Some Simple Savings

The simple savings we make here don't usually come via a flashy sale with price tags advertising huge discounts. Instead, they tend to reveal themselves in the everyday things we do over and again. These are some of the little savings we've made of late by making, growing, reusing, mending and finding our own:

This plant, grown from a cutting I brought home from my Mum's garden, has filled out its hanging basket. Both the wire hanging basket and its liner were 'rescued' from my stash of old pots that I keep on a table under our house. I am not sure what this plant is called but it has pretty tangerine bell-shaped flowers. A free plant from my Mum's place that's now growing here too.

I stamped a plain piece of brown paper, which came wrapped around a little bunch of flowers I received, with tiny flower heads. I added it to my ''saved" gift wrap along with this silver and black piece that came with flowers too. I think both will look lovely once re-used and tied with black ribbons.

A large dish of lasagne was baked to share as a meal with friends. I used grated zucchini and carrot and pumpkin to add to the very small amount of meat I had to make the filling. I sprinkled the creamy sauce on top with a little parmesan cheese and baked it until golden.  I served it with steamed veg. Warm and chocolatey prune muffins, from a recipe I found in a Grass Roots magazine, with homemade vanilla ice-cream, made a lovely dessert too. As we were feeding two extra hungry teenage boys, this homemade meal saved us quite a bit as I'm sure you can all imagine just how many takeaway pizzas growing boys can eat!

Little harvests from the garden are finding their way into lots of our meals. There are handfuls of crunchy snow peas for stir fries, juicy yellow tomatoes for salads that are also lovely and sweet when roasted. I've made two Silverbeet Impossible Pies now, with silverbeet and spring onion and parsley from the garden, which is just delicious hot or cold, for lunch or for dinner. The little limes, from a tree that I walk past almost every day while out with Sir Steve dog, are destined to become lime curd to dollop onto our homemade scones. At one of the big supermarkets, limes are 72c each. These were foraged and free!

 

One of my favourite op-shops is open again now and I found this black button-up cardigan amongst the racks of clothes. It cost me just a few dollars. I will get a lot of wear out of it because it's lightweight and thus perfect for our mild sub-tropical Winters. I also mended one of my son's favourite t-shirts to extend its life a little longer. 

Making things last that bit longer, reusing what we already have, growing and making our own, buying second hand and keeping an eye out for that which is free or a good bargain saves a little here and there which, over time, adds up to dollars and cents not spent but saved.

Meg