Making Good Use

Poorly Person

Poor P is quite the poorly person at the moment.  It started last week with a cough and cold and by Saturday he was feeling a lot better.  Sunday morning however he had deteriorated dramatically and was short of breath, had an upset tummy, was boiling hot, had no appetite and couldn't get out of bed.  He was only a little better by this morning so I phoned the doctor for a telephone consultation (no way am I going near a doctor's surgery at the moment!!)  I didn't actually get to speak to the doctor! but passed all the relevant information on to his receptionist, who them spoke to the doctor and got back to me to say he thought it might be swine flu.  Hmm, not totally convinced by that diagnosis - it seems swine flu is the catch-all diagnosis du jour.  The bottom line is P has to drink loads, stay in bed and take paracetamol - pretty much standard treatment for any virus. 

So far, keeping everything crossed, I feel fine - if a tad chilly due to the sub-zero temperatures here today.  I was going to have my usual 'meal for one' evening meal of salad and jacket potato but it's really too cold to contemplate salad so I'm making myself a sausage casserole with mashed potato.  Hopefully, a good hot meal will keep my strength up to ward off the germs and might actually warm my fingers and toes too.

Bringing Down the Shutters on my Ebay for Another Year

This evening the last of my ebay items for this year will come to the end of its listing.  To be honest, I won't be sorry to have a small break from the endless photographing of objects (VERY tedious in the half-light that passes for daytime at this time of year), listing, packing and, most tedious of all, standing in a HUGE queue at the post office to post them all out. 

I've done reasonably well this year on ebay, but have done very well since September when I really upped the ante with listing items for sale.  Since then I have averaged £50 - £60 a week of sales and have managed to declutter the house (to a certain extent!) into the bargain. 

I did really well with selling vintage Christmas items in September and October (but not so well in December - why is that?) which I'll certainly bear in mind for next year.  I've found that plus sized clothes sell well at any time of the year - but not in the run-up to Christmas (another thing to remember next year.)  I've managed to clear my wardrobe of quite a few items that I just never really wore and have now got a lot more room to store and use those items that I really do like and / or wear frequently.  This has been immensely satisfying both financially and de-cluttering-wise.

I also sold some vintage linen tea towels that were just lurking about in my large pile of fabric - I'd forgotten I had them so was well pleased to get on average £5 per tea towel when the listings finished.  I'll be keeping an eye open for more vintage linen items in the future - especially at next year's car boot sales.  I'm also on the look-out for copies of the Kit Williams book 'Masquerade.'  I'm sure I've seen them about fairly frequently (but, of course, not at the moment!!) as they are priced from £95 upwards on Amazon!!  I do have a copy myself but that's up in the loft and, besides, I really don't want to sell it as I've had it for 30 years.  I think I've always assumed it was the sort of book that the world and his wife bought at the time and that therefore would only sell for peanuts - which just goes to show how little I know about second-hand books.

Have you any suggestions about what sells well on ebay - and when?

And, Yes, It Was Very Tasty

Yup, if anyone is interested, yesterday's evening meal turned out to be very tasty indeed.  It's amazing what you can make a meal from if you get your thinking hat on.  P and I both enjoyed it so much we had seconds - I can see me making stuffed cabbage leaves quite frequently from now on.

There was some of the rice/veg/bacon stuffing left over so I had that with a drop more cheese sauce on it for my lunch today.  I don't usually have a hot lunch but today was so nippy that having a really tasty warm lunch was lovely - and helped me put off switching the heating on for a bit longer.

Tonight for tea we've got steak pie made from a tin of stewed steak I found on the shelf yesterday, whilst  frantically looking for the elusive tins of tuna, and topped with puff pastry.  I usually make my own pastry but I really hate doing it (can't abide the smell of fat on my hands) so I was delighted when I spotted frozen puff pasty in Aldi for 45p.  At that price you can't really go wrong.  We'll be having potatoes, carrots and the rest of the cabbage with it.  For 29p that cabbage has proved very useful.

I've spent most of the afternoon grappling with iron-on interfacing.  Yikes, that stuff is horrible to handle and would have stuck like glue to the base of my iron if I'd not suddenly thought that somewhere on t'internet I'd come across a tip that said don't, whatever you do, iron directly onto the interfacing or your iron will be eternally jiggered.  Whoever gave that tip - thanks very much - it's quite true and a sheet of printer paper between the iron and the interfacing certainly saved the day.  I'd love to show what it is I've been working on but, yet again, it's a surprise for someone for Christmas.  I'll be very glad once Christmas is over and I can finally reveal some of the things I've been making.

