So we survived Day 1 Living Below The Line.

Here is the excitement that is Day 2…

Breakfast

• Toast with butter and homemade jam (taken from the store cupboard, but I have factored in some pennies for it) and mashed banana-maybe half of our 21p loaf? 20p
• Milk for the Smalls-20p

Snacks

• 2x Sunshine Buns-with butter and jam-12p
• Bananas x 2-8p
• Hobnobs x 4-24p
• Apples x 1-12p
• Milk for the Smalls-20p
• Bowl of porridge with raisins-20p
• Popcorn-we caved, and I made some. I am really quite hungry…75g popcorn kernels+25g sugar works out at about 20p

Lunch

• Hubby took the left over portion of yesterday’s tea-42p
• Smalls and I had carrot soup-made a big batch using 5 carrots (10p), 2 onions (10p) a tsp of curry powder (2p?), a stock cube (8p) and 100g lentils (from the storecupboard) (20p), and a glug of oil (5p)-55p-will do lunch tomorrow as well. We probably had about a third today so 17p
• 2 rolls with butter-15p

Dinner

• Carrot and coriander falafels-recipe here from A Girl Called Jack-88p-I wasn’t sure the Smalls would eat these, but they were a HUGE hit! We will do these again-they look set to become a regular feature 🙂
• Pasta-half of our 30p bag-15p
• Tomato sauce-made witha glug of oil (5p) 2 onions (10p), two tins tomatoes (62p) and quarter bag frozen veg (22.5p)=99.5p. Used about a third of this-33p
• Yoghurt with stewed rhubarb-10p

Total: £3.87

I also added to our supplies today, by buying another bag of flour-might make a banana loaf if we are doing ok for bananas, and a tin of tomatoes (which went in the tomato sauce). This brings the total spend so far up to £18.64. I would really like to be able to get a tin of tuna, and some more bananas/other fruit towards the end of the week.

We had had a chat with BigSmall prior to starting the challenge, and explained  that we could only have porridge or toast for breakfast this week. He was very good about it, but then completely lost the plot this morning when I said he couldn’t have peanut butter on his toast. It is very hard to explain to a 4 year old why he can’t have peanut butter when he knows there is some in the cupboard. Hubby managed to talk him round somehow, and he ended up happily munching on mashed banana on toast instead, but it was a bit tricky for a moment or two, and made me question whether or not we should be including the Smalls in the challenge. I guess BigSmall is at an awkward in between age-old enough to be able to express his opinions very forcefully and vocally, but not really ready yet for big discussions about world poverty or any kind of empathy for other less fortunate people.
He has also been on an eating mission today, and about an hour after breakfast announced he wanted something to eat. He had a Sunshine bun. And then about an hour or two after that he was hungry again and had a big bowl of porridge! After this I was fairly sure he wouldn’t eat much lunch, but had a bowl of soup and a whole roll. And I have never seen him eat as much as he ate at tea this evening…
As I said, I am starting to get a little concerned that we shouldn’t be including the Smalls in this, and I am determined that they will not go hungry, so have been making a concerted effort to make sure they have enough snacks etc, and chucked some lentils into the soup at lunchtime as I’m not sure they are getting enough protein. I know that for 5 days, it won’t do any long-term harm, but it makes you appreciate what a worry it must be if you are genuinely living below the line and you have kids to feed.

I am starting to appreciate how difficult it must be to live like this EVERY day. I find myself mentally calculating how much things cost all the time, and have been checking on banana numbers with alarming frequency. If the Smalls say they are hungry or want a snack, I start worrying about there being none left at the end of the week. To live like this ALL THE TIME must be very very hard indeed.

I first read about this on the wonderful blog of a fellow Waste Watcher, Everyday Life on a Shoestring, and then again on the equally wonderful A Cheerful Living Adventure. It is a competition being run by MoneySupermarket to celebrate 30 years of the £1 coin, and they are trying to collate 1000 ideas all together. They want bloggers to submit their 30 Ways to save £1 by May 17th, and then they are going to pull a winner out a hat-you could win £1000, so what are waiting for-join in!

