Everyday Life On A Shoestring

A watched blackbird never sings...

2013-05-22T18:36:00.000+01:00

Outside our house stands an old telegraph pole, that via a rather precarious spaghetti web of wires, brings electricity and phone connection to several of the neighbouring houses. We pay it no attention until it's windy and the internet connection goes. I've lost count of the number of cups of tea I've handed into cherry pickers over the years for BT engineers untangling electrical knots and testing the line.

At the moment the world wide web is flowing into the house faultlessly but we've still got our eyes (and ears) on the telegraph pole.

Chirpy the Blackbird has claimed it as his singing post.

He's there every morning when I wake at 6.30am, and he sings for us at the children's bedtime.

We're sure his tuneful melodies are produced purely for our pleasure (he brings just as much joy as the TV and internet that is being pumped into the house under his very feet) and for his own love of music making. It's not the strident song of early spring; of attracting a lover or claiming his territory. He trills at a leisurely pace with lots of interludes where he looks up and down the street and takes in the first of the morning sun and the last of the evening's.

He pauses even more when he knows he's being filmed by Son. Wildlife filming is harder than it looks you know.

Tidy Friday

2013-05-17T13:07:00.002+01:00

There was salad-y food waste this week. One and a half tomatoes and some lettuce. Maybe it's because one iceberg lettuce seems to go on for a very long time, even with four of us eating it, or maybe it's because the weather is flitting from summer to winter and back again faster than you can say Food Waste Friday. One minute we're eating salad in the garden, the next we shivering over mashed potato and sausage casserole.

Elsewhere in the house, project Tidy is going steadily. Surplus crockery was disposed of via Freecycle. Freecycle is such an easy peasy way to declutter and I should use it more. I've never 'received' anything as you have to be so quick off the mark to respond to listings on the Freecycle website, but that works in your favour when it comes to decluttering!

Within half an hour of advertising my crockery, there were three responses, and within two hours it had left the house. Given that there were four heavy bags of it, that was almost faster than I could have got it to the charity shop. The hamster cage and accessories (RIP Fudge) is taking a little longer to go but I have high hopes that a new furry friend will be benefiting from it soon.

The other success story is the shelves on either side of the porch which went from this:

to this:

resulting in one bag for the charity shop, one bag for recycling, one odd welly that had somehow lost its partner (not sure how to recycle that - any ideas?), some random leads and wires (recycled to Husband's 'man drawer'), and a pair of crocs that have been divested of Daughter's girly Croc adornments and should fit Son this summer.

And two overwintering chrysalises (or whatever the plural of chrysalis is). I left them undisturbed and hope they have survived the winter and will become butterflies or moths soon.

Any food waste or decluttering successes at your place this week?! Are you a freecycler?!

8 things to do in Bath for Free!

2013-05-15T17:46:00.001+01:00

This weekend I was trapped in Bath for a few hours (that's the Roman city not the kind that you fill with water) between Daughter street dancing her way through a rehearsal and end of year Music Academy Show.

What can you do for free in Bath if you've got a few hours to spare?

1) Check out the Beazer Maze near the weir. I loved watching these little girls laughing and running wild.

2) Visit the Victoria Art Gallery. You have to pay to see some of the visiting exhibitions but the permanent galleries are free (donations welcome).

3) Bath Abbey is beautiful. Like the gallery, donations towards the upkeep are appreciated.

4) The Central Library is spacious with a large children's section, study area, reference section and lots of computers to use. My idea of hanging out here for an hour on Saturday and reading the newspaper, perusing a few magazines and doing some writing, was scuppered by the fact that everyone else seemed to have thought of doing the very same thing.

5) Look up above the shop fronts, take a stroll and enjoy the Georgian architecture.

6) Get some peace and quiet at the Botanical Gardens in Victoria Park. I spent some time communing with the squirrels and enjoying my picnic tea here.

7) The play area at Victoria Park is always popular with my kids and there's a great skate park for older kids and teenagers.

8) Bath's street entertainment is as good as anything you'll find in Covent Garden. I'm already a big fan of Ben Powell the guitarist, so it was a treat to find him playing outside the Roman Baths. And I couldn't help but think of my bloggy friends down-under when I saw the didgeridoo player. (N.B. As a fellow musician who's also hoping to busk in Bath this summer, I'm not advocating that you pass by these guys without giving what you can!)

Local readers, what have I missed?

Not so local? What's your local town or city and what are the best things to do for free there?

Tidy Friday

2013-05-10T22:31:00.001+01:00

I've been blogging for a whole year now, and that year has seen some very positive changes to our food waste habits. Most Fridays for the last year, I've joined in with Food Waste Friday and blogged about it.

As a result our food waste has been drastically reduced. Special thanks to Frugal Girl and Simply Being Mum for inspiring me to begin my food waste and blogging journey!

I daren't stop blogging about food waste for fear of jinxing all the improvements in our cooking and eating habits that we've made over the last year. However I'd also like to see if we could extend this careful stewardship of our precious food to the rest of our resources. So far all my fighting talk about decluttering at the end of the Slim Your Bin project, has really been nothing but hot air I'm afraid!

All the skills we've gained and put into practice about using what we've got wisely, not neglecting what's in our cupboards, not buying more than we need to etc, should be transferrable to our possessions. Add these skills to all the waste watching we did earlier in the year, and my trial of Stephanie of No Ordinary Homestead's Decluttering Made Easy course (which is currently on hold at Stephanie's end), and we should be in an ideal position to clean up our house, declutter and simplify.

On Tidy Friday I'm hoping that I can bring you good news about what's going on in the kitchen AND with tidying and decluttering in the rest of the house.

In the kitchen this week, there was food waste...a mouldy lemon and a small tub of decanted yogurt from weeks ago. Stale bread was turned into bread crumbs. And of course there was cake, well muffins actually.

Despite my love of home baking, I've never made muffins before, although I've probably read a million recipes for different muffins on various of my favourite blogs. This week Daughter suggested we make some 'breakfast' muffins to use up some defrosted blueberries. Cake for breakfast?

Actually a true muffin is not really a cake, as all you muffin makers will know. They have less sugar, less fat and less eggs than a cake, in fact probably a lot less unhealthiness than some breakfast cereals on the market. And the mix is referred to as a batter, so it's more of a substantial pancake/yorkshire pudding.

We made a batch of blueberry ones, using this recipe (we substituted 150g blueberries for the apricots and almonds) then used up an old apple and a small packet of cranberries to make some more. They're truly multipurpose and have been served at breakfast, eaten in the packed lunches, and dished up after school for a snack.

