Coffee, Cake and Warm Sloths

 Just perfect, coffee and cake for breakfast ...

... I don't mind if I do.

A homemade Banana Bread Muffin is suitably breakfasty in my opinion ... I may have gone back to the tin for a second one!!

Oh, and I made it one step better with my latest book.  Nigel does write well, and this one is in nice short, sharp bursts of foody bliss that can be picked up as and when I have the urge to read.

Yes ... I have a sloth sat on my little stool.  

Our new neighbours/tenants opened a new shop in town and we called in to have a chat and have a look around.  Alan, always keen to support a small business, saw me looking at the sloths and bought me one before I could say anything.  

Happily he's microwaveable, so any sloth cuddles are usually warm ones.  😄

A bit of a 'heads up' for anyone that has previously bought and downloaded the Jacquie Lawson advent calendar, the big yearly reset has just been done, so clicking onto your already purchased calendars will mean that if you don't want to buy a new one this year, you can use any of your previous purchases as a 'new' advent calendar for this December.

I've bought this years, which this time is Paris based and looks really good, but I still prefer to play the Solitaire game in 2022, so I have all the old calendars saved on my computer.

Sue xx

The Weekend ... and Thank You

 

It was a good weekend.

Ginger and Mavis learned how to assemble a shelf unit thanks to Midwest Magic Cleaning's YouTube channel, while I had a shower first thing on Saturday morning, they were absolutely fascinated so I left them to it.  I hope they don't put their new skills into practice when I'm out and about. 😁

We took Mavis for a walk along the promenade in Morecambe on Sunday morning, gosh it was cold but we did just about miss the rain.  Obviously as the dark clouds rolled in we retreated to our favourite café there for a coffee each and a bacon bun shared between Alan and Mavis.

Rather than walk any further along the prom, after our drinks we called into the charity shop.  I turned round from browsing the books to see Alan grinning at me ... he's a plonker!!

No he didn't buy the hat, thank goodness. 😄

But I did buy a book.  💖

I couldn't resist, it's been added to my little pile of books to try and read in December.

When I got home I realised that the illustrations have been done by Shirley Hughes, what a coincidence!!  I only mentioned Shirley Hughes books the other day when Angela over on Tracing Rainbows was writing about children's authors and about the books our children read as youngsters. 

It should be a nice little read for December.

On our way home we stopped at Morrisons as Alan wanted some of their 'pick and mix' fresh salad for his lunch, he asked me if there was anything I fancied and this Tiger Bloomer caught my eye.  That's what happens when I only have a coffee in the café and sit and watch Alan chomping away, the old tummy starts to rumble.  It was very nice to have a couple of slices with butter and cheese when I got home.

But ... 

I looked at the label this morning while two more slices were toasting.

I'm not impressed, when will I remember this long list of ingredients that supermarket bread has?  For all it's long list of ingredients it was still stale this morning, so I have been busy toasting and re-toasting it and will put out a little bit each day finely crumbed up for the visiting pigeons.

Finally, thank you so much to all of you who left comments yesterday.  

It was a really worthwhile blog post, and I think most of us learnt something from it.  I have decided that my blog will remain with exactly the same access format as now for the foreseeable future, especially as the Follower numbers has now risen above a hundred and this would make it more complicated to change to being a private blog ... as far as I understand it. 

Again ... thank you.  

Sue xx

I'm Already Thinking of Next Year

 

This year has been such a shit-fest, sorry no other way to describe it, that I am not surprising myself that I am already thinking about next year.  

Usually I hold on to each year until the last possible moment, but this year I have my two new calendars ready to go, I have plans to buy a non-officey desk diary .. hey next year is retirement year for us both, four months in the office do not need a diary.  Instead of officey I am thinking bloggy, there you go ... spellcheck hates me!!  😄

At the moment I am thinking of moving away from Challenges on the blog, moving towards day to day simple living as it used to be on my Smaller Life blog.  A little bit more homey, days outey, but still booky and foody.  Continuing to annoy spellcheck with a gleam in my eye.  😎

I was looking at the stats on the blog the other day and over the course of the past couple of weeks have watched the Follower numbers going up and down with gay abandon.  What is it about the numbers 87, 88 and 89 that leaves the little total going up and down like a lift with a mind of its own.  I have no problem at all with fewer Followers, but being under the magic 100 does mean that I have the option of making the blog open only to those Followers, it's something that I am seriously thinking about the way the internet is going these days.

After all with over sixteen years of regularly posting on my various blogs under my belt, I have a beautifully, wonderful core of regular readers, blogging buddies and Followers that have put up with my comings and goings, my blog hopping and life changing ways and still for reasons best known only to themselves stay with me.

Brooke seems to know her tribe ... and I think I know mine.

Sue xx

A Shopping Catch-Up

 

I think I need a bit of a shopping catch up so that I have my records straight on here, so here we go.  😀

At the start of the first week of November I did the shopping for the Challenge that didn't actually happen spending £13.94.  Then at the start of the following week I spent the £16.49 that I posted about HERE.  I called that post The First Shopping of November ... confused?  Join the club.  😄

At the end of that same week we went to Booths for a coffee and did some more shopping, I spent £10.65 at Booths, then £1 for the book on the charity table in there, and then I spent a further £3.16 in Aldi.  A total of £14.81.

