Reducing Spending in February

February has been a much better month in financial terms than the last couple of months at least. With, Xmas, plus all of my expensive dental treatment out of the way and no birthdays or other gifts to buy this month, save for small gifts for Valentine's Day, there was much less pressure on me financially and it felt so liberating.

As a consequence, I was able to spend a bit of money here and there on the house and improved solutions for storage and windows, etc. I purchased most of these from work using my staff discount, which helped to keep the cost down. Even the smallest tweak can make a big difference to how things look.

I bought some new curtains for the sewing room from work.  They were reduced in price. I have only hung one. The second I will use to make a quilt for the bed in there, so that the decor is a bit more co-ordinated if it needs to be used for guests, but that will be a project for next winter, as I have plenty of other things on the go for the moment.

I also bought some velvet storage ottomans, which I've used to replace plastic storage boxes and they look much better and take up much less visual space, but hold more, if that makes sense.  I'm pretty happy with these purchases and I am intending to buy a few more things for LB's room to improve the room and make it look a bit more grown up, but I am waiting until I find the right things.

I mentioned in a previous post, that I bought a lovely bird print tray from a charity shop the other week and wanted to make a table display with it for the kitchen. In order to do so, I finally purchased an orchid, which I've been promising myself I would do for over 6 months, to place on the tray, along with candles and tealights. Here's how it currently looks, complete with my current candle which is almost finished:

The tealight holder is an old antique ink well that used to belong to my mother. I had several of them wrapped up and packed away, as I didn't really have a use for them, but didn't want to let go of them either. When I got this one out, a tealight fitted in perfectly, so instead of buying a tealight holder, which I was thinking of doing, I can now use this, and it's a pretty colour too.  It feels good to actually put it to use. The blue tin is a hot chocolate tin from Whittards of Chelsea that I use to store spare tealights. 

I'm quite happy with how the display looks, as it cheers me up when I'm sat at the kitchen table and prevents clutter accumulating as there isn't room to dump stuff now.

The tealights themselves were a bargain from work. They were part of a clearance bag that included 8hr and 3hr tealights that I bought for £2. They had all come from damaged packs and had been gathered up and sold in a mixed bag. There was the equivalent of a full pack of 8hr tealights, which normally cost £3.50,  and also lots of these 3-4hr ones that I intend to use in the kitchen and outside in the summer, so they were a bargain.

In digging out the tealight holder, I came across some curtain pole rings that I had left over from hanging a curtain in the sewing room back in the summer. I'd subsequently bought a pack of these from work thinking I might need them to hang the new curtain, but I can now take them back and get a refund, which will save me more money.

Aside from the expenditures mentioned here, my monthly overall spend was half what it has been for the last two months, which felt great, as I'm trying to be careful not to waste money at the moment and keep some in reserve.

Finally on the frugal front, this morning, when out on the dog walk, I came across these lovely baskets that someone had put outside for anyone to take. I quickly picked them up and brought them back home, as these will be ideal for LB's room. I was thinking of buying some storage, and still might need to, but these should save some money too. They look like they've hardly been used too.

I seem to be waking up from my winter hibernation and starting to get the house back into shape, which is all good. It's surprising what the longer days and a bit of sunshine can do to give you more energy and enthusiasm.`