I'm a convert.

So that's the food waste. What about the rest of the house?

One black bag of man clothes to the charity shop, two bikes listed on Ebay and two books sort of disposed of.

This year, another goal was to slim the bookshelves. My plan was to read all the unread books that I have and get rid of a lot. In reality I have borrowed lots of library books, have been lent several books and received some as presents for my birthday. I cannot say that NOT buying books is a grand self sacrifice or hardship in any shape or form!

The getting rid of books part has been slow and I'm not sure that my discovery of selling them via Green Metropolis is going to speed things up, but it certainly feels good for the soul.

I know I could just take the books to a charity shop and some of my books will certainly go this way, but I thought I would give Green Metropolis a go. They are a UK online charity bookstore that sells all its books for a flat fee of £3.75. They list your books and pay you £3 when they sell. You hold on to the book until it sells, and then post it to the buyer. They have several charity partners, and their blurb claims that "By using our website to buy and sell your books, you're not only helping yourself, but you're also doing your bit for the environment and helping us support the great work of the Woodland Trust and our other great charity partners. And by making the most of what we already have, is one of the best and most effective ways to help protect the planet!" I've chosen the Woodland Trust for my charity as that seems to complete the circle when it comes to the life of a book.

It was easy to register, and if the books actually ever sell, it looks like a win/win method of parting with books. Far preferable to having tax dodging Amazon or Ebay take a cut of the purchase price.

There's a friendly forum for booksellers on the website and from this I can tell that depending on the popularity of my books, they may take some time, possibly weeks, to sell, so it's not a route for the fast track declutterer. I have set up my Green Metropolis bookshop in a drawer under my bed, and am hoping it will have more than 2 books in stock soon.

How do you get rid of your books? Have you ever sold online or maybe even bought or sold from Green Metropolis?

Kiddiwalks giveaway winner!

2013-05-06T21:00:00.003+01:00

There were three entries for the bank holiday give away on the blog and two on the Facebook page. The winner, drawn at random, is:

Fran (the Anonymous)

Congratulations Fran! Please could you email me (everydaylifeonashoestring@gmail.com) your contact details and I will forward them to Countryside Books who will send you your Kiddiwalks in Oxfordshire book!

Does what it says in the Kiddiwalks book...

2013-05-05T13:17:00.001+01:00

Firstly, don't forget to enter the bank holiday book giveaway! (Details here).

The giveaway is for a Kiddiwalks book from Countryside Books. The Kiddiwalks books cover many of England's counties. As I said in Friday's blog post - don't be put off by the 'Kiddi' part; the walks are great fun for kiddis AND those of us that are now only kiddis at heart rather than in body.

We put our Kiddiwalks in Wiltshire book to the test again yesterday when we went for a walk on the Pewsey Downs. Our area of North Wiltshire is geologically more like the Cotswolds, so the chalky downland landscape is very different, and once we'd got past Devizes, the kids were exclaiming that it felt 'just like being on holiday!' That's exactly what you want from a Mayday bank holiday outing.

The walk starts at the Pewsey Downs National Nature Reserve free car park (GR 116637). From here there are walks in all directions but this Kiddiwalk heads west. We had the Ordnance Survey map of the area, and although we could probably have managed with the book's sketch map and by following our noses, it was a useful cross reference.

The book promised fine views on a clear day and this was certainly the case. Up on the hilltops it really did feel as if we could see forever, or at least as if the whole of Wiltshire was laid before us. The only down side of the downs is that it's very exposed and breezy up there, and everyone agreed that battling the wind made it feel as though the walk was longer than 2.75 miles.

Hair blowing sideways across face - Beaufort Scale 6?

There was plenty of interest from the Wansdyke, a two part bank and ditch earthwork, the origin of which is unclear. Maybe it marks what would have been the limit of North Wessex, or maybe it was a Romano-British defence against the Saxons. Most importantly to us, it provided some shelter for our picnic.

Possibly the only time I've eaten a picnic wearing woolly hat,
sunglasses, suncream AND a waterproof!

And an opportunity for Son to take some of his lying-on-the-ground photos. Later on in the year, the area is especially good for orchids, but at the moment there are plenty of cowslips and dandelions!

There were views of the Alton Barns White Horse from up close, and a cake break at Adam's Grave, a late Neolithic long barrow.

All in all, another successful Kiddiwalk. If only I could enter the book giveaway myself!

A bank holiday book giveaway!

2013-05-03T17:47:00.001+01:00

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time you'll know that I love a good walk, and the rest of the family ~~reluctantly~~ keenly enjoy walking with me! Joking aside, even though there may be grumbles at first, once they're out of the house the kids enjoy it. Of course I can go on and on at them about why we need to save the planet, but I'm sure that getting out there and experiencing its beauty for themselves will do more to inspire them than all of my droning.

For my recent birthday I was really pleased to get a replacement copy of Kiddiwalks in Wiltshire. This is one of a series of walking guides aimed at families produced by Countryside Books, covering various counties in England. Our original copy went walk about itself, and it's been missed ever since so I was very happy to receive another. Having completed about a quarter of the twenty walks in the book, there were still plenty waiting to be discovered.

Part of the success of the walks is that they all have to pass the Kiddiwalks 'S' test:

Simple - circular routes that aren't too hilly and some of which are suitable for buggies.

Short - all the walks are between 1.5 and 3 miles.

Stimulating - Plenty of variety and points of interest, places to play and open spaces.

Stops - Each walk features somewhere to stop for a refreshment - this could be somewhere for a picnic, a cafe or family-friendly pub.

We can vouch for all those criteria as we've enjoyed some of the walks so much that we've done them more than once. Several friends have been taken to see the grave of the first person in Britain to be eaten by a tiger, in Malmesbury! As if that isn't excitement enough, the grave is but a few metres from a stained glass window in Malmesbury Abbey devoted to Elmer the Flying Monk.

Another of our favourite walks is one which leads the walker to Brown's Folly near Bath. And our monthly walk up the By Brook valley, which I've been chronicling on the blog, is also taken from this book. We're not native Moonrakers so the walks have helped foster a connection to and love for this area of the country - an area we didn't really know before moving here.

The Kiddiwalks Wiltshire book is well written and clearly laid out with easy-to-follow maps and descriptions, as well as lots of information about the history and wildlife you are likely to encounter. Although they're aimed at families, you'd still gain a lot from the books even if you don't have kids. With a map of the local area, you could easily work out how to extend the routes to give you a longer walk if you wanted.

