Change Of Plans

On April 13, 2026 By thefunkyfrugalistaIn Home lifeLeave a comment

For over a month we had an Airbnb booked for a two night trip to Granbury and Glen Rose. We also already had our tickets for Fossil Rim, the drive through safari. We were looking forward to staying on the lake, kayaking and doing some antique shopping. Just a nice little getaway in the middle of Donny’s vacation time.

We kept our eyes on the weather as the dates approached. It was not looking good at all. Stormy nasty weather was predicted on all 3 of the weather sites I use. Luckily, the Airbnb allowed us to cancel with a full refund. My daughter, who lives in the DFW area, can use our Fossil Rim tickets for her family. So that worked out well.

Our problem was where do we go. Every place that sounded fun was getting the same bad weather. Then I thought of a destination that I hadn’t been to in years, Galveston. Starting from scratch with the Airbnb s is daunting because I have to go through every minute description and read ALL of the reviews. I had decided that we needed an extra day because the drive was double of what the original trip was going to be and there is so much more to do in Galveston.

I found many, narrowed them down and went to Donny to have him look at them. Monday through Thursday is what I had added to my wishlist. I was so relieved to have that out of the way until Donny let me know that he had changed his vacation days to Tuesday through Saturday. This meant that my original list of airbnbs would not be accurate due to the different dates.

Two hours later I had whittled my list of 29 down to 5. Donny and I went through them and he and I both picked the same one.

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It’s so cute, cozy and right by the beach. It will fit our needs perfectly.

We leave tomorrow and I’ve been racing around trying to get everything off my list accomplished.

Is anyone else a list maker? I think I’m just a type A trip planner. I feel like it makes it so much easier once we get there to know we have everything that we need. I also make a packing list that I take with me so that I don’t forget anything.

And with all of my planning, Donny will just throw some clothes in a backpack and he’ll be done.

I honestly cannot wait to get away even if it’s only for a few days. Kids are in charge of the house. Let’s pray that my garden and chickens survive.

Speaking of bird, we have had martins build there nest in the soffet aria of our house since we have lived here. Every year a baby will fall out of the hole. Martins only have 1-2 babies and last year they only had one. It fell out of the hole twice and we put it back in. The parents scream at us until we come out and find it. It didn’t make it and the parents mourned that baby. I can’t have that happen again so I made a baby bird catcher.

No baby bird is going to die on my watch again.

Party?

On March 29, 2026 By thefunkyfrugalistaIn Home lifeLeave a comment

Tomorrow Hannah turns 20. She came down with a horrible cold a couple of days ago, so she isn’t sure she is going to be up for her get together. She wanted to sit out by the fire pit, play corn hole and board games with her core group of friends. The way she feels right now would not be fun for her at all. But, things could change in 24 hours so that meant that I had to get the yard ready just in case.

While I was mowing I noticed that the mulch was piled up over my cucumber plants in the front bed. I thought Donny might have done it when he was watering. Nope, it was the cats. I dug them out, measured the length and width, and we headed to Dollar Tree to get some kind of barrier. I had seen some in Kilgore that I thought would work. Our Dollar Tree hardly ever has anything because it sells out so fast.

They had 11 left. I didn’t know if it would be enough. Donny said it would, plus they were all tangled up so I just scooped them all up.

He was right, it was exactly the right number that I needed. I didn’t even notice when I bought them that they have the same curly scroll that the big one has.

While I was waiting for Donny to get ready to go to work I decided to paint the sun on the front of the house gold. It was bronze and teal. I just didn’t like the way it looked. I think this is much better. I am planning on painting the black cord white.

While I was mowing the back I found this hot wheels bread truck from 2014. It’s missing a wheel and was full of dirt, but it’s so cute.

We have a pretty big backyard, but 2/3 of it is wonderful but that other 1/3 is so lumpy. I have no idea why. It makes it so hard to mow that side. Luckily the good side is the side where you walk in.

We are doing a bulk trash pick up because there was a huge pile of branches that had been sitting by the gate (you can see the big dead spot) for over a year. Not only are those on the curb, but the blue chair and some other trash we have will soon be added to the pile.

The fire pit needed some help so I used the hoe to get rid of the weeds. We have had a 50 pound bag of sand just sitting by the patio. It wasn’t going to get used. We got it for the chickens put its not grainy enough. It works great for around the fire pit.

The weather was so beautiful today that I just didn’t want to go inside. My cat O’malley is the chicken protector so we laid on the grass and just chilled with the chickens. I did try that thing where you fall to the ground and play dead to see what the animals will do. The only chicken that had any interest was Penelope, one of our oldest. All she did was cautiously walk up and peck my belly button.

I spend so much time in the front yard and hardly any time in the back. I think that’s going to change because in the afternoon there is so much shade from the trees it makes it so nice to be out there.

