She Shops......She Scores!

Happy Easter Folks, hope you've not overdone the Easter Eggs! No Eggs here at Tightwad Towers but we did splurge on a bar of chocolate from Aldi yesterday, we ate half and have half left for later :0)


We spent the morning at the HUGE car boot at Stafford Common, it was a bit cold and dreary early on so there were bargains to be had from some very 'fed up' sellers.




Linking to the Fabulous Magpie Monday HERE  Here are my best buys:-

Another Embroidered and Crochet Cushion 50p

Pretty Pyrex type cannisters in the perfect colours for the kitchen at Tightwad Towers £2

And...I can't begin to tell you just how beautiful my latest picture is. At 20" square this  lovely freehand embroidery is breathtaking. The border is white on white, the flowers are ivory and then that pink bow, all on plain white cotton fabric. Mr Tightwad obliged with the photography here, holding it at various angles so I could try to get a decent photo for you. I have to say it's just so lovely and I couldn't hand over my £2 fast enough. In fact I break out in cold sweats just thinking of the hundreds of people who walked past this beauty before I got there.

It was surely meant to be mine :0)

After a nice lunch with Mr & Mrs Tightwad Snr we came home to more house fixin' and I just wanted to show you these little peeks at the kitchen (most of which still looks like a tip) but, hey, we can see the light at the end.....

Apologies if these are a bit dark but the sun was pouring through this afternoon. Hope you spot the Chicken theme going on here. The wonderful yellow gingham curtains were from The Salvation Army shop in Ashbourne a couple of weeks ago and cost me £1.45. 

I think they're perfect.

Enjoy the rest of the Bank Holiday :0)

Sneaky Peek.........

So the restoration of Tightwad Towers continues. It's doubtful that we'll move in at Easter as we wanted but we won't be too long after. Mr Tightwad is working hard to make this happen, unfortunately, I have a really horrid run of night shifts over the next couple of weeks that will limit my usefulness.


Enough ramblings...........lets get on with the mini tour...........


The Living room is 90% finished, just a few tweaks that can be finished when we're in. Almost everything here is pre-loved, I have my 'stuff' to add (mostly yarn and knitting) and Mr Tightwads guitars to find homes for. This should result in a more 'lived in' look (meaning messy) than is seen here.

What there is: 2 & 3 seater Leather sofa's (classified ad in local paper £100 for both, delivered) Various cushions (charity shops) Dog grate (Mega ebay bargain at £20, still available new at nearly £300) Coal scuttle ( £3 charity shop) Curtains everywhere (another mega bargain at £15 for 3 sets of huge curtains from a car boot, beautifully altered by dear MIL, and still have some left over fabric) Glass ceiling lights (car boot bargains at £1 each)

 Wooden trunk made by Grandad Tightwad many years ago, Chair & small sofa (ebay £20)

 Daisy's sofa - bought for the dog really but it cleaned up so well and was cheaper than a good dog bed. Lovely crochet cushions (charity shop £2 for 3)

 My picture, fiddle player and slate clock all re-homed. Lovely little onyx and pewter vases (car boot booty at £4 for the 3, higher than I usually pay but they are so lovely, I should have got a close up of these) Heavy brass vase (charity shop £2)

The lovely Daisy

 (also re-homed from the local rescue charity and the most loving dog ever (if a little lazy))

Spot the NEW thing - our heat pump on the wall (heating for winter, A/C for summer)

Well, that's all for now. We've done a lot of work to get this done but we've had some lovely bargains and a lot of fun putting it all together. 

Next up: finish kitchen and install 'new' bathroom. Hope you enjoyed having a nosey around and that you'll come back for the next finished on a budget project. Meanwhile I'll be linking this post to Magpie Monday ( HERE ) so why not pop over and have a look at some more fab finds.

Mrs Tightwad xx

Magpie Monday - In Stitches

Hi Y'all,

In keeping with my last couple of 'pre-loved' posts and once again linking to the lovely Magpie Monday HERE I found these beauties during this weeks bargain hunting. 

This embroidered flower picture is quite a bit bigger than my last ones and each of the little blue flowers has a tiny blue bead at it's centre. A steal at £3 and even better - it was spotted by Mr Tightwad. Lovely :0)

More pretty embroidery, this time on a cushion cover, wonderful for £1.50

There was of course much, much more but I'll keep you all in suspense a little while longer as most of them will be revealed when I post pictures of the newly restored Tightwad Towers. (Won't be too long now, I hope there's a glimmer of excitement out there as I'm really excited about 'going home')

Hope you all had wonderful finds this week and enjoyed the sunshine. I'm off now before my paintbrush goes hard. xx

Magpie Monday & Happy Mothers Day......

The Tightwad Telegraph - Everlasting Mothers Day Flowers.............

.......and even better than the real thing, I couldn't wait for the fabulous Magpie Monday so thought I'd share my Charity shop finds for this week. (I will link on Monday).

My DD lives in the USA and observes Mothers Day in May. So I don't feel left out this Sunday I treated myself to these absolute beauties. Both found in Douglas Macmillan Charity shops, the green framed poppies embroidery in the Leek shop and the floral wreath embroidery in the Stoke shop. Even better at £1.50 each they were much cheaper than fresh flowers in the shops for this weekend.

Happy Mothers Day xx

A Taste Of Things To Come

The Tightwad Telegraph - Featuring The Restoration of Tightwad Towers.............

There's a good reason for not posting over the last few weeks. The restoration of Tightwad Towers has begun and every spare moment (and every spare penny) is being focused in this area, here's a brief story of why....

A few years ago Mr Tightwad and I retired, we'd had a small but successful business for over 20 years, we worked very hard. When we retired we lived half the year (summer) in the UK, winters were spent in the USA.

The income from letting our UK property funded this and for a short while it worked OK. I'll cut a very long (and very distressing) story short here.We returned to the UK in April of last year and finally got the tenants out, for non payment, in September. 

We have 2 cottages, the smaller one was sub-let by the tenants as a holiday cottage, the larger one, the one we lived in for 22 years was virtually trashed and up until a couple of weeks ago we have done nothing to it since they left, apart from the fact  it was a bit depressing, it was just too bloody cold. We've been living in the tiny, 1 bedroom one since September.

Now we're ready! ready to take back our home, put it right, make it ours again and lay this thing to rest once and for all.

Of course, the budget is tight, very tight, but we've lived frugally and saved every penny we can for 7 long months. Retirement became more of a 'gap year' type thing for us and back to work we went.

So in short, Tightwad Towers will rise again! full of lovely pre-loved items from many of my favourite sources.We're hoping to move in at Easter and as our little cottage starts to feel loved again I'll share my room makeovers here. I hope you'll be astonished at some of bargains I have found.

Mrs Tightwad xx