We've been to see this White Horse at Westbury many times,
but are hoping to see another of Wiltshire's chalk horses this weekend.

We're planning an afternoon out this weekend with extended family, based on one of the walks that we haven't done yet and which is further afield from us in Wiltshire and I'm certain that the five out of the seven people in the group who are over 39 will enjoy the walk as much as the under 13s! With free parking, a picnic and no admission fees, this will make for a frugal bank holiday outing, even if you take the cost of the book (£7.99 with a 20% online discount) into account.

The books are all available from Countryside Books and the really good news is that they have kindly agreed to provide a Kiddiwalks book free to one of you lucky readers! All you need to do is to visit their website (click here or on the link above) and decide which Kiddiwalks county you would like your book to cover. (Countryside Books do lots of other books, not just walking guides, so the website is well worth a visit). There are too many Kiddiwalks books to list here, but they cover North, South, East and West. And London! (But not the far, far South West - Devon and Cornwall are notable omissions in the series). You might like the book that covers your home county or one that you can use on holiday. The choice is yours! Once you have made up your mind then leave a comment by 7pm BST, Monday 6 May on this blog post or on the Everyday Life On A Shoestring Facebook page, specifying which book you would like, and I will draw a winner at random.

Please note that I approached Countryside Books for this giveaway and they generously co-operated, not the other way round (so let's make sure there are lots of comments folks!) I was going to write about the books anyway as I think they offer such good value and such good material!

Many thanks to Jackie at Countryside Books!

Good luck!

Birthdays, bikes and bottom humour...

2013-04-30T20:12:00.000+01:00

When I was a child, a birthday party was simple. You put on your long dress (it was the 70s) and headed off to the birthday girl or boy's house for party games with a few friends, followed by a birthday tea.

Fast forward to the 21st century, and the kids' birthday party has become an elaborate beast. My kids have been to simple affairs akin to the classic 1970s party of my childhood, but they have also been to birthday parties with magicians and entertainers. They have been go-karting, and travelled in a limo to the cinema. They have been to craft parties, swimming pool parties. They have done all sorts.

And in turn, we've done our bit to fuel the elaborate party craze. Parties at home, parties in the park, parties in the garden, parties at the leisure centre, a climbing party, the party where I was Princess Leia from Star Wars and Darth Vader arrived all the way from next door...

But then again, we've also had no brithday party. Last year Son had a new bike for his birthday, which was way more than we usually spend on birthday presents, and part of the deal was no extra expense of a party.

So how did Son want to celebrate this year? Two friends for a sleepover and a bike ride. Simple!

We were able to piggy back onto the Spindles and Sprockets (our local community bike collective) monthly bike ride. Three boys cycling 18 miles in the afternoon = a blissful night's sleepover for all involved! (Thank you Spindles!)

There was also DIY Pizza all round. Add a whoopee cushion and a healthy dose of fart humour into the mix and you're guaranteed a successful supper. Ten year old boys are easily amused.

While the pizza dough was rising there was just the right amount of time for a flag capturing game in the garden.

And before they hit the sack, there was the compulsory DVD.

In the morning, ice cubes from the breakfast orange juice provided amusement for some considerable while. Melting holes in ice cubes by blowing through drinking straws is good fun (if you're ten). And it was a small step from hole-blowing to requests for more ice cubes, and a bold announcement that they would be constructing the Statue of Liberty from ice. Sadly this project was dropped in favour of kicking a football around...

All this got me thinking; years of planning fancy birthday parties, and it turns out whoopee cushion farts and a pile of ice cubes are as good an entertainment as anything!

However, even with the more complicated birthday parties we've organised, there have always been ways of keeping it simple and keeping the costs down. Based on our experience here are my thoughts:

We've shared several parties with other children who have birthdays at the same time as ours, which spreads the cost and the workload.
We have had lots of parties at home. We haven't got a huge house or garden but if you don't invite the whole class and all the extended family, then you can fit quite a few kids in a small space. My kids have brithdays in April and October and we've often been able to overflow into the garden for both.
Choosing a theme can jazz a party up a bit, and make it easier to think of activities. Most of the usual party games can be adapted to fit the theme. Over the years we've had a Postman Pat party (Pin the tail on Jess...), a Star Wars party (Husband spray painted pipe insulating foam silver for light sabres and they all went home covered in flecks of silver paint...), a Spiderman party and a Pocahontas party (complete with a teepee in the garden made from bamboo poles and bed sheets...)
Bake your own cake. I'm not an expert cake decorator, but a simple iced sponge decorated with maltesers or chocolate buttons or hundreds and thousands goes down just as well (and tastes better) as a bought cake.
Once you've planned the amount of food you think you need to buy, halve it! Kids never eat as many sandwiches as you think they will. (The same rule applies to the length of time you think eating the birthday tea will take...you might think eating will require a civilised half an hour of the party but they'll demolish the food in ten minutes!)
Don't spend a fortune on party bag stuff. A bit of cake, a lollipop and a balloon, and you're done.

There were plenty of other birthday party tips on the Non Consumer Advocate last week.

And other bloggers have been busy recently blogging about their kids' birthdays too: check out how Jen tackled her two year old's birthday on My Make Do and Mend Year (and also her mum's and brother's all in the same week!), and Ted's nature walk party at Bradshaw and Sons.) Wondering how to organise a frugal 18th birthday party for twins? Check out Lili's blogpost last month on just that topic at Creative Savv.

What are your favourite frugal birthday party tips?

Food Waste Friday - Green Stuff.

2013-04-26T19:38:00.001+01:00

It was not a zero food waste week.

There was green stuff - wilted lettuce, left over green beans and swiss chard.

There was tinned grapefruit that had been in the fridge for 10 days. I've become such a food waste nerd that I found myself debating whether to have it for breakfast or not, and trying to convince myself that the brown dots on it were something to do with the grapefruit tinning process and not baby mould spores. Oh for goodness sake! It had to go.

There was a tiny bit of toffuti (tofu cream cheese equivalent). Worth buying just for the name, but we must remember to eat it all up next time.

And there were almost lots of carrots. I've had problems with them in the past. A while back I promised you a Crecy* Plate Pie and here it is. The recipe I use is from my falling-to-pieces, ancient copy of The Cranks Recipe Book (my copy does not look like the one you'll get to via this link, but I think it's the same book, just a later edition), which I love and go back to time and time again. Good old fashioned, honest, vegetarian food.

