Easy Peasy Baking

I love to bake with my six year old son, but to keep his attention recipes need to be short and easy to follow. So I thought I'd share with you my three favourite bakes for people with little time and a sweet tooth!

Marshmallow Fudge
These take hardly any time to prepare and you can add your own extra flavours. Try replacing the milk with Baileys, mix in some cocoa powder, or add a dollop or two of peanut butter.

450g icing sugar
100g marshmallows
100g butter
2 tbsp milk
1/2 tsp vanilla essence

• Grease a baking tin or line with baking paper
• Cut marshmallows in half and put in a saucepan with butter, milk and vanilla.
• Gently heat until everything has melted.
• Sift icing sugar into the warm mix, stir well and then pour into baking tin.
• Leave to harden in the fridge.

Cookie Monster Bites
These are literally the simpliest cakes to make with the minimalist of effort. Kudos to my friend Kelly for the idea.

100g softened butter
200g icing sugar
Desiccated coconut
Blue food colouring
Chocolate buttons
Chocolate chip cookies

• Cream the butter and icing sugar to make butter icing.
• Add the coconut and food colouring and mix together well.
• Roll into golf ball sized balls, pressing in a dent or the mouth and leave to set in the fridge.
• Then decorate with chocolate buttons as eyes and chocolate chip cookies in the mouth.

Mini Truffles
225g choloclate
4tbsp double cream
1 tsp vanilla essence
Hundreds and thousands/ Cocoa powder

• Melt chocolate in a bowl over a saucepan of boiling water.
• Add cream and stir well.
• Leave to cool for 20minutes then add the vanilla essence.
• Put the mixture in the fridge for an hour and a half.
• When cool roll into small balls and decorate by either dipping into hundreds and thousands or dusting with cocoa powder

Thrifty Weekend

June, for me, is the start of the pre Summer holiday saving. With this in mind, cheap activites are a must. But it's always good to vary days out.

London's Time Out is a fantastic site for ideas of free places to visit and sights to see. The Thrift-Queen's top picks for this weekend in the capital include:

Naked Bike Ride

• London's World Naked Bike Ride - a liberating nine mile cycle past major London landmarks taking place on Saturday 9th June and it's FREE to watch.
• Open Garden Squares - This weekend 200 private gardens are opened for the public to snoop around.With gardens such as Downing Street and HMP Wormwood Scrubs on the list, the £9 ticket price sounds like an absolute snip.
• London Green Fair - Regent's Park opens it's gates to the largest FREE eco fair with exhibitions, music, and fabulous family areas.
• Or why not attend one of the many FREE performances of the Spitalfields Summer Music Festival starting this Friday (8th June).

English Country Garden

Thrifty Holidays - Barn Hopping

Looking for a fun yet thrifty holiday? Bored of camping but need a cheap get-away? Look no further. I've stumbled across a holiday concept that will provide a roof over your head in a stuning setting, but for mere tuppence.

In my family, we try to get away for mini weekend breaks as much as possible, but hotels can end up costing a small fortune. Over the past year or so we've opted to camp instead, but this year we've been looking for an alternative. Then I stumbled across Barn Hopping.

Based in the Lake District and Cumbria, Lakeland Camping Barns provides budget busting accomodation, amid beautiful scenery "in buildings all situated on farms and with a distinct, individual character." Winning! Plus it only costs £8.50 per person per night. I know where we will be holidaying this summer...

Our Thrifty House Purchases

Since moving 150 miles, myself and my better half have spent a large proportion of our time scouring flea markets, car boot sales and antique fairs looking for the perfect vintage (and cheap) accessories for our home. Here are some of our beautiful finds:

Left to right: a printing block tray £15, an old clarinet case £5, a 'Camp Coffee' box £15, an old trunk from WWII free, 2 bird seed bags £6, a painted fruit box £10 and a glimpse of our new kitchen table £90

Most of these items we already owned, but we bought the  pair of chairs (dating from the 1950's) from eBay for £52

We bought four apple crates for £20 each to use as kitchen shelves to display our favourite items of crockery. We lined them with vintage fabric, courtesy of my mother's fabric trunk!