And Then I Found I Had No Tuna

I'm not a great one for eating fish, and for many years the nearest I got to fresh fish was fish fingers.  These days I'm slightly more adventurous in that I will eat tinned salmon or tuna.  Just lately I've had quite a craving for tinned fish - presumably I'm lacking something in my diet - and have eaten a lot of salmon and cucumber sandwiches.  Today, I fancied making a tuna pasta bake.  I found a lovely recipe on t'internet and was convinced I had all the ingredients necessary.  Luckily for me, I decided to just double check on the ingredients before I set off for my chiropractor's appointment.  Would you Adam and Eve it, I had no tinned tuna.

I knew I didn't have time to get to Aldi before my appointment and also knew I wouldn't feel like schlepping down there afterwards either - rather tender after having been soundly pummelled by the chiropractor.  So, it was back to the drawing board for tonight's meal.

At the back of the fridge I found a pointy cabbage - bought last week for 29p in Aldi and still wrapped.  Amazingly enough, (what do they spray these veggies with?) it appared to be as fresh as a daisy so my mind started thinking along the lines of stuffed cabbage leaves.   I knew I had rice but didn't know what else was knocking about to make the stuffing with.  From the depths of my very small fridge I managed to find half a pack of smoked bacon, (bought by mistake but rather tasty) half an onion, a sweet red pepper and a beef tomato.  The onion, pepper and bacon were fried off in a frying pan, I skinned the huge tomato and chopped that up finely and added it to the mixture with a chopped garlic clove.  Finally, I added half a tin of sweetcorn, a dollop of tomato puree and a pinch of mixed herbs.  I added all this to some cooked basmati and left it whilst I had my lunch and whilst the outer cabbage leaves were cooling from their five-minute dip in boiling water.

After lunch I put a good large tablespoonful or two of the mixture in each cabbage leaf, rolled it up and now all I have to do is make a cheese sauce to cover the lot and bake in the oven for half an hour or so.  They look quite good but the proof, as always, will be in the eating.  I'll let you know tomorrow if they were any good or not.

The Easiest Make - Ever

Well, that was the easiest little make I've ever done.  One extremely ancient and falling apart towelling dressing gown into two wash mitts.  Probably two minutes each mitt - tops.

I'm afraid I can't take any credit for the idea - that was all down to my clever Mum.  She'd kept hold of my old dressing gown (16 years old at least, and a good advertisement for the hard-wearing qualities of cheap Asda clothing) and when I asked why, she said she was going to make some wash mitts from it.  I offered to make the mitts for her and brought the dressing gown home with me.  I have all sorts of ideas for using up other parts of it - batting inside hot pads as well as the backing to a small rug for our very cold kitchen floor.  Of course, when I'll ever get round to doing those projects is another thing but, for now, I'm well pleased with the mitts.  (Mum, let me know if two are enough or if you want me to do some more for you.)  One bonus of being 'plus sized' is there's plenty of fabric in any clothing item if you want to reuse it!!

Trying Housework as an Alternative to Central Heating

We recently had the gas bill for the end of July to end of October quarter - it was £70 or thereabouts.  Now, this would be a very reasonable gas bill if it was for a winter quarter but, bearing in mind we'd only had the central heating switched on for a few evenings in October, this bill was a bit of a shock.

We never switch the hot water or heating on at all during the summer and we know for a fact that the heating / hot water was off most of June and all of July, August and September and only on for maybe half a dozen evenings in October.  So if a total of perhaps 12 - 15 hours of switching on the heating gives a bill of £70, the next question is what on earth is the bill for the quarter end of October to end of January going to be?  Especially as we'd become rather cavalier about switching the heating on whenever either of us felt a tad chilly.