It's essentially lots of carrots and onion, flavoured with thyme and marmite. An odd marriage of seasonings but the pairing works and it tastes really good. If you're in the 'hate it' rather than 'love it' camp when it comes to marmite, fear not, I don't think you can detect the marmite once it's cooked.

Crecy Plate Pie Recipe

350g carrots

350g onions

50g butter or marg

1 tsp thyme

2 tbspn wholemeal flour

1 tsp marmite

salt and pepper to taste

A 450g amount of wholemeal shortcrust pastry. (300g wholemeal flour (I use half wholemeal/half white), 150g butter or marg, 3-4tbspn water)

Chop the onions and grate the carrots. Saute the onion until transparent. Add the carrots and thyme and simmer gently for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally (to avoid the 'caramelised' onion you can see in the picture above!)

Stir in the flour and marmite, and season to taste.

Roll out a generous half of the pastry and line a 20cm/8" tin.

Fill with the vegetable mixture and top with the remaining pastry. Seal the edges and flute them. (I made a pie in a larger tin and didn't bother with the top, so I suppose it was a Crecy Plate tart rather than a pie)

Bake in the oven at 200 degrees c/gas mark 6 for about 30 minutes, until golden.

Serve warm or cold.

* If anyone knows how to insert accents in blogger, I'd love to know. (The 'e' in Crecy has an acute accent).

A partial eclipse of the moon...

2013-04-25T15:52:00.000+01:00

Tonight sees a partial eclipse of the moon. Or it doesn't. Depending on where you live.

From Yahoo News

It won't be visible to those of you in North or South America. But if you live in the Eastern Hemisphere you might get a glimpse of it between 20.54 BST and 21.21 BST.

According to National Geographic, this eclipse will be spectacular for being so unspectacular. It's the second shortest partial eclipse of the 21st century. There'll be no moon glowing red, nor will the world be plunged into impenetrable darkness. The full moon will have a small chunk missing from its disc, and that's pretty much it. If it's a cloudy night with an invisible moon the whole event be even less spectacular!

Everyday Life on a Shoestring celebrates the beauty of the unspectacular, so we think you should indulge in a spot of star gazing tonight if you happen to remember, whether it's cloudy or not!

We've mentioned the night sky before here, here and here, and last year I pointed you in the direction of Mooncup's excellent free 2012 lunar calendar. I had trouble printing out the 2013 version, so I downloaded an alternative calendar here. It's slightly superior - the format is an A4 sheet per month, and it allows you to choose your location, with details of sunrise and sunset times and notifications of lunar eclipses etc. I'm old fashioned so I like a hard copy, but of course there are plenty of online equivalents, and smart phones probably tell you this stuff as a matter of course.

Whether you track the moon or not, and however you do it or not, a partial eclipse is worth looking out of the window for.

Hand lettering by Lisa Congdon
from http://exp.lore.com/

(Check out artist Lisa Congdon's wonderful 365 days of hand lettering here for more beautifully hand lettered quotes.)

Food Waste Friday - Old and crusty, like me?

2013-04-19T21:15:00.000+01:00

I'm a year older tomorrow and the bread crusts have come out in sympathy.

It might look like nice fresh homemade bread but it's old and rock hard.

There is an excuse; Daughter had 6 teeth out last week in preparation for orthodontic work, so that was one person less eating crusts, and the food waste shows it. I was so busy warming up soup, serving yogurt, mixing salty mouthwash and administering pain relief, that I forgot to do anything useful with them so they're currently soaking ready for the chickens. The Food Waste Friday blog post here and the comments following it have lots of useful ideas about what to do with leftover bread.

When Daughter tired of eating soft white rolls, there were even some of those getting drier and older, but by then my nursing role had eased off and I was able to turn them into a bread and butter pudding. The chickens are not laying very reliably at the moment so it was a bread and butter pudding without eggs. I found a vegan recipe to base mine on, which used good old Bird's custard instead. It wasn't quite as light and crispy as an eggy bread and butter pudding but it was palatable.

The other surprise entry into the food waste charts was an orange and some satsumas. They have featured before but since I've been using these (another Christmas present)...

...there hasn't been much fruit waste. 'Fruit and veg savers' are round paper sachets, filled with something compostable that discourages the production of ethylene, thus slowing down the rate at which fruit ripens and then rots. When I checked what was going on with the three mouldy fruits, I found that the sachet currently in use was 10 days past the date when it should have been replaced by a new one. Either that accounts for the withered up fruit, or they have joined the bread crusts in a symbolic representation of old age for my birthday.

The big orange was salvageable and was squeezed and frozen ready for a birthday cheesecake this weekend. I'm hoping that may be metaphorical too; there's life in this old fruit yet!

Food Waste Friday was dreamt up by thefrugalgirl.com, to encourage people to use up food instead of waste it. This week you can find Food Waste Friday hosted by
Simply Being Mum.

My '30 ways to save £1' post!

2013-04-18T23:37:00.003+01:00

This might not be the first blog post you've read in frugal blogland recently sharing 30 frugal pound saving tips, and it may well not be the last one you'll read either! Apologies if you're all frugal tipped out!

To celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the £1 coin, MoneySupermarket.com are offering bloggers £30 for sharing their top money saving ideas (thus generating a bit of publicity for the company along the way). The News and Community section of their website offers lots of money saving ideas and is worth checking out.

Several bloggers have already blogged their tips and I cottoned on to the idea from Frugal in Bucks who discovered it via the Mean Queen a.k.a. Ilona at Life after Money. Ilona was contacted by MoneySupermarket.com, so she heard it from the horse's mouth! Have a read of her blog post about the scheme if you want to find out more. Thank you to both of them for sharing the details and explaining how it works.

As for my 30 ideas, I'm splitting them up into three sections:

1) 10 Frugal Things that we do that I have already blogged about:

1 Use a family railcard (or other type of railcard if you're eligible) to cut costs on train travel.

2 Keep a close handle on food waste to ensure money isn't wasted on food that is not getting eaten.

3 The great outdoors is one big fantastic frugal resource! I've lived by the sea, in various cities including London, and now in Wiltshire and wherever I've been there's always been green space in some shape or form not too far from my doorstep. We like to walk, cycle, get out in the garden and fly kites!

4 Take time to enjoy small things like the night sky, a bowl of soup or even a pretty bookmark!

5 Bake cakes and treats rather than buying them.

6 Keep chickens. The set up costs have been covered several times over in the amount we have saved buying eggs over the last 3 years.

