Bargain - Christmas with Gordon

Christmas with Gordon - RRP - £15, the price at Tesco Canary Wharf (where normally the mark-up is about 20%) this morning?

Three Quid...! Ka-ching! ;)

Annual Season Ticket Win!

Hehe...feeling quite pleased with myself at the moment, in a spur of the moment decision at the tail end of December I decided to ask the office to get me an annual season ticket (to try and beat the impending price rise), last year I largely bought weekly tickets, so (tapping on my desk calculator) taking into account the few weeks of holidays when I didn't need to buy one I spent something in the region of £2784 getting to work (ouch), the average amount a season ticket was going to increase (this month) is 5.8%, so I was looking at having to pay out (roughly) £2951 next year (which was starting to seem a little silly, just in order to get into the office), anyway, when I went to pick up my shiny new gold card (expecting a modest saving) and I checked the price (it's going to come out of my salary over the next 10 months)...it was only £2072...a saving of roughly £879! Better than that - for the first ten months of the year we'll actually be better off by twenty pence (if you can believe that), cherry on the top - the last two months of the year we'll be better off by £202! ;)

So a very Merry Christmas for 2011! ;)

Easy First Birthday Food

Here we go, the spread we did for Thomas' family birthday party-

- join me, if you wish, to go into more detail about some of the treats we made -

Sausage Aeroplanes - take Porky Whites Surrey sausages (the best British sausage) and fry them in a little oil at a medium temperature, turning occasionally for around fifteen minutes, allow them to cool, then slice in half (length ways) to form the body of the plane, next, take some cracker bread and, using an extremely sharp (non-bevelled) blade, slice them in half (also length ways) to form the wings, now slice a small triangle of cheddar to form the tail fin and open a packet of Hula Hoops, removing two that are reasonably circular...the last thing to do is to open the "glue", which is a tube of primula (or similar)...start with one piece of cracker bread and use two little blobs of primula to attach the Hula Hoop "wheels" then just lay the sausage onto it (this stops it falling over), squirt a spot of cheesy glue onto the top of the sausage and pop the top wing into place (hold it for a second) and then do the same with the tail, preferably serve right away, if not chill the planes to set the "glue" or a few bits may fall off...

Bagel Snakes - Hard boil a dozen large eggs (start with a pan of cold water, add a little salt, pop in the eggs, then bring to the boil and cook for seven minutes), allow them to cool, remove the shells (roll them on a chopping board, bash the rounder end where the air pocket is, nip the membrane and then peel the shell off in one go working in a circular fashion), roughly chop them and add a small jar of mayonnaise (mayonnaise has a high PH and acts as a very good preservative, contrary to what you may have heard) and a good grind of cracked black pepper. Slice the bagels in half (into two rounds) and then chop these in half to make semi-circles, then arrange them into snake shapes, smearing them with a generous amount of egg mayonnaise, then decorate with chopped chives, olive or baby tomato eyes and thinly sliced red pepper tongues...
Egg Mushrooms - Cook up some *more* hard boiled eggs (same method as above) then when cool, carefully slice off the top and bottom, then half some large, ripe English tomatoes and balance them atop the eggs, using Primula to decorate them with spots, slice some cress to make "grass" to decorate the plate you present them on...

Cheese and Pineapple Monster - this one is really easy, everyone knows how to make cheese and pineapple on sticks (pro-tip though, get the cheese out and bring it up to room temperature first, especially if it is Cheddar, this reduces the crumble factor when inserting the cocktail stick), for the monster's body, just carve a mouth out with your sharp knife, then take a slice of Gouda or plastic American cheese, make a small slice and cut "teeth" from it and arrange in the mouth, tomato eyes can be attached with more cocktail sticks...

Sea Monster Rolls - Just normal submarine rolls, I happened to fill these with tomato, mozzarella, shredded basil, ham and a drizzle of olive oil, then I inserted bulbous eyes from mini cheese biscuits, and slicing a hole in the back and sides, cucumber fins...

Birthday Train - this was extremely simple, no cooking involved, just buy a couple of chocolate Swiss rolls, a load of sweets (for decorating) for glue use a mixture of icing sugar, cocoa powder and a little water, a bag of dessicated coconut, a little water and some green food colouring for the grass, Jammy Dodgers and Rollo's for wheels, Matchmakers for the rails and chocolate fingers for the sleepers! Then just go crazy, in a good creative way, only took us about 10 minutes and looked really good... ;)

Hope that has provided some inspiration! ;)

Cable Testing Complete...!

