Altering a Bra and other articles of clobber

Altering clothes for the frugally challenged.

I have been busy recently with my sewing machine.

I took in three pairs of shorts that I made about 8 years ago and were a good 4 inches too wide for me having lost weight and got fitter.

They are 100 cotton and dark blue with tailored waist band,inseam pockets and patch pockets.
That meant that I had to completely rip out the side seams after removing the patch pockets and rework them with new seams and seam pockets.
I decided not to remove the whole waist band but instead cut into it at the side seam as it was going to be so much narrower overall and incorporated it into the side seam as I machined.

One pair was shortened by about 3 inches, one pair by 2 inches and one pair by an inch.
The longest pair are going to have belt loops added so that each pair is slightly different.
I reattached one patch pocket on each pair but kept the second for using as material for the belt loops.

It took a good while but thankfully I have a very nice sewing machine so it was fun too.


Then I mended 6 pairs of pants( underwear) where the elastic had parted company with the material due to very cheap manufacture.
These last were done by hand because the material is thin and soft and the elastic although sound, is narrow and obviously stretchy.

I also had 4 quite nice bras that I bought back when I thought I was a 36 B
Unfortunately I am not a 36B and probably never was (MUM!).
The big TJ Hughes in town closed and their sale had several 34C bras which I bought to see how they fitted.
They were exactly right for me so I resolved to alter my other bras to fit better too.

I cant do much about the cup size but the chest size is doable.
Here is a diagram of how to do it incase anyone fancies having a go on their own.

 This was 

a really easy project and saved my bras from the dustbin. 

I remember when I first got a bra,Mum was in no rush to spend money on clothes and so it was after much pleading that I was given one, it was mums cast off and was way past its best.

If I had realised how easy it was to adjust the girth size back then ,I probably would have snaffled a needle and thread and got to work to make my ghastly acquisition a bit more acceptable .

As I did not, I went to school wearing it and other similar cast off s with over stretched straps and material and suffered the mirth of the 12 to 16 aged girls during many a PE lesson.

Bleaching T shirts

I found an interesting article on instructibles by a member called stinkymum.

She describes using Bleach in a tie dye fashion to alter dark T shirts.

This was very interesting to me because one of my favourite T shirts is black with a cheetah on and has become faded under the arms which looked horrible.
I also have a T shirt that OH gave me . It had been thrown away still in its packet because it was a small and didn't fit any of the beefy coppers.
When I wore it the first time, the black came off on everything.

So anyway I read through her instructions for various folds and chose two I liked the look of in her pictures.

The bleach went into a large bowl. I did 1 large yog container of bleach and 5 of water as it was wilkos thick bleach.
Then after folding and rubber banding my shirts ,I put them in and went off to do something else.
20 minutes later I took them out ,unbanded and rinsed them.
They had started to change but not very much so I had to carefully fold them back as closely as possible to previously and put them back again.
I gave them another 20 minutes because she had quoted 1 part bleach and 3 water and I had diluted mine by a lot more.

The second attempt was much better.
I rinsed like mad then when the rinse water  seemed to have cleared of browny colour, I put them through the rinse on the washing machine.

The manky underarm is gone from my cheetah shirt and the other shirt looks very cool going from a light mushroom brown to its original black in an interesting fadey pattern a bit like stained glass.
The cheetah is silk screened and so has not been affected at all and now sits in a shadowy shady mottled background. The underarm staining which was really I suppose natural bleaching from sweat and age, is just part of the bleach pattern instead of standing out screaming old and manky.

remember remember the 5th of November

Twas the 30th Anniversary of meeting the Hub, this Guy Fawkes night.
We met at work as many people do.
So many things have happened since and it is hard to relate to the people we once were.
My own kids are both older than we were then.

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On the running front, I passed the 3 mile mark and am on the way to the 3 and a half.
Still jogging along 3 nights a week.
Sunday we do mornings if we can but it isnt always possible if the Hub has a duty on that day.

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I am back to my plank exercise 2 or three times a week.
It consists of pushing into a push up position and holding steady as long as possible.
I can manage just over 4 minutes 40 as a PB

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The garden is still untouched and will most likely remain so until the spring.