And just because, I made a lamp out of my solar lights. I didn’t know what to do with them once I hung up the electric ones. I think it gives off a nice little glow.

P.S.

Even if she is feeling better the party might not be here. Gavin is house sitting for his neighbor while they are on a cruise. They gave him permission to have a pool party which Hannah is more than agreeable to use for her birthday. I guess we will just wait and see.

This ‘n That

On March 13, 2026 By thefunkyfrugalistaIn Home lifeLeave a comment

First I want to start by saying we had a scare last night. Hannah and I went to workout and got home about midnight. I was checking on everything when I heard the neighborhood dogs barking like crazy. I looked up and there were two huge coyotes just walking down the middle of our street. If the dogs hadn’t alerted me I wouldn’t have even known they were there because they were ninja quiet. I start yelling at them to go away because our two male cats were outside. Donny heard me and came out to see what in the world was going on at that late hour. We hopped in the car and started chasing them around the neighborhood to get them to leave. They did not want to leave and kept circling back to our street. We had the windows down yelling at them and honking. They finally left but I’m sure they will be back. We have a feral cat colony across the street and it breaks my heart when there is a missing cat.

Fridays are like every normal person’s Sunday for us. It’s like the end of the weekend because Donny has Thursdays and Fridays off. Since we did all of our running around yesterday today was home day. While he was cleaning out and fortifying the chicken coop (we had a possum sneak in the other night in the wee hours) I was painting one of the old tires that we had in the backyard. Donny had used it for planning potatoes a few seasons ago and I wanted to spruce it up and use it for cucumbers.

My cucumbers are almost ready to be planted. I don’t know how well they will do in the front because it is just so dang shady. I’m going to plant some in the full sun and some in the shad and see how it goes.

That’s some of my tomato plants in the round containers next to the cucumbers.

I may have overdone it with the tomatoes, but who knows if they’ll all live.

I have 3 that I cheated and bought at home Depot. They are still living so that’s a plus.

My watermelon is finally sprouting. Those are my babies because I love watermelon and buy so many during the summer. I would just love to be able to pick them from my garden.

So far everything is going well. Fingers crossed it stays that way.

As soon as the compost is ready I’ll be spreading that all over. For some reason Making compost has always intimidated me. We made it all the time at our house in Bryan. I have no idea why I felt this way. I decided that if I don’t do it right, that’s okay, but so far it’s been really easy. I also found that using the weed weasel thing to mix it up is so much better than the hoe and stick I was using.

Sorry about all of the garden talk it’s just that I am trying to record everything so I’ll have the records for next time and it’s also what took up the majority of our day today.

But, that’s not the only thing. Hannah and I went to Crunch to workout. I absolutely love this gym. No one cares what you wear. Everyone is so nice and helpful. We have started doing the circuit workout and then cardio. Tonight we found the holy grail of working out. It’s the sauna! We sat in that beautiful hot room and when we got out it felt like we had taken a sedative. That will definitely be our ending every time we go. I just can’t even explain how wonderful I feel after sitting on those cedar benches for 15 minutes.

Because Sprouts is in the same parking lot I had to run in and get some lotion. I am almost out of the patchouli buritti and decided to go with a new scent.

This is my favorite scent. It says floral in the description (I’m not a floral girly at all) but I’m not getting that from it. All of the scents that I have tried are really good, but the lotion itself is outstanding. Non greasy, soaks in and keeps my skin soft all day long. Highly recommend. Natural Grocers, Vitamins Plus and Drug Emporium also carry this brand.

Now I’m going to talk my cat Malley off the ledge because he is wanting to go outside. He can’t meow so it’s the grunting sound. Poor thing. He always settles down when he realizes he has lost the battle of wills.

Swap Out + Jewelry Making

On March 11, 2026 By thefunkyfrugalistaIn Home lifeLeave a comment

Since all of the trees are blooming we feel like there isn’t going to be another freeze. I was so sick of looking at my sweaters and how much room my winter clothes took up I decided it was time to swap out for my warmer weather clothes.

Bye bye winter clothes.

All washed and ready to be hung up.

I’ve decided that this summer will be the Summer of maxi skirts. I really like skirts in the hot weather because the air flow is unmatched.

After everything was washed it only took about an hour to bag up the winter and hang up the summer.

After many days of waiting for the weather forecasters storm to hit, it finally did last night. I slept through it but when the kids woke up they told me that it was bad, thundering, lightening and pounding rain. The storm stuck around most of the day so I decided to make some jewelry. I wrapped my first piece of sea glass.

I practiced making a few spoon rings.

It takes a lot of arm strength to get a good bend on the rings. I’m getting better at it. They really are a lot of fun to make.

I made shrimp and crawfish etoufee.

