Bargain Time

On October 11, 2020October 11, 2020 By thefunkyfrugalistaIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

A few days ago I was looking on offerup for a desk chair. Jack broke the one he was using. We replaced it with the only extra chair we had, which was a living room chair. He broke that too. He likes to lean back and it snapped one of the legs off.

I didn’t find a desk chair, but I did find this awesome cabinet. It had only been listed for 5 minutes. I messaged the seller and told her we could be there in a few minutes. That’s one of the perks of living in a small town, you can pretty much go from one side to the other in about 10 minutes.

We have little to no storage in our home and we can’t have anything too big because there is just no room. I thought I would repaint it and it would go in our bedroom, but the colors are perfect in our living room.

I was able to move the candles out of the tv stand and actually put the electronics back in the drawers.

Now it’s decked out for Halloween.

That’s a Jack’o lantern made out of a coconut

We did end up finding a desk chair for Jack. Not the $300 one he was looking at. We bought it at Wal-Mart and like my friend Cindy always said, “don’t buy the cheapest or the most expensive. Just get the one in the middle and it will work out just fine”. That’s exactly what we did and it has.

It’s Been Awhile

On October 9, 2020 By thefunkyfrugalistaIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

I think my little blog has been feeling neglected. Between my daughter’s laptop charging port being broken TWICE (she commanders my laptop when this happens) and life in general, I haven’t been on here much.

This evening, however, I thought that if I don’t attempt to jot down some of the good things that happen, no matter how mundane they may seem, I might forget the small awesome moments that I’d like to look back on in the future.

Like today. The weather was beautiful. The kids have a 4 day weekend starting tomorrow, so I decided to make some bread to go with dinner. I found the absolute easiest recipe on Pinterest. It only took and hour start to finish. But my home smelled amazing while it was baking and everything just felt right in the world. Cheesy but true.

I didn’t make a fancy dinner, just red beans and rice. It’s the easiest way to use up any leftover meat you have in the fridge. I cut up some pork chops, threw in some hamburger meat and added some sliced jalepeno sausage.

I just used the box red beans and rice mix

If you have an InstantPot, corn on the cob takes 4 minutes.

Here’s the recipe I used for the bread. I added Everything Bagel seasoning on the top before I baked it. It was the perfect addition. This bread is slightly crunchy on the outside and soft and delicious on the inside. I’m not much of a bread eater but I think I could have eaten the whole loaf.

So far, I think it’s been a good start to this long weekend.

Found It!

On June 18, 2020 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 June 3, 2020 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 June 2, 2020 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 June 1, 2020June 1, 2020 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.

You Deserve a Donut

On May 31, 2020 By thefunkyfrugalistaIn Home life, Weekend2 Comments

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I love breakfast food, just not in the morning. This household tends to eat brunch. I love brunch. It covers two meals with one, but teenage kids tend to be hungry in the mornings (all the time) and I honestly hadn’t planned a thing for breakfast. Oops.

I got Donny up and we decided donuts were in order. Only problem was, since we moved, we didn’t know where the closest donut shop was. I suggested going to Jimmy’s Donut where we used to go before we moved. Donny wanted to find something closer.

Disclaimer: Jimmy’s is roughly 2.5 miles away, but when you live in a smallish town, anything over a mile seems FAR.

Problem solved. Less than a mile away we found this.

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I judge every donut shop by their eclairs. If they can’t make a good eclair, it’s a no for me. Eclairs are my all time, I should just chew them up and plaster then on my hips, pastry.

I spied some in the very back of case. Whew, we didn’t have to go anywhere else.

Another problem I have is wanting to choose a little bit of everything. Donny is MUCH better at ordering so I just stepped back and let him do it so we wouldn’t have a 50 dollar donut tab. Not kidding, it’s happened before when I went by myself.

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Let the feast begin.

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For the record, us hungry adults had already taken ours out when I took this.

But the best part was…

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My oh so delicious, completely passed the eclair test, breakfast. Didn’t you know that weekend breakfast calories absolutely do not count.

While the kids were just hanging out and Donny and I were watching Harlen Cobin’s mini series Safe. (He’s one of my very favorite authors and if you like a good, twisty, who done it, you should definitely watch it on Netflix) I had an idea I wanted to try and that meant a trip to Hobby Lobby.

I’m hoping it’s going to work. I’m going to work on it today and if it does I’ll share it. It includes this.

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900 feet of jute rope!

It doesn’t include this, but when you find your favorite candle that you thought was discontinued, and it’s 50% off, you add it to the cart. We had a 40% off coupon so it’s kind of like the candle was free. (My frugal rationalization kicking in)

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It smells clean and fresh and is not over powering to where it gives you a headache.

We ended the evening picking up Taco Bell (I know it’s not real Mexican food, but it’s my guilty pleasure and I’ve loved it since childhood) chilling on the couch and finished watching Safe.

I normally skip the intro, but the theme song was SO good, I listened to it every single episode, then I even looked it up on YouTube.

You really should listen to it. You can thank me later.

Backyard Campout

On May 30, 2020May 30, 2020 By thefunkyfrugalistaIn Home life, WeekendLeave a comment

With the quarantine being lifted more and more each day, we decided to let the kids each invite a friend over for a backyard campout.The weather has been so iffy lately, but today there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

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The guests were due to arrive at 3. Donny and I decided to work on the yard before everyone showed up. I finally repotted some plants, got my planters hung up and found a useful place for our chalkboard that no longer fit in our house.

