Making Good Use

Small Mercies

Whilst I loathe this dank, dark time of year with a total passion, and I feel like I am being slowly suffocated in the endless, endless hours of darkness, at least there are some small mercies to be grateful for.

Small mercy 1.  I live in the driest county in England - Essex - where, apparently, the rainfall is less even than Jerusalem and Beirut.  I gather from my poor family in Bristol that it has rained, sleeted, snowed etc etc fairly relentlessly there for days on end - with yesterday being so bad it was barely daylight all day.  Thankfully, here in Essex we had a cold but bright and sunny day.

Small mercy 2. The mahoosive Post Office queue on Tuesday - it was out the door and halfway down the precinct when I joined it - was much more manageable this morning.  I was very gratful for that small mercy I can tell you.  And on that note, I should add small mercy 2a - at least I'm still selling items on eBay and Amazon at a steady pace.

Small mercy 3. It's only six more days until we get to the shortest day.  Hoo-bloody-rah.  Even if we won't see any perceptible difference in the daylight for weeks yet, at least we know that technically the worst of the dark will be behind us.

Small mercy 4.  The winter flowering jasmine is beginning to blossom - those teeny tiny little yellow flowers are such a cheerful sight. 

I do realise that I'm lucky to not have anything really major to worry about - just this miserable time of year - so maybe that should be small (or even very large) mercy number 5. 

Luggage Label Gift Tags

I was absolutely certain that they'd have some nice gift tags for sale at yesterday's Cat's Protection League Christmas Fair, wrong - they had a lovely selection of Christmas cards at excellent prices - but not a single gift tag to be found.  So when I got home I had to put my 'inventiveness hat' on and see what I already had that I could make gift tags from.

Cue a pile of brown card luggage labels, some stick-on red wooden hearts (and ladybirds), all of which have been accumulated from boot sales over the past year or so, and a session with my lovely fountain pen, and I've got me some gift tags.

I don't normally bother with gift labels but this year some of the presents are handmade and some are thrifted so I wanted to warn each receipient which is what before they open their pressies!!

A couple of nicely festive green luggage labels were also found, gussied up with some Christmassy do-dahs that were knocking around, and pressed into service as Plum Vodka gift tags.

Thrifted Cookware

Maureen kindly commented on my last post, saying how much she liked my enamel dish.  Yeah, I thought, I found that at a jumble sale when I lived in Nottingham (15 / 16 years ago now.)  Then I got to thinking that, actually, pretty much all my cookware is from jumble sales or boot sales,

Four enamel baking dishes - three from the jumble in Nottingham and one other from goodness knows where, possibly my aunt when she moved into a care home (I've certainly got her metal colander which is used pretty much every day, plus another green and cream enamel one which, again came from a jumble in Nottingham.)

A large black, white and grey speckled enamel baking tray which came from a jumble sale approx. 20 years ago at the church hall in Warmley near Bristol.  I love this tray, there's something rather French about the speckled enamel and it is big enough to roast all sorts of things in the oven on it.  Next to it is a round enamel pie dish in cream with green edging which I paid 5p for at a car boot sale two or three years ago.  It has also proved to be incredibly versatile for baking smaller amounts on in the oven - though I've never actually used it to bake a pie as I'm not very keen on pastry.

Three smallish Pyrex dishes - all found since I've lived in Wickford.  These get used A LOT to cook things in and to serve things from at the table.  One or other of them is often used as a salad bowl or a vegetable dish when we're having our evening meal.

An enormous Pyrex dish which I paid 50p for a year or so ago.  I hesitated about buying it as a) I had to cart it home in a bag and it was tres heavy, and b) I thought it might be too large for us but, no, I use it quite regularly.

And the ubiquitous rose-print Pyrex which I was given many years ago by a friend who was clearing out her parent's house.  I've used this dish almost as many times as I've had hot dinners since!!

And that's just the cookware, I'm pretty sure all my crockery is thrifted too - with maybe the odd mug as an exception - as is most of my cutlery, except the odd piece of gorgeous Habitat cutlery that I bought nearly 30 years ago and which I still love just as much now as I did then.  Wish I'd been able to afford to buy a whole canteen of it all those years ago, it's fabulous. 

Very occasionally I have to buy something for the kitchen new in a shop (I'm particularly good at dropping Pyrex measuring jugs on our stone-tiled kitchen floor - they inevitably smash with a sound akin to a small nuclear explosion) and the price of cookware retail always give me an attack of the vapours - thank goodness I like thrifting.

