Five frugal things over Easter

Cheerful daffodils on the kitchen windowsill

Hope you had a good Easter weekend!

We had a fun but frugal time pottering around, with the weird mix of sunshine and snow. It was great to celebrate Easter with plenty of chocolate, even if I did leave it too late to buy eggs. By the Easter Saturday, the shelves in Morrisons had been stripped bare, so I got each of the the kids a box of their favourite chocolates instead.

Luckily I’ve been a bit more successful elsewhere. Before Easter I was delighted to win two awards at the UK Moneybloggers SHOMOs 2020 awards, Best Specialist Money Blog (Investing) and Best Frugal & Thrift Blog, and be runner up for Best Specialist Blog (Lifestyle). Do check out the list of all the winners to discover other great blogs!

Successful egg hunting

Welcome return to the traditional Easter egg hunt

On Easter Sunday, we headed over to Dedham, for our traditional Easter egg hunt with the grandparents, albeit socially-distanced. It was such a welcome glimpse of normality, after we couldn’t go further than our own garden last year.

I’m so grateful this year’s egg hunt could take place – my 13-year-old and 11-year-old are still up for chasing down clues for chocolate, but suspect they won’t be for much longer. We got to explore the garden and into the orchard, which is a sea of daffodils right now. Lovely to bring some daffodils home too (pic at the top), where they’ve been gracing the kitchen windowsill.

Maybe next year we’ll actually be able to eat lunch together inside. Here’s hoping.

Low key meal on Easter Sunday

As I was only catering for our family of four, I ended up going with the kids’ preference for chicken rather than lamb. I snapped up veg on offer at Morrisons, with maris piper potatoes, carrots and parsnips for a total of £2, so we ended up with a budget meal everyone enjoyed eating. Recently, I’ve been roasting the chicken in an iron pot with bacon and onion underneath, with veg, wine and stock added afterwards, and reckon it tastes great.

‘Before’ shot of our extra garden

Prepped the garden for growing

I went along to Hadleigh market on Good Friday and bought a Cedric Morris for a decent £6.90 from the new plant stall. Cedric Morris grew different varieties of beautiful irises up the road at Benton End.

I have grand plans about planting it on the extra bit of garden we acquired last year, now that we’ve uprooted loads of the nettles and brambles. So I spent a chunk of Easter Monday weeding the space in the sunny spot where we’d like to create our first flower bed. Check out the ‘before’ picture above, taken last June. The bed will be just by the brick wall. 

Caught up with my spending diary

I took the chance over the Easter weekend to catch up with my spending diary, wading through assorted bank and credit card statements. I’m counting this as frugal because it inspired me to do some financial spring cleaning – and cancel some subscriptions I’d merrily signed up for earlier in lockdown. 

I’m cross I ended up paying for some subscriptions longer than I intended, but catching Amazon Prime just as a free trial ended, and avoiding the £79 charge, was a big plus.

Previous posts: 10 tips for keeping a spending diary and 12 reasons why a spending diary will change your life

Camping in comfort

Swapped a big trip for a tent

Right now, I’m looking forward to more lockdown restrictions lifting on April 12. We’ve got a weekend break booked soon afterwards, as part of my big birthday celebrations.

Last October I finally accepted that we wouldn’t be heading abroad in April, thanks to coronavirus, and ditched any dreams of a trip to Japan. Instead, we booked a tent all of 10 minutes up the road, and right now I’m very overexcited about any change of scenery.

After a frosty experience when camping in April a few years back, we won’t be taking the uber frugal approach but have forked out for a fancy safari tent with a woodburner and a bathroom with underfloor heating. We stayed at the Lost Garden Retreat for a couple of nights last summer so I’m looking forward to going back. 

Now – over to you. What are your frugal highlights recently? Do share in the comments, I’d love to hear!

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