So I’m giving it a post of its own. It’s brilliant – and if you are into old school thrift and Make Do And Mend, I think you will love it as much as I do.

Mr Straw’s House is in Worksop, 16 miles south of Robin Hood Airport. From the outside, it is an ordinary semi-detached property on a quiet, leafy street lined with red-brick Edwardian homes. Those who venture inside are transported back in time. In fact it is an uncanny experience, like walking into an Ealing film or an Agatha Christie novel.

The three-storey house, open to the public, is just as it was in the 1930s – right down to the brown leatherette wallpaper on the stairs, bowler hats hanging in the hallway and dusty letters with old stamps and faded postmarks, piled high on the sitting room piano.

The property is as perfectly preserved as the bottled fruit and jars of ancient pickles in its scrubbed pantry. Other features, such as a heavy stovetop iron, a chilly WC and a Baby Daisy vacuum cleaner, which had to be operated by two people, remind us just how far we have come…

The house’s former owners, brothers William and Walter Straw, were splendidly eccentric. Following the deaths of their parents in the 1930s, they spurned modern conveniences such as the telephone and rarely threw anything away. Over the decades, their home became a shrine to the disappearing past.

Walter, the town’s grocer, died in 1976, but William lived on into his nineties. He left the contents of the house to the National Trust, which decided to open the property to the public.

Every winter, the house is temporarily closed so that every item, down to a set of false teeth kept in one of the bedrooms, can be cleaned and returned to its proper place.

In keeping with a bygone era, visitors are politely requested to book their admission in advance, by telephone, letter or e-mail. If you aren’t a National Trust member, admission is £6.50 for an adult, and £15.50 for a family.

If you live nearby or are visiting the area, it is also worth noting that Mr Straw’s House is participating in the nationwide Museums at Night initiative: hundreds of museums, galleries, libraries, and heritage sites are opening for special evening events over the coming weekend of 18 to 20 May 2012. Mr Straw’s House will be open on Friday night, when you can see it in a different light – quite literally. Booking is essential though.

Mr Straw’s House, 7 Blyth Grove, Worksop S81 0JG. Contact: +44 (0)1909 482380; mrstrawshouse@nationaltrust.org.uk.

The request made me do an OMG face like this:

In truth, I’ve been holding back on the baby posts for a couple of reasons. The first is that once uncorked, I’m at risk of turning into a bloggy baby bore. The second is that Thrifty Baby and I have been doing a prolonged bout of road-testing. Although I spent my pregnancy stocking up on bargain baby gear and working out what we did or didn’t need, I was conscious of taking a step in the dark and that hello, maybe I needed that plastic “top and tail bowl”, freestanding changing table and buggy that cost the same as a small car after all.

As it turns out I didn’t need any of those things, and in the end we were able to get all that we needed either for free, or very cheaply. So over the coming weeks I’ll be setting out what I got, did and bought, and how I cut all the corners cost-wise. But I don’t want to bore anyone who doesn’t give two hoots about baby stuff, so shall we say, one baby post a week? Does that sound amenable?

I’ve been asked to tell you about what we did for a Moses basket, so that’s where I’ll start…

I was always going to get a Moses basket. Our house is small and, although we have a cot in the nursery, we were never going to fit it in our bedroom. My only worry was that Thrifty Baby would outgrow the basket so quickly, it would turn out to be money down the drain. (Actually, the opposite has been true: because he was poorly and slow to put on weight after he was born, he is still playing catch-up – and, as you can see from the pictures below, at four months old he still fits in the basket. Just.)

When I saw how much Moses baskets cost, I did another one of those OMG faces. (Actually, I did a lot of those while shopping for baby stuff.) In the baby shops, the baskets on display were priced at about £80. On the Mothercare website, the cheapest basket is £34.99 – and that’s without a stand. The cheapest stand costs £19.99. And that’s without the bedding. So £55, without bedding. As you can see, it all begins to add up very quickly…

Thank heavens for ASDA, where I found a Moses basket on special for £15. Here it is, as modeled by Thrifty B:

The basket is still available via Asda’s website, for £25. And do you know what? I really don’t think that quality-wise, there is much difference between this basket and it’s expensive equivalents. The hood doesn’t stay up very well, but I like to keep it down anyway so that I can check he is still alive see him.

