Rather Slim Pickings

Apologies - I should have posted this last week but completely forgot to do it!! The upside is that my lucky readers get double bubble today. This week's post follows shortly after this one.

The Cheshire carboot sale is going downhill fast. It is around a fifth of the size that it used to be and today most of the stalls were selling items that I would have taken to the tip. It is such a shame for everyone all round. There is nowhere near the amount of buyers which must be disheartening for the sellers who must be going elsewhere but we do not know where they are going instead. Many of the traders who were there every week have disappeared too. Consequently we are buying less and less each week. I still managed to find a few items and here they are:

A massive 8 arm chandelier/light fitting which is very heavy. It is made a company called Searchlight which we have bought from before and we rate the company for good quality lighting. This cost just £5 and will be going in our hall. We already have a fitting there which we put up about ten years ago but we prefer this one for more of a statement. 

I bought a Yankee Candle glass mosaic shade and tray for a large (or medium) jar candle. This cost me £3 and they range in price between £23.99 - £29.99 when new. It is almost clear glass but has a slight Aqua colour to it. I also bought a Yankee Candle wax melt burner for a £1. I have a plain one of these already but I liked the mouldings of vines on the sides of this one. This is currently selling for £8.99 on the Yankee Candle website.

I bought a lovely as new black padded coat with a hood for my sister for just £1. I am sure she will be delighted with this for casual wearing.

I love Bomb Cosmetics - particularly their bath bombs, bath fizzers and candles. I bought three of these boxes of fortune fizzers which were just a £1 a box. I can't find these on line but reckon they would have cost around £8 - £10 new. I bought one for myself and two as Christmas stocking fillers.

I bought a box of Joules egg shaped soaps for just 40p. There should be 6 in the box but given that usually sell for around £8 when new I was not going to quibble at 40p.

Finally I bought my usual collection of magazines - all June 2017 editions for 50p each, and a selection of DVDs for between 20p and 50p each. I have done so well clearing out my DVDs over the last two weeks and am still adding to a crate of them ready to sell.

I have also started having a major clutter clear out at home. Over a period of a week and finally finishing last weekend, I managed to clear out all my freezers. One is completely empty now whereas the others are not rammed full but neatly stacked. I know what is in all of them now and have been planning meals based on what is in them. I had to throw some food away but luckily not too much and it was mainly reduced price fish that was showing signs of freezer burn. I cooked some for the cat who showed little interest in it and as a last resort it had to be thrown away.

The kitchen has had a clear out too - everything from plastic storage containers to a Christmas cake dated 2013 that I found right at the back of the pantry. It had come in a fancy reusable storage tin that I thought was empty. It was only when clearing it out I found it had a whole cake in it. Such a shame  to throw it away but nearly four year old cake is not for me!

My next purge is cookery books but I have to read them first and check that I really don't find any of the recipes useful before they go.

Recent Highlights

My recent carboot finds include another Jo Malone item. This time it is a large bottle of Blackberry & Bay body lotion in a box complete with its bag. These usually sell at £40 at Jo Malone shops and concessions. I bought this for £20 which is more than I would have liked to have paid but it is still half price.

I saw one of my favourite sellers who had lots of Liz Earle products such as the hot cloth cleanser and body scrub but I passed on these buying instead two bottles of the newly released Botanical Essence No.9 Eau de Parfum for £15 each. These currently cost £54 a bottle so an excellent saving for me. I will be keeping one bottle for myself and one will be put away as a gift for someone at Christmas.

I bought two scarves which I assume are both copies as they cost me just £2. One is a Chanel square in green and gold - very 1980s. I'm not sure whether I will wear this around my neck or tie it to a handbag handle but I loved it for the price. The stall holder was a lovely and very glamourous lady. The second scarf is a long oblong one in red and black - a little gaudy but it should cheer up a black coat in the winter. This is a Louis Vuitton style scarf.

I loved these two Starbucks mugs in cream with a subtle Siren logo. These are a decent size for a cup of coffee, more a mug size so perfect for myself and David who like a large hot drink - none of those little cups for us. I looked these up on line when I got home and found that they have a G embossed on the handle to show they are size Grande. Others have a V for Venti etc. These cost £1 each. When I looked them up on eBay they were up for sale between £3.99 (plus postage) to £36.18 each.

On the pottery front I also bought this Mason's Christmas Village dish shaped like a Christmas tree for £1. I have one of these already and use it (obviously at Christmas) for serving nuts or chocolate truffles on.