The colander belonged to my late Gran. But with a broken handle, we up-cycled it to make this Ikea lamp a bit more 'us'

Possibly the best £17 we have spent so far. A beautiful set of vintage kitchen steps. With such high ceilings it is making reaching up for high up items a whole lot easier...

Thrifty vs Cheap

Ok, ok. I love to boast about my thrifty bargains. Recently, I have been making some bargain buys for our new home including Laura Ashley wallpaper on eBay and a gorgeous antique school desk for my son. Also, I bought a stunning vintage map of Surrey from a charity shop for £1.50 (see photo); and my sister-in-law, for Christmas received from me two beautiful vintage tins, which I haggled heroically on the price of, in an antique shop in Matlock.

However, on seeing 7p Smart Price Valentine's card for sale in Asda, I couldn't help pondering the difference between a thrifty find and being plain cheap. There is defiantly a fine line between the two.

 Ultimately, thrifty is cool. Cheap is not.

Winter Poundland Bargains

I happened to frequent Poundland this morning, looking for cheap chocolate and sweets, when I stumbled across two deals I just have to share with you.

Forget paying £10 upwards from your local sports shops, Poundland are selling sledges for £1. Also for £1 a pair (obviously) are their i-Touch Gloves. It would appear my mutters and moanings of having to take my gloves off to send a text/ surf the web via my touch screen phone have been heard and dealt with. A thrifty necessity this winter.

Pre Christmas Weekend Deals

With Christmas only a week away, we all need a bit of thrifty goodness in our lives, and thankfully there are some cracking (no pun intended) deals to be had. No need to break the bank, just read on for my weekend's favourite money saving potential Christmas gifts, as sourced from HUKD.

Stuck for a present idea for your bachelor brother of hard-to-buy-for husband? Head to Currys and pick up a Whoopie Pie Maker for a mere £7.99 reduced from £34.99. This 'idiot friendly' pie maker is perfect for pot pies, fruit pies, quiches and more. Simply combine ready made dough with fresh, frozen or canned ingredients, and cook. It's cheap and easy to use, an ideal gift.

Thrift-Queen Misprice Alert: News of another brilliant supermarket pricing mistake. Tesco's are selling Binatone B350 Sat Nav's for £6. They're usually priced at around £60 on Amazon, this is a misprice worth investing in. Some stores are also selling Logiteck Ultra Flat Keyboards for a bargain £1.25.

If you've managed to not spend all your money on Christmas gifts, why not make a thrifty investment in summer 2012 with this elegant Stone Falls Water Feature. It is currently being sold at B&Q for £20, reduced from £199.98. An absolute snip! Tight on space? They're also selling a smaller Bubbling Barrel Water Feature for £10, reduced from £99.98.

Know of any other amazingly thrifty deals? I'd love to hear about them. Just comment below, or on my Thrift-Queen Facebook Page.

Asda Misprice

Thrift-Queen Misprice Alert: Asda 8m x 0.45m brown paper roll marked at £1.20, but scans at fabulously cheap 2p! Could make for some thrifty Christmas wrapping paper?

My Top 12 Uses for Foil

We all have a roll of aluminium foil sitting in our cupboard, and yes it's good to store your sandwiches in, or wrap around a jacket potato in the oven. But there are many other fabulous uses for the stuff to help simplify everyday tasks. Get thrifty, save money and become a foil god/goddess!

Some of these tips I use ALL the time, and some are courtesy of the wonderful Reader's Digest.