Okay, just a quick "work in progress" update (if you click the picture I've put some little notes of explaination on it on Flickr - just hover the picture with your mouse to see them) but basically - everything works - yay!

The power supply on the top is a temporary measure (obviously), so all those messy looking cables are going to vanish, the laptop will live in the cupboard below, but that proves the VGA and network cables are all laid in okay, the router and cable modem will also disappear below into the cupboard, but that's all good (which means I wired the coax okay - as we have cable TV and internets) and the xbox tested okay and works through the surround sound - a 100% success rate - thank goodness...!

Tonight the cupboard doors should be going on - meaning we can throw away the old TV stand and move the Jungle Jumparoo back to it's normal place of residence, and as soon as we can sort out the parts for Kenny we should have neat and tidy power cables (all pretty much hidden from view) too!

So it might look a bit of a mess currently (mostly through having to temporarily Thomas-proof sensitive items at grab-level), but hopefully I'll be showing you the finished product very soon! ;)

Cheap Baby Proof Living Room

Well, I'm back (briefly) after my little "break" spent looking after Toddler Thomas, hobbling around with painful knees, which was...interesting...did have a lovely time though... ;)

Friday morning we had to send him out for a little walk with our local friendly baby-sitter (thank you Louise!) as the real chaos of the weekend began with the whole under stairs cupboard having to be ripped out so a new mains supply could be routed under the floor (thanks Kenny!) which took a good few hours as everywhere he tried to drill, our largely plasterboard walls seemed to contain giant blocks of impenetrable wood...

Anyway, that done I put everything back into the cupboard (limping and pouting) and then headed over for a lovely lunch and tea with my folks and Flyingpops who joined us for the later meal at Harvester (thanks Folks!)...Friday night I barely sleep (coming down with a nasty cold), then Saturday arrives with me wishing I could just stay in bed and try to get better, but have no choice but to get up and soldier on as today is the day we start (hopefully) the Final Solution for the living room problem (everything else had either basically failed to be Thomas-proof or was waaaay too expensive - thanks for nothing Ikea!)...after driving around for 3 hours with Flyingpops' dad (thanks Tom!) negotiating the very best price for the very best quality stuff around all the trade stores, we arrive back at our house where I try and dismantle the entire living room without loosing any of the cables (much harder than it sounds)-

- while Flyingpops is having her hair coloured in the kitchen (thanks Charlie!) and Thomas is being herded away from falling off things and grabbing power tools by Flyingpops mum (thanks Janet!), Tom and I install the cabinet carcasses we have bought (*extremely* cheaply - thanks Magnet! We have a 70kg TV, but the guy in the store said once we got them all together I would be able to "******* dance on it if you want to mate")...

So we got all the units in, and level, then started putting in all the various cables we would need (everything will be hidden behind the back board, so even the cupboards interiors will be extremely neat and tidy)-

- surround sound cables all laid in neatly and clipped together -

- Xbox 360 video and sound cable -

-VGA (for PC/Laptop etc.)-

-and then we struggled around the garden for ten minutes trying to get the (extremely heavy) three meter beechwood top in the house the correct way round to make the work top...but it was already looking awesome - more later!! ;)

Newborn clothes - Shopping in Crawley

Back to Saturday now, we got up really early so we could be there before the ravening new-town horde descended (baying and slavering) scouring every corner of every retail outlet with their particular brand of covetous chaos...arriving just about 9am, we found the car park largely empty (plan going well so far), parked up on the second storey and rode the escalators down into County Mall, first stop was Boots (which we had practically to ourselves), and by some great fluke of luck they had a massive promotion on (loads of extra points and up to 40% off baby goods), so we picked up some new expensive electrical goods, *enormous* pots of hideously expensive creams and lotions and a few items of clothing (earning about £17 in points on the reward card)-

- we then hit Pumpkin Patch (where we got 3 lemon-yellow little outfits, with an incredibly cute little hat and matching vest, mittens and booties) - these will be the "visiting time" baby wear, for when the little one has to be all presentable for picture taking -