I bought my usual selection of DVDs and all of these were 50p each from different stall holders. I've had a major clearout of my DVDs over the last week as they were starting to take over the dining room. I have a huge box full to sell on eBay now but as you can imagine I have got a little distracted with some of them and want to watch some again before I sell them.

I haven't listed any new items on eBay since May which is bad because I have dozens of items in my dining room ready to be listed and got rid of freeing up some space in my home. The dining room is suffering from some major clutter so I need to get a wriggle on and get listing. Having said that I still have quite a few items listed anyway and have sold 5 items in the last week.

I watched one of those recent shopping programmes with Greg Wallace where he looked at the changes in the way we shop, such as more people choosing to shop at Lidl & Aldi and visit less the standard supermarkets such as Tesco and Sainsburys. I realised that although I no longer visit Tesco and Sainsburys I have changed to shopping to both extremes of the price range. My go to places are Marks & Spencer and Waitrose but also I visit B&M too, which is unbelievably cheap.

I find that the expensive supermarkets have major reductions towards the end of the day so I buy most of my fresh meat, fruit, vegetables and bread from these shops. I make some brilliant savings. I also visit the local B&M which is less than a mile away from Waitrose to buy household items such as laundry wash, fabric conditioner but also cat food, tinned food and wine.

My recent bargains in Waitrose included this beauty haul of Garnier facial moisturiser reduced from £13 a jar to £4.55 (I bought four jars); L'oreal facial oil (great as a night cream) reduced from £10 to £3.49 and two bottles of L'oreal facial oil cleanser reduced from £6 to £1.99 each. Now these prices are cheaper than B&M prices.

Last Sundays Carboot Finds

I seem to have been so busy recently that I am behind on my postings. Here are the details of last Sunday's carboot finds. I have been trying to be a little more selective on my purchases so have not bought as much as I do normally but what I did buy I was delighted with.

I found a Jo Malone reed diffuser for £10. Now this is empty with all the scented oil used up but I though I could buy any oil that I fancied and put it in the empty bottle for fragrance. The reed diffusers normally cost £62 and there was no way that I would pay this amount but I like the bottle and reeds as I think it looks classy so I splashed out £10 as a treat - or rather David did as a gift for me.

I also bought this gorgeous black quilted throw for my bed. It is huge and covers my superking bed beautifully. It has heavy beading to the sides as a fringe and will be lovely and snugly in the winter while adding a little bit of glamour. This is from Marks & Spencers and cost £5. It matches the black lampshades on my bedside cabinets.

The last thing I bought for the home was a Camembert cooking dish. You pop a Camembert cheese in it whole and warm it through in the oven. Once hot you take the lid off it, cut a hole in the rind and then use it as a dip with breadsticks, crudités etc. I have a couple of these already but at 50p who could resist getting another one that matches them and aiming for a set of four?

I bought lots of other items from the bedspread stall holder. I bought this M&S swimsuit for just £2 and am so pleased as it is in the same style as some others that I have that fit perfectly. This swimsuit is new and unused.

This lovely navy Longchamp bag which is the large size. This cost me just £1.50. I have the small size bag in black and wish that this was also black to match but navy is a good colour and I'm not going to complain at £1.50.

I also bought some little bits and bobs from her. These lovely nail files with Breakfast at Tiffanys, Audrey Hepburn cat design. They were 10p a pack. There were the glass cleaning cloths with Lady Gaga cat design for 20p each and 50p each for the Amy Winehouse back to cat motif bags and purses. The nail files and glass cloths are for myself and the bags and purses are for my sister and niece as stocking fillers.

I bought my usual selection of magazines for 20p each and from the same lady a new Soap & Glory bath puff. I use this particular brand of bath puff all the time and just buy them whenever I see them on carboot sales so I have a stock of them to use when the one I am using starts to look a little sad. This one cost me 50p - the going rate for them.

I bought some DVDs priced between 20p and 50p and one fairly newly released one for £1. I seem to rarely watch proper TV these days and just have a few DVDs ready to watch in the evening. 

My Week

It's just been a kind of fairly typical week for me with a couple of highlights. I often wonder what most people's weeks are like - are their weeks like mine or are they fun packed and exciting?

I've put in a full week at work where I have worked a couple of days in the office with meetings, a couple of days working from home (catching up on emails, arranging meetings, completing spreadsheets, booking travel for a conference in Leicester) and I had a Celebration Day in Manchester for the completion of a nine month course.

