Miss Thrifty

Best Western Hotels is giving away two-night hotel breaks every 30 minutes for 24 hours, from 8 am on Tuesday 9 February. The prizes include dinner, bed and breakfast in a UK Best Western.

This is a Twitter comp. I’m seeing more and more of these; of course, if you’re on Twitter already and you aren’t following me, I demand that you do so immediately! Those who have yet to succumb, however, can enter via Best Western’s Facebook page.

How it works: follow Best Western on Twitter (@bestwesterngb) or on Facebook. Every 30 minutes a question about Best Western will be announced. Find the answer and @reply on Twitter, or submit the answer to the Best Western wall on Facebook. The winner will be selected at random, from all the correct answers submitted within 15 minutes of the question’s announcement.

In case you were wondering, that is indeed a Best Western hotel room pictured above. Earls Court, apparently.

NB. I am not sure if you get to choose your hotel. Let’s hope so, eh?

The January sales have been a Miss Thrifty-free zone this year, partly because (as you may have noticed) I haven’t been around much, and partly because I like to hold off until the last possible moment, when the pickings are heavily discounted.

Some people aren’t keen on sales, because they feel that (a) you can go overboard, splurging on rails of worthless tat; (b) why bother with the dregs that nobody was prepared to buy at full price?  Personally, I am not convinced by these arguments. If it’s rubbish, why buy it at any price? As for the “dregs” defence: this presumes that all the people buying stuff at full price have good taste. Ha! I think not, if the frock horrors falling out of Mayfair nightclubs and WAG boutiques are anything to go by.

Now is the best time to go sales shopping, in my book. Two of my recommendations: Read the rest of this entry →

Slow Cooker: save on money and save on washing up was featured in the 239th Carnival of Personal Finance, hosted by Darwin’s Finance.

Miss Thrifty’s pick: Staying Off the Car Payment Treadmill, by Tough Money Love. “I don’t understand the logic in borrowing money to purchase a depreciating asset”, notes Mr TML. Me neither.

When “cheap” and “Manolo Blahnik shoes” go together was featured in the 212th Festival of Frugality, hosted by Yes I Am Cheap.

Miss Thrifty’s pick: Composting on the Balcony: The Easy Way to Environmental Virtue, by Life On The Balcony. It can be done! This blog is dedicated to gardening tips for flat-dwellers.

Talking of gardening: Growing Brussels sprouts for Christmas was featured in the Make It From Scratch! Carnival, hosted by Out of Debt Again.

Miss Thrifty’s pick: All Day Beef Stock, by Making My Own Luck. I can tell you that if I ate meat, I’d be sloshing this over everything…

Image credit: Infrogmation.

The Cath Kidston sale is currently in progress on the company’s website. As regular readers will know, I am v. partial to Cath Kidston but bristle with indignation at the RRPs. This time around, some of the discounts are stingy but others are pretty good, so I thought I’d round up the most bargainous of the bunch for you. Here they are, divided into the website sections:

Accessories: nothing to write home about here, unless you’re in the market for thick woolly scarves.

Bags: bonanza! The cowboy tote bag (left), made from oilcloth with leather trim, is reduced from £55.00 to £30.00.

I love the cowboy print – I even have it on my bedroom wallpaper – and there are a few cowboy bags in the sale section this time. The cowboy messenger bag is reduced from £38.00 to £25.00. The cowboy bucket bag is reduced from £40.00 to £25.00. I hope this doesn’t mean that the cowboy print is for the chop…

Bathroom: washbags down from £18.00 to £12.00. Read the rest of this entry →

The car got stuck on ice – or rather, I got the car stuck on ice. I was driving to a meeting in my hometown, screwed up the one way system and ducked into a cul-de-sac to check my road map. (I have lived here for three years and still have to do this; I’m not sure if it says more about me or the town planners.)

I wasn’t thinking though: this was a downhill cul-de-sac.  I drove in – but damn it, I couldn’t drive out again. Much of the snow has cleared here in Yorkshire, but the roads are icy something rotten. In the end I parked up and walked (well, slid) the rest of the way.

It’s not the first time this has happened. Last week I parked up at work and, when it was time to go home, found that the car wouldn’t budge. Nonchalant wheelspins: yes. Motion: no. I had to tear up the car window cleaning cloth with a kitten heel and shove it under the front tyres before I could move off. It was not a dignified exit.

Gentle reader, it is my fervent desire that such irksome situations do not befall you as they have me. So here is the budget-friendly solution, comprehensively researched and validated by yours truly…

Read the rest of this entry →

A slow cooker, I have discovered, is a gift from the Kitchen God. I’ve had mine since November and I’ve become ever so slightly obsessed with it.