7 Take frugal holidays. Stay with family and go camping.

8 Use local markets as much as possible.

9 Buy secondhand. We're regular shoppers in our town's charity shops and on Ebay.

10 Cut waste and save money at the same time. Since joining in with Wiltshire Wildlife Trust's Slim Your Bin project we now always make our own washing powder and dishwasher powder.

2) 10 Frugal Things we do that I have never blogged about:

11 Try to remember to always turn light switches off when leaving a room.

12 Buy ink cartridges for the printer online.

13 Avoid (new) branded goods, non-branded are often just as good.

14 Entertain at home and rarely go out for meals.

15 Don't buy books. This year I have not bought any books (book buying is a weakness of mine!) for myself, but am enjoying the ones I already have, have borrowed books from friends and used the library.

16 Enjoy DVDs (borrowed or found in charity shops) at home with homemade popcorn rather than expensive cinema trips.

17 Put up heavy curtains for extra insulation in front of the front door (which is completely glazed) to help reduce energy bills.

18 Put silver foil behind all the radiators to reflect heat back into the rooms.

19 Read the news online rather than buying a printed newspaper. Print off my favourite cryptic crossword on a Sunday from the newspaper's website. When we do buy a newspaper at the weekend, we make it last for the next fortnight!

20 Make do with fewer kitchen appliances. We don't own a tumble dryer or a microwave.

3) 10 Frugal Things, some we haven't done but might try one day, and some we haven't done and probably never will...(thanks to the Spend Less Handbook by Rebecca Ash and the interweb for ideas!)

21 Gone on holiday to Thailand and had clothes made there.

22 Sold current home to buy something cheaper.

23 Become a house sitter for free accommodation or a free holiday.

24 Got rid of the TV.

25 Sold things at a car boot sale.

26 Rented out the drive. See www.parkatmyhouse.com

27 Made ice cream.

28 House swapped.

29 Used conkers as mothballs.

30 Hung up dental floss to dry so it can be used again. (Thanks to Extreme Cheapskates for that one!

Have you got any favourite tips to share? If you've tried any of the frugal things that we haven't tried, how did you get on?

A spring in our step, at last.

2013-04-16T18:10:00.000+01:00

Each month we've been out on one of our favourite local walks, partly because we like it so much, and this year, just for fun, to track the seasonal changes. You can follow our previous months' walks by clicking for January, February and March if you want to. We were a little later walking it this time, in April, but perhaps the extra week provided more of spring than if we'd headed out at the start of the month when it was still absolutely freezing.

The most apparent thing this month was the curious combination of winter and spring - sprinter perhaps? Maybe climate change will bring more of these seasonal combos.

The trees are still bare.

The view up the Bybrook Valley is resolutely remaining much the same as it has for previous months this year. You could be forgiven for thinking that I am reusing the same old photo.

The Bybrook Valley, 7 April 2013.

March 2013

February 2013

January 2013

Thankfully there are signs of new life.

The woodland floor is carpeted with wild garlic or ramsons, and thanks to our handy Onya bags, we picked a bagful for our supper. It's virtually impossible for any foraging foul-ups on this one - the smell of garlic wafts through the air where it is growing, and if you're still not sure, breaking a leaf will release a garlicky aroma.

Primroses are growing.

Son's favourite 'lying on the ground' style of photography.

My more traditional style...

The daffodils are out.

And the birds are singing. We saw a willow warbler and a dipper flying down the river. I was especially pleased to see the willow warbler as I had only just read here that although the cold weather may result in a spectacular late spring, it may also have resulted in many summer migrants, including willow warblers, perishing on arrival here in the UK.

Best of all, it was finally warm enough to linger. Warm enough for playing Pooh Sticks.

Warm enough for some members of the party to have an extended paddling session.

And warm enough to sit by the river for a cup of tea and a piece of Simnel cake.

"...and when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea." (Mole sitting by the river in The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame).

How many chocs can a choc chick chuck?

2013-04-11T17:32:00.000+01:00

Last week when my sister and my nieces were staying, it seemed the ideal opportunity for having a go at the Choc Chick raw chocolate making kit that I'd been given for Christmas. I mean, it wasn't as if any of us had eaten many Easter eggs in the preceding week or anything...

It's much easier than I imagined it would be. The cocoa butter (there was 100g in my kit) is melted:

You then add 6 table spoons of the raw cacao powder, and 2-3 table spoons of the Sweet Freedom natural sweetener that comes with the kit (or Agave Syrup). The raw chocolate enthusiasts amongst you will not be pleased to hear that we also added some golden syrup, as it was just too cocoa-y or cacao-y for the young palates that were helping me.

By this point it is a runny chocolatey liquid and can be made into chocolates by filling ice cube trays. We added mini marshmallows, nuts and cranberries to some of ours. (NB The Choc Chick company people pride themselves on their gluten free, white-sugar free, vegetarian, organic, generally all round healthy recipes, so probably would NOT endorse the addition of golden syrup or marshmallows...)

Chocolate making is so simple it can even be done in your pyjamas or onesie!

A good suggestion by one niece was to use some of the chocolate to coat strawberries (which kind of made up for the syrup/marshmallow aberration).

Then the choc chicks had to wait for the chocolates to solidify. Which doesn't take long in the fridge. Our mixture made 27 chocolates plus several chocolate coated strawberries - it's surprising how quickly 7 people can eat this many. No chocs had to be chucked!

There is plenty of the raw cacao powder (ethically sourced from South America) and Sweet Freedom syrup left so I can purchase more cocoa butter (from the Choc Chick website if I so wish) and make some more chocolates.

When my kids evaluate things, they use a method they have learned at school: two stars and a wish. (Two positive things and one area for improvement).

So, my two stars for the chocolates? Delicious and really quite professional looking (even though the photo of the finished product is, as ever, not very professional at all). And my wish? If only I had not got muddled up and had not told my sister that it was such a wonderful gift to receive from my lovely sister-in-law, at which point my sister looked rather crestfallen and pointed out that actually she, herself, had given it to me. Oops! Sorry sis! I obviously need to eat more raw chocolate with all those memory improving anti-oxidants and flavanols...

Any chocolate making tips to share? Any ideas for sourcing ingredients?

Slim Your Bin - the Grand Finale!

2013-04-07T08:30:00.000+01:00

A couple of people have been prodding me to confess...

What was the weight of our week's rubbish at the end of the Slim Your Bin project?

At the beginning of the project our bin featured here, and our weekly waste (that is, everything destined for landfill) measured precisely 850g.