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Food wise, I have finished the turpentining and think it helped.
Still Dairy free and will be for the long haul now.
Still Potato free.
Went back to Gluten and yeasted bread as it wasn't making a noticable difference to leave them out.

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Only a few weeks till christmas.
The boy has still not found a job but there is a possible offering coming up.
Our daughter is working and living away still and is back to the university alongside her part time job.
She works in retail (is a shop assistant in other words) and their idea of part time workers is to contract them as part time employment and then tell them when they are doing overtime.
This is to get around the governments rules on the minimum wage and workers rights.

Im sure the government wouldn't give two hoots if they knew as they are all corrupt themselves.
It is quite alright for a political employee to lie and cheat regarding expenses and extra income but not for anyone else. Barring corporations ofcourse who have a lot more clout if they are challenged than a shop assistant or a 'commoner' such as the rest of we plebs most certainly are seen as.

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My fiddle playing has improved vastly.
I can now twiddle my way through various hornpipes and you can hardly tell which are the wrong notes.
Very enjoyable.
I recommend learning a new instrument to anyone.

return to running

Since I have changed my diet so much, I find I have lots more energy.
So..I have gone back to my 3 running sessions a week.

So far I have been doing it for about a month with just 2 runs a week but we went 3 times last week and will have done 3 this week .
The distance started at around 2 miles because my 3 jump rope sessions a week have kept up my fitness enough not to feel like a total couch potato.

We are back up to almost 3 miles.

.
I charged up my garmin watch today and discovered it is 2 years since I last used it.

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The food changes are going well.
I have been oil pulling for a couple of months or so too which has really whitened my teeth.

This week I am trying to be gluten free and see how that affects things.
I think it will be another part change I might make.
We do eat a lot of gluten and I dont think I have an allergy to it but it does get in the way of curing candida problems.

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 For me that means I am now dairy free(since Julyish) spud free(since about august), yeast free and gluten free(for the next 2 weeks or so hopefully).
Plus the oil pulling every morning.

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For the Candida thingummy, I am trying the turps on sugar strategy.
It really needs me to stop eating sugar, most carbs and yeasts and even vinegar.



That doesnt leave a lot.
However,it does seem to work better on none gluten days so I am defo going to give gluten the push for 2 weeks and keep at the turps.

Ive been doing the turps thing for about 3 weeks I think .
Week one every day for 5 days, and the rest twice a week.

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Breakfast doesn't come in sachets

What is all this sachet business?
Oats in a sachet?
Why?

How hard is it to put a big spoon into a bag of oats and scoop some into a bowl?
Put some water or juice or milk ontop and zap it in the microwave for 1 minute 40.
You will have perfect porridge.
If you want it fruity, add fruit..
Syrupy, add syrup.

Next thing you know, they'll be selling you pre made
mashed potato
Ice
Custard
Gravy
cut up raw vegetables
chopped nuts

Oh yeah,they already do..

Lemmings buy them because they like paying for air and tap water.
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Hooray the UK are finally going to charge 5p on a carrier bag.
How many people will now go around picking them up when they see them flapping in the wind?

Ofcourse teenagers and students will still get one every trip and dump it in the park or by the river with their junk in but then kids and young people have grown up with far too much money.

I remember when it was lucky to find a pop bottle in the bushes because if you took it to the shop, the owner would give you the deposit money for it.

The reason kids now have a drinking ,drugs or smoking problem is too much money.
When you are confronted by a group of 13-15 year olds outside an off license or  tobacconists and asked to buy them fags or booze, you no longer wonder where on earth they got that sort of money.
Today's kids are so spoiled with pocket money that they will struggle their whole lives to live up to the standards of income they perceive their parents can afford.

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I am back to running .
We have been for three weeks now, 2 nights a week.
I am so glad I kept up the jumping rope because it has kept my stamina up and getting back to running is quite easy despite not having done any for about a year.

Better homemade vegan cheese

If you have read any of my other recent food type posts you will know that I discovered I have a milk allergy so have been trying very hard to find alternatives to dairy foods without breaking the bank.