Slow cookers have been popular in America (where they are also known as “crock pots”, after the Crock-Pot® brand) for ages. They used to be popular here, too – and from what I can gather, are gaining in popularity once again.

For the uninitiated, this is why slow cookers are great:

1. They save time. You pile your ingredients in the slow cooker before work, turn it on – and come home in the evening to a yummy stew, all cooked and ready to go.
2. They are easy to use. See above.
3. They save on washing up. Generally, washing up = one chopping board, one kitchen knife and a good wipe around the inside of the slow cooker.
4. They reduce food waste. No need to let those squooshy tomatoes or that stray courgette go to mush – chuck them in the pot.
5. (Drumroll) They save money! They don’t use as much energy as an oven or electric hob. I have been making frugal-but-fabulous dinners with cheap ingredients including root vegetables, tinned tomatoes (value range), dried pulses, herbs from the garden and lots of crusty bread.

Today is a case in point. We haven’t done our  January supermarket shop yet, partly because all the snow up here in North Yorkshire has made it difficult to get around and partly because, like most people, we are el skinto this month following the excesses of Christmas. So we’ve been making do with our dwindling food stocks. Open the fridge or the cupboard door and there isn’t much to look at but right now, bubbling away as I write, is a stew made from the following: Read the rest of this entry →

“Manolo Blahnik” and “cheap” are mutually exclusive terms, right? Even on eBay, it’s difficult to get a Manolo bargain. New, they go for £400 a pair, which is probably more than I’ve spent on footwear over the past decade.

Before I go any further I’d like to emphasise that I’m not a shoe freak. Frankly, I wince when cretinous women slobber and drool over Choos and Louboutins. Such a waste of money, energy and dribble. Read this newspaper piece about celebrities’ “best days ever” and you’ll see what I mean.

However one day seven years ago, something splendid happened.

I was wandering around the high street during my lunch hour. I was in a bad mood: at the time, I was working a wretched job for a pitiful pay cheque. I wandered into the local Oxfam thrift shop… Read the rest of this entry →

It’s New Year’s resolution time. Whirling dervish: on your marks, get set, go!

1. More blogging. I’m going to have more time to blog in 2010: I’ll be blogging on the same range of thrifty subjects, but more frequently. This site is also going to get a new design as, although this one has a certain homespun flavour that lends itself well to the Make Do and Mend theme, it’s time for a change.

Why am I telling you this? Well, if there is anything that you would like to see more of, less of – or would like to see, full stop – then please let me know. For your info: the most popular Miss Thrifty posts for 2009 included thrifty Cath Kidston wallpaper, a Tesco voucher codes tip-off, a look at fake wedding cakes and a failsafe, eco-friendly wheeze for cleaning an oven. This creates a rather pleasing image of the typical Miss Thrifty reader as a domestic god/goddess in a pretty, vintage setting. Read the rest of this entry →

I hope that you are all having a great Christmas break. Right now I am having a fine ol’ time sitting on my bottom, pushing Turkish Delight into my face and watching telly, so this is just a quick post to show you these:

Homegrown Brussels sprouts! I was very impressed when I saw them. They were grown by my friend, illustrator Erica Read, whose aptitude for crafty things extends to cooking and gardening, so I shouldn’t have been surprised. But I heard that Brussels can be quite tricky to grow. Also, you have to plant them up to 6 months before you can harvest the spouts, so some forward planning is required.

Erica said that she planted the seeds out at the back of her garden a few months ago and promptly forgot all about them. She remembered them in the days before Christmas, went out there, pulled back a big frosty leaf – and there were the sprouts, all lined up on their stalks and ready to be picked and eaten. Simples!

Her timing was perfect, not just because it was Christmas but also because, according to old-timey gardeners, harvest Brussels sprouts the morning after a heavy frost and they will taste especially sweet.

If it’s that easy, I’ll have a go at growing them myself next year…

Thanks to all who entered the How To Look Good Naked…Can Change Your Life book giveaway. Congratulations to the two winners: Emma (commenter #6) and Julie Sutherland (commenter #13)!  The winning numbers were picked out of Photo Matt’s virtual hat.

I have a stash of spanking new books to give away in the New Year, on subjects ranging from frugal cooking to frugal gardening. So if you weren’t a winner this time, please keep heart – and keep your eyes peeled.

Thanks also for all the great tips about looking good and feeling good. It struck me that perhaps in January, when everybody is feeling dumpy and miserable, perhaps I could compile them in a special post for Miss Thrifty readers.

Merry Christmas all. Plenty planned for next year, including a complete site revamp – and I think we’re going to have a ball.

Miss T x