Two good points about this basket: the colours are neutral. Also it is slightly larger than some of the wee matchbox-sized baskets I’ve seen elsewhere, so can be used for longer.

As for the stand: I thought we would make one, but my husband shot that idea down as, quite reasonably, he didn’t want to be held responsible for the thing staying up. But £19.99 is a lot for a few sticks of wood, isn’t it?

Fortunately these basket stands are pretty durable – well they have to be, don’t they – and so they pop up all the time at car boot sales and jumbles. Ours was £5, which seems to be the going rate.

So there’s my Moses basket: at £20 including the stand, it was a fraction of the prices charged at Mothercare and Kiddicare. Result!

Last summer I invested in a baby gender reveal cake, and held a baby gender reveal party. I didn’t post about it the time, because it felt so extravagant. I have never bought a big cake before – I even made our wedding cake! – so it was a something of a departure for me.

Over the past couple of days, however, there have been stories in the UK press about how baby gender reveal cakes and baby gender reveal parties are the New Big Thing for British mums-to-be. (These “trend” stories are so woolly, aren’t they? As seems to be the norm, the one currently doing the rounds features a single, solitary case study. Now I suppose enquiries will go up, and the media coverage will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Well, I suppose that’s how it goes.)

Since it turns out that I am achingly on-trend and also because some of the newspaper stories are, erroneously, lumping baby gender reveal cakes and baby gender reveal parties in with baby showers, I thought I’d share my experiences…

Baby gender reveal parties became popular in America, which is where we got the idea from, about a year ago. As explained by the Telegraph:

“These are celebrations at which friends and family gather around an expectant mother to find out the sex of her child, through the cutting of a cake that contains pink sponge for a girl, and blue for a boy.

“Typically, the parents will find out at exactly the same time as everyone else in the room, having asked their sonographer to seal the news in an envelope, which they will then hand straight to a baker who can get to work on a gender-reveal cake.”

This time last year, I was three months pregnant with Thrifty Baby and we had already decided to find out at the 20-week scan if it was a girl or a boy (due to yours truly being an infernal nosy parker). When we chanced upon the YouTube footage of American couples cutting into mystery cakes, surrounded by friends and family, we thought it was a brilliant idea.

The way we saw it, it was a way to bring our family together to celebrate Thrifty Baby’s imminent arrival. We live in North Yorkshire, but our families are based down in Essex, almost 300 miles away. Siblings, parents, step-parents and grandparents were all excited for us, and phone calls, scan pictures and emails were flying backwards and forwards – it seemed such a shame that they all lived so far away! A family member had suggested holding an American-style baby shower, but to be honest, that’s really not my thing.

So we hatched a plan. Rather than have the sonographer make the announcement at the 20-week scan in August, we would ask them to seal the news in an envelope. We would take the envelope to the baker as quickly as possible, because we knew we would be tempted to look inside. We would take the cake down to Essex, hold a small party for close family, cut into the cake… and all find out the big news at the same time.

We let our local cake baker in on our plans, and booked her in for August. My mum kindly offered to hold the party in her back garden. A date was set. Invitations were sent.

Then we hit a couple of problems. Explaining to the would-be guests what a baby gender reveal party actually was, and how it worked, turned out to be a job and a half. People were confused, then bewildered, then sceptical. Didn’t we want to leave the surprise until the birth? Wouldn’t we prefer the surprise to be for us two only? Weren’t we horrified that the baker would know before we would?

Then it was as if a switch flipped, and we had the opposite problem: guests who were crazy-crazy-excited about the impending baby gender reveal party. This should have been a good thing, but at one point the guest list was commandeered, extended to include other family members and family friends, and then extended to include plus ones and people we barely knew. British reserve kicked in, and we suddenly felt uncomfortable about the whole thing.

