Being Mrs C

Mrs C on the wireless

When I first started writing this blog I had absolutely no idea where it would take me. Being a blogger can be a funny existence though and blogging can definitely open doors for you.

This lunchtime I took the train north from St Albans to Luton to meet up with fellow blogger Liz from Me and My Shadow. Together we headed over to BBC 3 Counties Radio where we appeared on the Nick Coffer show to talk about all things thrifty.

It's years since I was last on the radio. I think I was about 16 the last time, talking about some school project. Today we were talking about being thrifty when it comes to the grocery shopping and it was great fun to both prepare and do, despite the nerves before going on air. Coming up with a list of tips for saving money at the supermarket wasn't actually that difficult and chatting about it all with Liz and Nick was also easy - as ever, if you know your subject matter it's quite easy to talk about it.

If you're interested in listening the show is on iplayer here for the next week, so until Wednesday 26 June 2013. Not sure I yet have the guts to listen back to it myself, but please let me know what you think - our slot starts about 1 hour 12 minutes in.

To fit in with what we covered today, this week's Thrifty Friday Five will be grocery shopping and I hope to include what we spoke about on air.

Thrifty Mrs C - Fixing a broken North Face fleece zip

I was gutted the other week when I went to zip up my North Face fleece as I went into the garden, and instead the zipper just came off in my hand. Closer inspection suggested that a small bit of metal within the zipper had actually broken off meaning that it no longer held the teeth of the zip properly.

I'd owned the fleece for a good six years or so, and in that time it had travelled the world with me - keeping me warm on a chilly Los Angeles evening, as part of layers as we treked in New Zealand and to snuggle up in as I waited for a delayed plane in Hong Kong. The coat seemed to be in very good condition apart from the zipper and there's no way that I wanted to throw it out. Replacing the whole zip would have been one option, but that would have been a complete faff and unnecessary as the rest of it was intact.

Unsure about how to proceed I started as I often do in situations like this by looking up the company on Twitter. The North Face have a very active international Twitter account with an astounding 124,000 followers. A quick tweet asking if there was anything they could do about a broken zipper resulted in a reply with a UK phone number for me to call to talk to their customer services team. I phoned later that day, but only to discover that they're based in Belgium and I'd managed to call them on a random mid-week bank holiday there. I was given a direct dial number to call back the following day and when I did got to speak to a very helpful woman to whom I explained my problem.

"No problem" the lovely lady said. If possible they'd help me to fix my coat. She went through a series of questions and then took my email address so that she could email me and ask me to respond with some specific photographs so that the team there could identify the zipper and work out how it could be fixed.

I did this and was pleased to receive a response about 24 hours later saying that they'd worked out which zipper it was and that I'd be able to fix it with just a replacement zipper part easily. I sent them my postal address and was warned that it would be posted out from Belgium and, as they covered the P&P costs, it would be coming snail mail. Ten days later it appeared in the post. Now to try to fit it.

This is where it got a little bit harder. The top of the zip on the side of the coat where the zipper should be attached has a little plastic stopper bit at the top meaning that you can't just slide the new zipper straight on. The stopper was part of the moulded zip and I couldn't work out how to take it off or avoid it so instead out came a big pair of pliers and I just broke it off. I figured that whilst the stopper originally stopped the zipper from flying off the top of the zip when unzipped, it doesn't really serve a purpose when the zip is fastened.

With the stopper removed it's easy to just slide the new zipper on and hey presto - one fixed North Face fleece for the cost of a tweet, a couple of phone calls and an email. Far cheaper than over £100 for a new fleece.

Ladybird Tuesday: Mr. Badger to the Rescue

There are some children's books that just leave you feeling all warm and fluffy inside - and Mr Badger to the Rescue is one such book.

Like all the other books in series 401 (Animal Rhymes) the book is written entirely in verse and the rhythm of it when read out load is lovely.

In this lovely take three little doormice wake one morning to see that the circus has come to town. They're so desperate to go and see it, but they've got no money to buy tickets, so they set about trying to earn some.

Their first attempts fail, but Mr Badger helps them out by providing a couple of extra barrows to enable them to help Mrs Bunny and Mrs Hare with the laundry.

Finally they think they're going to be able to go and see the circus, but alas a mishap on the bridge results in the washing falling in to the water. Once again Mr Badger comes to the rescue, helping them to catch the washing and then, once they've dried it all again, taking them to the circus himself.

The whole tale really is quite adorable.

