August 2024 – Sheepover and Open weekend at the Farm Animal Sanctuary, Stationery month Link to Hope and Bags of Education.

Bramley 20/08/2024 no Comments

Link to Hope and Bags of Education

It’s stationery month on the Link to Hope calendar which ties in nicely with filling some Bags of Education for Door of Hope who sometimes work with Link to Hope. The Link to Hope calendar says ‘A gift for everyone – young and old. Pencils, crayons, rulers, notepads, calculators, notelets.’

Bags of Education have a list of stationery items they’d like you to include – such as biros, pencils, coloured pencils, eraser, sharpener, ruler, pencil case, exercise books, A4 drawing pad, water bottle, and plastic document folders etc.

I’ve filled 3 bags but have also bought some extra items to put in the box to assist with other bags.

Tesco are good value at the moment, with some of their stationery items reduced. The pack of 4 black, 4 blue and 2 red biros are now 40p, a pack of 10 blue or black biros is 50p, a double pencil sharpener for 40p and a large eraser for 50p. Their HB pencils aren’t the cheapest at £1.00 for 12 so about 8p each. Their coloured pencils are just 75p for 12. They also have a small clear pencil case for 50p, similar ones in Asda are 45p. Asda are slightly cheaper for HB pencils with 12 for 90p, but Sainsburys seem to be the cheapest with 24 HB pencils for £2.25, and a pack of 50 pens for £3.00.

Poundland are still the cheapest for HB pencils if you can get hold or their pack of 24 for £1.00, but they don’t seem to be in stock in many stores, though some have a pack of 6 reduced to 30p. They’ve also got a packet of 6 small roles of Sellotape for 75p.

Dunelm still have some vinyl pencil cases for 62p, or I’ve bought multi packs from Amazon and Temu for roughly 50p each.

Asda have some good deals on reporter’s pads, spiral notebooks and plain writing pads that could be used as A5 drawing pads – 3 reporter’s pads for 90p, A5 spiral notebook 30p, and A5 plain paper pad 50p.

Home bargains have a few deals on stationery items – 30cm nightfall ruler 39p, glue sticks 4 for 69p, and a pair of children’s scissors for 49p.

I haven’t bought any calculators so far but the cheapest I’ve seen are £1.00 from Poundstretcher, who also have two children’s animal print scissor for £1.00.

The Farm Animal Sanctuary

The next Sheepover is taking place on Saturday 24 August, with food available to buy on Saturday night and breakfast Sunday morning along with the option of a yoga session – details of how to book the event is on the Farm Animal Sanctuary website.

There is also an Open Weekend on 14 & 15 September with lots of handcrafted goods, and food stalls, as well as activities for children, and a chance to meet the 600+ rescue animals. Camping isn’t available for the open weekend.

I’ll be there with a stall selling hand crafted items to raise funds for the Farm Animal Sanctuary as they still need to raise funds to purchase the site they are based at.

Details of the events and others later in the year are on their website.

https://thefarmanimalsanctuary.co.uk/events

Shoebox bargains

I’ve mentioned the stationery items above, but I have come across a few others bargains this month. Home Bargains have various candle jars for £1.00 but they also have some for 69p. There don’t seem to be many of their 29p flannels around, but they had packs of 4 flannels in grey or white reduced to 99p.

In Ikea their Dimforsen 4 pack of flannels in white was reduced to 75p (online they are still showing as £2.00), and they had 30 Enstaka “bonfire” scented tealights reduced to 50p, they do smell of wood smoke, so I only bought 1 pack 😊.

Proper job still had some 500ml hot water bottles for £1.20, and they also had 5 pairs of ladies’ trainer socks for £1.00. The Works had skipping ropes reduced to 80p, and Poundstretcher have packs of 2 double ended screwdrivers for 79p which can be split between two shoeboxes 😊, a useful gift which doesn’t take up much room in a shoebox 😊.