The last week of the project (3 weeks ago) was a Zero Waste week, aiming for as little waste as possible. It was also a week of much excitement. There was the screening of Trashed, the environmental documentary, with a panel of bloggers and environmentalists, (pictured below - we're not really as odd as we look, honest) answering questions from the audience at the end. Knowing that I was going to be feeding these doyennes of recycling before we watched the film, added extra impetus to aiming for an empty rubbish bin...

L-R, Me, Jen (My Make Do and Mend Year), Emma (Wilts Wildlife Trust)
Pip (Transcoco), Front, Karen (The Rubbish Diet)

The outlook was really positive, after all the changes we've made to our waste habits, on top of the recycling that we were already doing. All that saving of packaging for reuse and discovering a host of things that we didn't know we could recycle such as rigid plastics, stretchy polythenes and biscuit wrappers. All that brewing our own cleaning fluids and grating soap for home-made washing powder.

Yes, I could pretend that implementing those measures did indeed lead to an empty bin...

But that wouldn't be honest. The bad news is that there appeared to be no change whatsoever in the weight of our waste. Yes really, none whatsoever!

The good news is that the lack of change can be attributed to a visiting baby depositing two full nappies* in the bin, highlighting the fact that 'waste happens'! That's waste that we wouldn't usually create as we haven't got anyone of nappy-wearing age living here, so if you take the nappies out of the equation, our final weigh-in was 450g! That's better. Not zero waste, but better than 850g. We have got better at avoiding non-recyclable food packaging but it still accounted for most of the 450g waste.

If you haven't already read about the changes we made to reduce our waste, the blog post here is a pretty good round up of our experience of the project. Although the Slim Your Bin project is officially over for us, we haven't stopped waste watching by any means so there will be more recycling blog posts here in the future! And the Rubbish Diet, on which the Wiltshire project was based, is about to kick off in Suffolk, Shropshire and Powys. (You can find more info on the Rubbish Diet blog.)

(*Disposable and real nappies both have an environmental impact. Read these top tips from Which Magazine which provide suggestions on how to minimise the impact of either kind. And the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust has a guide to the benefits of using real nappies here.)

BYO food waste Food Waste Friday!

2013-04-05T16:37:00.000+01:00

When Sue, who blogs at Our New Life in the Country, pictured this book, which she picked up in a charity shop on her recent holiday...

...it reminded me that I picked up the very same book in a charity shop during my summer holiday last year. I haven't read it cover-to-cover, and I'm already familiar with lots of the tips, but there are a few new ideas and I've always thought it might be useful for inspiration if I ever start suffering from bloggers' writing block.

After reading Sue's blog post, I dipped into the book at random and found Tip No. 198 which is 'Don't overspend on dinner guests - If you're trying to live on a tighter budget, then don't spend too much money on making meals for people when they come round for dinner. The most jubilant responses I've ever got from dinner guests was by serving them a really good shepherd's pie or a roast dinner with crisp roast potatoes, roast parsnips and yourkshire puddings.'

That might have been useful advice for us this week when we have had guests to stay for a few days. Aunty and her daughters are model guests though. They have made it almost impossible to overspend on meals by arriving with their own food waste to contribute to meals, and chipping in with various goodies that they have purchased whilst they have been here!

They arrived bearing half a leftover love heart cake, amongst other things!

With all the fun-filled family time together the food waste accounting has been a bit more chaotic...

I know for sure that four children polished off all the fairy cakes:

And I know that the chickens have been busy polishing off a little more leftover supper and breakfast cereal than usual:

A vegetable finger and cornflakes!

But aside from that, it's all a bit hazy! We all need a break from strict food waste accounting once in a while!

Food Waste Friday was dreamt up by thefrugalgirl.com, to encourage people to use up food instead of waste it. This week you can find Food Waste Friday hosted by
Simply Being Mum.

Simple Things - Easter lambs

2013-04-01T18:46:00.000+01:00

This Easter we've enjoyed...walking to see our local lambs...

...and more time to laze around watching Shaun the sheep...

Shaun The Sheep - Life's A Treat (Karaoke Version) by orchardmusic

What simple things have you enjoyed this weekend?

A stodgy Food Waste Friday and a stodgy but yummy recipe

2013-03-30T23:12:00.002Z

This Friday there was food waste to confess...

I'm the only one who eats mushy peas, but half a tin in one sitting is my limit. I should have used the other half tin up rather than let them camouflage themselves in a green cup for two weeks. The leftover mouldy pineapple was not camouflaged in the pink pot but I just didn't get round to doing anything creative with it.

There were also some stodgy food waste saves so it's not all bad news!

The bargain wholemeal scone mix from Approved Food hasn't proved a big hit here after all, and following some attempts at disgusing it in other things, all home baking that I serve is now prefaced with much inquisition, "Are you absolutely sure you haven't put any scone mix in this?" Mix it with dodgy bananas though, and say it's banana cake, and you're onto a winner. NOBODY suspected a thing! Ha!

Wholemeal scone mix + overripe bananas = banana cake

Fuelled with success, I went on to hide some swede (as unpopular as wholemeal scone mix with some of the family) in a homity pie. For recipe see this blogpost. I couldn't pull the wool over the kids' eyes this time and the innocent swede was detected, which just meant there was more for Husband and me, so we didn't complain.

Swede infested Homity Pie, centre.

It has been so cold that here there has been nothing to do but eat banana cake, homity pie and other stodgy stuff, including chocolate surprise pudding.

It's no surprise that the chocolate surprise pudding didn't last long enough for a photo in our house so I've 'borrowed' one from Nigella...

Nigella's chocolate pear surprise pudding - Thanks Nigella!

Trust me, it's just the thing for our Arctic spring...

Here's the recipe.

Chocolate Surprise Pudding

For the sponge: 75g self raising flour
25g cocoa powder
100g butter or marg
100g caster sugar
2 eggs
1-2 tbspns milk

For the sauce:
100g soft brown sugar
25g cocoa powder
250ml hot water

Butter a 2 pint/1l pudding bowl really well.

Preheat oven to Gas Mk 5, 190 degrees celsius.

Boil the kettle.

Cream the butter and sugar, and gradually beat in the eggs. Fold in the flour and add enough milk to make a soft consistency.

Spoon the sponge mixture into the bowl. (At this point you could put pears under the sponge, like Nigella. I added a couple of large spoonfuls of frozen raspberries to make it seem more of a healthful pudding...)

To make the sauce, pour the hot water onto the brown sugar and cocoa powder and mix well.

Pour the sauce over the sponge mixture and bake the pudding for about 40 minutes.