Mr Badger to the Rescue was first published in 1949, but the version I have was then republished, with the later cover, in the early 1970s. I really like all the books in this series - and I've managed to get hold of quite a few now, as I just find that the rhyming text works so well with little ones when you read aloud to them. The stories are all very sweet too.

If you have a collection of old Ladybird books then please feel free to join in with Ladybird Tuesday. There are no formal rules to follow, just leave a link to any post you write in the comments below and if you're feeling kind link back to my Ladybird Tuesday category here on Being Mrs C. Thank you!

 

Featured Post: Saving money by unblocking toilets and drains yourself

If you're looking to save money around the house then one way to do so is to teach yourself some DIY skills and get yourself the appropriate tools. Trades people can be very expensive, especially if you're having to call them out in an emergency - and we all know that if something's going to go wrong it will happen either on a Sunday or on a Bank Holiday, when call out charges are even more than usual!

When it comes to drain problems you only really need two pieces of kit to be able to resolve many problems yourself - a plunger (under a fiver from a DIY shop) and a good pair of rubber gloves. 

Unblocking a toilet

The toilet is one thing that you really don't want going wrong in your house, but if you've got small kids who can be a bit over-enthusiastic with the amount of toilet paper required to wipe their bum then you're probably going to have to deal with a blocked toilet sooner or later. It's definitely worth learning how to unblock a toilet as it's not at all difficult to do, yet making a wrong move could involve flooding your bathroom - and no one wants that.

The key thing is not to assume that flushing it again and again will solve the problem as it probably won't. Once you've realised there is a blockage stop flushing and instead try to dislodge it using your plunger. In most cases this should sort things out and once it's unblocked flushing again should prove that there are no longer any problems.

Clearing your drains

When it comes to your house's main drains there are several things that could cause blockages - fat or grease being washed down the kitchen sink, sanitary products down the toilet, or leaves getting in where the drains go into the ground. Making sure you don't let these things get into your drains in the first place will definitely help keep them unblocked. Pouring hot water down the inside drains regularly is one way of keeping them clear. And rather than waste your money on expensive cleaning products a combination of bicarbonate of soda and vinegar will do just as good a job if poured down and flushed with hot water. (There's not much around the house that bicarbonate of soda and vinegar can't do when it comes to husehold cleaning - and I've a whole series of other posts lined up using them very soon!) 

If you have a problem with your outside drains then using drain rods may help to solve it. Whilst these can be a bit more expensive to buy yourself (anywhere between £10 and £50) you can also hire them or ask a friend of neighbour if they have a set you can borrow.

If previous residents of your house haven't followed the tips above then you might need to call in the professionals to clear the problems once and for all. Dyno-Rod drain jetting goes a step further than just using drain rods and really eliminates problems, rather than just moving them around the drainage system.

In all these situations though, if in doubt ask someone to help you. You don't want to create more expense for yourself by doing something wrong, so ask a friend or family member if unsure and if they can't help call out the professionals. Paying for them to come out once and explain to you what they're doing and answer your questions may well save you money and hassle in the long run.

Disclaimer: This featured post was brought to you in association with Dyno-Rod.

For more thrifty money saving tips - have a look at Thrifty Mrs C.

Thrifty Friday Five - In the bathroom

One of the smaller rooms in the house, but have you ever thought about how much money you spend on things going on in your bathroom? There's all that water for starters - did you know that 70% of all water usage is in the bathroom. And then think about how much you spend on toiletries too. This week I'm hoping to give you five tips to help you save money in the room where you spend a penny.

1. Reduce the amount you flush

Every time you flush the loo water goes down the drain - literally. If your water is metered (and as an aside, if your water isn't metered request a free water meter from your water company as it WILL make your bills go down) then you are paying for the amount you flush every time you flush the toilet. In an average UK household 30% of daily water usage is from flushing the toilet.

So, how do you reduce this. There is the simple answer of just not flushing every time you use the loo. Not necessarily nice if there are lots of you in the house, but effective all the same. If you have a dual flush toilet just try using the smaller flush option.

If you don't have a dual flush toilet, a preferred option may be to use a Hippo. This is a small bag-like device which fits inside your toilet cistern and reduces the amount of water used in each flush. In just 8-12 weeks you should have saved the amount that the Hippo cost you and in a year you could save about £20. It may not seem much, but every little helps, and as well as saving money you're also helping reduce your household carbon footprint.