I thought I would try and share with you 30 ways to save £1 (or more!) by Making Do and Mending, with a little bit of Waste Not Want Not thrown in for good measure.

Here goes:

 General Make Do and Mend Tips

1. Cut up old towels to make flannels for wiping sticky hands and faces, and save way more than £1 on baby wipes
2. Learn to sew on a simple patch, and save money on little boy’s trousers
3. Use bicarbonate of soda and vinegar to clean your oven instead of expensive oven cleaners
   

   Hurray!! Sparkly clean

4. Make full use of sites with free stuff, like Freecycle and Freegle
5. Make yourself a brand new skirt from a tired old pair of jeans
6. Make a Christmas tree out of egg boxes (ok, so this may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it was good fun, and a great talking point!)
7. Make your own deodorant-and it actually works!!! I reckon this cost me about £3 to make, and there is possibly enough here for a whole year
8. Cut up old t-shirts to make t-shirt yarn to knit or crochet with
9. Find a local Swish and swap yourself a whole new wardrobe
10. Make toys for the kids from whatever is in the recycling box-we have made bug catchers, a fire engine, and a marble run!
    Waste Not Want Not
11. Chop up any fruit that is past it’s best, and freeze to use in smoothies
12. Dead things can be made into delicious puddings-sligthly manky fruit and stale biscuits make a great Dead Things Tart Tartin
13. Dead cake can be make into a version of Bread Pudding
14. Make your own popcorn next time you go to the cinema, or get a DVD
15. Get a Green Johnanna or a Green Cone to help stop food waste
16. Soup is a great disguiser of slightly ‘tired’ veg and homemade soup is much cheaper than shop bought
17. Another way to make sure you use up every last scrap in the fridge is to disguise any veg that might be past it’s best in risottos, quiches or fritttatas
    
18. That Christmas Pannetone that someone gave you that you have no idea what to do with makes a great Bread and Butter pudding
19. Make your own bread-MUCH cheaper than buying Artisan loaves, and better for you than processed supermarket bread
20. Meal plan for the week ahead, to make sure you only buy what you need
    
    Homemade presents-all WAY cheaper than buying something new, and much nicer too!
21. Beanbags-boy or girl version
    
22. Some marbles, a drawstring bag, and some ideas for marble related fun!
23. Personalised bunting makes a nice present for a new baby
24. Old felted jumpers can be turned into a hat, scarf and mitten set
25. Bath bombs are a cheap and easy present-we made loads at Christmas
26. What little girl wouldn’t love a Hair Grip Holder?
27. Cushions are always popular, and can be adapted to the recipient easily
28. If you have a foodie who needs a gift, homemade flavoured oils are a great frugal present
    
29. We made Monster Sick Bubble Bath, complete with a monster wash mitt for a 5 year old, and he loved it!
30. A great, cheap, easy peasy yet fantastic and very personal present is a record clock of the single that was number 1 on the recipient’s birthday!

Wow! Now if that doesn’t save you £30, I don’t know what will!

For those of you wanting to follow our progress as we Live Below The Line, I thought I would update you each day with a rough ‘what we ate’ and the cost. Apologies if this is boring some of you to tears..!

Breakfast

• porridge made with 50:50 milk and water, with raisins and sliced banana-44p
• milk for the smalls-20p

Snacks

• bananas x 2-8p
• hobnobs x 4-24p
• sunshine buns x 2 -with a smee of butter and homemade jam-12p
  

  Sunshine buns!