Oddly enough, I didn't feel the need to put the heating on until early evening at all yesterday - which was good.  Then today I read Ilona's post about not putting on the heating and I thought I'll really have to make a start at cutting down on our usage of the central heating too.  With that in mind, I've been doing bits and bobs of ironing all day today - warming up after ironing a couple of P's shirts and then switching off the iron and going off to do something else that won't keep me so warm.   After half an hour or so, when I'm feeling chilly again, I've gone back to the ironing and warmed myself up again.   This has been useful on several counts - keeping me just warm enough to do without switching on the heating and finally getting me to tackle the pile-of-ironing-that-was-probably-big-enough-to-be-seen-from-space.

I've also done a bit of Christmas present sewing - I always get rather heated using the sewing machine, I think it's tension in case I make a horrible mistake, some scrubbing of the carpet with a damp cloth and warm water - heaven knows how I manage to get black marks on pale carpets, but I always do, and some general tidying and housework which has warmed me up quite nicely too.

It's only about another hour before the heating will kick in on the timer and I shan't be sorry but I do feel pleased that I've managed to get through another day without having to burn gas just to keep myself warm.

For anyone wondering what a Tunis cake is (see yesterday's post) it is described on Wikipedia as 'A Tunis cake is a Madeira cake topped with a thick layer of chocolate and decorated with marzipan fruits. It is traditionally eaten at Christmas.'  And very tasty it is too.

Savings from the Saturday Telegraph

P and I only buy one newspaper a week - the Saturday Telegraph - and, if we're totally honest, that is mainly for the TV guide.  You know how you get used to the layout of certain TV guides and then you're lost without them - well, that's happened for us with the Telegraph.  Granted, the rest of the paper is a bonus read too - although it can seriously take me the rest of the week to get through it all - and these past couple of weeks there have been some really good money-saving offers as well.

The first one was a £10 off voucher for Waitrose if you spent £60 - valid for a week.  So on Saturday afternoon (the day the voucher expired) P kindly drove me over to Billericay to our nearest Waitrose shop.  I'd primarily gone to get a Tunis Cake for Christmas (I bought one last year and it was del-i-cious), only to find that this year they weren't stocking them!!  Oh b*ggerations!  But I did want to get other nice food-related items as presents for Christmas and also to stock up on mundane things like organic bread flour which I can't get in Wickford. 

I'd gone armed with a calculator to make sure I'd hit the £60 target for the £10-off voucher.  Really, I don't know why I bothered as spending £60 in Waitrose is not that difficult.  In the end I managed to find all the foodie presents with no problem (except the blasted Tunis Cake), and also managed to stock up with lots of useful store cupboard items too.  One particular treat for us though was a Charlie Bigham Moroccan Lamb meal.  OMG, that stuff was gorgeous served with plain boiled quinoa.  It did cost £6.99 but was seriously as nice as restaurant food and super easy to cook.  I'll be buying that again I can tell you. 

Whilst in Waitrose I'd fortuitously picked up this week's Saturday Telegraph too - which had an offer for a free box of Waitrose truffle chocolates - good for that day only.  We managed to get hold of one of the last boxes of those left in Billericay - luckily for us the white chocolate ones didn't seem that popular - so that was another £3.59-worth of useful offer.

Finally, yesterday evening I was reading through the 'Weekend' section, when I saw they had a large feature about the chess player Magnus Carlsen and a 20% discount for tickets to the London Chess Classic Masters which is on all this week at Olympia.  P is VERY KEEN on chess and was, literally, just about to buy his tickets for this event over the internet - the 20% discount saved him £10. 

So, all in all, two weeks Saturday Telegraph papers have saved us £23.59 - a good result methinks.

In Which Quite A Lot Of Money Was Spent, But Most Of It Was For My Boy - So That's No Problem

Yup, I managed to spend quite a considerable amount of money (well, for me anyway) at this morning's Christmas Bazaar.  That's fine on two counts - one the money all goes to a good cause, and two, most of the spend was for a certain young nephew.

There were two large Lego kits - £5.00 each.  My nephew loves Lego, as I did as a child, and I never mind spending goodly sums on something so long-lasting (DN is still playing with Lego we had as children,) so educational and so much fun.

Also for my boy is this rather nice Science Museum Vibrating Metal Detector.  I've always fancied having a go at metal detecting myself - I think it's the idea of finding hidden treasure that appeals so much to my inner-child.  Hopefully DN will enjoy himself with this, it was £3.50.

I bought a couple of items for selling on ebay.  This 'Glow in the Dark' Magnetix set - £2.00.

