Day 2 & 3 of hols

Not been able to blog whilst on holiday my dongle was not really working that great in the area we were in so I gave up. We are still away but have moved on to a hotel half way home to cut down on the travelling tomorrow. This hotel has free wifi so here I am catching up on a bit of blogging before we eat our evening meal.

Last Saturday we went to the Bristol Balloon Fiesta. We had plenty of food in our cooler box for our lunch so only had to pay the entry parking which was a whopping £10 for the day. We did get our monies worth on the parking as we arrived just after 10am and left around 10pm.

85 balloons were launched in the evening which was great to watch. We have been 3 times to the Balloon Fiesta over the years and we felt it was too busy this year. You could not move along the paths by early evening and the queues for the porta loos were ridiculous.

We ate from a fast food stall which were ridiculously priced and the queues were ridiculously long too. We could have taken some extra food for our evening meal but we thought not having it refrigerated all day could have been a bit dodgy.

Night Glow

We watched the night glow when it became dark which was lovely to watch. They fire up their balloons to the rhythm of the the music then they had a fireworks display. An enjoyable day in some ways but too busy to call it a great day.

DAY 3

On the Sunday we went to Bristol Zoo. We printed off some tickets from moneysupermarket site for 2 for 1 on entry into the zoo which gave us a great saving (can't remember now how much it was in now) We called at the supermarket on the way to the zoo and bought bread, sandwich fillings and drinks. We did this every day and it saved us a fortune. We never spent over £10 and that was for four of us. The prices in these cafes at venues was ridiculous so it saved us a lot of money taking our own food. Parking was only £3.00 for the day.

 

Huge fruit bats, lovely cute faces

Dragonfly sculptures

The zoo has lovely gardens with lots of sculptures and the gardens are well tended. I was pleasantly surprised with the zoo. A lovely day out.

My Girls

After the zoo we headed to our country chain hotel for 5 nights b&b in Devon. Hubby printed off the hotel website 2 vouchers for a free glass of wine if you order a main meal so we took them up on the offer. 

Day 1 of our hols

Day one and it's been a lot of travelling. I did the first stint of driving then we stopped at a park in Birmingham and had planned to have a picnic outside on a rug but the heavens opened just a few minutes before we pulled into the car park. Ended up having our picnic in the car. The rain stopped so we went for a stroll around the park. We then had a coffee in the cafe which was not budgeted for but we indulged. It was not even a very nice coffee. One daughter got a hot chocolate and the other a small bottle of milk shake. All this was at a cost of £7.00! I'm not used to paying for hot drinks in cafes and I do find it a rip off and just think of what I could buy with the money in the supermarket instead.

Hubby took the second part of the driving and we arrived at the chain hotel in Bristol for our stay in a family room for two nights. You should look into family rooms when you ever want a stay in a hotel with kids. They are really good value and when you pay for breakfast the kids eat for free at the chain we used. So four of us are eating breakfast in the morning for £13.24 which works out at £3.31 per person for breakfast. It could have been cheaper but hubby wanted to have a cooked breakfast so it did make it a bit more expensive. If he chose to have a continental breakfast like me we could have all had breakfast for £2.62.

We ate in the Beefeater restaurant in the hotel and came in budget with what we allowed ourselves for the meal. Hubby received a confirmation of our booking through e-mail the day before we left and attached to the e-mail was a token for a free drink for us with our meal. We had £9.80 deducted from the bill for our drinks.

We are now sat in our room having a bottle of wine which we brought with us. We bought the wine in Aldi for £3.99. So much cheaper than buying a bottle in the bar and we can sprawl out  and relax whilst enjoying it.

So a good start. Came in budget with what I estimated we would spend. Tomorrow will be even less because we still have plenty in the cooler box for lunch tomorrow and we shall only be having some food from stalls at the Bristol Balloon fiesta for tea tomorrow.

Got lots of these, need lots of these

I've got lots of these,

 

 

 

Homegrown courgettes

so I need lots of these.

Empty jars

My courgettes are doing well but I have a glut and was struggling to work out what to do with them. I had a search on the Internet last night and now have a nice pile of recipes to use them up. I've a recipe for courgette bread, courgette soup, courgette chutney and courgette & chocolate cake. I'm going to start with a courgette chutney.

For jams and chutneys you need lots of jars. I don't buy new ones. I save any jar of any size to reuse in my jam making. Above is a picture of a mayo jar I finished yesterday and a pesto jar. Jars are great for storing herbs and spices and I just used one the other day to store some smoked chillies I had opened and wanted to make sure I lost none of the flavour. So if your thinking of starting jam or chutney making, save your money and start saving any jars you have finished to reuse.

Off on my holidays tomorrow but shall still try and blog most days if I'm not too tired and don't get in too late.