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When the kids arrived they all piled into my son’s room to play jackbox. It’s a super fun interactive game. You buy game packages and everyone plays on their phone. Hours can go by and you don’t even realize it. It’s been a great distraction with being stuck at home.

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With the sun getting lower, it was time to set up the tent.

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After we chowed down on hotdogs I asked the kids if they wanted to walk to the park. It’s half a mile away and I fully intended to go with them. Donny was pressing me to let them go by themselves. I was sure, 100% positive, that they’d want me to go. Nope, they didn’t. I have to admit that I was a little crushed. The helicopter parent in me was panicking. Thoughts were running through my mind about everything that could and surely would happen to them. Thanks to Donny, the sane more rational one of the two of us, he talked me off the ledge. For the record, they did call me to come pick them up, so that’s a little win, right?

When it got dark we made the quintessential camping dessert. Smores for the win.

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By this time it was getting late. Donny and I were tired and the kids were ready for parents to go in so they could hang out. Yes, there are both boys and girls staying in the tent, but they are all just really good friends. Remember, helicopter parent here. I watch and listen very closely.

They wanted the giant, bright gulag-ish interrogation light that we have in the backyard off. I’m sure my neighbors were happy about that too because I’m pretty sure it illuminates their bedroom pretty good. We left them with glow sticks, flashlights and I left the twinkle lights on in the patio (aka carport).

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Now it’s bedtime and morning is going to be here before we know it. I hope we get some sleep. I’ve checked on them more than I care to admit.

Speedy Delivery

On May 29, 2020 By thefunkyfrugalistaIn Home Stuff, product reviews2 Comments

I’m not someone who regularly orders products online. I’m always a little leary of it not really being the same as what’s advertised. With that being said, I took a chance and was pleasantly surprised.

The first item was a flea collar from chewy.com.

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We have tried SO many different flea prevention products and the Seresto collar was the winner. It last for 8 months and doesn’t cause skin irritations on my dog. We used to get ours at the local pet store, but they are expensive. I googled it and chewy had it for 30 dollars cheaper! I jumped on that deal. That’s a good chunk of change.

My mom had given me a purse that she’d had since the 50’s/60’s. It’s a leather mock crock handbag. I love vintage purses, but the handle was so small it just wasn’t practical. I’ve had it for so many years and it just sat in my closet. I was going to donate it when I had a great idea.

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You can see in this picture how small the handle is.

I found a leather purse strap on ebay. I could pick the color, length I wanted and the metal finish. I chose the 24″ length, brown color with antique brass finish.

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It matches almost perfectly. I’m SO glad I didn’t donate it.

Also, if you have a Big Lots near you, next time you’re there check out this soap.

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I use it to wash my face. It’s a castille soap with aloe Vera. It takes off all my makeup and leaves my face clean and soft. Most importantly it doesn’t dry it out. At big lots it costs just a little over a dollar. It’s a little more expensive online, but not by much. Totally worth the money.

Now I’m going to go get things ready for the kids backyard campout we’re having this evening. We worked on the yard yesterday and just have a little tweaking to do today.

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Happy Friday! ❤

The Same But Different

On May 27, 2020 By thefunkyfrugalistaIn Easy meals, Home life2 Comments

Yesterday I realized that I do the exact same thing every morning. My dog Marty wakes me up around 5:30. I let him out, make coffee and then either read or watch a documentary on Netflix. I’m an morning person, so I try not to wake the rest of my family who is definitely not.

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I’ve been watching Dark Tourist. It’s really good, if you need something to watch.

When Marty comes in, he knows he gets a treat and will not let you forget.

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He then gets his bone, tries to bury it under the rug, realizes he can’t, so he puts it against the wall so he can guard it because he just knows the cat is trying to get it. Every. Day.

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When Donny wakes up we decide what we’re going to do for the day. He grabs coffee and goes and checks on the garden. He loves the garden. It is a mobile one and he grew it from seeds.

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And I finally have flowers on my morning glories that we also grew from seed.

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When the kids wake up we normally go for a walk. It’s been rainy so lately we’ve had to go between rain showers.

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I am not a huge fan of shopping. I know what I need, try to find the best deal I can and get it. I needed a pot to grow my pineapple top in. I was pretty sure I could find one at Ollie’s. We hadn’t been to this one since it had opened, but I managed to find the perfect planter and for a steal.

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Natural Grocers is right next door. Have you tried the Mad Hippie skincare line? I love it. It’s not too expensive and works really well. I was out of my vitamin a serum and picked up some night cream too.

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How great is that packaging?

Winding down the day, I make dinner. We’ve been trying to eat cleaner and lighter. I’ve stopped doing heavy side dishes. Sometimes we don’t even have sides. Tonight I made a bacon, onion and cheese frittata. We just had watermelon and pineapple for sides. Super easy and everyone liked it.

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I had made a big batch of berry sauce to go with pancakes for brunch. There was some leftover, so I baked a pound cake to use the rest of the sauce. Turned out like a scone and although if you let the sauce absorb into your slice it was ok, I wouldn’t use the recipe again.

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But the sauce was delicious!

I can’t wait to see what today brings ❤

The Funky Frugalista

Author: thefunkyfrugalista