of crochet out as she was sending it to go off to two charities. She does this very regularly and even gets to hear some of the nice stories that come back about who received various things. The hats  and headbands are going to cancer patients. 

In the afternoon Dad took some rare time off and asked if we would like to go mushrooming? 

YES! So off we went and a couple of hours later we returned with these...

The larger red tray was too heavy for me to lift. It took two of us to get it out of the car!

It was so much fun and we had so many we made some trays to give away. Chloe took some to work and they were gratefully received.

I brought some home and we had steak and mushrooms for dinner last night. (Plus I have loads more still)

While away I finished three tops for Harper. I gave the fox a bow so she is now a girl!  Plus two bunnies with tails.

When I got home the first thing I saw was that neighbours had put out on the kerb two half round wrought iron tables. I love fancy wrought iron. They need new tops and painting etc.... but I will get to that!

Finally I got a huge bag of apples for $3. I am planning apple pies and apple muffins. I will also do a pork roast and apples.

This week I mixed up my money saving, nest building and getting ahead into one report.  But it was some of each. It was a good week.

I hope you had a great week. How did you feather your nest, save and get ahead?
Have a lovely weekend. I am off to babysit for a little while this afternoon and the sun has made an appearance!

xxx