The course involved (along with other things) working with three other attendees to produce a management report and presentation and then give the presentation to an audience at the Celebration Day. It was a little daunting standing on the stage watched by a fairly full conference room, being filmed and then being asked a series of questions by a panel. It was good when it was over and it was time to relax. 

We ended up getting free tickets to a concert in Manchester City Centre on Saturday night. There were four bands on and the headline act was Blossoms which is a Stockport Band. Stockport is a town on the outskirts of Manchester so as you can imagine, it was a packed concert. It is was held outside in Castlefield bowl and luckily the weather was perfect - sunshine all day and it stayed warm. The atmosphere was electric and we enjoyed a couple of the support bands too. One was The Coral who were brilliant.

We are lucky to live a 20 minute walk away from the tram system so can get into Manchester and back fairly easily. The walk is along a canal bank too which is a very pleasant walk with swans swimming up and down and boats and barges passing by.

Despite not getting to bed until gone midnight, we were up and out by 7am to go carbooting at the Cheshire carboot sale. It was busy and there were plenty of stalls but I tried to not go too mad on buying. More about my purchases in another post.

We went to the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester city centre on Sunday afternoon for another free concert. This time it was called Tram Tracks and was a birthday celebration of 25 years of the Metrolink tram service and 21 years of the Bridgewater Hall. There are 93 tram stops across the network and so 93 pieces were played across two concerts in the morning and afternoon. Each piece represented a tram stop. They were all brilliant pieces but my favourite was a band called The Retrosettes who played a piece for Stretford tram stop which was like a swinging 60s piece. My second favourite was a female choir who sang a song for Brooklands Station and finally a wonderfully beautiful song dedicated to the Media City stop at Salford Quays (where the BBC is based).

Being the frugal queen that I am I was happy to be given some free bars of chocolate and jelly beans in tram shaped boxes courtesy of the Metrolink system as a gift at the concert. I'll give these to my nephew and niece in goody bags for them.

Back to Carbooting

I returned home Wednesday morning from our holiday in Kalkan. It was back to work, food shopping, house work and gardening until this mornîng when it was back to carbooting. I went to the Cheshire carboot sale which had moved fields. It felt so confusing to not have the same layout for parking the car and visiting the usual rows of stalls. Many of the usual traders were not there and it had more of a feel of a real carboot sale than a market which it had started to feel like just before we went on holiday.

I didn't buy a huge amount but what I did buy I am really pleased with. I bought a brand new pair of Hotter sandals in black patent leather for £1. They have not been worn and will be great for wearing for work over the next few months. The same sandals are currently between £20 and £30 on eBay. I need to re-paint my toenails and I'll be good to go with these sandals this week.

When we were on holiday I noticed a few people with those thin microfibre towels which I thought were great because they are so lightweight but still absorbant for when you need to dry off after a dip.  I found this new and boxed towel for just 50p. Guess who has bagsied it for himself?

I lose diamanté earings all the time - usually just one of them. I go through a few pairs a year so now I just buy cheap ones so I don't get upset anymore when I lose one. I love the size of these new ones from Claire's. They are mounted on sterling silver and have a £10 price ticket on the back of them. I paid £2.50.

One of my favourite sellers was on today and she had these cute travel sets of D&G Dolce shower gel and body lotion for sale. They are 100ml each in size and I find these perfect for a two week holiday. Now I paid a little more for the set than I would have liked at £8 but I decided I need to start treating myself every now and then so I paid up. The scent is soft, feminine but not too sickly sweet.

I bought this all-in-one as a beach cover-up as a change from floaty kaftans. It is in a stretchy soft crinkle material and is an Italian make that I've not heard of. I only paid £1 and the lady selling said she had never worn it as she had bought it thinking it was a dress and was disappointed to find it had trousers.

I bought eight copies of Vogue/ Harper's Bazaar for £2 which are all dated this year and last year. As I was walking back to the car with the heavy magazines, I found £1 coin in the middle of the field in the grass so was chuffed to bits. I am always find money in the street or on the floor. When we were on holiday I found 50 lira (around £11) on a settee at the hotel. I handed it in as someone may have been missing it after sitting down but I somehow doubt if it was returned to the rightful owner. A couple of days later I found 20 lira (around £4.40) on some steps on our way to the beach club. I pick up pennies if I see them - I'm not too proud to walk pass them.

My final buys were the usual collection of DVDs. Two box sets of one of David's favourite TV series,  Randall & Hopkirk (deceased) and a couple of films for myself. All £1 each.

Well that was it for this week. More bargains to be found next week hopefully. Follow me on Instagram #themrsdanvers if you would like a daily update.