Pages

Tuesday 23 October 2012

Frugalism vs Simple Living are they one and the same

Ive been asking myself this question for a while now and I still dont know the answer so comments are more than welcome on this one. I have been living a frugal life for around 3 years or so now and I like to think of myself as being pretty good at it. I gave my car up 3 years ago and bought a bicycle instead, I moved to an all electric property in the hopes of installing solar panels at some point so we can live off grid, I started shopping at charity shops, started using sites such as Freecycle/ Freegle/ and JFTLOI. I learnt how to shop more wisely and price check everything, I learnt to look for vouchers and coupons on items and events, I learnt how to repair items instead of throwing them away, and I learnt crafts so I could make things by hand either for gifts or for my familys wants and needs. All this said ive noticed a trend in the simple living blogs I read. They all seem to have veggie gardens, keep chickens, and will buy only local produce with a concern on food miles. I have tried many times to start a veggie garden and been unsuccessfull every time. I would love to keep chickens but just can not afford the start up costs at this moment in time. I would love to buy only local produce and support local business's and local farmers but at this moment in time my purse just will not allow it. Here in the UK food prices are at an all time high and set to rise even further. That combined with rising fuel costs, rising energy costs, rising public transport costs etc etc I now buy what I can afford not what I want and im affraid morals have somewhat gone out the window. My priority right now is reducing my debt as quickly as possible so that we can afford to have morals on food miles and buying local produce again. So that I can afford the start up costs of keeping chickens. So all this said am I living a frugal life or a simple life or maybe some where in between ? Maybe in order to live a simple life you have to follow a path starting with frugalism in order to get to your final destination of simple living I know I still have a lot to learn and am so gratefull for all the blogs and writtings avalible to me nowadays teaching me how to move closer to my goal of simple living. Please feel free to comment on this post all CONSTRUCTIVE critism on where Imay be going wrong is more than welcome.

Much Love
Claire
xx xx xx

The Start Of A New Week

We was very busy yesterday (Monday) as soon as I got up I got the children ready for school and tidied the house whilst Lee had a lie in. He has been working a lot of 12 hour night shifts recently so I didnt mind he needed to catch up on his sleep. I did some more washing had a shower and got myself ready. I really wanted to go out and get a few things in town but felt mean waking Lee up so waited untill 11am before doing so. We went into town and had a look in the charity shops where we got some nice items. I got myself 2 pairs of shoes, a pair of trousers and top, a jumper for Brandon, and a lovely Thomas the Tank engine night gown for Brandon. I have put the nightgown away as one of his xmas presents and I just know he is going to love it. I also got some more wool for the scarfs I am making as xmas presents and a plastic funnel for the homemade toiletry xmas gifts I am making this year. I also got some foil containers that I wanted as I plan to make up some family meals for the frezzer this week. By this time we were tired and hungry so we treated ourselves to lunch out. When we were finished we came home and unpacked just in time for picking up the boys from school. Lee went to collect the boys for me as Baby had an appointment at the vets for her vaccinations. I always feel mean taking the animals to the vets but I know its for their own good in the long run. When I got back from the vets it was time for dinner I made a yummy carbonara pasta bake with cheesey garlic bread which was delicious. Then it was bath and bed time for the boys. Once the boys were in bed I sat down to write my weekend blog post, did a little knitting, and did a little housework before going to bed myself.

My etsy shop is now open just click on the ad in my side bar to view the items I currently have in stock.

Remember these

 
 Well this is what they look like now

 
 
 
They are avalible in my etsy shop at just £2.99 each. There will be more stock added just as soon as I can get some decent photos of it.

Much Love
Claire
xx xx xx

Our Weekend

This weekend has been pretty quite as Brad and Brandon were at restpite and Lee was at work which left just me and Ben at home. I love the times I get to spend with my children just one on one I get to focus purely on them. I have managed to get back on top of the mountain of washing that had accumalated whilst I was unwell using my homemade laundry detergent. Some of the boys white school shirts were so badly stained that they did not come up in the wash. So I decided to bleach them overnight and rewash them in the hope of saving them. Im pleased to say this worked and saved me having to get rid of 6 good school shirts.

Washing to be done
 
Washing to put away
 
 
 
I was also inspired by a post written by Rhonda Hetzel at her blog Down To Earth entitled Junk Drawer Challenge. You can find the post here http://down---to---earth.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/junk-drawer-challenge.html#comment-form
I have a drawer in my kitchen that the boys use for their stationary and colours which it has to be said was a complete mess here is a before picture.

 
I just recently bought Brandon some new pants and the packaging they came in was basicly a pencil case so I saved both packets and used them for this task. Here is the packaging I am refering to.

 
I emptied out the drawer and put things into piles all the pencils together, all the crayons together, all the other items such as sissors / rulers / rubbers etc together. I put all the pencils in one set of packaging, all the crayons that were not broken into another set of packaging, and all the other items into a pencil tin that was in the drawer already. I pulled the drawer out and gave it a good clean before putting everthing back and this is how it looks now.

 
I had a large number of broken crayons left over so decided to make some teddy shaped crayons for the boys using these left over broken bits. I put them into piles colour matching as closely as possible.

 
I then peeled the paper from the crayons leaving just the wax crayon itself.

 
I then cut up the crayons into small pieces and put them into my teddy bear silicone moulds.

 
 
 
I put these in the oven at 240 for about 10 minutes untill the wax had melted. I then took them out of the oven and using the end of a paint brush gave the wax a good mix to get a solid colour as opposed to a rainbow effect colour. I then left them to sit on the side for a few hours to cool and solifiy and then poped them out of the moulds and this is what we had.

 
Some fun teddy bear crayons
 
 
The boys were very impressed with these and have been having great fun using them. I have also been busy catching up on my blog reading. I have around 6 blogs that I follow religously and had not read for about 2 months so that meant a lot of reading. It was just what I needed to get my head back into the zone of frugalism and simple living so thank you ladies for your inspirational posts.

I also made a start on one of the 5 scarfs im hoping to get done as xmas presents one for each of my 3 boys, one for Lee, and one for my god-daughter Leia. Appologys for the picture quality my camera has been playing up a bit recently and I need to get Lee to take a look at it for me. I will post a much clearer picture when I get the chance.

 
 
Hope you have all had a good productive weekend at your homesteads.
Much Love
Claire
xx xx xx

Saturday 20 October 2012

Very Very Unwell

Over the last few weeks I have been extremly unwell with my Menieres Disease it has completely stopped me in my tracks and a lot of the time I have had to rely on help from my partner Lee and several of my friends just to get the day to day things done in the house. I have had 2 ambulances called out to me one of which wanted me to go into hospital which I declined as there is nothing that can be done for my condition in hospital that cant be done at home i.e medication and lots of rest. Several doctors appointments and an urgent referral back to my specialist and it looks like im going to have to have more surgery on my ears something im really not looking forward to. So as you can see frugalism has been the last thing on my mind recently and as such im afraid I have very little to report in that respect. I do have some news though Lee and I have decided to live together we have a few things to sort out first but we are aiming for early 2013. New year new start as they say. It will be so nice to have him here all the time especially when I get sick he has a way of calming me down and getting me through the worst of MD attacks. Today I am feeling a little better and the eldest and youngest Till's are at restpite and Lee is at work till tomorow evening so its just me and Ben at home for the weekend giving me time to get back on top of things. Especially the mountain of washing that has accumalated while I have been unwell. The plan is to get back to my frugal living and start my blogging again. However MD is very unpredictable so if I disapper for a while again then you can be sure the MD is upto its old tricks again.

Much Love
Claire
xx xx xx