And at this point we realised that as fun as the party idea was, the cutting of the baby gender reveal cake was also going to be a very personal moment. And that actually, we were really nervous about it and didn’t want share it with all and sundry. So we restricted the guest list to parents, step-parents, siblings, grandparents and our baby niece.

Our next challenge was getting the whole thing past the sonographer. When we went for the 20-week scan, she initially refused to write the baby’s sex on a piece of paper and put it an envelope, on the grounds that it would contravene data protection rules. Eh? That Data Protection Act has a lot to answer for! If any of you are considering a baby gender reveal party, I would bear this in mind. It wasn’t something we had expected!

Fortunately we persuaded the sonographer that if the envelope was passed to us rather than the baker, data protection didn’t come into it. She agreed to write down the baby’s sex – albeit grudgingly.

We took the envelope to the baker quicksmart. The cake cost £50. Do you know, we got so much out of that £50 – a great cake, a great party and some great memories – that I think it was money well spent.

Here is our wonderful cake:

The sponge had been dyed and then thickly iced, so that none of the colour peeped through. When we drove down to Essex, the cake was carefully strapped in on the back seat. I was terrified that we would have to brake suddenly, and the cake would go flying up and smash on the ceiling, and cover us both with dyed cake crumbs…

The party went well too. It was a sunny afternoon and all the flowers were out in the garden. Both our families came together for the do, and my sister-in-law and her family even flew over from Macedonia for the occasion.

When we cut the cake, it was an unexpectedly nerve-wracking moment. I don’t know why – we were going to be delighted if the cake was pink, and delighted if it was blue – but that split-second between putting the knife in and seeing what colour was inside passed v-e-r-y slowly. (We also took a video – I’ll see if I can dig it out.)

And the outcome? Well, you probably know that already…

If you are considering holding a baby gender reveal party, I would really recommend it. I loved it, and would definitely do it again. Just be prepared to argue your case, if necessary. I know that if we had given into the sonographer’s protests in that cramped, windowless scanning room, and instead let her tell us there and then that Baby Thrifty was a boy, the surprise wouldn’t have been half as much fun.

You also have to be prepared to eat cake of an exceptionally lurid hue…

Here are the tips on taking care of clothes, taken from the beginning of Make Do And Mend. See what you think…

Tips on taking care of clothes

Clothes have simply got to last longer than they used to, but only the careful woman can make them last well. If you want to feel happy in your clothes as long as they last, start looking after them properly from the very beginning. Here are some hints to help you.

1. Mend clothes before washing them or sending them to the laundry, or the hole or tear may become unmanageable. Thin places especially must be dealt with, or they may turn into holes.

2. Always change into old things, if you can, in the house, and give the clothes you have just taken off an airing before putting them away.

3. Don’t throw your things down in a heap when you take them off; when they are still warm the material will crease. Brush them with a short-haired brush (a long whisk picks up the fibres) and shake them well. Then hang them on hangers, making sure that the hangers are wide enough. A hanger that is too narrow will ruin the shape of the shoulder, and may even make a hole. For skirts, cut a notch each end of the hanger to stop the loops slipping off.

Do up all fastenings before hanging clothes. This helps them to keep their shape. And see that the shoulders are even on the hanger and not falling off one side.

4. See that the wardrobe door shuts tightly, to keep out dust and moth.

5. Remove all stains at once, as they usually come out fairly easily before they are set.

For grease use a hot iron on a piece of clean white blotting paper placed over the stain.

For all other stains try plain tepid water first, and then soap and water. If you still can’t get the stain out, send the article to the cleaners, and put a note on it saying what the stain is.

6. Keep a look out for loose buttons and other fastenings, frayed buttonholes and split seams, and mend them at once.

7. It is best to wear clothes in turn, as a rest does them good. Shoes, too, are better for not being worn day after day.

8. Never let clothes get really dirty. Dirt injures the fabric, so clean or wash clothes when slightly soiled.

9. Use dress shields to protect clothes from perspiration, but don’t leave shields in when putting clothes away for any length of time.

