Happy Cheapskate Girlfriend Day

I am a terrible cheapskate, and that's ok. 

Hello and good evening to you all. This week I am not quite so much of a braindead zombie as I was seven days ago. I have however had to spend most of the intervening time hiding from the world and sleeping whenever possible to achieve this. Last week I didn't feel like going dancing at all! I hope those of you who know me well will appreciate that this is a rare and drastic thing. I stayed in feeling sleepy and a little sorry for myself for 3 nights in a row. But the weekend came along in the end and I think I'm a bit more on top of things now.

Saturday was Valentine's Day, which we mostly marked by ignoring it, as is only right and proper. Ok, so I made scrambled eggs instead of just toast for breakfast, but we really did just let the whole thing pass us by. Ignoring Valentine's Day when you would actually have someone to celebrate it with was a whole new experience for me, so in a roundabout way really quite exciting. I never really believed in all of the red glittery heart-shaped crap anyway. Last year the novelty of having a someone to give things to got the better of me and I wound up presenting poor L with this super-romantic light-up colour-changing pig.

We call him the 'Mantical Pig and he sits on one of the corners of L's four-poster bed, occasionally glowing away to himself. 

With this as my only record of previous form, I was let off the hook and given permission to ignore the whole shh-bang. Probably the safest course of action.

The rest of the weekend rolled on. Some people did some dancing, which was much more interesting, and the whole Valentine's thing passed us by and was forgotten. Right?

Well done you lot.

So then last night we'd been for our weekly Monday night Pilates/Swim (where L wiggles her butt in the air for an hour, and I swim two lengths then sit in the sauna for a very long time), after which we had to buy petrol. Then a very strange thing happens:  L returns from the shoppie, wishes me a "Happy Cheapskate Girlfriend Day" and presents me with a bunch of yellow-sticker red roses.

Tonight I am rocking the top I wore to work today which has lots of upside-down birds, with a red starry scarf, and purple check pyjamas on top. Cos of classy.

This is because we are cheapskates. And that's ok. 

I have decided that I think I like doing things the cheapskate way, and that I'm going to keep trying to make it work for me.

Like how I really want to make a big floor mat out of crocheted strips of cotton, and how we're looking for extra camping kit, so this weekend we got up BEFORE Church and spent a wet Sunday morning wandering around the Thainstone car boot. Like how I'm still wearing my super-comfy ebayed man jeans even thought they have a big hole in the crotch. Like how the weekend before last we wanted to make 20-odd people decorate gingerbread men because, well it seemed like a good idea at the time. This lot are a fairly creative bunch when given the chance and I wanted to see what they'd produce (they didn't disappoint - pictures are below). However I couldn't bear to splurge on buying enough gingerbread biscuits and pre-made writing icing for them all, so instead we did a whole heap of baking and provided shot-glasses of coloured icing and cocktail sticks to paint it on with. The cheapskate way. The cheapskate way though, turns out to work surprisingly well; we had just the right number of gingerbread men and ladies, and people managed just fine with the cocktail stick versions of writing icing.

So this is my little reminder to myself to endeavour to do things the cheapskate way, and to make the cheapskate way better than the not-so-cheapskate way. If I say things like that publicly then I'm ten times more likely to stick them.

And for all the rest of you lot, here's a whole heap of pictures of the genius and nonsense that happens when you let a room of grown-ups loose with biscuits and coloured icing.

Enjoy...