A frugal life is an easy life!

Traditions are passed on to children around the world by their families, but here in the UK traditions are being watered down and allowed to disappear.
It is not very thrifty, to pay out for the ever increasing costs of fireworks, but the costs of losing traditions or watering down events that have took place for hundreds of years, is a process that desperately needs reversing.

Take our bonfire night celebrations.
In my area, many of the children I converse with think that the thing to do at this time, is to visit a travelling funfair, paying over the odds for rides and stalls, eating candyfloss, etc, whilst watching fireworks being let off on a hill almost a mile away and if they are lucky, seeing a bonfire being lit.

They expect to get wet (as it always rains), stand in queues for attractions, walk for miles as all the areas where the funfairs are, have no parking and public transport laid on is poor, packed out and expensive. They expect mum and dad to pay £5 to get in then £2 for a 2 minute ride on a waltzer.
Black peas, toffee apples, bonfire toffee and baked potatoes can only be found from a travelling stall, at extortionate prices, after they have queued up for 20 minutes of course. Often it is now named the bonfire night "weekend" - a misleading fact that irks me considerably - designed to part people with more money by visiting the same fair in a different local location.
Not very frugal is it!
Nor does it uphold traditions that millions of British children have been lucky enough to experience over the decades.

A traditional bonfire night, is a fantastic feast of seasonal colours, smells, all enjoyed with friends and family. It can also provide a valuable thrifty service.
In today's world, we are forever being charged more of our hard earned money for basic refuse disposal - landfill costs are a record levels - bonfire night gives us all a perfect opporunity to get rid of rubbish, broken furniture, old sheds, etc.
Our small bonfire night celebrations with a fire, fireworks, traditional bonfire night fayre (which all takes places, rain or not, on November 5th) is now a regular "burn bin" occasion - whereby all the important letters that need to be shredded, are saved in bags and boxes and thrown on to the fire once its established.

Bonfire night used to be great fun for children, collecting bonfire material from neighbours for days, building the fire itself, eaten red hot potatoes that have been wrapped in tinfoil and thrown into the hot embers, dripping with butter and cheese, parents letting off all kinds of fireworks, all being shared around the fire as all the local families come together for a night of fun.

Sprog 1 has always had the full bonfire night tradition at our house.
A fire, fireworks, toffee apples, baked spuds cooked in the fire, etc.
Now with sprog 2, it is very important that this tradition continues.
It is my job as a parent - one that I enjoy of course - to pass on traditions to my kids, in the hope that they too, will pass them on to their children.

A funfair is not part of bonfire night tradition - as the neighbourhood children told us a couple of years ago, as they sat on wooden crates, around our small bonfire, watching the wife let off fireworks in the street and writing their names with sparklers, then scoffing piping hot baked spuds, dripping with butter and cheese, even eating the skins - the funfair was expensive and packed out, full of mud, we saw only a few fireworks in the distance as we had to walk half a mile to get there because there was no parking... we didn't even see a fire!
We only got on two rides and had to queue for an hour and we got wet. This is miles better!