Usual start to the week, heading out of town to do the grocery shop. I do like getting out of London for a few hours each week, even though it's not very far out (only 10 miles). The pace of life is different, everyone is a bit calmer and not in such a hurry.
More importantly, I shop in very large out of town stores and I know exactly where the bargains are to be had and I actively seek them out. I managed to get some breakfast items very inexpensively in the reduced sections today. They just get put in the freezer and I pull them out as I need them, so I'm sorted for a week or so.
I ended up getting two bags full of shopping at Tesco for £34, which included 9 chicken breasts and a medium sized chicken, as well as yoghurts, bread/breakfast products, two packs of tortelloni, 2 cartons of juice for OH and a pack of Lincolnshire sausages. I also bought some dark chocolate, some for making a little Valentine's treat for OH and some to give him as a gift, so I think I did okay on this shop.
I also managed to get some reduced sticker items from B&M. Their bread products often get discounted to 10p each, so I was able to get tea cakes, bread and pancakes (all Warburtons) for this price and 50p in the case of some crumpets. Again, most of it gets frozen and used as needed.
I did most of my shop at Lidl, where I had a 10% off voucher to use. I decide to stock up on canned goods, i.e. tinned tomatoes, kidney/other beans, chickpeas and lentils, buying several of some of these to re-stock the pantry. I did buy lots of other items that I normally buy weekly, but didn't get at the weekend. I was expecting the bill to come to around £70/£80, but got a nice suprise when I'd only spent £52.
I bought more cans from Home Bargains, this time Branston spaghetti and ravioli, which I haven't tried before, but which works out much cheaper than Heinz. We like their beans, so I'm hoping I like these products too. I occasionally like to eat spaghetti on toast for a quick supper if OH is cycling. Not the healthiest meal, but I enjoy it. (I did try the spaghetti this week and it was okay, not quite as nice as Heinz, but I can live with it)
I spent quite a bit in total today, it was another case of front loading the grocery shopping for the month, but I think I got a lot for my money and the house has plenty of food in it again, so shops for the next couple of weeks shouldn't be too expensive as a consequence.
OH and I are getting a bit bored of our regular meals at the moment, hence why I bought the chicken breasts. I am going to try to make some dishes that I've seen on Instagram, that are high in protein. Maybe just once per week to change things up a bit and then I also want to try some from scratch curry dishes I've seen on YouTube too, so I purchased some ginger and garlic paste for this purpose. I will probably need to freeze what's left of the jars in ice cube trays and then decant into pots or bags for future use. I figure that there are probably much cheaper ways of eating than we currently employ, but I just need to build my confidence in making some new dishes.
I tried a new dish in the evening, a kind of one pot (roasting dish) chicken, chorizo and chickpea bake with rice and a few vegetables included. It was very tasty, but the rice wasn't quite cooked and it took 30 minutes longer to cook than suggested, so it wasn't a total success. I may cook it again, but I would probably pre-cook the rice and seal the chicken in a pan before oven roasting the combined dish.
Tuesday, was another wet and pretty miserable day here. I went off to my Zumba class at the gym. It was a stand in teacher this week, but I like her class and music so I was quite happy. There were only two of us in the class though, which was disappointing. I'm hoping they don't start removing the classes from the timetable, as they have gone quieter lately. After the class, I did a 1km incline walk on the treadmill. I've decided to go back to this type of cardio, as it did really work for me when I was trying to lose weight and it is supposed to target visceral fat (i.e. the tummy area). I'll see how that goes.
When I got back, I did some sewing again in the afternoon, attaching another couple or rows to the denim project and organising the pieces for two more rows, which I'll sew another day this week. I'm hoping to have it finished by the end of the month, hopefully before.
On Tuesday afternoon, I decided to do a major sort out of all the clothes in my wardrobe and storage. It took me until 6pm. It was a useful exercise though and I've posted separately about it. It felt good to get it done.
After hardly sleeping on Tuesday night, I woke up shattered on Wednesday and so was late getting up and ready for the day. It's a been a while since I slept so badly. Anyway, I got up and ready and headed downstairs for a very late breakfast, afterwhich I did a few small sewing jobs. I've been going through all my current WIPS (Works In Progress) and decided to let a couple of small ones go, as they no longer appeal. The remaining 3 I'm going to try to continue with this year and hopefully finish at least one of them. They are all English paper piecing projects and I've kind of moved away from doing them lately, but I need to keep trying to progress them, between other projects.
