Another Approved Food Order

This month, I decided to place another order with Approved Food, to stock up on some things that I use quite regularly.  There weren't quite as many organic/natural options available this time around unfortunately, but I did still manage to purchase a few, some of which were re-ordered since my last order, as I liked them so much and they were still in stock.  It arrived yesterday,  and here's a picture of what the order contained.

The bulk of the order was made up of multiple packs of salt and vinegar Snack a Jacks, (not pictured here).  I tend to eat a pack of these every day with my salads, as they are pretty low fat snacks and give me that salty hit I like.  I also re-ordered some more Amaizin' Hint of Lemon Organic Corn Chips after my last order, as they were particularly scrumptious and good for an occasional treat.

Other organic items ordered included some Italian biscuits, rice cakes, crackers and a Green and Black's Milk Chocolate Easter Egg (bought for the chocolate content).  At £1.99 this seemed like a bargain as I eat this brand of chocolate a lot.

I was pleased to see that they were selling another Dr Bach's Rescue Remedy product, namely the Night Liquid Melts.  I've not tried these before, but they might be handy on those evenings when you can't sleep because you're anxious or worrying about something or upset about something that's happened in the day. They are another item to add to my alternative medicine cabinet, and at £1.99 for 28, were much less expensive than buying them elsewhere.

Finally, I was really pleased to see that they had bicarbonate of soda on offer at three 200g packs for 99p. I mainly bought these for home made beauty products and for natural household cleaning purposes.  It's good to be able to stock up on such a useful product, as I don't think I can buy it as cheaply anywhere else that I know of.

You'll also notice that I managed to sneak a couple of small bottles of Bailey's Biscotti flavoured Irish Cream into the order.  I was interested to try these without having to buy a large bottle.  (I have now tried one and although  it was okay, I think I prefer the original flavour)

I must admit that I am finding it a little more difficult to fill an order at Approved Food on my current regime, and I can't seem to get their new Naturally Free shopping site to work properly for me.  I had another attempt recently and was really excited to see Faith in Nature hair products on there for half price, so when there's more things I need, I may try to place an order and see what happens. In the meantime, I keep checking on the normal site at various points in the month, as there are sometimes things on there that suit, as we still do eat and use non-organic items too. I do still enjoy shopping with them, when I can find enough to make the postage on an order worthwhile.

Ten Frugal Things

Once again in the spirit of Katy and her regular posts of this kind on her entertaining and frugal blog The Non-Consumer Advocate, I am posting ten things I have done lately that have been frugal(ish).

1)  I managed to stretch one bar of organic soap into two and a half large bottles of liquid hand soap by following a video on YouTube.  This is now being used as hand soap by the kitchen sink, and as shower gel in the bathroom and I have also occasionally used it as a laundry liquid when combined with bicarbonate of soda.

2)  I have been busy sowing and repotting lots of vegetable plants for the allotment and garden at home.  Surplus plants, of which there were quite a few, will be given away for free from outside our house, during a Jumble Trail event next weekend.

3)  Little Bird and I have been regularly making natural homemade scented bath bombs for our own personal use and have been enjoying using them when I fancy having a soak in the bath (usually after a visit to the allotment).  They don't look much, but do work quite well when used in conjunction with a bit of Faith in Nature bath foam.

4)  I saved myself some postage on sending part of a 50th Birthday gift to my sister in Australia, by ordering her a Natural/Organic Beauty box to be sent to her direct from an Australian site at a very reasonable cost.  They actually sent her two identical boxes by mistake. (I'm hoping I wasn't charged for both!)

5)  A couple of days before it ran out, I used a voucher for a free pot of tea and piece of cake at John Lewis Oxford Street, which made a nice treat whilst out on a day out with Little Bird during May half term.

6)  I enjoyed receiving and reading my first copy of Top Sante, a healthy living magazine, that I subscribed to for free using my Tesco Clubcard vouchers.

7)  I discovered that I can fit into Age 13 Boys Nike t-shirts to wear for going to the gym, so I will in future be endeavouring to replace any old gym T-shirts with these youth sizes, which tend to cost quite a few pounds less than the ladies adult versions.

8)  I received some share dividend cheques through the post and these were paid straight into my savings account.

9)  I used some Boots loyalty points to buy a concealer this month (a more natural option I purchased recently didn't agree with my skin, so I have reverted back to my original Boots Seventeen product for the time being, to give my skin a rest and chance to recover before trying something different).

