Miss Thrifty

I’m going to keep this one short and sweet – very sweet.

Lidl is shifting job lots of Cadbury’s Creme Eggs: a pack of six for just 99 pence!

If you buy these up I do recommend that you eke them out, tasty as they are; is it me, or do they seem to get sicklier every year?

Also, I recommend that you do not put a Creme Egg in your jeans pocket and then forget about it, which is what I did the other week. It’s a sticky end.

Image credit: Michael K N.

Fancy some cut-price Spanish food? The Daily Telegraph is running an offer for 50 per cent off food at tapas chain La Tasca. The offer runs until 19 April and covers a table of up to four diners.

The online version of the coupon is here. You can find your nearest La Tasca here.

Argos has slashed the price of its budget bedlinen range: this kingsize duvet set (left) is now just £5.99, down from £9.99.

The set is 50 per cent cotton and 50 per cent polyester, doesn’t need ironing and comes as a duvet cover and two pillowcases. You can get it in grey, duck egg blue and oyster.

We aren’t talking mega-luxury, super thread count finest Egyptian cotton here. But it’s decent quality bedlinen for a bargain price.

If you don’t play Scrabble for free online, you may be interested to know that right now Sainburys is selling the original boxed games at a fraction of the usual retail price. The board-games are £4.84, down from £19.99.

Image credit: patrickeasters.

Argos is doing a good deal on this Nicky Clarke Dryer & Straightener Gift Box: £24.99, reduced from £69.99.

The straighteners are ceramic-coated and heat to 200 degrees in 30 seconds; the products come in a matching leather-look box. The set has gained the thumbs up in Argos customer reviews, too.

The set isn’t available via mail order, but you can reserve it via the website and pick it up at your nearest store.

Are you in the UK? If you are, buy tomorrow’s Sunday Telegraph – and get a free hardback cookbook by tip-top Michelin-starred chef Marcus Wareing!

Full details of the offer can be found here. The only catch is that you have to buy the newspaper from a Morrisons supermarket. They’ll be handing out the cookbooks there and then – no faffing around with coupons and postage. (more…)

One of the shocks about turning grown-up is finding out just how expensive all this stuff is. Window boxes, I could cope with. But since we moved into a house with a bona fide garden, I’ve been regularly horrified by the bank account-draining qualities of spanking new garden gear.

Now I’m sure it doesn’t help that our garden was such a bombsite (complete with trenches, cratered knolls, piles of rubble and broken glass everywhere) when we moved in. The lovely people who used to live here used the back yard as a rubbish dump for ten years; I am told that when the house was finally repossessed, the council sent four skips to clear it all out. Bits of broken plastic toys still float to the surface when it rains – but at least the garden is level now, and has a lawn of sorts. It even has a shed, a composter and one of those rotary washing lines. Believe me, this Pooterish vision of suburban tranquility has involved much in the way of sweat, tears and rushing down the garden centre on a Saturday morning because something just has to be done, damn it. (more…)

I must apologise for the extremely late running of Friday Bargains. This is because I was out on the razzle when I should have been posting. It’s all come good though: I was moping around Morrisons at the weekend and… Well, I say “moping”; I cleaned up!

Lots and lots and lots of £1 offers at the mo. Not the rubbish stuff, either: there are plenty of goodies to be had. I picked up everything from fish to potatoes.

Best of all there was a stand of summer bulbs and perennials, for £1 a bag. I picked up bags of lupins, red hot pokers, aquilegia and hollyhocks. I love me a good hollyhock!

Frugal Grandma is currently on a month’s sojourn in Egypt (and is apparently having a very nice time, down amongst the sun loungers) but when she returns I shall be asking her for planting tips.

Okay, two things:

i) Yes, this is my second recent post about Orange. They aren’t paying me (honest, guv!) but they have the Miss Thrifty thumbs up right now. Because I like pizza.

ii) The voucher is here.

From the Guardian: (more…)

I try to avoid buying flowers online or using Interflora, if possible. Last year I was all set to send my mum a bouquet for Mother’s Day. Then I went on the Interflora website and got all moody when I saw the prices. Was it me, or were the tariffs all pumped up for the Mother’s Day weekend? I worked out for the cost of sending a half-decent bunch of flowers, I could fund the 500-mile round trip to go and see her. So I did that instead.

Since then, I’ve discovered Bunches. (more…)