New Year, Bargains and Excesses!

We are back after our winter break and would like to wish all our readers a very Happy new year full of new adventures. Just thought we would give you an update of a few of our adventures over the last week or two. Our baby Christmas / Yule tree has been outside now for a couple of weeks and is looking much better.... hopefully it will continue to grow all year ready to be brought in again for next year.

The decorations have been very carefully packed away... If you follow our blogs you will know that we hand make a lot of decorations and each one contains so much love and so many memories of past seasons and the children growing up that we would absolutely hate to lose any of them.

As an extremely thrifty living family this careful packing also saves us much money each year... Talking about thrifty living, we have used the January sales to stock up on anything we may need for next Christmas at just a fraction of the price!

We have bought the crackers and all of the wrapping paper for next year for bargain prices many things were just a few pence, plus some rolls of paper which could also double up as other occasion wrapping paper, for example stars can be used as birthday or congratulation wrapping paper too. Extra thrifty bonus points! No need to worry or stress about these things throughout the year or in the run up to Christmas now.

Another good money saving tip is to look out for bargain foods after Christmas... most supermarkets are wanting to offload their seasonal excesses very cheaply. One of the things we bought were these parsnips for just 3p a bag, I have to admit we bought lots... more than 10 bags. Well, we do eat a lot of vegetables and most of them have been prepared for the freezer, ideal to grab a handful for a casserole or just for roast parsnips. We have also been enjoying parsnip crisps too.

My freezer is also now full of carrots too, apart from the ones used for carrot stick snacks and of course carrot cake. Not only has this saved us a lot of money, it has also stopped a lot of food being discarded and ending up in landfill. As a zero food waste family this means a lot to us!

For the whole festive season we have been enjoying the beautiful flowers on my rhipsalis pilocarpa cactus plant, it's like looking up a lots of tiny white stars. We are also looking forward to the new season of growing especially with the arrival of our new seeds.

So once again we wish you a very happy new year and good bargain hunting!

Seed Bombs

We have just had our 4th wedding anniversary and every year my husband and I try to make each other a gift based on the traditional gift guide. For the 4th anniversary the gift should be fruit or flowers, a little difficult to make... so we had to be a little creative.

As our love is so strong and very special and we both have a strong love of the natural world, I thought I would make a gift for my husband that would share the beauty of our love with the world... with nature. So I made him some seed bombs as these will grow into flowers.

These are so very simple to make... I just mixed a handful of compost with some wildflower seeds from our local area in a bowl, sprinkled in a little powdered clay and a few drops of water. Once mixed well I spooned the mixture into a heart shaped ice cube tray and left to dry.

When these are planted little pockets of wildflowers should spring up in bare patches giving a little extra help to our ailing bee population.

If this gift just feeds one bee or makes one person smile as they walk past we will have made a difference to this world, albeit a very small one.

Well that's my gift to my wonderful husband this year... Happy Anniversary. 

More Halloween Preparation

My husband carved the pumpkins today, as you can see above, what do you think?... scary enough? He tries to carve a different face every year and I think he's rather good at it. Last year he did Jack Skellington, he also likes to carve something in the back so that you get the shape projected onto the wall behind, this year he did bats. A little added magic for the children. With two pumpkins there is a lot of pumpkin insides to be removed, and we like to make use of as much as possible. I started off by collecting all the seeds and tossed them in a little oil, salt, pepper and cajun spices, these were then roasted for us to snack on.

The pumpkin flesh that was scraped out we have divided in half. One half I've kept to make soup, the other I've cooked and made into a puree to use to cook other things with. Today we made pumpkin pie, or should I say pies, as the recipe we used had very big portions.

This was really nice and as there are two pies we will be eating it again tomorrow. The children have been enjoying all the Halloween preparations, especially all the crafts.

They have made this banner, I wanted to make a fabric one to keep forever but ran out of time so they have made the banner using Halloween shapes, colouring them in and sticking the pumpkin faces on. So today has been another very busy day full of baking and crafting.