Papier Stationary - £15 off your first order

As a self-confessed stationery lover, Papier is a website I’ve heard of lots of times in the past but never somewhere I’ve bought from myself. I came across an offer recently that gave you £15 off your first order, with no minimum spend, and thought it was the perfect time to try them out.

All their products are beautifully designed and can all be personalised, from personalised notebooks and stationery sets to thank you cards and photo books, it’s a haven for stationery lovers like me. I was eying up a couple of their notebooks and was going to get one personalised, but I have quite a few notebooks I need to use first, so in the end, I opted for some cards. If you follow me on Instagram (@frugalfemmme), you may have seen me share my card box recently, whenever I see a pretty card I always buy them so I’m never without a card when I need one. It’s running a bit low at the minute so it was the perfect excuse to get a few cards to fill it up. 

I choose to take all the personalisation off the cards as I don’t have any specific birthdays etc I need a card for just yet. But they have an amazing website where you can personalise the majority of their products from adding wording, choosing the colour and font and even the colour and design of the envelope.

I kept mine super simple, but will definitely reorder and make use of their personalisation service in future. Here are the cards I choose, how beautiful are they 😍

Using my £15 off my first order code, I paid only £1.50 for these cards, which is such a bargain. The quality is beautiful and just look at the designs too! 

If you’d like £15 off your first order just use the following link: http://fbuy.me/ou1u- , let me know what you order in the comments below! I may have to go and order one of the notebooks! 

Welcome To Frugal Femmme

Welcome to Frugal Femmme blog, I've recently started a money-saving Instagram profile, I love Instagram for sharing pictures but there's only so much you can share, so I thought it was about time I launched a blog to go alongside it.

Top - Debris Debt Challenge Chart | Recent Competition Win | Logo | 1p 2020 Saving Challenge
Bottom - FeelUnique Samples | BareMinerals Deal | Postal Samples | Sales Bargains

I've had blogs previously over the years and have always enjoyed blogging, but I never really had a niche. Now I know what I fully want to write about and share, it's about time I get my blog up and running again.  

For my first post, it's going to be a bit of a back story - I'm not very good at keeping things short and sweet, so grab a cup of tea and I'll give you a bit of insight into my life and how 'FrugalFemmme' was born.

My dream has always been to own my own home, that dream came reality a couple of years back (2016) when I was with my now ex-boyfriend, we found a scheme which meant we could part own a house rather than get a full mortgage, so with the help of our families, we soon moved in our brand new house.

I loved my little house, but a few years later our relationship broke down, (that's another story) but, as we were no longer together, it, unfortunately, meant I couldn't afford the mortgage on my own and sadly the house had to be sold.

With a fair bit of accumulated debt, it did mean I had to move back into rented accommodation. Initially, I was debating moving home as it would have been a better option financially, however my parents live around an hour and a half from me and I was settled in my job where I lived and had a steady income. There aren't many job opportunities near them, so after weeks of deliberating what my next steps were, I decided to stay put in Lancashire.

You can't predict how things will pan out or have control over some things in life. Although I was initially sad I was no longer on the property ladder. I think looking back, it was more bitterness at my ex rather than sadness, as I'd worked so hard to get the house in the first place, it was me who arranged all the appointments to secure it and I was so set on one specific house I wanted and he'd just pulled my dream from under my feet.

Looking back I'm glad I'm out of the situation I was in, at the time I loved my house and the life I'd built for myself. But, it wasn't perfect... We had the house on a shared ownership scheme, so we didn't own the whole house. This was advertised as 'affordable housing' and a way to get young people on the property ladder, but in reality, it turned more into a bit of a money trap. Yes, we had the house, but we were forking out for a mortgage and rent to the company who co-owned the house with us each month. The rent went up a couple of times during the course of us living there and we'd put all our funds into getting the house so we were struggling each month just to get by and didn't have any spare money to decorate and furnish the house how we really want it.

So at the minute, I'm living in rented accommodation which my current boyfriend, it's the complete opposite of my new build house, it's an old cottage but is pretty spacious (apart from the crazy low ceilings and the tiny kitchen) but, you can't have everything right!. I'm slowly learning to love living here too. It's a completely different feeling living in rented accommodation than owning the house you're living in, it has everything we wanted in a house though and is the perfect place to tide us over until we can get our own place.

This is how Frugal Femmme was born, my dream is of course to own my own home again. I've learnt that I need to get better with my money, more organised, more aware of where my money is going and most importantly to start saving, like properly saving, not just the odd pound here and there.

Following the break up with the ex I had the mortgage with, I've learnt so much about life and myself, before I met my new boyfriend, I had the mindset that I could do anything I wanted by myself and didn't need a man haha. So there's where the Femmme bit comes in - I had to add an extra M and Femme was already taken 😩, but it's fine because my name is Em, haha and of course frugal is how I'll be living to get myself into a financial position where my debts are cleared and I have enough funds to get buy my dream home.

I'm ready and excited to see where this journey will take me!..