In the Home

1. Clean pots and pans - Don't have a Brillo pad to hand? Scrunch up some foil and get scrubbing (works well on barbeque's and silverware too). Foil can also be useful for preserving the life of your Brillo pads. Prevent rust after initial use by wrapping it in foil and storing in the freezer. Go on, get your money's worth!
2.  Move furniture with ease - To slide big pieces of furniture over a smooth floor, place small pieces of aluminum foil under the legs. Put the dull side of the foil down, the dull side is actually more slippery than the shiny side. 
3. Speed up ironing - I hate ironing, it's such a boring chore. So anything to help speed it up is a winner with me. When ironing your clothes, a lot of the iron's heat is sucked up by the board itself, requiring you to make several passes to remove wrinkles. To speed things up, put a piece of aluminum foil under your ironing board cover. The foil will reflect the heat back through the clothing, smoothing wrinkles quicker. You can also use foil to clean your iron. Simply run your hot iron over a piece of aluminum foil. 
4. Sharpen your scissors - I use this method all the time to sharpen up my dull scissors. Fold a piece of foil about seven or eight times and cut a few times with the scissors. It works a treat. 
5. Keep a paintbrush wet - Going to continue painting tomorrow morning? Don't bother to clean the brush, just squeeze out the excess paint and wrap the brush tightly in aluminum foil (using a rubber band to secure). For extended wet-brush storage, think paintbrush ice-pop. Put your wrapped brush in the freezer. But don't forget to defrost the brush for an hour or so before you paint.

Out and About

1. Protect tree trunks - Mice, rabbits, and other animals often feed on the bark of young trees during winter. A cheap and effective deterrent is to wrap the tree trunks with a double layer of heavy-duty aluminum foil in late autumn. Be sure to remove the foil in spring. 
2. Put some bite in your compost - To keep hungry insects and slugs away from your cucumbers and other vegetables, mix strips of aluminum foil in with your garden compost. As a bonus benefit, the foil will reflect light back up onto your plants. Be eco-friendly and try using Lovechock's biodegradable foil.
3. Keeping your sleeping bag dry - When camping, place a piece of heavy-duty aluminum foil under your sleeping bag to insulate against moisture. Stay warm without spending a fortune on gadgets and gizmo's
4. Keep matches dry - It’s a tried and tested soldier's trick worth remembering (I learnt it in Scouts): Wrap your kitchen matches in aluminum foil to keep them from getting damp or wet on camping trips. 

Do you know of any amazing uses for regular household items? Leave a comment, or email me at thrift-queen@hotmail.co.uk.

Top Five Free Hobbies

"Beware the hobby that eats." Benjamin Franklin

About six months ago, it occurred to me that many of my favourite hobbies were generally costing me more than I could afford. Snowboarding, pole dancing classes and theatre trips were leaving me with limited funds, so I set about trying to replace them with free or virtually free new hobbies. My top five thrifty favourites are as follows:

1. Thrifty sports and exercise. Such as hiking, football, walking/running, darts, tennis, skateboarding, basketball and cycling.
2. Music. Re-learn or teach yourself to play an instrument. Attend gigs for 'up-and-coming' bands. Less notoriety = cheaper tickets.
3. Cooking and baking. Challenging, cheap and child-friendly.
4. Blogging. Share your passion and give yourself a voice.
5. Arts and crafts [see previous article Get The Crafting Bug]. Or why not take up knitting, sewing, painting or photography.

Do you have any recommendations for cheap yet fun hobbies I could try? Leave me a comment or email me at thrift-queen@hotmail.co.uk

Money Saving Website

Just wanted to share with you all this amazing new [to me] website I've found. It's called Cheap Bargains (UK) and is Thrift-Queen heaven with top tips galore on saving money and deals to be had. My recommendation of the moment is to buy the Skullcandy Full Metal Earbud Headphones on play.com for £14.99 (RRP of £79.95) which is a massive saving of £64.96. Perfect for a thrifty Christmas present. Check out other bargains to be had at http://www.cheapbargains.org/

Let's go fly a kite...

With the summer holidays drawing to a close, funds are dwindling, and patience can be at a minimum. The Thrift-Queen's top tip: Go fly a kite! It cost me £3 from Tesco's and my son had THE best day out! Cheap yet cheerful!