- after this we headed to Primark (me dragging my heels in anticipation of absolute hell), but it too was actually comparatively empty! In there we picked up the majority of the simple, everyday outfits required for the early days, and after a brief stop at Prémaman (another sale) to pick up a bargain cardigan, we finished off in Mothercare (who were *also* having a sale! Talk about the right weekend to go shopping for baby stuff!) but all that meant was they had wheeled all the rails out of the stock room and jumbled everything up (meaning it ended up being a much more confusing shopping experience even than Primark, as newborn was all mixed up with everything else)...not ideal...but anyway, we now have *plenty* of vests, socks, baby grows, etc. etc. and from that direction, at least, we are all ready to go! :)

NCT Sale North Holmwood

So this Saturday we went to have a look at the first NCT sale (in our area) of the year, taking place in North Holmwood (near Dorking) -

- we popped over and picked up Nanjan first and then made our way (about half an hour early) to the village hall -

- we formed up with the small queue of about 15 people already there (thinking that some people had been rather keen as we thought we were early) and after a wait of about ten minutes two ladies with official badges started to slowly walk up the queue from the entrance to the hall, collecting our entrance fee (£1 each) and handing over in exchange a large carrier bag -

- lined with promotional material from nurseries, aqua-aerobics instructors, toddler groups and music tutors (oh and a key-ring encouraging one to breast feed, which you could pop open with a coin to replace the message with a picture, if so desired)...

With five minutes to go Flyingpops told me to check how long the queue was behind us (as lots of cars and people had been arriving while we were waiting)-

- and the answer was extremely long...and the hall looked like it was quite small...and I started to feel a little bit uncomfortable about what was to come (recalling the chaotic scrum of dusty church/school jumble sales of old)...

When the doors opened and everyone flooded in (every third person either carrying (internally or externally), pushing (on differently sized sets of wheels) or dragging an infrant, at various stages of development) -

- we knew what we wanted, and I duly waded in to try and help search, but I got about half way round (the extremely narrow walkway between stalls) and became completely stuck, trapped between pushchairs being wielded by stern faced mothers using them like weapons (the baffled looking infants quite unaware of what was going on around them or how they were being manipulated), at one stage I honestly thought the tide of people was going to sweep me off my feet - I only stayed upright by gently nudging a pile of teddy bears under a nearby trestle table to make some room for my feet and pushing up against a colossal pile of "0-6 month" baby clothing (nearly new)...when I *finally* escaped, gasping, into the hallway, I threw open a window, shed my (stupidly thick) coat and gulped in air until the claustrophobia had passed...peering back into the fray I could just about pick out Flyingpops bobbing about in a sea of determined bargain hunters, clutching armfuls of spoils with an equally determined look upon her face...when she got back to the entrance she shoved a lot of it (and her coat) into my hands and just had time to utter "We'll just do the middle now" before vanishing again from sight...peering behind me, it quickly became apparent that it was so busy in the hall the ladies from earlier who had been handing out the bags were now blockading the doorway to stop anyone else coming in! It was 50 minutes before we saw the sunshine again...

Some lessons could be learned from this...leave the pushchairs outside and put into place a one way system with signs from the ceiling - 50 people equipped with buggies the size of shopping trolleys moving against one another in a space twice the size of my living room while fighting over bargain baby goods was never going to be a recipe for congeniality...

Anyway, we succeeded in getting a baby bath, a top and tail bowl, some baby towels (the kind with a hood on one of the corners), lots of baby grows (including a Disney one) some things to do with teething and a scattering of toys...and we only spent £15...so, not for the faint hearted, but there are certainly a *lot* of bargains to be had!

Best UK shopping comparison site - Find-dvd.co.uk

Well, I've used quite a number of shopping sites in the past (liking to think I'm particularly clever for shopping around to find the best deal) and the other day I was proudly telling a colleague all about dvd.co.uk (who get around UK tax by shipping everything from Switzerland, a bit like Amazon's little Channel Islands outfit, and are free shipping, and thus where I tend to buy many of my Xbox 360 games)...I was however utterly trumped by a colleage who clued me in to an absolute *diamond* of a site which covers not just games, DVDs, CDs and books, but also phones and electrical goods...and it doesn't actually sell anything, it just indexes *every* UK retailer and sorts it by final price (including shipping cost!)...