• milk for the Smalls-20p
• handful of raisins-15p
• 1/4 tin of pineapple chunks-5p

Lunch

• Egg rolls x 3-35p (2 eggs)
• Carrot sticks- 5p
• Apple slices – 24p
• Yoghurt+rhubarb compote-20p

Dinner

• Cheesy potato thing-half of our slightly sprouty 5op potatoes mashed with 2 carrots, on top of cheese sauce and (cooked) frozen veg-£1.67-this made 4 grown up sized servings-hubby and I had one each, the Smalls shared one, and then there was one left for hubby for lunch tomorrow-so cost for the bit we’ve eaten today £1.25
  
  
• Yoghurt with rhubarb (again!)-18p

Total £3.75

It is making me much more aware of how much I take the ‘basics’ like milk, butter and cheese for granted. I weighed them all out for the cheese sauce, which I would never normally do, and then still needed a bit more when making the mash. I don’t think the Smalls have noticed especially, BigSmall certainly hasn’t commented, and he is usually not backwards in coming forwards if he is not happy with something! The things I am missing most are just all the little ‘picky bits’- a square of chocolate here, a stolen contraband sweet there. And I think hubby missed his crisps in his lunch today. But other than that, I think we are doing ok.

One down, four to go.

PS. I have some popcorn kernels in the cupboard-do you think I can make a bowl of popcorn for picking on tonight for 25p..?

Our plan is to donate the remainder of our usual weekly shopping budget to Save The Children, but if anyone would like to contribute to our fund-raising coffers, then you can donate here 🙂

The other night I decided I NEEDED a pinboard to take to our inaugural Make It Better…mending/sewing/crafting cafe evening, to display posters for other upcoming events and workshops.

Just in case you ever NEED a pretty pinboard in an emergency…

This is what you need:

• cheap pinboard or cork tile
• fabric of your choosing
• glue gun

In the garage we have a cheap pinboard sat still in its shiny wrapper, that we bought ages ago (when Focus went bust I think!) waiting to be loved.

So I went and grabbed it in and set to work.

My plan was to cover it in fabric, but I was a bit worried that the frame around the outside might make it a bit ‘funny’, so I found an old pair of my Nana’s curtains that I had already butchered for other projects, and cut these up to fill in the gap

I used my trusty glue gun throughout, as it is quick and easy, and we all know I love a bit of speed crafting.
I put 2 layers on, which filled in the gap nicely, but actually makes sticking the pins in a bit of a pain. If I did it again, I think I would just do one layer.

Then I placed my ‘pretty’ fabric face down on the floor, and placed the pinboard face down on top

Then just fold the edges over, pulling the fabric nice and tight. At the corners, do it like you are wrapping up a present. Go crazy with the glue gun. Remember, it doesn’t have to look pretty from the back!

Then, because mine really didn’t look very pretty from the back, I cut another rectangle of Nana’s curtains and glued this on top to neaten it up

Ta da!

Obviously it helps if you remember to iron your fabric first to remove the crease lines…

This pinboard came with 6 free pins-woohoo! So I set to work on them too-glue-gunning some buttons on to the tops

Here it is ‘in action’

Not quite a 10 minute pinboard, I may have been fibbing there, but certainly less than half an hour.

The only minor issue with ‘speed crafting’ is that it does leave quite a lot of mess to clear up

Now where is that ‘Tidy-up Fairy’..?

PS. I’ve just blogged this over at The Pinaddicts Challenge site, where I am doing a weekly post. It is a great site full of all sorts of crafty/foody inspiration-check it out!

This weekend saw us shopping in preparation for our 5 days Living Below the Line.

This meant we had £20 (four people, on a £1 a day, for five days) to spend.

In my last Live Below The Line post, I had done a basic meal plan, and a shopping list of sorts. Hubby had spent Friday evening visiting the various supermarkets in our local town and doing a bit of a price comparison (we know how to have fun…) so armed with this knowledge, and our shopping list clutched in our slightly sweaty anxious paws, we set off.