Tuesday of this week I called to Sainsbury's for a few fresh things.  I did the worst thing possible and went out hungry, hence the 'Giraffe Baton' purchase, which was very tasty actually.

I spent £10.45 on food.

And then just before I left I spotted this, another £3.95 spent.  So a grand total of £14.40 for this week.

A total spend up to now for this month of £ 59.64.

I fancied the magazine partly because I don't buy many Christmas magazines these days and partly for the calendar.  Gosh I used to buy a real stack of them many moons ago, now it's just something like this with a free calendar, and then happily this year I still have a couple of issues left of my gift Country Living subscription.

Then by a weird twist of coincidence while I was looking at and deleting old photos from the computer I came across this from November 2013.  The same magazine, the same free calendar (well the 2013 version of it), and a couple of other freebies.  Just look at the price difference in the last eleven years, which is only to be expected I suppose.

There we are, all caught up ... and only slightly confused.  😄

Sue xx

The £2 Challenge That Never Was

I had plans in place to do another £2 Challenge, following on from the first one, albeit a couple of months after.  Whereas the first challenge saw me going out each day armed with a £2 coin to spend on that days food, this time I had decided that I would go out with all £14 for the coming week and do the shopping all at once.

I thought that doing this, as well as challenging me, would also help lower this months budget, which thanks to last months overspend is over where it should be at the moment.

My plan was to use the same basic pantry items as last time, but swapping out the red chilli flakes for cumin.

I planned out the purchases carefully on the Sainsbury's online shopping website, chopping and changing the basket until I had what seemed like a good meal plan in place.

Then I went out armed with a shopping list, complete with the prices copied from the online shopping basket, and as you can see from the crossings out and price alterations ... filled in when I got back, some of the prices had changed before I even got to the shop and some of the items I decided to pick up from Aldi as they were cheaper.

My plan had been to call to Aldi on the way to Sainsbury's to pick up the things that I knew were cheaper there ... the sliced brown bread for example.  The cheapest bread at Sainsbury's was 75p, whereas the same loaf at Aldi was 47p, and when you are dealing with such a tight budget that seems like a huge difference.

Anyway once I was in Aldi I thought it made sense to also pick up anything on my list that was the same price or cheaper than in Sainsbury's as well.  After all our branch of Sainsbury's is pretty small and you are never guaranteed to get everything you want on any visit.  The apples were on the Aldi Super Six that week, so that saved me some money the minute I walked in the door.

Therefore, the Aldi shopping turned out to provide most of what I needed.

Aldi Receipt - £10.21 

Amazingly the peanut butter in Aldi had gone up to £1.49, and I knew from my online check that I could get it much cheaper in Sainsbury's.  I went for the own label version rather than the budget line as it had a higher percentage of nuts, 96% and a couple less additives.

Because of the eggs, apples and bread being cheaper than I had originally thought they would be, I managed to add a lemon and a carrot to my shopping.

Sainsbury Receipt - £3.73

A total spend of £13.94 for the week.

The store cupboard foods.

The fridge foods.

As I always do I counted out the things that I had bought, so that I could work out how many to allocate to each particular meal on the menu plan ... 18 potatoes. 🥔

It makes meal planning much easier if you know exactly what you have, when you have to make things last for a full week.

I got six slices out of the lemon, so I squeezed the twos ends into my cup of hot water on day one.  The slices as usual went into the freezer to be used one a day all week.

My first breakfast was a simple one of peanut butter on toast as I wanted to see what the peanut butter tasted like.  I don't know why I bought smooth, I've been preferring crunchy just recently, and they were both the same price.

The main reason for buying the peanut butter was to make some hummus, it's much cheaper than Tahini, and I've been finding I'm a bit sensitive to sesame seeds these days so it's good to avoid them when I can.

My first lunch was a couple of egg sandwiches, I allowed myself one of my mayonnaise sachets picked up for my freebie stash to bind the egg together slightly.

They were very tasty.

And that's where with one phone call the wheels fell off the Challenge wagon. 😐

It couldn't be helped and sometimes you just have to change your plans ... or indeed scrap them altogether ... at the last minute.  There's no need to whinge or complain when things like this happen, it's just a case of smile through gritted teeth and carry on along a different path.

I did sit down the other day and write out a neater version of the meal plan that I had come up with, to show you in case you were interested.  The only thing I forgot to add on there were the additional apples and bananas that were going to be available as snacks or additions to the breakfasts.

So, that was the £2 Challenge that never was.  

I've been incorporating the shopping into meals that I've grabbing here and there, and I will set too and make the Shepherdess Pie one day as I still have most of the ingredients for that.  It's not the end of world ... just the end of a challenge that never was.  😄

Sue xx

For information:

Exchange Rates

British Pound  £13.94

US Dollar  $17.78

Canadian Dollar  $24.79

Australian Dollar  27.19

Euro  €16.76

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