Sleepy Shopping

I always used to say that I hate shopping...and whilst that is still pretty much true for clothes shopping, I have definitely learnt to love shopping when food and/or kitchen appliances are involved!

On Friday, I went into town with Toby after dropping Izzy at school. The children had decided that 5.30am was an acceptable wake-up time that morning so I was pretty tired. Tired shopping = spending lots of money it seems!

The first shop I went to was Holland & Barrett. On Maria's recommendation, I wanted to buy some Seed & Bean chocolate...

I ended up buying 4 bars, but in my defence (!) one bar was to give to someone else, and they were buy one, get one half price. I can't wait to try these!

Next shop was Boots - from interesting chocolate to boring essentials - wet wipes, tissues and the free magazine:

This was one of the cheaper, but more useful shops. I used the wet wipes and tissues straight away, and read the magazine in the bath that afternoon while Toby had his nap. Bliss :)

The first two shops were things I'd planned to buy, but after this my tiredness kicked in. I went into one of our local cook shops to see if they sold doughnut pans. They don't, but I came out with this instead...

I do already own a stick blender as my Grandma gave me her old one. But it is a bit old and I can't get it clean enough to want to use it, so I have been making soup in my blender jug instead. This will make soup-making a lot easier, and was only £7.99 so justifiable to my tired brain!

Next was Julian Graves for some planned peanuts (to make peanut butter) and some caramel nuts reduced to 10p:

Is there are real difference between paleskin and redskin peanuts?? There were blanched peanuts which were, understandably, more expensive but then there were paleskin peanuts that were half way between the price of the blanched ones and these ones. The shop assistant didn't think there was any difference in taste so I went with the cheapest option. I quite like having flecks of peanut skin in the nut butter anwyay.

Next shop, and by now I'd definitely got into the habit of buying one thing from each shop, was a local health food shop. I was very restrained though, just buying a jar of honey that I like.

They've stopped selling Booja Booja chocolates again which helped with my self-control - they sold them at Christmas and will apparently sell them again for Easter, but apart from that they say there is no demand for them. Shame.

At this point Toby and I went to Costa for a coffee break, well for me anyway.

This was a gingerbread latte, my favourite. I didn't buy myself a cake as I'd only had breakfast an hour or so before. Toby got a pack of the wafer biscuits they sell by the til though - he's come to expect those whenever we go into Costa!!

Revived by the coffee, we started to head home. With a few more shops on the way. I randomly went into The Factory Shop with nothing in mind, and came out with a little tractor toy for Toby and some "pink milk" straws for Izzy:

Our final stop was Tesco - pizza for dinner as I knew I wouldn't have the energy to cook, and a random drink that was by the checkouts. I hadn't realised it was a lucozade drink - I was drawn in by the words "lightly energising" but it was actually pretty nice. Cranberry flavour, not too sweet, and only lightly fizzy which was good - I'm not a huge fan of fizzy drinks.

It's worrying how easy I found it to spend money as a way of comfort...no more aimless wandering around the shops when exhausted for me!!


Do you like shopping? Do you find that you buy more when you are tired or are you good at just sticking to a list? Like I said, I don't like clothes shopping. The only shop that I came out of empty-handed on Friday was a clothes shop. I can never seem to find anything I like, and I never have the enthusiasm to spend much time looking. Plus the idea of trying things on with Toby around...nope!

Food shopping though...that I enjoy! I love having time to browse the shops to find new things that I haven't tried before.

I'm normally pretty good at going into town for the things I need - buying the things on my list and coming straight back home. Friday's combination of me being tired and Toby being really well behaved (unlike his normal self that constantly tries to climb out of the pushchair!) led to an easy, and unnecessarily expensive, shopping trip!!