2. Buy your toiletries carefully

There are toiletries all of us use daily - toothpaste, soap, deodorant etc - but it is possible to buy these in such a way as to save money. If you have preferred brands then watch out for when they come on special offer, either in the supermarket or at the large chain chemists. Most products usually have a period when they're on a BOGOF deal, or a three for two. If you buy in bulk then and stock up then it will save you money in the long term. These things don't go off, so if you have the space to store them then do. Also, if you can convince the whole family to use the same brands it will reduce the number of special deals that you have to look out for.

Whilst the above may be the case for branded items, many supermarkets and other shops also do their own label toiletries that are cheaper than the well known brands. In some cases the quality may be inferior, but in many it's not. Why not try them for a month and see if you would be prepared to swap brands. Do be careful though as I have found that some own brand shower gel for instance is so watery that you end up using twice as much - so a bit of a false economy!

3. Don't wash your hair

Well what I really mean here is don't use shampoo. Many of us, especially the women, spend a fortune on shampoo and conditioner and also wash our hair pretty frequently. Just think about how much you'd save if you ditched the shampoo. It may sound a bit gross (and I have to admit that I've not plucked up the courage to try it yet) but it can really work.

Lucy over at Lulastic did a full year of living without shampoo and blogged about it as she went along. If you're interested in seeing how she managed then she wrote a fantastically honest FAQ to celebrate her year without shampoo.

4. Save water when you bath the kids

When it comes to bathing kids, once they're too big for a baby bath and instead go into the "big" bath it actually becomes quite wasteful when you think about how much water you use to do so. There's one simple way of reducing this quickly, without spoiling the bath fun for the kids - the BabyDam. This is, as the name suggests, a plastic dam which fits across the bath so that you're only filling a section of it, rather than the whole thing. An instant saving - and yet another green tip too!

5. Alternative sanitary protection

Right - if you're a male friend you might want to stop reading right now as this tip is one for the girls alone.

OK, ladies only? Let's carry on. It's a fact of life that every month we bleed. It's part of being a woman. And as a result, every month we end up giving a whole heap of money to a company that makes sanitary protection. Towels or tampons that end up going into landfill or being flushed into the sea. So in addition to the cost of buying them each month there's also an environmental impact too.

When I recently attended a blogging event I was lucky enough to meet the lovely Joy from Pinkoddy. It has to be said that what Joy doesn't know about Mooncups isn't worth knowing and that night (possibly after a couple of glasses of wine...) the conversation turned to Mooncups and she was in her element. I'd heard of these before - a silicon menstrual cup - but had remained a bit sceptical, but just having the chance to talk to someone about them made everything much clearer.

Mooncups are really quiet simple. They sit inside you and collect the menstrual fluid and then you empty it out and reuse it. And that's it! They don't hurt to insert, you can't feel them when they're in and if you empty it regularly enough there's no chance of leaks.

A Mooncup can last for years and in just a few months you'll have paid for it with the amount you save from buying towels or tampons. There's also no environmental impact and also no risk of TSS either.

If you're not ready for a mooncup then there are other alternatives, Jam Sponge being just one. If you're wanting to be super thrifty and combine it with a bit of crafting then there are even patterns out there to knit your own tampons! Honestly.

Featured Post: No Family Left Behind

David Cameron isn’t the person who comes first to mind when you talk about the importance of family support, but in the aftermath of the 2011 London riots, it was he who had given a clarion call to turn around 120,000 most troubled families in the parliament’s current term.

Beyond the political hyperbole family support services are a critical need for most families. Given the wide gamut of issues that fall under family support here are three areas that families might potentially focus on and avail the help that the system provides them. 

Child and Family Centres

The UK’s well-developed network of child and family support centres comprises both public-private partnerships like Sure Start (3,500 centres) to centres being run exclusively by private charities like Action for Children, Home-Start and Family Action. The range of services offered are comprehensive: early education and intervention, basic health services, and counselling to name the most sought after.

Any family in the local community where a centre operates thus has access to the range of services and projects being run out of it. While certain baseline services as indicated above are common to all centres, availability of specific services may vary, so it may be best to check with the concerned administrators.

Parenting Support

One Plus One, a UK charity that focuses on strengthening relationships estimates that broken families cost the taxpayer £42 billion per year. It’s not just the children but the parents who need support as well, especially young adults. 

Many charities will offer one-on-one training, emergency parent helplines as well as arrange for specialized intervention around a problem area so that parents are able to effectively rear their children and in extreme cases, not become a threat to them.

Parents with a history of mental illness or substance abuse can enrol themselves in specialized programs run by staff with the necessary competencies. 