First stop was Lidl:

• Bag of frozen mixed veg-£0.89
• 2L semi-skimmed milk-£1.00
• 2L whole milk-£1
• 2x250g British butter-£1.96
• 500g pot natural yoghurt-#0.55
• 1.5kg white bread flour £0.79
• 10 medium eggs-£0.89 NB. hubby was berated at this point as he failed to buy free-range eggs…
• 2x400g tins red kidney beans-£0.42
• 1x400g tin chickpeas-£0.69
• 1x400g tin chopped tomatoes-£0.31
  Total spend in Lidl £8.50

Next we popped into Morrisons:

• 500g pack Morrisons Savers pasta-£0.30
• 1kg Morrisons Savers porridge oats-£0.75
• 425g tin Morrisons Savers pineapple chunks
• 1 bag Morrisons Savers apples (7 apples)-£0.82
• 500g bag Morrisons Savers raisins-£1.19
• 350g Morrisons Irish Cheddar-£1.70
• 1 bag Morrisons Savers onions (10 onions)-£0.50
• 12 Morrisons chicken stock cubs £0.99
• 1kg caster sugar-£1.09
  Total spend in Morriosns £7.54

Then on to the local greengrocers:

• Bowl of bananas (13 bananas)-£0.50
  
• Bowl of carrots (25 carrots)-£0.50
• Bowl of potatoes-£0.50
  Total spend in greengrocers £1.50

Total spend: £17.54

Phew! In under budget, and a bit of wriggle room for the rest of the week…

This afternoon, I did a bit of prep:

• Made a bread mix using 1kg flour (53p) 20g salt (1p), 10g yeast (9p) (both from stock) and water. Total cost 63p. From this, I will hopefully make 12 rolls, and 1 loaf of bread.
  So rolls should work out at 3.5p each, and the loaf of bread is 21p
• I am a bit worried about snacks for the Smalls, as I usually have a stash of cheesy feet and hot cross buns in the freezer to grab when we are going out. I found this great recipe for ‘Sunshine Buns’ on the fantabulous blog A Girl Called Jack, so promptly made some. They worked out at 4p each.
• I made a batch of 24 Hobnobs-they worked out at 6p each
• And I have a bowl of porridge oats soaking in some milk in the fridge to try and mean that making the porridge in the morning is a bit quicker (we are always in a rush…!) I used 150g porridge oats, 350ml milk, 350ml water and 50g raisins, and I am hoping this will do the 4 of us (maybe with a chopped up banana or 2). This should work out at about 10p/serving
• We went to visit my mum and dad today, and my Dad had been down to do a bit of work at their allotment, and came back bearing a bagful of rhubarb. It seemed churlish to turn it down, so we bought it home and I have stewed it with a bit of sugar, and will add it to the natural yoghurt for puddings in the week.

So, I think we are as ready as we will ever be…

Wish us luck!

The last (but by no means least) of our birthday triple bill…

And this one is an extra special treat for you, a guest post by the lovely hubby…!

It has been some years since we have exchanged Birthday and Christmas gifts with my brothers. We initiated a present amnesty when it we realised that we were essentially just swapping money by giving vouchers…But as this year it was my (much) older brothers 50^th birthday I thought it would be nice to Make Do and Mend him something.

 After trawling the interweb for some inspiration I came up with a record clock and a pair of cufflinks.

 Cufflinks

 We had some cufflinks backs (left over from making scrabble cufflinks to sell a while back) and I had been left a pouch of sixpences by my grandfather. Not a great leap from those two components, but a nice touch was being able to find two 1963 (the year of his birth, for those of you who struggle with the maths….!) coins to mount date side outwards. I used two part epoxy glue and then when this was dry, I moulded Sugru around the edge of the glued surface  for neatness and extra strength. Hey presto!

Apologies, this a RUBBISH photo. But you get the idea…

Vinyl Single Clock

 I hit upon this idea as I was looking for something I could make for big bro from something dating from around his birthday.  I did a spot of Googling, and found out that Gerry and The Pace Makers “How do you do it?” was number one on April 21^st 1963 (Big Bro’s actual birthday).  Two minutes later I had bought the vinyl single from a wellknown auction site. I got an old clock from a charity shop and having dismantled it, sprayed the hands white to contrast with the record.

