Having fun – Spending lessA family of four making the most of what we have.

We live close to many country lanes that are abundant with ripe blackberries at this time of year. Sometimes we’ve picked a few to make a crumble, but this year we decided that we were going to really take advantage of all this free fruit and collect enough to make jam and do some baking too – especially as we’d seen that they were £2 for a 200g punnet in the supermarket!

The thing is…my husband can’t do anything the easy way…that’s just way too boring. For him, even blackberry picking becomes an extreme sport!

And so that’s how we found ourselves in this position:

Him entrusting his life into the hands of three young children, solely to get his hands on the perfect berry that was slightly out of reach. The problem being that the girls were laughing so much that they nearly let go of him! (I’ve blurred out the face of a friend who was with us – it’s not my terrible photography skills).

A lot of hassle to go to for a few berries? Not when you’re a dad trying to show off to your children and their friends!

We had a great time fruit picking, and soon we’ll have some good family fun baking with them too – and so far it hasn’t cost us a penny.

Having Fun – Spending Less!

I have ninja’s hiding in my kitchen cupboard, I’m scared of them, they’re out of control.

I approach the cupboard with trepidation…do I really need what lies within?

BLOODY TUPPERWARE!!!

Am I the only person in this house who puts things away nicely?! Every time I open the cupboard door the whole lot falls out on me. No one else in the house sees the problem. They just pick it up, throw it back in and shut the door quickly – Bob’s your uncle, job done.

It drives me insane, making packed lunches, storing left overs etc is dull enough without having to do battle with the cupboard and then conduct a box/ lid dating service to try and find a matching set.

Am I the only person being stalked by ninja tupperware? How do I tame these beasts?

(Swearing and blaming the husband is apparently not the right course of action…just saying).

Nobody wants to seem like a cheapskate over the school holidays, or to be permanently saying ‘no, that’s too expensive’, so what we’ve got to do is find a way to have those slightly bigger treats more cheaply.

Let’s face it – a trip to the cinema for a family of four with popcorn can easily cost £50 these days.

There are lots of cinema bargains out there – you’ve just got to know where to look and be flexible about when you go.

Here are a few different options I’ve found for you:

If you want to see a film that has just come out Orange Wednesday is the deal for you. All you have to do is use your Orange network mobile phone to apply by text for a special 2 for 1 cinema ticket offer. You can pick up a really cheap PAYG Orange mobile solely for this purpose if you a regular cinema visitor.

 Vue Cinemas are doing a Kids go for £1.25 offer every weekend and week day of the school holidays. Like most kids cinema clubs, they’re slightly older films, but still a great way of filling time on a budget, particularly on a rainy day.

Cineworld don’t appear to be offering anything on a week day, but their ever popular Saturday Movies for Juniors is running all throughout the summer, and at only £1 per ticket it’s an absolute bargain.

Odeon Cinemas also runs a Kids Club over the summer holidays with tickets priced at around £2.50 (attending adults get free admission). The only problem is, their website is terrible and the films are poorly advertised – you’ve really got to delve to find out what offers are on week by week.

We try to stock up on drinks and treats before we go too, to try and save on costs there. We went to the Odeon a few months ago and I was charged £3.50 for a bottle of water! We always take our own in a back pack unless it’s a special treat.

Hope that helps.

Do please comment if you know of any other cinema offers that I’ve missed. 

Time for my first ever entry into Sticky Fingers weekly Gallery. This week the theme is travel.

Early in 2009 my husband and I decided we’d like to take the girls travelling around the world (This is the abridged version of events!).

To cut a long story short, we sold the house, released the equity, sold our our possessions, quit our jobs and took the children out of school for a year. In November 2009 we commenced our round the world journey.

We visited San Francisco, Hawaii, Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, New Zealand, Australia and Singapore before settling back in North Yorkshire. We had the most amazing, life changing experiences together and I would whole heartedly encourage other families to do the same. We weren’t rich, we travelled off the money tied up in our house. We’ve come home with little financially, we’re starting all over again. If we can do it, anybody can.

I think this photo sums up our journey perfectly. It was taken deep in the Ecuadorian rainforest. The children spoke a quechuan dialect and our girls spoke English/ Spanish…but children don’t need words to communicate.

We also had a wonderful week visiting an organic farm in Ecuador. The days were long, hard, extrememly warm and very humid…and CRIKEY ecuadorian bugs grow BIG on their organic diet! We learnt so much about a simpler way of life though, learning skills that apply even here in the UK.

We made this video slideshow to share with our family back in the UK so that they could see what we were up to.

 If any of you are thinking seriously of making a similar journey, drop me a line, we’d be happy to answer any questions.

A few weeks ago I blogged about finding activities to fill the long summer holidays. I thought I’d kick things off a little early so that I can build up a bank of ideas to share with everyone. Please feel free to comment if you’ve tried out the idea or have a better one!

As far as I am aware, all local council libraries have a free summer reading challenge. We live in North Yorkshire and the 2011 summer reading challenge theme is ‘Circus Stars’. Click the link to find out more information.