10)  I placed an order with the Ethical Superstore.com website this month and stocked up on some organic store cupboard items such as tins of tomatoes, chickpeas, sweetcorn, flour, rice, sugar, toiletries and household products.  They had a 20% off offer and free delivery on orders of a certain size, made before a certain date and as it was the first time I had ordered from them, I was curious to check out their service.  This order has significantly reduced the amount of food I need to shop for on a weekly basis this month.

I found the service to be really good and their website has a vast range of natural/organic food, household, beauty and clothing products available, as well as a customer loyalty scheme in operation. It's a great one stop shop for anyone interested in natural/organic food/products.  I will definitely be shopping with them again. (Please note I am not sponsored in mentioning this site - I am simply sharing my experience).

I'm slowly but surely getting back to more frugal ways, but still could do better.

A Herbal Workshop

Saturday afternoon, and I took myself off to the Geffrye Museum in East London, to attend a workshop and talk I'd signed up for, on the subject of the famous 17th century herbalist/apothecary Nicholas Culpepper.

Here's  a picture of the museum in question, which is a museum of domestic interiors through the ages. It has rooms decorated in the style of various eras in history up to the present day. It's a great museum, which doesn't charge for entry, has a lovely cafe and garden and is well worth a visit if you're ever in the Shoreditch area of London.

The attendees were divided into two groups, such was the demand for spaces. One group attended a talk by a published academic/writer, whilst the other group attended a workshop to introduce them to using herbs to make remedies and beauty products.

I was in the latter group and started off with the workshop. We all got to introduce ourselves and give our reasons for attending and it was interesting to find out everybody's motivation for being there. There was a very interesting and eclectic mix of people in attendance, some like me who were just interested in finding out more about herbs and how to use them.

Here's a picture of the different herbs, the scent of which hit you as you walked into the room, and some of which we got to use before coming home.

I came away with some interesting ideas of a few things to make, books I could read with good recipes for natural beauty products, shops where I could find the ingredients and other places to visit that I would find very interesting.

At the end of the workshop, we got the chance to make a bath tea bag made up of whichever herbs we chose to use.  Mine was a bit of a mixture of different herbs that I liked; lavender, cammomile, verbena, rose, cinnamon and some bran thrown in, as it's supposed to be good for making the skin feel smooth.  They were all wrapped in some cotton  squares so that they could be dangled in your bath and the scents incorporated into the water.

I also made a foot soak using lavender and marigold, as I knew these herbs were anti fungal and might help my occasional flare ups of athletes foot.  Here's a picture of them.  Very simple to make and use.

We were also shown how to combine another couple of ingredients to make another very simple product that I will post separately about, when I've made it myself at home. We did get to sample the actual resulting product and it was lovely.

After the workshop had ended we moved into the room next door for the talk, which was incredibly interesting.

Before going home I went for a look around the beautiful walled herb garden and the rest of the gardens behind the museum.  I have visited them before but I always enjoy wandering through and admiring the beautiful  plants and planting.

It  was a lovely afternoon, I met some lovely people and had a very enjoyable and informative time there. I will definitely be going back should there be any other workshops that appeal.

Saturday Morning and Another Purge

Saturday morning and I found myself home alone.  OH had gone out with the dog, Little Bird had gone to her basketball training and I decided it was a good time to do a spot of decluttering of some things that I find the hardest of all to declutter, namely Little Bird's baby clothes and other items.

Please don't judge, I know I probably should have got rid of these a long time ago, but for reasons I won't go into here, many of the items are very sentimental to me and I find it incredibly hard to throw them out or donate them.

In all honesty, it has taken me years to get to where I am now with decluttering these items and I've still got a box full of them sat on top of my linen cupboard.  I came to the conclusion a long time ago, that I just have to do the job in small spurts and let go of what I can when I can.  I don't put too much pressure on myself, I just keep going back to the box and deciding if I can let go of a few more items each time.  Baby steps, literally.

On this attempt, I started off well enough and was feeling particularly gung ho.  I stopped part way and had a bath, which was probably an error, as in doing so I had time to think about what I was doing and consequently some things went back into the box once I'd got out of the bath.  Better to be cautious than have serious regrets I say.

Anyway, towards the end, Little Bird came home and took a look through the box with me and we cooed over the tiny clothes she used to wear. It was quite nice to do this.  I didn't get rid of a whole lot, but a good 20 or so items went into the donation pile, were thrown away or put aside to be re-purposed, which did make me feel a lot better. There's still a lot of work to do here, both physically and emotionally, but I'm not in a hurry. I can feel myself becoming more detached from some of the items left, even as I speak, so some progress was made.