And for £1.50 this Crabtree and Evelyn travel gift set.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed these will do well as they'll be my last items listed before Christmas.

By special request, I got the only jar of blackcurrant jam they had for sale for my Mum (sure enough, after the bumper plum harvest this year, there was masses of plum jam for sale.)

And, for myself, a Country Living liquid soap and hand cream set - £1.00 and some Bourjois eye shadow - 15p. 

I was well pleased with what I managed to buy and I do hope they'll hold the bazaar again next year.  It was certainly doing a roaring trade and I gave up even trying to get near the china stall (lots of dealers in a rugby scrum-type huddle meaning no one else could get near,) and the toiletries stall was also doing a very brisk trade - but as that was mainly women trying to get a look the behaviour was a lot more decorous.

One of the Highlights of My Year

Tomorrow is one of the highlights of my thrifting year - the local Grand Christmas Bazaar - held at the same church where they have the weekly 'Coffee and Jumble.'  It's a two-day event but I only ever go on the Friday as I think the best stuff is already snapped up then (too lazy to get out of bed early on a Saturday is more the truth of the matter.) 

Anyway, this grand event is a bit late in the calendar this year - it's usually held in mid-November - and apparently there was some debate as to whether they'd bother holding it at all.  They do put in an enormous effort and the event is very well attended but as most of the helpers are pretty elderly they find it an awful lot of work. I'm not really surprised as it is very well laid out and there must be a heck of a lot of lifting and shifting of things involved.

So I've got a purse-full of small change at the ready, my shopping trolley has been fetched in from the shed and I'm fair raring to go.  I've had some great finds there in the past (blogged about here and here) and I'm keeping my paws crossed for more good stuff tomorrow.  

Stuff

After almost a year of being dark and shuttered, at long last our redundant Woolworth's store has been taken over by another retailer.  It's lovely to see the huge store-front open and alive once again and it adds a real buzz to the high street (which, with it's plethora of empty shops - including the Oxfam shop, it really needed.) 

The new shop is a 99p shop - everything is priced 99p or less.  It opened last Friday and, when I went past on the bus, it was absolutely heaving with people.  P had a quick look in there on Saturday afternoon but said it was so busy he had a job seeing what they had for sale.  I too went in, just to have a look-see, on Monday.  There were a few foodstuffs I might have bought if the queues had not been half way up the (very large) shop and I'm sure it might well prove to be a useful shop in the future.  Not as useful as Woolworths was - I never knew I'd miss good ol' Woolies as much as I have - but a reasonable alternative nonetheless.  However, what struck me when I was looking round was that most of the 'stuff' they sell (and I'm excepting the foodstuffs and toiletries here) was total tat - plastic rubbish imported by the container-load from some sweat-shop in China (probably), and yet people had such over-flowing baskets they could hardly hold them.  And I've seen people absolutely laden with 99p shop carrier bags in the high street.  Do they really need all this extra 'stuff,' or is it just destined for landfill in the new year?

Maybe I'm just getting to be a grumpy old woman, or maybe I've been reading too much about Freegans on the internet lately, but somehow this 99p shop, and the voracious appetite the public of Wickford seem to have for their tatty wares, makes me feel rather uneasy. 

Recently, I've been making a big effort to rid myself of a lot of my 'stuff' that's been cluttering up the house.  Every place I look in or every drawer I sort through, I find yet more 'stuff' that I really don't need or, even more worryingly, that I've forgotten I even had.  And as for the loft - please, don't even go there (I haven't for a few years!) goodness alone knows what's lurking up there - I sure as heck don't any more.  When did I manage to accumulate SO MUCH 'STUFF', and how big are other people's houses that they have the space to fill it with Chinese-made plastic crap?

But, do I practice what I preach?, absolutely not.  I may not be buying 'stuff' in the 99p shop but I can't resist the lure of a good bargain in a charity shop.  Today I came back from the high street clutching a Jeff Banks wool and cashmere blend gents tweed winter coat, which I hope will be suitable for P to wear to work.  It cost me, gulp, £7.00 - a bargain, I know for a good winter coat - and I've been assured that I can take it back if it's not suitable - which is really nice of them, but I don't know as I'd have the nerve to.  And, for myself, a totally unnecessary pair of chav-tastic star-shaped earrings, just because I really liked them.