15 Days Till Christmas: I Love, Love Actually, Actually

Little one will not sleep for more then 20 mins, taking an hour to settle him back down, trying to wrap presents, write cards and plan the rest of the presents - not to mention writing some bloody blog.

But Love, Actually makes it all better. I really so love this film. So Christmasie and great. So I thought I'd give a countdown of my favourite bits of the film: In no particular order as I love them all and I will no doubt forget a million things and have to edit this post so much. 

1. Did I mention it features Colin Firth

2. The dude from The Family who goes to America

3. Hugh Grant as the Prime Minister. 

4. Love to hate that Bitch that seduces Professor Snape

5. Martine Mccutcheon swearing (especially when she has sworn the first time mimics going bla to the other housekeepers)

6. Stacy and the guy from the office small talking and mock shagging

7. The guy singing 'Christmas is all around us' just his face makes me laugh.

8. I love that guy who's wife dies even the little bit of the funeral made me cry today

9. When they watch Titanic

10. When he tells the kid to run after the girl

11. When he meets Claudia Sheffer

12. When Colin Firth is having akward convos with the Portugese lady

11. The trumpets in 'All you need is love'

13. When the whole town comes out to see Colin Firth's proposal

14. Rowan Atkinson - Love that bit so so funny (we have an unfounded suspision that Rowan Atkinson just turned up that day and was like 'so Richard Curtis I'm here where my part' and Richard Curtis thought 'Oh shit I'd better make something up. That scene is what he came up with. 

15. The bit where the guys holds up the cards for Kiera Knightly

16. Perhaps I just Love, Love Actually, Actually

17. The super happy ending where everyone gets what they want (except Emma Thompson - bloody Professor Snape)

18. Tiffany and Hugh Grant bowing after kissing

Just to name a few. A Thrify way to spend a happy evening.

Love, Mrs Thrift x

16 Days Till Christmas: Tesco Clubcard Exchange Kicks Budgeting Arse

I turned £20 of Tesco Clubcard points into £40 to spend on Toys at Christmas. Which is like the best thing possibly in the world!

Omitting one or two all of my group of friends now have children so Christmas time can get expensive quick. Especially as my friends are so lovely and generous to my little boy so I didn't want to palm them off with cruddy presents for their little ones.

Here's my stash:

Quite a haul. I was really impressed with how far my money/vouchers went too. With some offers they bump up the price of the toys so your voucher is spent so quickly. I only spend a bit over £20 on this lot.

I was at my friends this afternoon to exchange presents and the winner seemed to be the pony set I got Tilly who is three who carried her pony set around with her for the duration of the afternoon. So sweet.

Saved me a sodding fortune! I really do not know how I would of done it otherwise.

So the moral of the story is - don't spend your points in the year but save them for Christmas. You can get vouchers that are unspend resent to you  too- which I need to do as I will stash these for next year as I'm not an Aldi convert.

Love, Mrs Thrift x

17 Days Till Christmas: Tis the Season to be Jolly, Fa la la la la, la la la la

We have a tree but what about the rest of the house?

Well...............I took boxes out of the cupboard and then took a picture. Why? Well your dying to know my method of Christmas decoration storage. I will hold you in suspense no longer:

The only bits I brought this year is the silver tinsel. The rest of my stuff we've been collected since we moved out 10 years ago.When we first moved out we where so poor we'd buy one ball ball a year. Lucky I redid our haul last year and now have a nice selection of Christmas stuff.

I Christmasfied my self by moving the pictures up and putting (from left to right) our nativity scene - minus Jesus coz he is not born yet, tealight with berry wreath, a spinning Christmas tree silver thingy, tealight with berry wreath, and a fireplace tealight holder.

TV stand with little bells, santa and snowman stuffed toys:

Christmas Cards (When I get some) will hang on the tinsel and my mum made the stockings (is she not so very clever):

So all the decorations. Yay yay yay Christmas.

Love, Mrs Thrift x

18 Days Till Christmas: Borrowing a Tree

As established from previous post I'm wanting to borrow an artificial tree this year to save on the expense of the real tree we usually buy.

My sister in laws boyfriend's mum and dad had a tree in the loft (they now go real too). The only problem was my sister in law is the most relaxed person in the world, a bit like my husband and I had to ask like 20 times as to when I could get the tree ie. now now now! I want to put it up early this year so we can take it down promptly so I can start sorting and packing for the new house. 

After I send too many poking texts my husband finally got off his bottom at 4.30 PM on Saturday (only 2 hours before little ones bedtime routine starts - just pointing that out not bitter at all) and he went and got the tree. 

This is my tree. Do you like?