Bye for now.  : )

Budgeting for a holiday

I've a busy day ahead clearing a backlog of ironing before I do my last wash tomorrow before we go on holiday Friday. Yes, a holiday when we try to live frugally. We don't have to live frugally because we are in debt. We live this way to make sure we don't get into debt doing things we enjoy.

We live our lives planning meals, budgeting and being careful so we can save for things we want and put a little aside to pay for things that may unexpectedly turn up. When we finish a holiday it's straight on with saving every month an amount into a savings account for the next holiday. We don't do expensive holidays, mainly because we can't afford them, but we make sure we have a break somewhere each year.

So Friday we set off on our annual holiday which will be starting off in Bristol. We are staying in a family room in a chain hotel for two nights so we can go to the Bristol Balloon Fiesta. We are staying in a family room as it's a lot cheaper than getting a room for us and a room for the girls. The Bristol Balloon Fiesta event happens every year and is FREE. The only expense is the parking which is £10 this year.  We shall have our electric cooler box which we plug into the car so this allows us to visit a supermarket in the morning and get some supplies to make sandwiches later.

We then travel onto Devon which has all been planned so we have a good idea how much we shall be spending and it allows us to print off discount vouchers or pre-book tickets for places so we can save money. We are not the type of people who say "let's stick every thing on the credit card and do what we want on holiday and pay for it later." We will not get into debt to have a holiday.

So follow us on our holiday later in the week and see how we do. Do you budget for a holiday and plan your days out to minimise costs?

Menu Week 08/08/11

MONDAY - Creamy pesto chicken/tofu, sauteed potatoes, roasted tomatoes & peas

TUESDAY - Sausages, mashed potatoes, vegetables, yorkshire puddings & gravy

WEDNESDAY - Lasagne, wedges & salad with homemade garlic bread

THURSDAY - Curry, rice and naan bread

We are then on holiday so no menu planning for nine days; I'm being cook for which will be lovely.

Bought some strawberries & cream today whilst shopping so decide to make something a little different to strawberries & cream for dessert.

HIGHLANDER SHORTBREAD

100g butter
50g sugar
100g plain flour
50g ground rice

Heat oven to 190C, Gas 5.
Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
Add flour and ground rice and mix well into a dough.
Roll out onto a piece of baking paper as the dough is quite difficult to handle.
Roll dough quite thin and place baking paper and dough onto a baking tray.
Bake for about 12 minutes.
Cut out round circles with pastry cutters and leave to cool.
when cool they will harden, lift the circles off the baking paper and they are ready to use.

I whisked some double cream with a few drops of vanilla extract. I placed a biscuit on a plate added cream then some strawberries the topped with a biscuit. Dust with icing sugar and top with a strawberry.

I just threw mine together but the others looked a lot neater. It was only when I remembered to take a photo that mine was the only one untouched so I had to have a picture of my messy dessert for my blog. Never mind, it tasted just as nice as the perfect ones.

I have a fig!

My first and only ripe fig. I have had my fig bush for over five years now and it always produces plenty of figs each year but they usually drop off or rot on the plant. This one survived so I picked it today before I forgot about it and left it to rot. I shall eat it tomorrow, maybe with my breakfast. Looks like I'll have to wait another year now to see if we can do any better , there are no more figs left on the bush now.

Well, I did my voluntary shift at the charity shop this morning and I shall be going to work shortly to do a night shift then that's me done with work for three weeks! Yippee! Every year I take three weeks off in the summer holidays and I LOVE IT. The only problem is having to go back to work and get back into working a night shift but I will cross that bridge when the time comes. So roll on 7.00am Saturday morning and that's me done.

Have a lovely weekend.

Whitby, another day out with the girls

We went to Whitby yesterday. Hubby had the day off work and I don't work Mondays so we went to the coast for the day. We had a car full! A dog, two daughters, daughter No2's boyfriend, me and Hubby. The boot was also stocked with blankets to sit on, a cooler box of sandwiches and other bits to eat and we had a bag of drinks.

 We had a picnic at the car park at the top of the hill where the abbey is. The weather was lovely and we had good views of Whitby. After our picnic we went walking around the town and harbour. Daughter and her boyfriend went off on their own and met up with us later.

Parking cost £4.00 and the only other expense was on a couple of ice creams at £2.70 and £2.80 in a cafe on cups of horrible tea.  After walking and getting very tired we went back to the car and lazed on the grass on blankets for a while before setting off home. A very nice day.

Did not get my menu plan sorted for the week with being busy and going out for the day so need to get that sorted sometime today. I shall just call into a shop on the way home from my voluntary job today and buy a packed of sausages for tea tonight. So the menu plan so far will be -

TUESDAY - Sausages, mash, yorkshire puddings, veg and onion gravy

WEDNESDAY - leftover lasagne, salad and garlic bread

the rest of the weeks meals will be sorted sometime today.