Money Matters

Government is often derided about their inability to deliver on social welfare programs but putting money in the hands of families is a primary objective. For one, there is the new £1,200 a year child care tax break that families can claim— this is going to benefit almost 2.5 million families.

Then there is the New Deal for Lone Parents (NDLP) a program specifically aimed at helping unemployed lone parents get back to work, if their children are below 16 years of age. Currently less than 50 per cent of lone mothers are employed in the UK, while surveys have shown than 85 per cent said they wanted to work.

The largest and most popular financial support package for families however is the Child Benefit program. If you have a child under 16 (or 20 in some training cases) you get a tax-free allowance, unless one of the parents has an annual income in excess of £50,000. In such cases, the Child Benefit is still paid but attracts a tax charge.

Dark Clouds Ahead

Even in the gloomy economic scenario of late, and a government focused on cuts to the “welfare state”, 64 per cent of all British families receive some kind of aid. Unfortunately, around 58,000 families will face a reduction in benefits in the next fiscal year. Therefore, it is important that families look to get most out of what their local family support ecosystem can provide, especially for their children.

Disclaimer: This featured post is brought to you in association with OnePlusOne.

Review: Bigjigs Road and Rail

Regular readers may well have had enough of me going on about how much I love Bigjigs (but just in case you haven't read this post from earlier in the week) so I'm going to keep this post just to the facts about the review items in question.

Just before Little Miss C's birthday Bigjigs sent us our second Play Patrol review package - a wonderful selection of their Road and Rail accessories. This fitted in perfectly with the selection that we had already bought her as gifts and now she's lucky enough to have a fantastic selection with which to build a huge road and rail network - ready to challenge the Highways Agency and Network Rail.

For any child that loves trains and cars the Bigjigs Road and Rail series are perfect as they have so many different components available and you can always find something to fit in with any child's interests. The link items (which contain both road and rail sections) are particularly good as children are then able to really recreate things that they see in everyday life or on television.

Little Miss C is going through something of a Thomas obsession period at the moment and it's one of her favourite things to watch on DVD. She also loves recreating some of the scenes that she's seen. Being sent the Roadway Cutting was ideal as it allowed her to recreate part of one of the title sequences straight away. The Overhead Gantry Crane was also great for acting out everything being loaded and unloaded at the dockside. This particularly worked really well with the Fruit & Veg Train which we reviewed last year which has removable carriage loads.

To help build up our transport network we also received a pack of long road pieces. The only strange thing about this is that it's sold in a pack of three pieces. Yet the curved pieces come in packs of four, so if you wanted to make a road loop you'd actually need to buy two packs of straight roadway to do so. To me it would just make so much more sense to sell it in packs of four pieces.

The Duchess of Hamilton crossing the Roadway Cutting

Accompanying the link items and roadway was a train - the Duchess of Hamilton. The original Duchess of Hamilton is a streamlined steam locomotive which currently resides at the National Railway Museum in York. I hadn't realised before that Bigjigs made so many trains in their Heritage Collection, but it's lovely to see that young children are being introduced to these old engines through play. It also reminded me of the last trip Mr C and I made to the NHM and made me realise how much LMC would probably enjoy a trip now.

Who says you can only park cars in parking spaces?

As well as the accessories we were sent to review we also bought LMC the triple engine shed which is perfect for when she wants her trains to go to "bed" whilst playing with them. The parking spaces were also a gift from her uncle and ideal for the games she likes to play in which the cars all park and people have to remember to buy parking tickets (I know - strange child!) They come with three cars and the spaces are handily numbered 1, 2 and 3 so that they can be used to help young children learning numbers. The cars are coloured red, yellow and blue, but the numbers on the spaces are red, yellow and green. Just swapping those green and blue colours would have added an extra learning opportunity to match colours too - hopefully something Bigjigs could take onboard for any future updates to it.

It goes without saying that everything we were sent and that we bought from the Bigjigs Road and Rail range is designed and build perfectly for little hands. The build quality is excellent, the paint work is bright and attractive and the rail components also fit with other wooden rail sets. Once a child has a starting set (and we started with the popular Figure of eight train set) accessories make perfect gifts and with so much selection in the range you won't be stuck for something new to buy them each year, whatever your budget.

Disclaimer: As Bigjigs Play Patrol Agents we were sent the following for review: Long road pieces, Duchess of Hamilton train, Roadway Cutting and Overhead Gantry Crane. The Fruit & Veg train was a previous review item. All other items mentioned in the review or seen in pictures were either already owned or purchased by family for Little Miss C's birthday.