Hooray I managed to make a much more cheese like cheese on my second attempt.

It grates and slices and looks like cheese.
It is softer,like a very firm mousse,not hard and crumbly but it is good on pizza or sandwiches or crackers and I even secretly made Quiche with it and nobody commented that the cheese tasted funny.

The recipe is from reciperenovator.com

1 C cashews
1 1/2 C water
4 teaspoons agar powder
   OR
4 Tablespoons agar flakes
1/4 C nutritional yeast
1/4 C lemon juice
1 Tablespoon onion powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

Soak cashews for 4 hours and then grind em up or just used ground cashews like I did without the soaking.
Boil water and add agar simmer for 5 mins stirring.
Put everything into a blender or food processor and blend it smooth.
add any herbs or whatever(I didn't) .

Oil a bowl or tub to shape your cheese.
Pour in the cheese and let it cool.
Put in Fridge when cold enough.

I did this exactly as above and have a yellow,almost cheddar coloured cheese.
You could add a little bit of tomato paste for oranger cheese or cook a carrot before using the agar in the water.

I might try some hickory smoke powder the next time.

I don't think the cup sizing matters because it is just to get the proportions of the larger amounts right.

Half of this amount lasts me a week so I cut it in half and freeze the second bit.
It thaws out well and keeps its firmness.

Free mobile phone use,broadband use and cheap texting

I have been looking at my mobile phone usage and decided that  I could use Ovivomobile for their freedom package.
I didn't like Orange,they messed up all the time.
The website was buggy and they charged an arm and a leg for data use if you didn't top up your phone every month which I never do,so my credit would whoosh away just for a quick look on a search engine taking only a minute or two.

I already have samba mobile for free broadband on my computer.


[[UPDATED TO ADD OVIVO HAVE NOW GONE OUT OF BUSINESS SO DISREGARD  THIS BIT        MARCH  20TH   2014    ]]

OVIVO supply a sim for £15 and when it arrives and you put it in your mobile phone, it adds £15 of credit so basically the sim is free.
Then you are allocated..

• 150 mins of talk time
• 250 texts 
• 500mb Data

For free each month

Then when your allocated free credits are all used you can still call anyone else who is on ovivo for free or if you are wanting to call other numbers you can top up with real money or just wait for the new months free credits or just go for one of their paid for tariffs which are quite cheap too.

If you port over your existing number by requesting your FREE PAC code from your old supplier they give an additional £3 of credit.
You shouldn't have any trrouble getting your PAC code as they must give it to you by law in the UK.

They also do an ovivo data sim (750mb free a month) which I believe is £15 with the same amount added to your account as credit.

You can have as many sims as you want as you pay for each one so you could have 2 dongles to get 1.5gb a month  or two sims for your phone (would have different numbers of course)or two phones and get two lots of the free phone credits.

 If you use your phone a bit more than I do and have an older phone knocking around, this would work out very cheap indeed over a year...

2 phone sims, £30 one off payment would give you every month

300 mins talk time
500 texts
1gb of data

2 Data sims ,£30 one off payment would give you every month

1.5gb data

That is very cheap over a year  when compared with the yearly PAYG tariffs of other companies.

Of course the longer you use it for ,the cheaper it would be .

So if your uni course was 3 years and you bought two sims of each kind(£60 all together) ,it would be £20 a year for phone and internet.

They don't provide the sims or phones in that price plan .

You can pick up very cheap unlocked phones and dongles on ebay or ask family for their spares.

Ovivo sims work in Nokia's symbian  phones  as well as apple and android and window phones.

The only criteria seems to be a phone that can get 3G and needs to be unlocked.

I have been waiting to change to OVIVO for a while because I still had about £7 credit on orange but then I found FISHTEXT which is an online texting thing. You can pay for the texts with mobile phone credit (eat that,orange) and allocate your mobile number when joining.

Then you can text from your PC or using the app on your mobile and the texts are 2p
International texts are very cheap .
They give you 20p credit (0.30euros)  for joining so you can try it out (10 standard uk to uk texts)
Texts to other FISHTEXT members are free using the PC or a wifi signal on you mobile or the free data from ovivo and their app is very low data usage anyway.