Basically, children are rewarded for reading books in the scheme over the summer holidays. The challenge is to read 6 books over the summer (that’s just one per week). I’m not a big believer in having children doing school work over the holidays, so would never recommend anything too ‘school like’. The schemes are usually fun and local libraries often have themed activities going on through out the summer too.

What’s not to like? It ticks all the parent boxes:

1. It’s free!!

2. It encourages and rewards children to read.

3. It gets you out of the house one morning/ afternoon per week all summer.

4. Perfect for a rainy day.

We’ll be signing up to the challenge at Skipton library on Tuesday 26th July 10.00-11.30am. Give me a shout if you’re local and will be there too.

Mocha Beanie Mummy’s famous meme….

Maxabella hosts a weekly blog hop over at Maxabella loves. I’m a newbie to blog hops, but I really like the theme.

It’s too easy to spend time being angry, frustrated or regretful about things. Let’s celebrate what we’re grateful for.

I am eternally grateful for the healthy family that I have. I am lucky to have had two normal pregnancies and amazing homebirths. My girls are now 8 and 10 years old and have always had good health. My husband is strong and healthy and has supported me in everyway possible over the last few years.

It’s easy to take good health for granted, but we certainly don’t anymore. We have close family members who have died suddenly. We also have parents fighting cancer – every day with them is a blessing, and everyday we hope and pray that the cancer (although uncurable) will remain stable.

I grateful for, and wish you all good health.

I hate throwing perfectly good stuff away, and if I’m honest, sometimes just don’t have the time or inclination to store things for long enough to send to charity (especially larger items – just not enough room in the house). That’s when I discovered Freegle.

Freegle is a group hosted by Yahoo, and anyone can join. Just join the group that is local to you (if you go the the website, this will make sense). The idea is that when you have something you no longer need/ want, you can put a message on your local Freegle group and then other people who are interested will contact you via email. You can choose who you would like to give it to and arrange for them to come and pick it up.

The flipside of that is, if you see something you like the look of on the daily list, you can make contact with the person offering, and you may be chosen to recieve it. It’s a bit of a lottery, but the odds are good for getting what you’ve asked for, especially if you can collect quickly and give a genuine (not begging!) reason.

You can also put on a polite request if you are looking for something in particular. (You never know what people have stashed away in their loft).

The one rule is that everything must change hands for free. No commercial business at all.

We’ve advertised unwanted furniture, boxes of toys, old bikes, bags of clothes etc and they’ve always been snapped up within the day.

We’ve received a mountain bike, a full metal studio bed (we just bought a new mattress) with matching wooden furniture and gardening equipment. They’ve all been in excellent condition, just no longer needed by their owners.

I can’t believe that people would just throw things like this away – such a waste. I love Freegle. It’s like swap shop for adults. I’d urge you to give it a whirl – it’s free and it may just save you money too.

We’ve been hoping to have a weekend away together all year, and seeing as it’s July, we thought we’d better get something booked. What I’d really like to do is go to New York for a long weekend – but that’s so not going to happen!

Anyway, the budget is low, but we wanted a bit of luxury and had faith that the right deal would turn up…and it did, on Groupon. Groupon is great, all you do is sign up to a daily email and deals are sent to your inbox from businesses in your area. You can search offers in other areas too. All you do is ‘buy’ the deal and a voucher is sent to your email address the following day for you to redeem. We use Groupon a lot, for restaurant deals and theme park tickets too – every penny counts these days!

For £99 we have 2 nights in a hotel with gym and spa facilities, a two course evening meal and bottle of wine on the first night and breakfast both mornings served in our private suite. We looked the hotel up on Tripadvisor to make sure that it had good reviews.

If we hadn’t found a deal like this, we wouldn’t have been able to go away together. You see – we’re Having Fun and Spending Less!

Like many schools, the girls’ school is choosing to strike tomorrow. There are many mixed opinions in the playground, and I guess mine is one of them. Yes, I understand that it’s inconvenient for parents who have had to arrange child care or take a day off work. I’m lucky that I happen to be not working tomorrow anyway, in fact I shall be helping out other parents who do need to work by holding a play day at my house.

The way I see it, a strike is supposed to inconvenience people, to make others stand up and listen. Maybe it’s because my husband is a tutor (in further education, not school age – so therefore not involved in tomorrow’s strike). Sometimes I think people have a rose tinted view of the teaching profession. The belief that they really do clock off work at 3.30pm and enjoy all of the school holidays too – they wish! In fact no, they probably don’t wish for that. They just want a fair days pay for a fair days work, and to know that at the end of their working life they will comfortably be able to retire.

I don’t understand why people begrudge teachers this. After all, we rely on teachers and schools to help us as parents engage children with learning opportunities. Yes, we know that schools don’t always do the best for every individual child, but they are trying. In reality, teachers don’t earn a fortune. The average teacher earns around £34,000 a year. That’s a heck of a lot of responsibility for a only slightly above average income.

It appears to me that people who work in public services are between a rock and a hard place at the moment – punished from both sides. Job cuts, pay freezes, pension cuts. Yet these are the people that are delivering essential day to day services.

So I say – go ahead and strike tomorrow. You have my support. I shall take the opportunity to enjoy an unexpected day with my girls.