Being healthy without spending a fortune

I have just started the evening meal and later on I will be going for a swim, we were talking about exercise and the gym etc. earlier at work and it got me thinking about how much is spent by some on memberships and how little they are used.  I joined my local pool a year and a half ago when the Change4life scheme had posted through my door.  I  have always gone to the pool but I only used to go once a week and sometimes that wasn't a definite thing, but the cost was always an issue as a quick swim soon adds up especially when you are taking the children along.  I had looked at joining before but it worked out too expensive however when the offer was on I got two years membership for £249 which is great, it covers the gym and sauna also but I don't use these.  When you consider I was paying £4.00 per swim before this is a huge saving plus I go two or three times a week now, the only downside is that with lessons and swim team meetings times can be limited in the evenings. If you are looking to join a gym or pool I would definitely recommend keeping an eye out for the Change4life posters outside your local leisure centre.

I think they look like jelly babies (but that is not very healthy)

It should have been £249 for the year but if you paid in full you got the second year for free, I think this just shows it's best to save when you can and then you can make the most of offers like this.  There was the option to pay monthly by direct debit but that was just for the one year  membership.

When the posters were up again near us recently my husband decided to join but he prefers the gym as he doesn't like to swim.  There are lots of things you can do if you don't want to spend money however, walking is always the easiest and cheapest plus most accessible to all ages, my friend has just started going to jive dancing in the week and she says that is really good for working up a sweat they are not formal lessons it's more of a social evening.  I have borrowed DVD' s from the library, there are all kinds of exercise workouts you can get there.  You can also get free trial sessions at some gyms and if you have health problems there are great reductions you can get from a GP referral.

Frugal things

Well the sun was shining at last all  day yesterday so the washing was on the line, that is the first frugal thing of the week and what a difference I think it makes to your mood just to get outside and feel the sunshine. I can never understand when people complain about the warm weather we just don't get enough of it for anyone to complain!  Wear a hat, open some windows but please don't complain when the sun shines!  A walk with the dogs to the park and a visit to family and while I was there I got given this skirt for the fabric...

I don't know if I will modify it and keep as a skirt (probably a bit shorter and less gathered) or if it will become something else, still free fabric is a good thing it cost so much now.  We then discovered had not picked up a pudding for desert when we went shopping so I made a chocolate and orange cake and the best bit was the eggs were form my sister in laws hens that she gave me the other day.  She actually said they don't really like eggs which I though was funny seeing as they keep hens. So cheap desert sorted! 

i had a sit at the top of the garden in the sunshine and we had been talking about what plants and stuff we need for the garden when I spotted this...

Can you see that little splash of pink? Roses growing among all the brambles at the other side of my fence near the tracks. I took a close up.

How beautiful is that? It will be really tricky to get to as the thorns on the surrounding bushes are huge but my husband said he will get boots and gloves on and get us a couple of cuttings.  I read that it is ok to take cuttings from wild plants just don't damage or uproot the original, which is bizarre when you consider the land that gets cleared for houses etc. Also it was mentioned that wild roses only flower for a couple of weeks early summer and that cuttings should be taken August to September.  I think if I wait until then I will not be able to find the plant without the flowers! Does anyone know if it will still work if we do it this early, rather thrilled at the idea of a free plant.  

One last frugal thing that got done this weekend was my husband finished re-staining the decks.

I think that has transformed them ready for the summer lets hope we have a good one. 

Fabric printing testing

I had a go at printing on some fabric today, I only have the one colour as I wanted to see how it works and how it lasts through the wash before I invest in any more.  I chose aqua (just because I like it) but if I plan to get any more I am going to buy just the primary colours and white so that I can mix my own colours.  I bought it from a shop called the Range and it is a little pot for £2.49, it was £2.99 in hobby craft and the same online, the make is Dylon.  If anyone knows that the cheaper makes work just as well let me know as I saw there were sets of these online and they were reasonably priced.  For my fabric I just used an old shirt of my husbands (he always passes them  on to me for fabric) but it did have a fine raised line in it which does affect anything you print.

I decided to use a potato to try it out first as they are easy to cut into and I didn't really have anything else suitable to print with, I know you can buy all the tools and foam stuff for making your own print blocks but I really just want to see how this works first. To be honest I don't want to be spending much on it so anything from around the house I can use will do just fine. I cut it into a square then I  cut a square from inside that one, that bit was tricky as I had to score the centre square then chip the bits of potato out.  I blotted the potato then as it is full of moisture and I used a small brush to paint the fabric paint on. 

I went along the fabric in rows so as to cover the whole thing, at first I thought I could paint it on then do maybe three prints but the colour fades so much immediately after the first print that you really have to load up the paint before you print each time. 

You can see that you get a bit of variation in the squares I think some of that is of course the way the potato has held the paint but some of it is the raised lines in the fabric.  I quite like that though as it is not too uniform. 

This is what it came out like and I like it but can you see where disaster struck? I dropped the potato just as I was finishing and there is a little splodge in one of the squares.  It now has to be left to dry before setting with a hot iron so I moved on to another bit.

This one I did just using the brush and it is supposed to look like waves.  My teenage son came in and said he liked  this one, he had been laughing and asking me how old I was when he saw me potato printing.

Here they are drying, the yellow one was to see if it would go green on yellow or just sit on top of the colour. as you can see it does go green on this very bright cotton. I used the square again and overlapped it lots,  not sure I like this one though. Next time I will try and cut some stencils but they will have to be paper  so they may go soggy quick. I want to see what the paint looks like with a crisper edge.  I suppose you could just paint a border on things free hand if you are artistic.  I think this would be good for people who do quilting because if you get given fabric you can change the look in lots of ways or maybe just stencil or print on certain little blocks.  I don't what I will use these bits for yet but I want to fix it and then wash it just to test the staying power of the colour, I will let you know how it gets on.