Any replies go to the mobile whose number you have used for your member number.
You can also pay to have a phone number online without needing a mobile phone at all.

The texts are cheap and they can be used internationally with a price guide being shown for each option and length of text when actually texting.

So for a bit of hunting around, I now have a free monthly mobile 'rolling tariff'  with £18 of credit
Plus a £5.20 credit on Fishtext

(£23.20 for the cost of £20) a 16% profit :P

without the Fishtext add on credit £5 it would have been £18.20 for the cost of £15 (a 21.33% profit)

These two things would be ideal for a student who must pay for their own phone and internet.

If you and your friends joined FishText the texts from your pc would be free according to their bumph.
Join Samba mobile to get free broadband to use with it or additionally.
Join ovivo and have free texts and calls and mobile data
Get someone to buy you the samba sim an ovivo phone sim and an ovivo data sim (750MB free a month) for your birthday or xmas  and you will have lots of free broadband and phone data.

Get yourself a copy of joikuspot for your phone and use the phone data to get wifi on either a tablet or PC
Log into samba mobile website whenever there is free wifi available (maybe in a takeaway or cafe,a library with wifi,uni) and watch the adverts to keep your account topped up with data.

Use the dongle or your tethered(joikuspot) phone to run skype so you can instantly message your family at home when you are away. The messaging bit of Skype uses very low data.

Then if after all that, you still run out of calls and texts etc, you can still have your family ring you,because phones work both ways and you don't pay to accept incoming calls or texts,only outgoing.

Incidentally,  I have been topping up my SAMBA SIM every day by watching the adverts I haven't  used the data much, we got it for our ten day trip away in the spring (I think I bought it at the end of Feb for £1 using a code from moneysavingexpert and used an old dongle  I unlocked free)when it was used daily and it has been used about 3 or 4 times when the home wifi was being glitchy. (about 2gb usage all together maybe)

I have 7.8gb sitting on it waiting for my next bigger outing.
If you were going to be off to uni next year and bought a sim now or asked for one for a present, you could accrue a lot of data on it in the time you are at home and avoid paying for the internet when you are away

If you want to get yourself one, you can click on my referral link here to save yourself £2.50
http://www.sambamobile.com/Signup/BecomeMember?memberKey=0x5C0A8DD4F4DDB8E7FC6D4BD659FB8AD5

And the sim will be £2.50 instead of £5 or a dongle with a sim will be £22.50 instead of £25

I haven't got a referral to share for OVIVO because it would be  my name and phone number which obviously I'm not going to broadcast to strangers on the internet.
Fishtext is also not really a referral based thing. click here to get to their page or just search the name

Parents are not pack horses or taxi drivers

I have noticed over the last few years that children in pushchairs are getting bigger and bigger.

When my son started infant school at 5 years old, one of the other children was brought in a pushchair with a dummy firmly inserted in his mouth.

Now some 20 odd years later,I see many many big children being pushed around when they are perfectly capable of walking.

It is important to let children walk once they can. Baby reins help with stumbles , a wrist strap stops them running into traffic.

We had both of our children out of the 'buggy' as much as possible by 3 and walking everywhere as soon as they could.
It was easier with my son because my daughter was younger and he could always hitch a lift on the pushchair when he got tired .

My daughter was given a shoulder lift if she was too tired to manage a longer walk.

We could walk the 2 miles to school with both children and I would shoulder lift my 3 1/2 Year old daughter to town (about 3/4 mile),then she would walk  with me around the shops and we would both walk the 1.5 miles home.

It took time because small children cant walk as fast as adults and it meant that we could no longer  rely on the pushchair to carry the shopping but better that than have children who baulk at walking anywhere. Parents are not pack horses or taxi drivers.

When our kids went  to 6th form college after homeschooling, they were each presented with a bus time table and a bus pass.
The pass enabled them to get a bus at the top of the road and then another in town to the school, about 6 miles away. They both opted to walk to town and take only one bus rather than stand and wait for the first one.