The dress shields, in case you were wondering, are fabric pads sewn or inserted into dress underarms. I don’t suppose we need them now, what with everyone deodorising and showering more regularly; some of the threadbare underarms on very old vintage items I have picked up in the past are proof that perspiration rots clothes. (Nice!)

P.S. If you don’t have blotting paper (Tip 5)… Try a paper bag instead!

This post was included in the 334th Festival of Frugality.

The 20% discount also applies to dresses in the sale section, which means that in at the time of writing, you can get brand new Phase Eight dresses for half price or thereabouts. I have pictured a few of the half price dresses below…

Delphine Print Dress: reduced from £130.00 to £63.20.

Luchia Print Dress: reduced from £99.00 to £52.00.

Lina Knitted Dress: reduced from £75.00 to £39.20.

Felicity Jersey Dress, reduced from £79.00 to £39.20.

Cotton Pintuck Dress: reduced from £85.00 to £28.00.

Amy Stripe Maxi Dress: reduced from £89.00 to £35.60.

Lauren Lace Dress: reduced from £160.00 to £64.00.

[20% discount on Phase Eight dresses]

It didn’t used to be this way: back in the day radicchio used to be relatively expensive and hard to come by, and the salad bags certainly weren’t chock-a-block with it as they seem to be now. The problem with radicchio is that it looks great on the plate, but is bitter to taste. I don’t know about you, but we often end up with old, opened salad bags in the bottom of the fridge that look like this:

Now I hate food waste. So I’d like to share a little secret with you: toss that radicchio in a frying pan for a couple of minutes, and it will taste delicious! For this reason, I am quite happy to stockpile the radicchio leaves in the bottom of the fridge until we have enough for a tasty side dish. The other great thing about radicchio is that it keeps in the bottom of the fridge for ages.

My radicchio recipe is as follows:

Toasted Radicchio Recipe

4. Mix with the salad dressing and serve.

That’s it! It’s very quick and easy. The nuts are for texture rather than taste as cooked, radicchio has a lovely nutty taste anyway. I must be honest: served this way, radicchio doesn’t look half as pretty as it does raw in a salad bag. It tastes twice as nice though…

Last time I used up the dregs of the salad bag in this way, I served the toasted radicchio as a side with hot buttered toast and smoked mackerel:

Find a list of the participating properties and gardens here.

We are lucky, up here in Yorkshire: there are lots of National Trust properties, and I love exploring the old manors, mills and landscapes. Sadly, this pastime doesn’t come cheap. Take this National Trust place, which is just down the road from me:

Fountains Abbey is a World Heritage site and it is beautiful. In the summer, families congregate for picnics on the greens that slope towards the ruined abbey buildings. Beyond Fountains Abbey itself is the 18th century Studley Royal Water Garden, which stretches on forever and comes complete with swans and a Temple of Piety:

Sadly, it’s also expensive: £9 per adult. I used to be a National Trust member, which was great because I could sail past the desk waving my membership card and get in for free. But even annual membership, which can save a lot of money if you’re a fan of such places, costs nearly £100 per year for two people.

Really, what I’m trying to say is this: it’s free! WOOP WOOP – IT’S FREE! Go go go!

It is worth bearing in mind, however, that the weather forecast for this weekend is predictably gloomy. So if you do download the voucher, I’d recommend that you take yourself to properties with roofs. The National Trust list to which I linked above doesn’t contain links, so here are a few choice numbers to whet your appetite:

NORTHUMBERLAND: Lindisfarne.

DERBYSHIRE: Sudbury Hall and the National Trust Museum of Childhood.

CARMARTHENSHIRE: Dolaucothi Gold Mines. Have a guided tour underground, and try gold panning.

HERTFORDSHIRE: Shaw’s Corner. This is George Bernard Shaw’s old house, just off the A1 near Welwyn. It looks amazing and I’ve always wanted to visit – somebody, please do it for me!

DORSET: Kingston Lacy. “Home of the Bankes family for more than 300 years, this striking 17th-century house is noted for its lavish interiors.”