Using Up the Leftovers

Tonight's evening meal was a tasty concoction made from using up the leftovers from the previous two evenings.

The blanched outer leaves of a cabbage (the inner we had with a lot of other veggies and some roast chicken yesterday evening - and the veggies left from that were souped up for lunch today) stuffed with what was left from Monday evening's quorn spaghetti bolognaise - with a bit of plain rice added to make it go a bit further.

Topped off with a plain white sauce - sadly, made from a packet mix these days as it's much lower in saturated fat than if I made it from scratch - baked for 30 minutes in the oven with the merest sprinkling of some grated parmesan on the top halfway through cooking to give it a teensy bit of a cheese taste.  It was jolly delicious and warming - just the ticket for a cold, windy evening.

Bottling Up

Today seemed a good time to bottle up the four Kilner jars of plum vodka that have been quietly marinading in the sideboard since the end of July.  I was very surprised by the number of bottles I managed to fill with the gorgeous pink vodka.  I'm still not sure how two large bottles of vodka plus half a very small one and a whole pile of plums, turned into two large and three small bottle of tres tasty plum vodka - but I'm certainly not complaining.  Good job I'd saved both the original vodka bottles as well as the three organic cordial bottles otherwise I'd have run out of suitable containers.

The smaller bottles are ear-marked as Christmas presents for various people, whilst the two large bottles are for P and I to enjoy over the winter.

The colour is glorious, and the taste is pretty good too - there has already been a small taster session this afternoon.  I'll certainly be repeating this experiment - hic!!

I'm Looking Forward to ....

.... The Ultimate Guide to Penny Pinching on Channel 4 this evening.  I'm hoping I can pick up a few more useful tips in the quest to save a bit of cash, although I'm not sure I could go as far as to eat roadkill - which apparently one of the penny pinchers featured does!!  Anyway, in the spirit of penny pinching, I thought I'd pass on a couple of very useful tips my Mum has given me - and they both work a treat, I can guarantee that.

1.  If you use the 'steam' function on your steam iron, it will conk out in no time - use a mist bottle filled with plain water if you need to 'steam' what you're ironing,  I went through three irons in very quick succession before I realised that my Mum was spot on, it's the steam function that seems to knacker them totally - don't know why this is but it's certainly true.

2.  Always wash underwired bras by hand to stop the wires snapping.  Again, it took me A LOT of broken bra wires to realise that Mum was right, we think it's the tumbling and banging they get in a washing machine that causes the wires to snap so if you wash them through by hand it's a lot more gentle on the wire.  I only have two bras and they both get washed by hand only, so far they've lasted me about 2 and a half years without snapping,  I really should buy a couple more bras but I'm so awkwardly shaped - extremely broad back but only need a B cup  - that I put off buying bras for as long as possible.  Plus, they're expensive little blighters to buy these days.

3.  Finally, a penny pinching idea that was all my own - although probably patently obvious to everyone else - ignore the 'rinse and repeat' nonsense on shampoo bottles and only shampoo your hair once.  Took me, oh, about 45 years to work that one out but it really does work just as well as shampooing twice.

 

Too Quick to Count as Crafting

In amongst the busyness that is mega eBay listing, packing of items sold, trips to the Post Office, mega amounts of time on the sewing machine (for 'elving' purposes) and the decision to take advantage of today's dry, sunny and breezy weather to take down, wash, dry, iron and hang back up the dining room curtains (I would be ashamed to admit how long they've been hanging without having been washed!!!!) I made a couple of really really speedy crafted projects.

Some of last week's thrifted fairy tale playing cards were stuck onto card blanks using double-sided tape - it took far longer to locate the card blanks than it did to make the cards, which says quite a lot about the state of my craft supplies (and my house in general!)

And some mega-sized plastic buttons that I found in a charity shop ages ago have been turned into some lightweight brooches with the addition of some glued on brooch backs.  A few of these should brighten up my darker-coloured winter jumpers nicely without pulling too heavily on the fabric.  Both these projects were so quick and so simple it seems almost silly to even call them crafting.

Busy Saturday

It was a busy day for me on Saturday, with not one, not two, but three Christmas Bazaar's in the local area.  Whether by design or accident the start times were all nicely staggered and two of the venues were in outlying villages so there was some pretty scenery to admire en route too.  Amongst many many things I found at the three various bazaars there were

Two Redken Time Reset shampoo and conditioner sets - for porous age-weakened hair - which pretty much sums up my barnet well these days.  I paid £1.50 per box and was delighted to have found them.