 It was then just a case of putting it all together. The hole in the middle of the record is ready made to take a clock mechanism. I managed to use the hanging bracket from the dismantled clock also super glued to the back, to hang it up with. I then printed a label to stick on the back to explain that it was number one on big bro’s birthday.

 In total this took me less than an hour to make and he loved it. And I enjoyed making something that was totally unique and the clock especially looked like a bought gift.

How cool is that?!

A totally personalised, VERY cool, yet practical and useful birthday present. For less than a fiver!

Huurah! Thankyou Lovely Hubby 🙂

So the second birthday in our triumvirate (is that the right word to use?) of birthdays was my lovely mum’s.

She has been dropping some reasonably heavy hints that she wanted a pinboard/memo board for her new kitchen, so this is what we decided to make.

And this is how you do it…

What you need:

• old picture frame-we found a picture in a nice big frame on a trip to Glastonbury Reclamation Yard (if you live anywhere near, go for a mooch-there is some awesome stuff!)
• paint to paint it with
• piece of sheet metal
• metal primer (optional)
• something to cover the sheet metal with-fabric, old map, comics, magazines, stamps, anything you fancy….
• glue to stick things with-I heart mod podge-it is awesome, but watered down PVA is the next best thing
• craft magnets, and things to stick them to
• glue gun or super glue

What you do:

• Disassemble your picture, and put the glass somewhere it won’t get broken…

• Paint the frame (or you can cover it with fabric/stamps/magazine bits etc)
  I painted the frame with about 3 or 4 coats of purple (which is the ‘accent’ colour of the new kitchen…) acrylic paint I found lurking in my craft stash.

• Get your lovely Hubby to Very carefully cut a piece of sheet metal to fit the frame (use the backing piece of the frame as guide)
• Prime the metal with some spray primer if yours is a bit rusty like ours

• Use your mod podge (or equivalent) to stick your chosen fabric/magazines/comics etc to the primed metal-taking care to smooth out any air bubbles or creases. At the back, just fold it over like you are wrapping a present, and glue it down

• Allow the frame and the covered metal bit to dry, and then reassemble

• Make some magnets by gluing a random assortment of items onto craft magnets, and job done!

(I will admit that a lot of the items we used in this project were stuff we had lying around after being bought new a while ago-pre MMDAMY-for previous projects, but still a pretty frugal present, and 100% homemade!)

• Then you need to find something to wrap it in…Back upstairs to the fabric stash…

Couple this with a batch of homemade Millionaire’s Shortbread, and a candle, and I think that makes a pretty good pressie!

I posted yesterday about the fact that we celebrated not just one, but THREE birthdays in our family this weekend. And I thought you might like to know what we made for each of them.

So first off, it was SmallSmall’s “number 2” birthday (as BigSmall called it).

Being the second of two boys, he already has pretty much everything a Small boy could ever want or need, so I was really quite glad that we are in the middle of My Make Do and Mend Year and didn’t feel the need to go and buy yet more plastic stuff.

We were very kindly offerred a small trampoline by one of the mum’s at Pre-School, to which I said a very resounding YES!

It was duly delivered and was in need of a little TLC

So I set the Smalls to work…! (Yes, I did make SmallSmall ‘clean’ his very own birthday trampoline…)

I put the other bits in the washing machine and Hubby then hammerited the whole frame, and re-assembled it.

I think SmallSmall is pretty chuffed with the results…

My other favourite thrifty Make Do and Mend triumphant find was this

Bob the Builder Beanbag chair! Total cost 45p..!!

I found the fabric at the Scrapstore, and just thought they were ordinary beanbags. I got 2 for 90p 🙂

Once I filled it with beans that I got free from Freecycle (even more :)) I realised it was in fact a chair! How cool is that? I want one!

