Using Up Stored Crops & A Bargain

I wanted to start this week by showing you a bargain that I managed to spot last week.

Our front room has been a bit of a mess since the builders finished our new kitchen in December 2013.  The builders moved our fireplace from the old sitting room to the front of our house and the builders also had to knock a hole through the wall, for our supporting ‘steel’ to rest on (as they knocked our chimney breast down to make more room in our new kitchen).

So we have been saving like mad to complete our front room, as we need the electrics sorting in there and the walls replastering too.  As you can see in the photograph below, we also need a new carpet (the carpet was already old when we moved into our house twelve years ago):

Our settee and arm chair has also seen better days now and the removeable covers have torn in various places where the material had worn thin over the years too.  The settee also caused lots of daft arguements in our house, as three people are always squashed on the settee whilst the fourth person had the comfy arm chair, so we really needed a ‘three piece’ suite instead:

So as you can imagine, our front room is going to be an expensive room to sort out.

My Bargain:

I nipped into town last week and had a quick look in a few charity shops as I was looking for a vase.  Unfortunately I couldn’t find a vase, but when I popped into the British Heart Foundation charity shop I found an absolutely lovely three piece suite for £165!  It was in really good condition and the price even included a matching pouffe.

Mr Thrift came back to the shop later that day (with me) to see the suite and we decided there and then to have it.  We paid £20 extra to have it delivered and it is now in our front room:

The cream cushions are from our old settee, but it will save me having to buy any new ones for the moment.

We really don’t mind having a second hand suite when it is in such good condition and to be honest it was exactly what I would have chosen if I had brought a brand new suite.

So we are very pleased with our bargain, as this has saved us approximately £1500 and our local council has picked up our old settee and taken it away for free.

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Mothers day.

I had a lovely mothers day this year and my daughters gave me some lovely presents.  My youngest daughter made me laugh though, as she made me a book mark to replicate the one she made for me when she was eight years old.  I have always treasured this bookmark, like it is the crown jewels (which has always made my daughters laugh) and Mr Thrift even laminated it so it didn’t rip…..but now I have a new one (though I will still treasure the old one).

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This week I decided I wanted to make our kitchen a little bit more ‘homely’, so I ordered a ‘Home Sweet Home’ wall sticker from ebay for £11.49.

It was quite easy to put up, except I used masking tape to make sure it was straight before I stuck it onto the wall.  Unfortunately when I removed the masking tape a bit of the paint came off the wall too, so I also had to ‘touch up’ the paintwork afterwards.

I think the wall sticker looks really lovely and it does make the kitchen look a bit more homely too:

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My Seeds So Far:

This week I have been pricking out my seedlings and I have now moved them into my heated greenhouse, as there are too many for my kitchen.

I now have the following things growing :

Greenhouse tomatoes, greenhouse cucumbers, lettuce, onion sets, white and red cabbages, corianda, mixed salad leaves and a tray of lobelia.

I also have a couple of sweet peppers that have just poked their heads through the compost.

My garlic and broad beans are now ready to be hardened off, so I have moved them into my cold mini greenhouse:

My onion sets have started to grow now too and I will also move these into my cold mini greenhouse in a few days:

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Cooking At Home This Week:

This week I have been busy trying to use up some of my stored fruit and vegetables.

I have made a blackberry cordial with frozen fruit from my freezer:

 I have made tomato and basil soup with the tomatoes I put in my freezer last summer (incidentally, I froze the tomatoes whole without cooking them, as I knew I would be using them for soup):

I visited my mum on Mothering Sunday and I thought it would be nice to take some strawberry muffins to share with my mum and sisters.  I used frozen strawberries from my freezer.

The muffins turned out very tasty, but I have just realised I haven’t put the recipe on my ‘recipe index’ , so for now I’ll just show you a photograph of them and I will post the recipe on my blog another time:

I also made some parsnip crisps with one of my few remaining parsnips that I dug up recently from my allotment, before I gave my plots up:

And I decided it was time to do something with the pumpkin that I had been storing in my bedroom over winter (very romantic I know).

I chopped it up and froze most of it on trays (so it doesn’t stick together when I bag it up):

I did however keep some of the pumpkin back and I made a nice pumpkin and orange cake to share with two of my old friends who came to lunch today:

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So it’s been another busy week in the ‘Thrift’ household.

I will leave you with a photograph of my flowers.  I never did get a vase when I went charity shopping, so I used half of an old lemonade bottle instead to put my flowers into…..I don’t think it looks too bad after all.

Thank you for reading my blog today, I will be back next Friday as usual.

I hope you have a good weekend.