Do you have any weak spots when it comes to decluttering?  I guess we all have, but I do believe we'll get where we want to be in the end, wherever that is.  That's the thing about simplifying. It means something different to each of us. I don't want to get rid of everything, but I don't want to keep everything either.  There is a balance to be found and slowly but surely, I think I'm creeping closer to it.

Almost Organic Yoghurt Lollies

I've been buying quite

a few different types of ice lollies lately, as the weather has warmed up and in all honesty I find the healthy ones especially to be quite an expense at £2 per box of 3 or 4.  I decided to go back to making some yoghurt lollies and thought it was about time that I used these lolly makers that I bought back in the January sales.

They cost about £5 and after an epic lolly fail last year, when I tried using some very cheap lolly moulds and couldn't get the lollies out no matter how hard I tried, at least not without breaking the plastic sticks, I decided it was worth investing in a decent set that were a bit more sturdy.  When I saw these in the John Lewis Sale, I just couldn't resist them although it's taken me quite a while to getting around to using them.

Anyway, I took a look around the kitchen to see what we had in that I could put in the lollies and came up with an overripe kiwi, a banana, some yoghurt, milk and orange juice.  The kiwi was the only non-organic ingredient, as I'd bought a huge bowl full for £1 from a market last week on my week of stretching the budget.

I whizzed up all of the ingredients with a hand blender stick and poured the mixture into each mould. The lids closed onto the mould with a very satisfying click, so they should be quite secure in the freezer.  I  liked that the kiwi seeds were in there, as it added an interesting texture to the lollies.

The next day I tried one out.

It did take a little while to get the lolly out of the mould, but after running the case under the tap for a few minutes it did the job and the lollies tasted  great.  Little Bird tried one too, but she wasn't quite as enamoured of the taste, as the kiwi fruit made it a little tart.  She wants to devise the  recipe next time which is fine with me.

I just have to make sure that the sticks don't get inadvertently thrown away, which often happens with these reusable sets, but otherwise I can see us making lots of different lollies this summer to keep us all cool.

Getting Tough on Stuff in 2015 - May

This challenge is one that I've set myself this year, as part of trying to simplify my life as much as possible.  The aim is to remove/donate 1000 things from our house in 2015.  Now it may sound like a lot, but the total is steadily rising and five months in, I'm pretty far ahead of where I thought I'd be.

At the end of April the total stood at 508 things taken to the charity shop or local Give and Take events, and this month has been a bumper month, which was a surprise, as I really wasn't expecting it to be.

A quarter of the items donated this month were things that Little Bird decided she no longer wanted, books mainly.  The remainder are things I have found mainly in the process of decluttering the kitchen, plus a few more books, items of clothing and other things that have found their way into the boxes.

Little Bird was going to try to sell many of the items we've decluttered on a stall during a local Jumble Trail event in a couple of weeks, but she has since received a party invitation and can't participate in the event.  As I don't actually want to do it myself, I will be taking most of our items to the charity shop and letting people take some items (i.e. plants) for free from outside our house.

I didn't get around to doing all of the decluttering I wanted to do in May, so I still need to finish the last few last bits of the kitchen declutter and start to tackle the shed. These will remain as my aims for June and should hopefully result in more progress and yield yet more donations.

Here's a picture of the accumulated 'stuff' from May, ready to be donated. (Please note that some of the items in this picture have been added in June)

The total for this month is 210 items, making a grand total so far of 718 items after just five months. Hopefully, I can now take my foot off the accelerator a little, as just fifty things per month for the next six months should do the job, but if I can donate more then I am very happy to do so.

I'll be back with another progress report next month.

A Little Garden Tour

I thought I'd do something a little different today and decided to take you for a little walk around our tiny city garden.  It's a bit wild, as I've spent very little time on it so far this year.  There are weeds and wild flowers growing where they shouldn't, but we kind of like the wildness of it.

It's kind of developed a life of it's own over the years and needs very little attention and we're more than happy to leave it to it's own devices.  It may not be everyone's kind of garden, but we love it. Especially at this time of year when the orange blossom and the next door's rambling rose are in bloom.

I didn't put my voice to the video, as I didn't really want to spoil it, but as you can tell, we are on the flight path of various airports here in London (and seagulls!).

There is a special guest appearance from one member of the family, who likes to bark at the aircraft overhead and just had to get their tuppenceworth in.  Cute though.

I hope you like it.