A generously-sized Matt & Nat shoulder bag, described as eco vegan (!!) for £2.50.  I liked the colour and the fact that it is nicely capacious so I can cram quite a lot of 'stuff' in it.

A little light bedtime reading for 50p.  This book is a whopper and could easily pass itself off as a doorstop.  I quite like Elizabeth George novels and as the original price was £18.99, I considered this an excellent bargain.

A bag full of the most delightful vintage crochet thread which must date from the war as the wrapper on the green spool states it is 'coupon free', many of them are still wrapped in the original tissue paper.  They were 50p for the bag load.

And a bright and vibrant 1960s bag, also 50p.  This was lurking in a bin bag behind the linen stall but I spotted the bright print and asked if it was for sale - it was.  It's got a lovely waterproof lining so will be great for taking to the beach or if I go swimming anywhere.

After all the to-ing and fro-ing to various church / village hall venues, P and I had an appointment to view a house that's for sale.  I was a little suspicious of the estate agent's details as they failed to give any specific sizes to the 'double' bedrooms, nor did they have a photo of the downstairs 'study.'  Hmm, all became clear when we looked round as the 'study' was off the kitchen, had no heating and barely any daylight, was fitted out with kitchen units and was used by the present owner's as a storage area!!  It was plainly a utility room.  The 'utility room' as described by the estate agent turned out to be a cupboard in the hall that housed the washing machine!!  To cap it all off, the back 'garden' was basically a paved yard - which faces north, the fourth bedroom may have accommodated a double bed but that would be the only item it could accommodate (and you'd have to be a contortionist to get into said double bed) the 'en suite' was a shower and loo in a cupboard, there was no bath in the house only showers and the asking price was about 25% too high.  To say I was not happy was putting it mildly. 

Now, I have looked at A LOT of houses for sale in the last few years but never have I come across such flagrant misrepresentation as there was in this house's particulars.  I had a few words to say to the half-wit who phoned me this morning to ask what we thought of the property!!  By the time I rang off I'll bet he wished he'd never asked.  Gordon Bennett, why can't some estate agents just be honest in their descriptions of properties, trying to pass off an unheated utility room as a study is just going to p*ss off anyone who goes to view the place, it certainly peeved me a great deal!!

Kop Ingenting

Kop ingenting means, I think, 'buy nothing' in Swedish (I'm hoping my sister - who is most impressively teaching herself Swedish - will let me know if I've got this phrase wrong.)  So, anyway, this Christmas I'm trying to be as creative as possible with my presents, and whilst I can't claim to have bought 'ingenting' so far, I have bought very little.  There has, on the other hand, been some quite serious crafting (or 'elving' as the wonderful Soulemama refers to it,)  none of which I can share on the blog until after Christmas - though the bottom drawer of my wardrobe is filling up nicely with homemade and thrifted gifts. 

There is also some pretty serious eBay listing going on too as this is THE best time of the year for eBay selling for me.  Most joyously, I've even sold some of my handmade items lately which always makes me very happy indeed.

Tomorrow there are three Christmas Bazaars in the vicinity - two of them in fairly rural locations - so with P as my chauffeur I'll be tootling off to those to see what's on offer.  Next Saturday there are another two and then that will probably be that for another year.

The plum vodka should be bottled up this weekend too, providing I can get hold of a cheap plastic funnel somewhere in the high street.  I'm looking forward to having a small glass of it in the near future and seeing if it tastes as good as it looks - it's now a lovely delicate plumy pink colour.

Little Things

I don't know what it is about tiny things that I like so much but somehow most things are much cuter when they're miniature.  Somewhere in the depths of the loft I have a box full of teeny tiny items to be displayed in a printer's tray.  Although those little items are an absolute pain in the proverbials to dust, I used to love having my printer's tray and miniatures out on display.  Ah, one day, when we're finally settled somewhere, I'll get them all out again.

Meanwhile, I found three teeny tiny little bottle brush Christmas trees at the Coffee and Jumble yesterday.  They were 50p for all three and I'm really rather enamoured of them.  They were probably originally Christmas cake decorations but they'd look equally good in a festive doll's house.  They'd also look jolly nice in my printer's tray but I've no intention of hauling that down from the attic at the moment.

I also found a large pile of vintage children's fairy story cards.  The illustrations are lovely and I'm thinking they may make some nice greetings cards at some point.   They were also 50p for the entire bundle.