Miss Thrifty

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…

InvisibleHand is a great new tool for online shopping. In a nutshell, it ensures that you get the best possible price for your chosen item. I have been testing it out for the past few days, and I’m pleased with the results.

Two caveats: firstly, it is an add-on for use with Mozilla Firefox. Roughly a third of Miss Thrifty’s visitors use Firefox, so I thought this tool worth mentioning. If you are using Internet Explorer, Safari or Chrome, my apologies. Secondly, InvisibleHand is currently enabled for use in three countries: UK, USA and Germany.

This is how it works. You go here and install The Invisible Hand on your browser. It is free. Next time you are searching online for a specific product – a Flip Ultra HD camera, say, or a packet of soap nuts – InvisibleHand springs into action.

It searches online stores and a small text box pops up at the top of the screen to show you the lowest price and the vendor. You can then click through to purchase the item. In my opinion it is better than Google’s own shopping results, because it searches in real-time (i.e. you get the latest prices) and your results aren’t clogged up by overseas vendors who charge peanuts for the product – but the earth for shipping. I like it.

[InvisibleHand]

A couple of years ago we couldn’t find our trusty box of Christmas decorations. The box was stuffed in a remote corner of our loft, which isn’t boarded and is filled with all kinds of rubbish; trying to retrieve anything is the suburban equivalent of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

So as 25 December rolled towards us and we didn’t have as much a scrawny string of tinsel above the fireplace, I picked up a couple of cutprice bargain bin decorations from Focus DIY. I think this felt hanging decoration was about £1. As you can see, it’s a novelty advent calendar: the little Father Christmases and stockings all have numbers painted on in gold. We’re a bit old for advent calendars, but at least it added a little festive cheer to the sitting room.

Earlier this month I strung up the decoration and didn’t think anything more of it. My husband, however, had other ideas… (more…)

Hello! I’m your Thrifty Christmas Fairy, 2009 model. Struggling to keep track of all those slashed prices ahead of Christmas? Rest assured that this lil’ thrifty blog is at your service!

You’ll find a list of all the current sales below. I’ll be keeping this post on my front page and updating it whenever new information is released.

Have I missed anything? If so, please let me know via the comments and I’ll add it to the Christmas Deals Master List pronto…

08/12/09

Argos: up to 50 per cent off toys.

Very.co.uk: if you are splashing the cash this Christmas (unlikely, if you’re reading this blog – but hey ho), check out  this online department store. It has up to £300 off flatscreen televisions. There is also a very tasty deal on the Nikon S630 digital camera: was £459, now £229. Total saving: £230. (more…)

Would you like some free photos? Miss Thrifty reader Amy pointed me in the direction of a website called Free Photo Printing – 455 Free Photo Prints, which does what it says on the tin.

Many of the photo developers – Truprint, Boots, Jessops et al – offer sets of free prints for new online customers. You just have to pay the postage (usually around the £1 mark). This site lists all the companies, the numbers of free prints available from each one and the postage costs.

The links take you to the companies’ homepages, which can be a little annoying because you have to click around, but it’s certainly a site to bookmark.

The best offer right now is Jessops‘: 40 prints  (6″ by 4″) and 99p postage. You also get a voucher for £6 off their fancy photo paper photobooks.

Actually, if you are on the hunt for thrifty Christmas gifts, Jessops have got a couple of good offers at the moment. Until 23 November 2009, you can get 20 per cent off their personalised photo calendars.

Thanks Amy!

Image credit: tick followed tock.

Christmas was a dizzying whirl of visits to relatives and friends in various parts of the South East, and I’m still disorientated. Seriously; I spent this afternoon working while feeling ever so virtuous for beavering away on a Saturday. It was only at 9 pm that I found out it was only Friday (to much chortling from my husband). Hey ho; at least I get to have two “Saturdays” in one week! But it’s time to come back down to Earth again, isn’t it?

It also means that another edition of Friday Bargains is due. And I must admit, I’m enamoured with the sudden rash of £1 deals. They’re everywhere! (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.

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…)

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…