I really do prefer my real tree from last year. (Photo before in previous post but here it is again.)

Real trees are just so beautiful on there own even before you have decorated them that you can't really compete. 

I was going to put tinsel on the tree and brought some from poundland but I think as it was rather thin and weedy it just looked crap. 

I did buy two reels of silver beans which look great on the tree as does the candy canes and star which where all from poundland. 

Soooooooooooooo the tree is up - YAY Its Christmas. 

Love, Mrs Thrift

19 Days Till Christmas: Pat a Cake, Pat a Cake, Baker's Man, Bake me a cake as cheap as you can. Baker: "You can just buy them cheaply at the supermarket you know?"

Which is a shame as I really enjoy baking.

On Sunday my group of friends and I are meeting at one of our houses to see each other for Christmas and give the kiddies their pressies and I said I'd bring a cake.

I was going to make an apple and almond cake. It's so easy. Just make a purée of the apples, let that cool. Mix all the other ingredients together, add the purée and put in a tin, scatter flaked almonds on top and bake. So easy and really tasty. (If you'd like to make its called 'Gluten-Free Apple and Almond Cake' on the BBC Food website.)

I was in Tesco with my calculator (Aldi not selling all baking ingredients) added one bag of ground almonds - 1.99 on the calculator, another bag of ground almonds - another 1.99, and a bag of flaked almonds - 99p. Then it hit me - WOW I've just spent almost a fiver and I haven't even brought the eggs yet (and it requires 8 so that's £2 more for eggs) so 7 pounds on a cake!!! I must be able to get cheaper cake so walked around to the cake aisle and saw Christmas Chocolate Yule logs and £1.20 each.

So I brought two, naturally. My budget was a tenner and I spent £8 on the extras I needed and even got to buy bananas and nice Blackberry jam with the money saved buy not making a cake.

What I can't get over is that you'd think it would be cheaper to make a cake! What a tipsy turvy world we live in.

Love, Mrs Thrift

20 Days Till Christmas: Christmas Jumpers

I love Christmas jumpers. Okay I said it! I love everything about them - the snowflakes, the snowmen, the polar bears, the reindeer  the red, the grey, the blue, the big knitted cozyness and the fact that sometimes the motif jumps out at you.

See is this not Christmas perfection?

Perhaps not, I am so in love with Colin Firth that I am unable to judge unbiased  I am also tempted to post pictures of him in Pride and Prejudice  but am trying to remind myself that this is a blog about saving money and not Colin Firth.

Oh yes so Christmas Jumpers. This year - before no spend days had began, I brought my little boy a Christmas jumper from Next  - would buy other half one but he would not wear (I had to convince him into a subtle grey stripped shirt this year so no way as festive jumper).

 My little ones Christmas Jumper this year. Next - £14

The biggest advantage to this jumper is that I brought it in October so I could get my Christmas Card photo done (my Christmas card is now a picture of my little boy in a Christmas jumper).

If I could of waited Primark have some lovely Jumpers:

Penguin - £7

Reindeer - £7

Which is remarkable like the Jojo Mama Bebe jumper I brought last year (which I still prefer to the Primark version - although I can't really put my finger on why:

Jojo Mama Bebe - £20 (I recall?)

Personally my favouriate Primark jumper - which I'm so tempted to get even though he has loads of jumpers:

Polar Bears - Primark - £6

And if I had a baby this year I would so get this:

Primark Santa Suit - £12 (which I still think is quite alot)

Merry Christmas Jumpers everybody.

Love, Mrs Thrift xx

21 Days Till Christmas: I'm walking in the Air - and that's still free right?!?

Snow Snow xxxx

The best Christmas activity to date. Putting on the wellies, hats, scarves, wrestling my boy's little fingers into mittens and going to play in the snow.

In the communal bit (ie. bin space) about to go play in the snow for the first time:

He saw it last year but as he was only 9/10 months he wasn't particularly interested. But not now! Even before we had got outside he was poised at the window looking at our street - so he must have noticed a difference. It was such a surprice too as we where up at 5AM I opened the curtains to see big chunks of snow outside, only visible where the street lamps where shining as it was still dark.

I wasn't sure how much he'd like playing it so we just went to the little green (or white) outside our house which is where everyone hangs their washing in the summer.

But he loved it so we took the short walk the the field.

And we saw some very cold ducks on a icy pond.

So much snow - such little feet:

I had to coax him home the best I could as his face was getting very rosie!! Once our boots where off and wet trousers and gloves where on the radiators we had a bit of hot chocolate:

And we watched the Muppet's Christmas Carol :)

A very Christmasie morning. And well FREE!

Love, Mrs Thrift