I was thinking of walking into town to visit our newly refurbished local library, which re-opened this week, but in the end I didn't go anywhere today. I'll maybe do this another day this week. Instead, I just had a homey day doing some hand stitching. I started a little project to use up the last two denim jeans pockets I had left over. I'm making them into a little zipped pouch using one of the jeans fly zips.
Today, was a bit of a comedown from being quite productive on Tuesday, but such is life, some days are better than others. In the evening, OH and I finished watching Frankenstein on Netflix which was good.
Thursday, I was up and out to go to a class at the gym. It was good today, there were a few more people in attendance which was encouraging. I did my 1km incline walk on the treadmill and then took a slightly longer route home to get yet more steps in.
When I got in, I needed to re-organise the undersink cupboard, as OH had had all the contents out for a few days, whilst replacing the trap and the waste unit when it got blocked. It was good to get it all put away again.
After lunch, I decided to do a bit more decluttering today, this time of my earrings. I got out the surgical spirit to clean all of the earrings, whether I was keeping them or not. It was shocking just how many I have and I only managed to donate 17 pairs. I have posted separately about the process. It was good to get it done though, as it's the first time I've systematically gone through everything and cleaned and organised it properly. I just need to keep it in order now, which isn't so easy.
Friday, was a quiet day here again. It was filthy wet and miserable outside for most of the day. I spent the day at home doing a bit of laundry, working on some English paper piecing and then I finished making the little denim pouch from jeans pockets. Here are a few photos:
Most of it was handstitched save for sewing the zip in by machine. I'm really happy with how it turned out, it's cute. Not sure what I'll use it for yet, but I'll think of something.
Later, in the afternoon, I had to go out to the shop to get some milk and dropped into our local charity shop on the way. I think it was my first visit this year. I bought two books for £2.50 each, one of which, Quiet, I'd seen new in a bookshop and wanted to read. The other, about waste food, is quite old, but I thought it might be an interesting read. I love reading non-fiction, so these should keep me entertained for a good few months, at a good price too.
On Friday evening, we watched the second part of Ken Burns' series called The Great American Buffalo. Thankfully, this part was a bit more positive and focussed on how the US rebuilt the Buffalo population, although not nearly to as much as it existed before it was hunted almost into extinction. A very sad history, but an extremely interesting series.
On Saturday, I didn't need to go anywhere, so I had a lie in after another terrible night's sleep and then got up and spent some time at my sewing machine, this time preparing some weaving yarn from fabrics that I don't want to use for anything else. I am planning on making a rug at some point, using mostly shades of green, with the odd brown/neutral thrown in. The making of the yarn probably takes the longest time in the whole process.
Late afternoon, OH and I did a trip to the tip. We had a whole bunch of stuff in the garden that needed to go and some bags of wood at the allotment from dismantling a pallet, that we picked up on the way. We left it a bit late, but just had time to drop it all off before they closed.
When we got back, I returned to fabric yarn making. I am going to need approximately 100 meters of fabric yarn for this project, which is dependent on the size of the makeshift loom I'm going to use. This sounds a lot, but I will hopefully manage to make 28m this weekend.
To figure out how much I will still need to make, I decided to measure what I had previously made, which came to about 40 m, so just 32m to go! At least I now know what fabrics I need to add to get a balanced selection throughout the rug.
Sunday, was a pretty quiet, chill day. I went to the gym in the morning and then spent the afternoon sewing more fabric yarn. I only need to make another 15m or so, so I'm almost there. I won't be actually making the rug until next month though, so there's no hurry. I just wanted to be a bit more organised about it, so that I've got everything I need when I do start weaving.
Today, I volunteered to show some potential new plot holders the three plots we have available on our site at the allotment, starting on Friday, so that should be interesting.
It's been a pretty uneventful week, but I feel like I've been a bit more productive and have been doing a lot more sewing. Hopefully, this will continue into next week. Hope you've had a good one.
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