Check out this example, Jamie Oliver's new book - "Cook your way to the good life" (click the link to see the breakdown and prepare to be shocked)...no, not Amazon, not Tesco (and definitely not DVD.co.uk) but *Waterstones* are the cheapest online retailer at a staggering 50% discount and zero shipping...!

Would you honestly have gone and checked their website? Thought not...

So, prepare yourself to save a *lot* of time (if you do shop around) *and* a lot of cash (if you don't) in the run-up to Christmas... ;)

Bargain Makeover - T25 Rust treatment

So, as I mentioned before, we took poor old Colin the Camper to be ravaged by a pressure washer and loads of previously hidden flaws in the paintwork were revealed (and we really weren't going for the rat look ;), so while thinking perhaps it would have been better to give him a nice gentle wash with a sponge and bucket...things had to be resolved, and fairly quickly, as a result...

Thence, to Robert Dyas in Dorking to buy a tiny brush (well, we needed two for another project, so it actually cost about 99p), a wire brush (large) which was £1.99 and I already had a pot of Hammerite "Direct to Rust" white metal paint from Tesco for under a fiver...no mucking about though, time for some serious elbow grease, work it all back, as near as possible back to the bare metal (just work away with the brush, don't be afraid, every flake needs to come off to make a proper seal) -

- this was about all I could get off without the use of power tools, meaning it's probably good enough to keep the evil rust pixie at bay (without resorting to a complete strip down and respray), anyway, a *good* coat with the aforementioned Hammerite later -

- and admittedly, not the prettiest finish in the world, but if that really is a problem for you - wait until it's completely dry then gently sand it down, and finish with a second coat a day or two later (as I will be doing, if and when I can find the time)...!

None-the-less - Bargain rust treatment - Done... ;)

Tesco Bargain Canvas Photo Printing

Well, what can I say but "Wow", £20 (they emailed us a deal, it's normally £27) for a 30cm by 40cm canvas print (they call it "Medium"), and the quality of that printing is absolutely amazing, none of the detail has been lost...the colours are just as they were in the original...and it only took about 5 working days from ordering (on their website) to delivery!

What an absolute bargain, and it looks fantastic on the living room wall...first shot of mine I have ever felt compelled to do this with, and I'm just thrilled with the result...

Thank you Mr Tesco... ;)

Original shot for comparison -

VW T25 - Bargain carpet replacement

So, the rubber flooring at the front of Colin the Camper was looking a little on the tatty side, lacking funds (it being that time of year) but having plenty of enthusiasm, the obvious solution was to try and be creative on a shoe-string, Flyingpops found these "Tesco Value" range doormats last time we were out food shopping that closely resembled the tough carpet material used for the headlining and so wouldn't look out of place at all, so we picked them up...

...after finishing the shed I picked up the same pair of kitchen scissors I used for the roofing felt, pulled up the rubbers around the gear stick and the hand break and cut around the actual bits of metal underneath (you don't have to be too careful as the rubbers will hide a multitude of sins), that shot is work in progress as I was snipping small sections off until it fitted neatly-

- then tuck everything into place. pull the rubbers down to the carpet level et viola! A brand new, clean look, hard wearing central corridor carpet section, all for five minutes (incautious) cutting and two value doormats that cost us a grand total of £1.98...

Can't complain about that! ;)

Homebase Garden Umbrella

Got up early today (really early) Flyingpops isn't very well at the moment and she couldn't sleep, so we were in Crawley by 8am (zzz) picking up her new DVD writer from the City Link couriers office (they tried and failed to deliver it to an empty house yesterday), we nipped into McDonalds for a naughty breakfast, then decided on a whim to check out Homebase for special "Bank Holiday" offers and came away with this -

- which really was a good deal (£68 quid down to £44), so we're enjoying the intermittent sun, I've been doing a bit of gentle gardening (just tidying up really) -

- ready (assuming the sun keeps shining) for me to dust off the BBQ, which seems to have survived the winter quite well, later on this afternoon...I've got a load of ribs and some piri piri marinade... ;)


Oh and Unazukin liked her new home btw (here we are enjoying a last beer together yesterday)...and is looking forward to her adventures with Kipperfrog... ;)