LONDON: 2 Willow Road. Erno Goldfinger’s Modernist family home, built in Hampstead in 1939. Timed tickets apply, so arrive early to avoid disappointment.

SOMERSET: Tyntesfield. The National Trust only opened up this Victorian property in 2011. Timed tickets apply, so arrive early to avoid disappointment.

Image credits: National Trust & Wikimedia Commons.

Palmolive Hygiene Plus has a full retail price of around £1.70 a bottle. But to be honest, I never buy handwash at full price anyway – who does? – preferring to wait for special offers or plumping for the supermarket’s super-cheap own brand, which does the same job. And what do you know, Asda is currently running a special offer on Palmolive Hygiene Plus handwash: buy three bottles for £3. Sainsburys were selling it at 87p per bottle, although that offer has just ended.

But here’s where it gets interesting…

The sleuths over on the MoneySavingExpert coupon thread have found that when the Palmolive coupon is presented at checkouts, instead of the soap being rung through at £1 per bottle, the coupon value is deducted from the total shopping bill. So if you go to Asda with three Palmolive coupons with a combined value of £3, the three bottles of handwash are effectively run through at £0…

At the time of writing, the coupons expire on 30 April 2012.

Update, 17 April 2012: Ah, it looks like you had to be quick with this one. Palmolive has now taken down the coupon and updated its website as follows:

If you wanted to take advantage of this offer, I hope you made it to Asda in time!

[Download Palmolive Coupons]

I’ve seen cod, haddock and coley packaged like this in Morrisons and Sainsburys. At around £3.00 for 500g, these packets of fish are generally half the price of their fresh equivalents. The downside: as rectangular “fish portions”, they don’t look quite right served as a dish in their own right. So what do you do with them?

I keep a regular stock of these packets in the freezer, and turn them into Italian Fish Stew. It’s a great recipe, requiring little prep. I tend to rustle it up when the fridge and cupboards are beginning to look bare at the end of the month: if you have fish in the freezer and a tin of tomatoes on hand, you’re away. Although it’s a stew and it’s great in winter, it is also light enough for the summer months. And of course, it’s tasty and super-cheap – especially for a fish dish!

I make this dish in the slow cooker, and am featuring it here following a reader request. This Italian Fish Stew based, albeit VERY roughly, on a recipe called Sardinian Fish Stew, included in Truly Madly Pasta by Ursula Ferrigno. My recipe isn’t particularly Italian; the name is a nod to the original. Also, let’s face it, “Fish Stew” on its own doesn’t sound half as appetising, does it?

P.S. If you are skint and your local supermarket doesn’t stock the frozen packets as detailed above, it’s also a good recipe for those £2.00 packets of unidentified “white fish” that frequent the freezer aisles.

Italian Fish Stew
Serves 4-6

1kg- 1 1/2kg fish. There are no hard and fast rules, so use whatever you have to hand. I tend to use a couple of packets of white fish, as above, along with a frozen fillet of salmon and, if I have it, some oily fish too. (I keep sardines in the freezer; mackerel is also cheap.)

A couple of handfuls of pasta. The original recipe specifies soup pasta, but I can never be bothered to buy any. We usually have the remnants of a packet in the pasta – almost one serving but not quite – so I smash it up a little with the end of a rolling pin and chuck it in.

Olive oil

6. Serving time: season to taste, sprinkle with the rest of the parsley, and serve with fresh bread. Yum!

If you have other tricks, tips or recipes to get the most out of those frozen fish portions, do let me know…

The True Grit/No Country For Old Men double bill was the one that caught my eye. I lovelovelove the Coen Brothers, and those are two of my all-time favourite movies – if you haven’t seen them, I can recommend them most highly. But there are plenty of other really good titles too.

They include:

The complete Lord Of The Rings trilogy.

Inception.

And finally…

Wallace & Gromit: The Complete Collection.

You can view the full list of titles here.

[DVDs for a fiver - Sainsburys Entertainment]