We did it!

Last week I began a challenge to see if I could raise enough money to buy Stephanie and myself a 'new to us' bike each. I sold old goods to the total of £34.50 and Stephanie sold £18.00 worth of her things. Stephanie is saving her 'earnings' towards getting herself a laptop which she is adamant she wants. Well if she can save enough then she can get one!

I spent £20.00 of my earnings on Sunday on this;

My little speed demon loves it! It looks huge at the moment, probably because she is only just big enough to ride it and it is a lot bigger than her last bike. First comment was "mum how heavy is this thing?!" However it wasn't long before she had ridden it all the way around the lake at the park we went to. Then time for a quick play before home;

 

Now I need to organise a few more items and get myself a new bike. I have £14.50 left over from what we have already sold, ladies bikes seem to be selling for around £40.00 so that gives me another £25.50 to find!

Making extra cash

Yesterday I sorted out our old cloths

 and took them to a cash for clothes collection site near where I live. I sold our old clothes for 50p a kilo and came home with £14.00. Not masses of money for what looked like oodles of clothes, but lots more than I had in my purse to start the day with!

We have decided that as a family we would like to cycle together more, to aid this I need a new bike and Stephanie could do with a bigger bike as she has grown a lot recently. Now I very much doubt this will be new bikes, more likely 'new to us' bikes. The money received for the clothes has started off our budget for buying these. I will be on gumtree/ebay/facebook selling sites and so on until I find what we need.

I shall add a counter to the side bar where our financial stats for the month are to keep a check of this progress.

A little inspiration;

some of these so we can do this;

more often :-)



These pictures are to help me keep inspiration and get up in the cold attic, and cold shed to find things to sell. I'll be back later

leg power!

this weekend has been all about leg power! It started with Stephanie's swimming lesson. Then after some baking we picked up my niece and the girls went cycling

We played at the park, came home and watched a film before bed. the first question I got this morning was auntie Sarah can we go out on our bikes again. So I took them to a nearby country park;

yep we found water! toes were duly dipped in! Well people are swimming in there mummy!

can you spot the girls, it was my turn to hide in hide'n'seek. They couldn't find me lol

 

We had a lovely day, we ended up cycling/running for the full 4 hours that my parking ticket lasted. I need to get a bike sorted for me, and a way of transporting it. The girls had to keep waiting for me to catch up. they are both doing so well on their bikes now, even if Stephanie has outgrown hers!

cycling in the New forest

Whilst in the new Forest wehired bikes. It is the ideal place to cycle as there are many off route places to cycle. We couldn't take our own bikes as mine is broken and I can't carry them on the new car due to the spoiler. I need to look into a way of transporting our bikes on the new car.
We hired the bikes from a company which delivered and collected the bikes direct to our campsite. It cost £14 per day for an adult bike, £7 for a children's bike. As we are not a  cycling family I decided to hire a taga long bike for Stephanie as I was unsure how well she would manage a day cycling.

I was a little wobbly at first, and took a little getting used to so we rode around the campsite before heading off into the forest.

The forest was beautiful.

We soon got the hang of the tag a long.

We stopped regularly along the way for drinks and to relieve our bottoms! LOL I know understand why some serious cyclers have padded shorts!

Stephanie was very pleased as her wobbly tooth fell out before we left. We cycled all day. I think we clocked up around 30 miles in total. We ended up cycling to Lyndhurst as Stephanie had seen a New Forest museum she wanted to visit. We went in the museum which was fantastic. It is a small museum but tells the history of the forest from the time of William the Conqueror right up until the present day.  The museum had very friendly staff who chatted with me and the children, there were lots of interactive activities around the museum to interest the children.

All for the bargain price of £4 in total! I would definitely recommend a visit if you are in the area.

 

We had lunch from a  little sandwich bar, called Marina's sandwich bar. Lovely food for supermarket lunch prices, except you choose exactly what you want and watch the sandwich made for you. In total for this day we spent £35 bike hire, £4 museum entrance, £8.00 lunches= £47.00. Not our most frugal day but so much fun.

Oh and it is also one of the items off of my bucket list :-)