Sensibly Frugal Living

20 Frugal Summer Fun Ideas

Do you remember my free summer bucket list printable from earlier this month? Free printable! Well, I wanted to post my 20 frugal summer fun ideas for you to fill it whilst sticking to a budget. These ideas are free or cheap and will help you entertain your kids during the summer holidays!

Summer Fun Ideas

Picnic
Beach day
Bike rides
Fabric Painting
Outdoor painting
Garden camping
Flying a kite
Barbeque s’mores
Park/ playground trip
Nature walk/ hiking
DIY sports day
DIY puppet show
Water table/ paddling pool
Scavenger hunt
PLanting sunflowers/ gardening
Skate park
Junk modelling
Tie Dye clothes/ fabrics
Den building
Making nature art

Just 20 simple ideas to allow you to sail through the school holidays on a budget!

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FREE Printable: Summer Bucket List

Are you planning your summer holidays? Do you have kids to keep entertained? Why not write a summer bucket list of the activities you want to do?

My printable is simple, easy to use, and you could laminate it to use year after year. Just use a wipeable pen!

You can download yours here:

Summer Bucket List

Summer Bucket List Download

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FREE Printable: Teacher Gift Bookmarks

A great teacher gift idea is a bookmark. It can be hard to know what to buy teachers without inundating them with 100 mugs or best teacher plaques. A bookmark is simple and not going to clutter up their homes or classrooms. You can gift them as they are or perhaps with a book.

I have made 2 designs (four bookmarks per sheet). This can be handy if you have teaching assistants to gift as well. Simply print on card and cut them out, or for an added element, laminate them.

You can download yours here:

Teacher Bookmarks

teacher-bookmarks Download

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Corned Beef Stew: My Comfort food

Ever since childhood, my Nana would always cook us this meal. It is my comfort food! Sometimes referred to as Poor man’s stew (but not worthy of the title now corned beef can cost more than mince and sometimes diced beef).

However, this recipe does make a large batch. It feeds my family of four inexpensively!

Ingredients

Tin of Corned beef
Potatoes
An onion
Oil
Hot Water

Simple Instructions (more of an eyeball it recipe)

Add a drizzle of oil to your saucepan and fry off your diced onion.
Peel and dice your potatoes into bite-size chunks. Enough to fill your saucepan. Add them on top of your onion.
Cover them with hot water and boil until nearly soft. Approx 20 mins.
Dice up your corned beef and add into your potatoes (do not drain the water). Cook for another 10-15 mins.
Finally, carefully add in your gravy to thicken. Try not to break up your potatoes as you do this part.

You can watch my youtube video here: Corned Beef Stew

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FREE Printable No Spend Tracker

I love a no spend challenge, especially if I’m trying to save money for something particular. I also like to have a visual aid for tracking my no spend days, so I made my own which I’m happy to share with you today.

My tracker is simple but effective. Mark any star green for successful no spend days and red when you have a spendy day. I have made trackers for both 30 and 31 day months.

You can download yours here:

31 Day tracker

31-day-no-spend Download

30 Day Tracker

30-day-no-spend Download

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Simple Wildflower Garden Gifts

Do you have budding gardeners in your family and friends circle? Do you want a cheap party favour idea? Why not make some wildflower pouches?

A mix of various wildflower seeds, some of which you could possibly save from your own garden, makes a lovely, thoughtful gift. Cornflower seeds, sunflowers seeds, and calendula seeds are some of the ones I use.

Present them in a small envelope with a label.

I am happy to share my labels with you for free!

wildflower-gift-labels Download

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What are Sinking Funds?

I have mentioned sinking funds on different occasions on this blog and have used them for a while. They are beneficial for saving for annual expenses that you know will be ‘spendy’ or something important you need to save for.

If you haven’t heard of sinking funds, basically they are a saving tool to help you save weekly or monthly toward big purchases, holidays, or expensive times of the year such as Christmas. Set the budget you want to achieve for the event, then work out how much you need to save each week or month to achieve it and put that money aside on pay day. Christmas is a big one for us, and without a sinking fund we’d struggle with the large outlay in one go. Putting a little away each month minimises the financial strain and stress.

Like I said, our main sinking fund for 2023 is Christmas. We have set a £500 present budget for Christmas, and that is a lot for us as a one income family. We like to have our money saved by November 1st if possible, so we can use it in the Black Friday sales and ensure we get the toys our children ask for before they sell out.

I make my own trackers, and I’m happy to share this one with you…

Christmas Fund Tracker Download

And in this post you don’t just get 1 freebie but 2!!!! Here is my birthday sinking fund tracker for you to download!

Birthday Fund Download

Do you have sinking funds or is there another method you use to save for events such as birthdays and Christmas?

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FREE School Uniform Sinking Fund Tracker Printable

I love trackers for keeping up to date with my sinking funds. I have a sinking fund for a lot of regular expenses in the year, one of them being school uniforms. Now is the time to get saving for that necessary expense every August/ September (UK).

My tracker is one I designed to use personally, but I thought it may be useful to you. You can set your savings amount to whatever you like! I am aiming for a cheaper year in regards to uniform as last year both my kids were starting new schools and it cost me a fortune. This year, they have a lot of the stuff they need, and a lot of things such as PE kits still fit them with room to spare. I will source 2nd hand items too. £60 is my aim.

You can download yours here:

School Uniform Fund Tracker Download

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FREE Memo Board Printables

I have the simplest of ideas for you that can be handy in your home or make perfect gifts… Memo printables. These are a great way of making reusable note pads/ memo boards for the family. I have even designed 2 for you to choose from. Pick your favourite (or both) and download!

You can simply print them out and laminate them to create a memo board that you can use over and over again with a wipeable pen.

Download the blue memo board here:

memo-1 Download

Download the flower memo board here:

memo-2 Download

TIP: If you don’t have a laminator or want the board to match your decor, why not pop them in a frame and write using a white board pen on the glass of the frame!!!

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Inexpensive Mother’s Day Gifts

It’s that time of year again. The time to show the mother figures in our lives that we appreciate them. If you are on a tight budget, these gifts are inexpensive, but would make any Mum happy.