The 'surprise' is that while the pudding is baking the sponge rises to the top and the sauce goes to the bottom. Husband pointed out that this means it is really only a surprise for the person who baked the pudding. And if they've read the recipe properly it's not really a surprise for them either. But it's still quite magical, even if you're read the recipe and made it a hundred times before, like I have. It's not actually that stodgy at all and most importantly, surprise or no surprise, it's still delicious!

Food Waste Friday was dreamt up by thefrugalgirl.com, to encourage people to use up food instead of waste it.

An Easter tree and an Easter plea...

2013-03-28T21:50:00.001Z

Our Easter tree...

and an Easter plea...

Trussell Trust foodbanks will give emergency food to over 280,000 people nationwide in 2012-2013. More and more people are hitting crisis point where they can't afford food. Help Crack UK Hunger aims to raise £1 million to launch 200 new foodbanks to provide food to an additional 200,000 people per year.

Text EGGS13 plus the amount £1, £2, £3, £4, £5 0r £10 to 70070 e.g. ' EGGS13 £5' or visit the Trussell Trust website here.

A totally pants weekend!

2013-03-26T22:15:00.001Z

I think that we can say we are frugal, right down to our underwear!

I look to the M&S sales for bargains when I need new undies. And then there are the My Little Pony Pants...

Not mine, but Daughter's. She's 12 and a half now. She goes to secondary school. The knickers are for a 5-6 year old. They have pink ponies on them. Not good. Even if you take into account that she's a skinny girl and grows upwards rather than outwards it's still not good. Apart from the frugalness and the eco-ness. Seven years of wear? Now that is good! Really good!

I'd be tempted for her to get another year's wear out of them, of course! And if I'm honest, I probably don't want to face up to the fact that my own My Little Pony knicker wearing daughter is transforming into a young woman. But I have to accept it; My Little Pony pants have no place in our home any more.

Daughter convinced me that H&M is the place for tween lingerie.

And after our shopping trip there this weekend I think I agree.

I liked the signs we saw about bringing your old clothes in to the store for recycling. I can think of a lot of other places I can recycle fabric before I'd hit H&M in Bath, but if the least their posters do is to jog customers' memories about textile recycling that's no bad thing.

The staff were wearing T shirts promoting the H&M conscious collection. The collection is part of H&M's work towards a more environmental and sustainable future in fashion.

As well as promoting recycling and working with UNICEF and WWF, H&M claims to be the number one user of organic cotton world wide, and to have saved 450 million litres of water in the production of denim. (Conventional cotton production uses up precious water and can result in chemical pesticides and fertilisers getting into local water supplies.) The company is aiming for all their cotton to come from sustainable sources by 2020.

We paid £7.99 for a pack of 7 knickers. I didn't even realise they were organic cotton until we got them home - that seems a very reasonable price to me and I might even check out the middle-aged lady lingerie range when I next need some new undies.

It looks as if H&M are doing a good job, environmentally, and have clear age guidelines when it comes to the use of child labour by their suppliers, but is it just green wash? What do you think? Are you a frugal or 'green' knicker wearer/buyer?!

(After all that hard work, knicker buying, we needed refreshment, and were pleased to discover Bath's latest new veggie/vegan/gluten free cafe, The Green Rocket Cafe. Friendly staff, lovely surroundings, yummy gluten free chocolate brownies, same colour scheme as this blog's spring theme. Thoroughly recommended! With all the money we've saved on NOT buying Daughter new knickers over the last seven years we could afford to blow some on a coffee and a hot chocolate!)

We liked the Green Rocket Cafe's
flower-in-teacup table decorations...

...and the patchwork textile wall art.

'Decluttering Made Easy'! The Giveaway Winner!

2013-03-23T20:17:00.001Z

It seemed appropriate for the tidiest person in the house to draw the winner for the Decluttering Giveaway this afternoon. He did and it was (drum roll...)

HAZEL !

Hazel, please email me (everydaylifeonashoestring@gmail.com) your email address and I will forward it to Tiffany at Decluttering Made Easy to set you up on the programme!

Thank you to everyone who commented, and those who entered. It's good to know that there are a few others out there who are as in need of decluttering help as I am!

(Now I'm off to go and recycle all the bits of paper with names on from the grand draw, before they start cluttering up my kitchen...)

Using what we've got or "Omne vivum ex ovo"...

2013-03-21T19:05:00.001Z

Maybe I would have been more enthusiastic about making the Roman gladiator costume for Son's school Roman day last year if I'd realised it was going to save us some time this week. And if I'd shelled out on a posh fancy dress Roman outfit, then hacking the helmet about would not have been such an attractive prospect. But it's only card and silver foil so why not?!

This work of art started as a Roman Gladiator's helmet.

Can you guess what it is yet?

Now it's an Easter egg
(with the Easter bunny on top, for good measure)
for the Easter bonnet competition at school.

The really good thing was that Son had the idea for this all by himself. My kids are getting the hang of the make do and mend philosophy! He used coloured paper, foam shapes and an Easter bunny that we'd already got in the craft cupboard, so as well as being mostly recyclable, it's all his own work.

If you were around when we made the Roman gladiator costume, you'll remember we were still watching the glue dry and sewing Son into his tunic on the morning of Roman Day, but this time I'm proud to report that the gladiator-helmet-turned-Easter-egg was all ready at least 12 hours before it was required.

As for the Latin in the blog post title, the Ancient Romans believed that "All life comes from an egg". Egg decorating is a pre-Christian ritual so maybe Son is not the first Roman gladiator to have turned his headwear into a festive spring fashion accessory.

(Don't forget that the Decluttering giveaway is up and running until Saturday, so you still have time to enter!)

A decluttering giveaway!

2013-03-19T23:25:00.001Z

I'm the very last person you should come to if you want advice about decluttering.

I'm the queen of big topply piles of papers, books and laundry.

Time for some filing...

Too many books...

Trying to be green means that we try to recycle and reuse everything properly rather than chucking it in a black bin liner and forgetting about it, so attempts at decluttering result in more piles of clutter to be disposed of in different directions. A 'hand-me-downs for the cousins' pile, a recycling pile, a charity shop pile, a 'borrowed-things-waiting-to-be-returned-to-their owners' pile, an Ebay pile, a 'move-to-another-part-of-the-house' pile....

Trying to be frugal means things are kept kept in case a use is found for them at a later date. Just take a look in our garage and you'll see what I mean...

My general rule of thumb is that there are lots of things I'd rather be doing than worrying about clutter, so it doesn't unduly bother me as long as the piles aren't becoming too much of a health and safety hazard and as long as I can still see small patches of carpet in Son's bedroom, under all the Lego and clothes.

