Miss Thrifty

Welcome to The 157th Festival of Frugality: The Queen’s Speech Edition!  And a special welcome to all first-time visitors to the Miss Thrifty blog. If you would like to stick around, please feel free to put your feet up: some of the most popular posts include thrifty household tips, my beloved Thriftymobile and a hotlist of Frugal Twitter Users. For regular updates in your RSS reader, whack the big orange button to your right.

With the Festival on the other side of the pond this week and Christmas looming, I thought I’d go for a quintessentially British theme. As you may know, we take the seasonal festivities very, very seriously over here; Christmas Day is centred upon a vast lunchtime banquet at which we all wear paper crowns, eat until we pop and try to keep the flaming Christmas pudding from setting the curtains ablaze. After that it’s copious quantities of sherry and telly until bedtime. The day after Christmas Day is a public holiday, to give everyone time to recover.   

So there is plenty to choose from when it comes to selecting a theme. I was going to go with The 157th Festival of Frugality: The Alka-Seltzer Edition, but on reflection felt that this would provide an unfortunate impression of the scenes of carnage Dickensian delights for which the British Christmas is renowned.

Instead, I have plumped for another fine British Christmas tradition. (more…)

The Times has published its top 12 money-saving tips for Christmas. It’s as wickedy-wack as one would expect; I know I’m mean about these well-intentioned broadsheet round-ups, but come on! This time around, the top frugal tips include wrapping presents in brown paper from the Post Office (which, erm, works out more expensive than regular Christmas wrap), and decorating the Christmas tree with pine cones foraged from one’s garden and spray-painted gold (Pfffffff. See: Caitlin Moran).

Anyway, another one of the Times’ tips is to eschew Christmas crackers in favour of recycled, fill-your-own crackers from John Lewis (£5 for six). But one of the readers has replied with an even better idea, which I love: (more…)

Despite my avowed intention to keep up with all the UK Christmas bargains, sales, deals and discounts, I’ll admit that it has been hard going. Right now is there any store that is still selling its wares at full price? Woolies has gone under – who’d have thunk it? – and even newspapers such as The Daily Telegraph have taken a break from running the usual glut of diamond-studded, designed-labeled gift guides to publish lists of coupons and codes.

Traffic to the coupon codes sites has boomed, although I find the sites themselves to be a mixed bag: they feature lots of good offers but also plenty of expired ones, which can be irksome.

So I’m quite taken with this UK Christmas Sale website. It isn’t fancy, but it does the job. The site lists all of the sales that are on right now, with links to the stores’ websites.

A sister site lists details of all the post-Christmas and New Years sales.

Ah Paris, Paris, how je t’adore! Even though I speak French like Del Boy.

This competition has been organised by Paris Ile-de-France Tours, and you can enter by visiting the competition page and filling out your details. You also have to answer some questions, but they aren’t very difficult as, erm, every question also contains a link to the correct answer.

The prize draw is only open until Sunday (21 December), so get in there quick!

The winner gets a long weekend in the city, which includes the following: (more…)

Believe it or not, this works a treat on old, tatty-looking wallpaper. Just rub a slice down the wall, and the bread will pick up the grime.

Cheap white bread seems to works best, for some reason - so even if you end up using the whole loaf, it will cost you no more than 80 pence or thereabouts.

Forget Alexandra Burke and Leona Lewis; YouTube is a veritable hotbed of credit crunch-themed Christmas tunes right now. Here are two of my favourites:

Credit Crunch Christmas - Tarquin Britten and the City Boyz

  (more…)

From now until 15 December, the clothing chain Oasis is offering 25 per cent off everything. Click here for the printable voucher (thanks to Money Saving Expert).

The discount also applies to Oasis concessions in House of Fraser and Debenhams. If you are shopping for Oasis goods online, use the code collections2008 at the checkout.

I quite like the knitted baby doll dresses (above), which are £33 including the discount. At least they look warm! 

I’m thinking about trying out Furoshiki gift wrapping this year. It’s simple (well, the finished results look simple), pretty and the wrapping can be recycled.  You use squares of fabric, rather than spangly paper and ribbons. Check it out:

Furoshiki gift wrapping from RecycleNow on Vimeo. 

Japan’s Ministry of the Environment has kindly provided a Furoshiki instruction sheet, with wrapping instructions for a variety of different-shaped gifts.

If my efforts come up trumps, I’ll post the photos. If I end up with pouchy knapsnack-style confections, let us never speak of this again…

My Frugal Grandma has been cleaning up recently! Her top frugal recipe is featured in the 42nd Money Hacks Carnival at the Financial Wellness Project. And her old school tips popped up in the 41st Money Hacks Carnival, at Ask Mr Credit Card.

In other news, my hotlist of Favourite Frugal Twitterers was featured in the 155th Festival of Frugality, at Greener Pastures.

I’ll be hosting the Festival of Frugality later this month, on 23 December, so if you aren’t yet familiar with it you’re in for a (lengthy) treat…

Now then, who made it to the Angels vintage clothing sale at the weekend?

I couldn’t make it after all and I was gutted; sadly, I just couldn’t offset the cost of a round trip from North Yorkshire against the likely gems to be found at the costumier’s vast Wembley warehouse. Now there’s dedication to the thrifty cause (sob).

So I’ve been living the Angels’ frenzy vicariously, with the help of some of the UK’s tip-top fashion bloggers. In summary: the place was swamped and there was an awful lot of tat, with many items in need of repair and renovation, but there were a few prizes to be had.

The wonderful Susie at Style Bubble went the whole hog, (more…)