We went and did our food shopping in Portslade today.  We bought most of our food at Tiba – a great middle eastern shop which sells fruit, veg, meat, rice, pasta, grains, chickpeas, herbs, spices and more. It is really reasonably priced in there and got us all out the house on a cold, blustery day!

We also perused the charity shops in Portslade and found this great set of books (pictured above). Everything was half price in the shop and usually they sell 3 books for £1, but today it was 3 books for 50p. They are all about being good and include titles such as ‘Being Wasteful’, ‘Being Selfish’, ‘Being Destructive’ and so on.  We (i.e. my husband and I) thought they were brilliant and had to adopt them.   They are actually pretty educational.  I now know all the reasons why I really shouldn’t be as messy as I am and my husband now knows what he should do next time he feels like complaining   As an added bonus I think they are probably quite good for the kids too

My husband and son between them paid £4 for 24 books – 22 of which were part of this set. You can buy them through Amazon here – but they aren’t cheap – we got ourselves a pretty good deal today!

Hope you are all enjoying the holidays!

I am currently undertaking a Year of Eco Challenges . If you have a moment I would really appreciate it if you would consider sponsoring me with an action on my DoNation page. Also if you liked this post please click like on Facebook and follow on Twitter – thanks so much!

Luckily, while out shopping the other day I went into a charity shop and found an absolute bargain.  For the grand total of £2 I bought a pirate ship with various figures and extra bits and pieces.  He is really into pirates at the moment and I know he will love it (especially as I didn’t hide it very well and he saw it and then nagged and nagged to have it now!)

My son is is used to receiving secondhand gifts which come with no packaging and no wrapping paper and so far he hasn’t seemed bothered about whether something is new or not. Every time he asks me about having something from a shop that isn’t a charity shop we talk about the black smoke in China and why it is better to buy something that is secondhand, so I know he will be fine about the fact that nothing is in ‘new packaging’.  

I can easily spread this gift out over 8 days, which is great as he is all sorted for Chanukah gifts at a cost of £2!  Now just need to sort out gifts for the rest of the family….  Have you started preparing for Christmas / Chanukah yet? Have you had any great frugal finds?  I’d love to hear about them in the comments below!

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