Month: June 2020

Found It!

On By thefunkyfrugalistaIn Longview, txLeave a comment

Donny and I were at Wal-Mart the other day and I saw a guy wearing the coolest shirt. The next day I was in our local Papcita’s restaurant (not part of the Papas restaurant chains) and saw that they were selling the same shirt, but in a bright turquoise. I asked about it and they said it was a shirt family owned restaurants and businesses were selling to make money for the income lost during the quarantine.

I didn’t have time to buy it then, and truthfully, I don’t typically wear bright colors, but they had given me names of other restaurants that were selling them also.

The next day I was planning to run back into Papacita’s to pick up the turquoise shirt. Before I could do that I was at Jucys tacos and just happened to ask if they were, by any chance, selling the shirt. They had one left. It was in my size and it was charcoal grey! I must have been the last person in Longview to know about these. Anyway, of course I bought it.

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It didn’t hurt that I love both Jucys tacos and Jucys hamburgers! I looked online and the Jucys hamburgers shirts were dark green, so tacos it is.

What a great way for our town to help small, family owned businesses recoup some of their losses.

Sms just because, here is a picture of Donny carrying our 3 legged cat. He was taking him into the kids rooms to say hi. So random and yes, the cat can walk and even run just fine. LOL, he just likes to be pampered occasionally.

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❤

 

 

 

Sad/Happy Date Night

On By thefunkyfrugalistaIn Date Night1 Comment

Donny and I decided that we were going to have a date night. It’s been a few months and restaurants are opening again and with it being a Tuesday night we figured it wouldn’t be too crowded.

There are two restaurants I’ve been wanting to try. I work part time for Waitr. It’s like grub hub and door dash. Anyway, it lets me see a lot of restaurants and the food they offer. It was between Roma’s, a relatively new Italian place downtown, and Kumori, a Japanese sushi bar restaurant.

Donny was fine with either, so I chose Roma’s because, although I’m not a huge Italian food fan, I loved the cozy feeling of the inside, and it was popular with Waitr. I thought it would also be fun to take a walk around our downtown area afterwards.

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We were seated in a booth across from the bar. Our server came to the table, asked us if we’d been here before and told us he’d be there to answer all our questions. He took our drink order, gin and tonic for me and vodka cranberry for Donny. We ordered stuffed jalapenos for an appetizer and he brought us the courtesy bread and olive oil dipping sauce. And then we waited and waited and waited and waited. Appetizer was brought out by a different server. Still no water or drinks. We could see our server making drinks for the only other couple at the restaurant that were sitting at the bar.

We finally asked a random server walking by if we could at least get our water. By this time 45 minutes have gone by. I was not a happy camper. Our original guy FINALLY brings our drinks. I am by no means a bartender, but I at least know that a gin and tonic has a squeeze of lime in it. I mean c’mon, how hard could the drinks we ordered be to make? We already knew what we were going to order as an entree, but by the time our server got back to our table, we were done. We asked for the check and he asked us if we would be coming back? Yeah, that’s a big ole nope.

I was not really hungry and was feeling sad because I had been so excited to try this Roma’s. Donny was still hungry so he suggested we go on to Kumori.

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Until I got a Waitr order here a few weeks ago, I never knew Kumori existed. It’s on a little side street with no big sign. And to be honest, the outside sends a little iffy.

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The hostess was friendly and our server was happy and smiling. We ordered sweet tea and it was the BEST sweet tea I’ve ever had. The young woman who was our server turned out to be the tea maker. She said she makes it with sugar and love. I believe her!

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We put our order in and she asked us if we wanted the complementary soup and salad. Our salad dressing choices were sweet and creamy or gritty (???) and tangy. We chose the former, but next time I’m going to HAVE to see what that grit is about.

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Although the soup and salad were really good, I SO should have passed on them. Our usual sushi place is Fuji. Their rolls are small (and pricey). We ordered 4 rolls. Two Texas rolls, a scorpion roll and a Kilgore roll.

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Yeah, definitely not Fuji size. This is only three of them. The other Texas roll was still being made. It was delicious! So delicious that I ate so much I felt sick. We ended up taking almost two whole rolls home with us. Luckily the kids love sushi. I even scored a to go cup of the love tea.

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After being so sad and disappointed after the first restaurant, we left happy and stuffed at Kumori. Please excuse Donny’s reading glasses. I think he was midway taking them off when I snapped this.

We finished watching season 2 of Dead to Me. I am slightly obsessed with Linda Cardellini’s character’s hairstyle I think a visit to Charley, my hairdresser, is in my near future.

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How cute is she? We’ll see if I chicken out or not.

Problem Solved

On By thefunkyfrugalistaIn Home lifeLeave a comment

Years before I met my husband, I purchased a piece of furniture that started it’s life as a kitchen island in my Austin home.

It’s moved everywhere with me and even survived almost 4ft of water in the 2016 Baton Rouge flood.

It’s been an island, bar, tv stand and entry table, but the one thing it’s always been is a scratching post for the cats. I’ve tried everything to keep them from mauling the legs, including wrapping the legs in foil. It worked as long as the foil was on, but it wasn’t the prettiest solution.

This is what they’ve done to it.

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It was bad! And made me sad until I came up with a solution that I thought might work. So I gathered up what I needed and spent the entire morning getting busy.

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And guess what? It worked.

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It just took a LOT of jute rope, a staple gun and a hammer to tap in the staples securely. I just wrapped, pushed up and pulled tight. I have a nice friction blister on my finger to prove it. The cats can now scratch to their heart’s content, although now they don’t seem to want to.

On another note, Donny took over cooking for the day.

 

 

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That’s over an inch of flies. They just flock to this smelly contraption and once inside they can’t get out. It’s truly been a game changer. A gross one, but hey, I’ll take it. If you have outdoor fly issues, this is 6 dollars well spent.

So after grilling and watching fly death, we came in and Donny made pickles. He makes the best pickles ever! Puts the store bought ones to shame.

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Evan’s Corner

On By thefunkyfrugalistaIn family, JournalLeave a comment

Have you ever read a book that changed your life?

When I was in the very early years of elementary school, we read a book as a class. I loved it. I read and reread it as much as I could. Little did I know, at the time, that this little book, would stay with me forever.

Even as I grew into an adult and had children of my own, I always referenced this book. I couldn’t remember the name of it, but I knew the story by heart.

Today while I was in the shower the story popped into my head once again and I knew I had to find out the name of this book.

And, thanks to an extensive Google search, I found it.

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It’s about a little boy living with his family of 8 in an overcrowded apartment. He just wants a place to call his own so his mother lets him pick out a corner that he can call his. He finds some old crates to use as a desk. He paints pictures to hang on the wall and even gets a pet turtle. He loves his little corner until he realizes he misses playing with his brothers and sisters. He invites his little brother into his corner and they end up picking a corner for him and Evan helps him fix it up. Evan realizes that it’s good to have your happy place but it’s even better when you share it with others.

It dawned on me that my home and this blog is my corner. Just like Evan’s corner, I use what I have to make it work. To make a place filled with the best parts. A small cozy reprieve from the craziness that is happening around us.

I won’t write about breaking news or politics. I’m well aware if what’s going on, but this isn’t the place for it. There are a million blogs out there about those subjects.

When I look back and re-read my posts, I want to remember the good stuff that happened. So yes, if you happen to stumble upon this blog, it might seem hokey and optimistic, but that’s okay by me. I keep it public because sometimes we all need a little hokey in our lives.