BUT part of the motivation for joining in the Slim Your Bin project was to work on slimming our clutter too. Week 7 of the project focused on all the ways you can get rid of stuff without it going to landfill.

As if by magic, at the same time as we were slimming our bin, a decluttering fairy arrived in my email inbox, waving her virtual wand. She goes by the name of Tiffany Muehlbauer, an ex pat American living in Berlin, of the blog No Ordinary Homestead. Tiffany, a 'sustainable living guru' (and mother who understands the clutter of family life), was looking for people to try out her new online decluttering programme, Decluttering Made Easy.

Tiffany: declutterer extraordinaire and creator of the 'ultimate decluttering course!'

Husband laughed long and hard when I told him that I thought I'd give it a go, and said something along the lines of, "It will have to be a very good programme if it's going to have any effect on you..." But with the Slim Your Bin project up and running in our house, the timing seemed right, and besides, Tiffany was offering a membership for me to give away on the blog too.

In the name of you, my blog readers, I have been trying out the programme.

What does it entail? Well, armed with a user name and password, you are ready to run. It's not scary at all. You don't get bombarded with emails and instructions - I think the content is pitched at just the right amount. It's not just another online thing to waste precious time that could be better spent on, let's say, decluttering! A ten minute video featuring Tiffany's friendly face and natural approach arrives weekly, with an acccompanying PDF document and other goodies eg blank templates of 'to do' lists and calendars. There's a 'members only' Facebook page if you like that sort of thing.

As a hopeless declutterer, the pace suits me. The membership is for a year, so there's no expectation to perform immediate miracles. Good advice abounds, such as reminders of the benefits of 15 minute bursts of tidying and acquiring the knack of 'just doing' chores that will only take a couple of minutes when you notice they need doing, plus suggestions for how to get the family on board. Improving your time management skills is also an important part of the course too.

If you've been to my house recently (and some of you will have been) and you're wondering why it's not yet a minimalist haven, then it's because I'm only up to week 6 and it's been a gentle decluttering ride so far. In fact, although there's been a fair amount of tidying, not much actual decluttering has been done, but I think things are about to get serious. Who knows, I might even give you the odd update!

If you've ever thought about buying a decluttering book or thought about simplifying your possessions, or if you're in the process of decluttering and would like bit of a helping hand from Tiffany, then this could be the very thing for you!

If you'd like to enter the giveaway for free membership to 'Decluttering made easy', just leave a comment below by Saturday 23 March, midday (GMT) and I'll pick a winner at random. (If you do enter, please remember to check back to see if you've won later on that Saturday!)

I may not be the person to come to if you want advice about decluttering but I sure am the person to come to if you want a giveaway about decluttering!

Food Waste Friday - Feed the birds

2013-03-15T15:40:00.000Z

Yesterday I watched Trashed. The movie (which follows Jeremy Irons as he journeys to different countries to witness the impact that our waste is having globally) is frightening, shocking and heart rending in equal measure. I'll be coming back to it in future blog posts.

The morning after Trashed, I'm gradually coming round from my despair in the face of such enormous environmental challenges. The message from Karen Cannard of the Rubbish Diet, who introduced the film and answered questions at the end, was clear; "Think big, start small", (aka "Think global, act local"). Don't let the enormity of the big picture dissuade you from tackling the little things.

And so the show goes on...Food Waste Friday rides again. The smallest of small things, but if it reminds us to make the best use of our resources, I hope it's worth sharing. Here goes...

This week was our attempt at Zero Waste week, as part of the final Slim Your Bin fling - we were extra nervous about food waste. Happily there's certainly no food waste in the bin. Hurrah!

But there was food waste. Remember the porridge cake? (My unsuccessful attempt to reuse leftover porridge in a cake...) The frozen remnants reared their ugly head again as an emergency dessert, but it really was no more appetising the second time around.

Porridge cake and banana muffins left, and bird seed (for a balanced diet) right.

The up side is that we have hardly ever had Black Caps in the garden before, but boy, do they love porridge cake and mouldy banana muffins! A female Black Cap has virtually single-handedly scoffed the whole lot. It's just the thing for putting yourself in peak condition before migrating to Central Europe and nesting! Honestly. After her first meal of porridge cake, I worried that the dense stodginess of it might cause her to thud to the ground and be unable to flutter her delicate little wings and fly away. But she is a picture of health and vitality, like this one (I can't get such good close-ups with my camera).

As I looked at the sparrows out there this morning in my post-Trashed state, feeding the birds seemed another painfully 'small thing' to be doing, just like accounting for my food waste, in the face of environmental catastrophe. (Granny, what did you do to save the planet? Well dear, I tried not to waste a crumb of food, ever, and I always fed the birds...). If we lose our sense of awe, wonder, and respect for the natural world (or the big picture) that's on our own doorsteps, then surely we really are doomed.

My 'Free gift' sprout packaging - these sprouts were definitely grown with love...

The second food waste disaster was some beloved bean sprouts. Last summer some 'free gift' sprouts came in the veg box which reminded me about bean sprout growing. After some rather damp smelling, sprout growing attempts in a jam jar, I splashed out on a sprouter and have since had lots of success growing them; they provide easy and cheap green freshness, even in the depths of winter. Sadly the latest lot went from being seeds to mouldy sprouts before I'd even noticed. I'm embarrassed at my lack of conscious awareness...

But we are all interconnected in this cycle of life - the really mouldy ones were composted and the salvageable ones went to my other favourite birds, the chickens, and I wasn't downhearted. A new lot of sprouts has been started and I promise I'll nurture them better this time.

Any food waste successes in your house this week!?

Making music with waste?

2013-03-13T17:40:00.000Z

As an amateur musician, people often tell me how much they would love to have learnt a musical intrument when they were a child.

Well, it's never too late...and it doesn't have to cost a fortune. Forget the price of an instrument or music lessons...why not learn to play the cups! What's even better is that you can reuse yogurt pots or other plastic containers - great for those of us slimming our bins.

We're late in discovering this musical style (we do live in rural Wiltshire after all) but Daughter had a very happy week recently, teaching herself the cups. She'd spent the previous week trying to convince me that she 'needed' a tablet (the computery kind) in order to be able to play some particular computer game or other, so it was refreshing to see that a plastic cup could provide that much entertainment.

Here's one of her performances (not too polished as one of the cups skids out of control in the middle, but is successfully recovered), playing along to one of the Youtube videos she learnt from (that's not us singing!):