We also wrapped him up a new toothbrush-possibly the first and only time we will get away with this as a birthday present….

Of course, we musn’t forget the Gruffalo Cake…

This weekend saw a very special day.

It was SmallSmall’s SECOND birthday! When did he get so big and grown up?

Apologies for the mucky face. Snot is the default nasal position at the moment-roll on Summer…

It was also my lovely mum’s birthday.

AND my brother in law’s 50th birthday. When did he get so old big and grown up?

So we have been busy making presents, and cake. Lots of cake…

SmallSmall’s Gruffalo cake!

Inevitably, like it or not, I will be blogging about the presents we made, so stay tuned…!

For those who are paying close attention, and wondering who’s the 4th birthday was…
The Queen’s of course! Happy Birthday for Sunday ma’am. There is still some cake at our house if you fancy joining us…

Live Below The Line is an initiative of the Global Poverty Project, and from the 29th April to the 3rd May will see over 20,000 people in the UK, USA, Australia and Canada, all voluntarily spending 5 days living below the poverty line. The challenge is to survive on £1 a day for all your food and drink for 5 days, with the aim that you raise money for your chosen charity, as well as raising awareness around global poverty.

One of my lovely readers bought this campaign to my attention, and I immediately thought “Is that even possible?” But then I did a bit of research, and decided it would be a great thing to do. Hubby was, however, a little less keen.

I did then point out to him, that as I would be doing all the meal planning and shopping and cooking, apart from having to eat it, it wouldn’t have that much of an impact on him. And he knows by now that I am always right…. (nearly always – lovely hubby) So he came round to it after a while.

The budget is set at £1/day/person, so for 5 days, for our family of 4, we have a budget of £20. What we have decided to do is to then give the remainder of our usual weekly food budget to our chosen charity (we have picked Save the Children)

This is obviously going to need some thought and a bit of planning..! What I really want to try and avoid is eating processed cheap crap for 5 days. I want to see if it is possible to eat well, and cheaply without having to resort to horse meat sausages…

So I have come up with a meal plan, and a shopping list, and I am sharing it with you guys, in case anyone else wants to join in!

Breakfasts

Porridge-made with milk, raisins, or stewed fruit to sweeten

Toast-homemade bread-with butter or homemade jam

Lunches

Soup-whatever is kicking around in the veg basket-mixed veg/leek and potato/curried carrot/parsnip

Rolls-cheese and homemade chutney, egg, tuna

Dinners

Pasta bake

Pizza-homemade bases, and tomato sauce made from tinned toms-cheese/egg/roasted veg toppings

Macaroni/pasta cheese-with added veg

Frittata-with any leftover bits of veg, and homemade baked chips

Bean burgers

Puddings

Fruit

Stewed fruit

Baked apples

Natural yoghurt flavoured with stewed fruit

Snacks

Cheesy feet

Homemade cake-like a tea loaf or similar

Homemade biscuits-hobnobs maybe?

Shopping list (supermarket):

Value porridge oats -65p/500g
Value raisins-£1.54/500g
White bread flour-£0.80/1.5kg
Caster sugar-£0.90/500g
Eggs x6-£1.00
Kidney beans-2 tins-£.054
Chickpeas-1 tin-£0.62
Stock cubes-£0.78
Value pasta-£0.30
Milk-2L green, 2L blue-£2
Butter-2 packs-£2
Cheddar-£2.74/500g
Frozen mixed vegetables-£0.75/kg
Natural yoghurt-£0.45/500g
Tinned tomatoes-£0.31

Total £14.97 (Prices from Asda on My Supermarket.co.uk)

Shopping list-market/greengrocers

Whatever is cheap or reduced at the end of the day, but I am on the look-out for:

Potatoes
Onions
Carrots
Bananas
Any other fruit

Crikey. I was a but blase about this, and thought it would be easy, but starting to actually look pretty hard….

Anyone else joining in? Please….!!