Bigjigs can be found on Twitter and Facebook and their new product range for 2013 is also on their Pinterest page.

A birthday crown

On Monday a certain little lady turned three. Oh, how we partied. It's funny how two days of celebrations seems to have left me feeling as exhausted as I did when I gave birth to her.

With two little people in the house my crafting has slowed right down, but seeing as I was a special event I was on the look out for a simple little project that I could make in time when someone at my knitting group passed me a copy of the May issue of Let's Knit magazine. Inside there was a lovely little trip of quick projects to celebrate May Day and this crown jumped out at me as perfect for the birthday girl.

Knitted in Robin DK on 3.75mm needles it just took a couple of sessions to complete - and then a bit longer to sew in all the ends - and it seemed to work really well. The sizing was a little tight for LMC, and a bit big for her brother, but the stretchiness of the yarn meant that it would still go on her head. 

In this case I followed the pattern exactly, but I'm thinking that future variations might include making the band a bit taller, using different colours and possibly adding some buttons as decorations. I'll get my thinking cap on before the next birthday!

Ladybird Tuesday: Car Games

Do people still play car games? Or have hand-held electronics and DVD players taken over instead?

After reading this book in preparation for writing this Ladybird Tuesday post I'm wondering about a campaign to encourage everyone to start playing them again. They're all from a time that seemed so much more innocent and simple and I'd love to revive that rather than relying on modern technology to do so. The idea of a whole book on car games seems a bit alien in this day and age though.

Ladybird's Car Games book really is a flash back to a different age. Published in 1978 this book starts with the whole of the inside cover devoted to Health and Safety issues around seat belts, child locks and not distracting the driver whilst travelling. When you think about all the modern day distractions in a car it seems funny to think about all the warnings of children causing a distraction by playing I Spy or a number plate game!

Most of the games in this book assume that you've got two children in the car to play rather than involving the adults in the front of the car and many of them involve the children looking at what is going on around them outside the car. There are several games around number plate letters and numbers and also other vehicles on the road. Whilst number plate formats have changed since then it should be easy to adapt the games accordingly. 

Today's increased use of motorways makes some of the games in the book a bit more difficult - you don't see many pub signs along the M1 for instance - but modern day variations again could be created.

As an adult, the thing I love most about this particular vintage Ladybird book is that it's almost like taking a car journey back in 1978 and seeing everything that you would go past en route. Old vehicles, old signs and old street scenes. A retro car journey, from the comfort of my own sofa.

Car Games was first published in 1978 and is part of series 633, Hobbies and Interests.

If you have a collection of old Ladybird books then please feel free to join in with Ladybird Tuesday. There are no formal rules to follow, just leave a link to any post you write in the comments below and if you're feeling kind link back to my Ladybird Tuesday category here on Being Mrs C. Thank you!

Featured Post: Ensuring our holiday goes with just the one hitch...

We're counting down now to our first trip away as a family of four to a friend's wedding in Copenhagen. It feels like an age since we've been overseas on holiday and I'm currently fluctuating between excitement and fear. Excited about all the new experiences that we'll be able to share with our children and finally being able to spend sometime away together, but scared about the risk of things going wrong whilst we're away.

I've got all the guidebooks and maps ready, checked that our travel insurance is in date and also updated all our European Health Insurance Cards. I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself for remembering that last one.

I'm making lists of all the things that we need to take with us and also plan to research what shops are near our hotel so that I know where to buy anything else we might need whilst away. As much as we can try to plan everything in advance accidents do happen and there is always a worry about one of us having an injury abroad. I'm sure that if the worst does happen we'll be able to cope at the time, but it's also worth knowing about what to do if you need to make a holiday claim for all those extra expenses you might incur. 

Previous holiday experience has shown us that information is often key when things go wrong abroad. We've been lucky enough not to suffer accident or injury before (I hope I don't regret writing that!), but when faced with delays and cancelled flights it's always been so much easier to deal with things (both practically and emotionally) when you can just push on and put new plans in place and not have to worry about the cost of doing so as you know you're adequately covered. Extra expenses can go on a credit card and then dealt with when we get home. Having a smart phone and being able to research alternative routes home, book tickets and hotels and let people know what we were doing was so valuable - and we even managed to do all that from the comfort of a hotel bar whilst others queued up waiting to talk to airline staff. Oh we did feel smug. Fingers crossed that we don't need to do similar again and that the only hitch on our trip is the one at the wedding.

Disclaimer: This featured post was brought to you in association with Irwin Mitchell.