Hobbies

I bought some fantastic things on Sunday, mostly for presents. I'll write more about them another time. I did get a copy of Glamour mag for £2 because I'd read it not only had a nail varnish worth £11 in it, but also a £3 Body Shop gift card. Well, not only did I get them, but I also did the spammy scratch card inside and phoned up and I've won a trip to Pontins! It cost me around £21 in call charges, but quite honestly as I was thinking about booking Pontins again for 2014 it's saved me at least £40. Need to send off the card to claim it!

Today I'm going to write about my frugal hobbies. What do I do in my spare time?

I spend most of my time with S when we aren't at work. Together we tend to watch movies, or TV series. We are currently watching Dexter/Trollied at my house, and The Sopranos at his. We both also spend a lot of time online. Here's the good part - we both work for Sky and get our Sky package and broadband free, so while a lot of frugalistas find pay TV is the first to go, it's not so for us! I recently won a 2TB Sky+HD box too, so I have plenty of storage room for downloaded or recorded programmes. I really do appreciate my luck with this as the value of the package I have comes to around £100 a month which is not something I could or would pay if it wasn't free, I just couldn't afford it.

I LOVE reading. I don't have a library card due to, erm, not returning books previously. Oops. But to keep costs down I try and stick mostly to charity shops and sometimes get free or low cost ebooks to read on the Kindle app on my iPad. I don't really like ebooks, though. I also have a stamp card for Waterstones, where I get a stamp each time I spend £10 & then get a £10 gift card when I have 10 stamps. I've already filled one of these in and I have a half-full one in my purse. The first one probably took me about a year to complete and I mainly used it for BOGOHP offers for presents, though some books for myself too.

I enjoy cooking. Since leaving my ex it's now quality over quantity, S and I have quite small appetites relatively speaking and the kids definitely do too. It's fun to try cooking new things. We made a delicious bacon and leek pasta a couple of weeks ago. Tonight I'm surprising him with smoked salmon, chilli and lemon pasta.

Surprisingly for a frugalista, I also really love Lush, bathing is probably a hobby for me too. Purchasing non-Lush bath products is something of a false economy for me, as I've found to my detriment! Ill blog about that another time, too. Luckily, I tend to get a lot of their products as gifts. At the moment I have a Snow Globe soap on my sink from last Christmas, 2 shower gels in my bath from my birthday and a couple of bubble bars from my birthday too. In my drawer I also have a soap from my birthday which will come out soon.

Introduction.

Well, this is something I've been thinking of doing for a while! I'm C, and I live in Sunderland and work in Newcastle. I spend a lot of time with my darling S, and my children L and R live with me for 4 days a week (they stay with their daddy on the other 3 days).

I was living with L and R's dad until we broke up amicably at the end of last year. I moved out in January, and I'm now trying my best to pay off the debts I racked up whilst with him whilst maintaining a happy life!

The purpose of my blog is twofold: keeping track of my spending and debt management for my own benefit, and also tips for others. I've been following some frugality blogs for a while now, and I've been really inspired by them. I'd love to do the same for others.