I doubled the recipe thinking I would freeze some for a later date.

It was a huge hit and luckily there was enough leftover for Donny’s lunch.

Spring Prep

On February 8, 2026 By thefunkyfrugalistaIn Home lifeLeave a comment

The weather the last few days have been glorious. The 10 day forecast is supposed to carry it on. I know it could be a false Spring, but I’m just going to pretend like this weather is here to stay. When the weather starts warming up is when I do my seasonal clothes swap out. It’s not time for that yet, put I have been noticing that there are items in my closet that I just haven’t worn in forever. So I did a closet purge.

I’m getting rid of 17 items and I’m sure that by the time it warms up I’ll be getting rid of more. I still need to purge my purses and shoes, but for right now things fit in our shared closet. That’s one of the drawbacks of living in a house built in 1961, the closets are tiny.

By the time I finished with that the sun was shining and I was itching to get outside and start prepping the garden. It has been bugging me for a while because the weeds were out of control and we had dead tomato plants and cantaloupe vines.

I also dug up the weeds around the garden. Next I moved to the baby pools. They took were so weedy.

I got the easier one done first because I have to move the wire fencing around the other one and get the weeds that are growing into it.

We are still debating if we want to till part of the backyard for a bigger garden. What I think I want to get are the oval galvanized raised beds. I just think it will be easier to take care of and the chickens, hopefully, won’t eat everything out of it. Whatever we do, we need to decide soon. With Donny working so much the responsibility will be falling on me so I’m thinking smaller.

By this time I had been outside several hours. You know if you weed it’s a lot of squatting and digging. After I came in Donny said, “let’s go to the gym”. We joined Crunch 1.) so Hannah would have someone to go with and 2.) since we are getting older I want to make sure we lose muscle tone and stay in shape. I shouldn’t have gone after all I did outside. We did the elliptical and the recumbent bike on the Alpine program. When I got off I couldn’t walk because my lets were like jelly. Today my thighs and butt are killing me. I keep telling myself the only way out is through. Guess I’ll be back at it on Monday. Ouch!

Snowmageddon

On January 31, 2026 By thefunkyfrugalistaIn Home lifeLeave a comment

I am so happy that the snow and ice is starting to melt. I don’t mind the cold weather, it’s just the snow and temperatures in the teens that I don’t like. I worry about our feral cat colony. I put out more food than normal because they need to eat more when the temperatures drop.

Mr. Whiskers came for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I would bring him in if he would let me. He will let me pet him and sometimes hold him on my lap, but he gets very nervous. The feral colony actually lives across the street, but I made them a bed just in case they wanted to warm up before they headed home.

My cat was the only one that used it, but he loved the heating pad. All of my cats have the ability to go out and in when they want to. All except the kitten and she has no interest to go out into the cold.

We were going slightly stir crazy since we were iced in and couldn’t go anywhere. We did watch this guy free climb to the top of a building in Tai Pei . I am deathly afraid of heights but I had no trouble watching him climb. Donny is not afraid, but he did not want to watch it. We were watching it live and it was a bit nerve wracking.

My favorite part of being snowed in was how quiet it was at night. No owls, frogs, insects, nothing. The snow made it so much brighter. This was after 9:00 and the street lights didn’t even come on. It was both beautiful and eerie at the same time.

We were very relieved when we were finally able to get out and do things again. Hannah and I ran some errands. When we were in Aldi we saw the saddest Valentine Day decor.

Doesn’t everyone want a colorless concrete heart bookend? And I’m using heart loosely.

But wait, you can also get X’s and O’s bowl filler that look like cat toys. I have no words.

When we got home Gavin was waiting for Hannah. I looked out the window and saw this snow thing in the yard.

Gavin had built a little snowman.

Ok, it doesn’t have a face or arms, but I still thought it was so cute.

Hannah had been wanting me to go to The 504. It’s a 6000 sq. ft. thrift store. There are 9 rooms and every room is filled to the brim. I got lost from Hannah and Gavin because this place was a maze. I could spend hours looking through everyone’s booth. It’s funny because I have two framed pictures of antique sheet music and the day before we went to this store I was thinking how I really wanted to change them out. One of the booths had antique sheet music and I found 2 that I really liked.

Donny still hasn’t noticed that I changed them out. I like these so much better than the ones I had in.

The only other thing I got were some matches.

There is just something so special about lighting candles with matches. The store had so many to choose from and I think the next time I go back I’m going to pick up some more. These were my favorite because, well, I love celestial anything.

That face!

Let Each Other Be

On January 17, 2026 By thefunkyfrugalistaIn Home lifeLeave a comment

I saw the best Tiktok video the other day. It was a woman talking about how her marriage works and they believe in letting each other be. By that they mean be themselves and not try to change the other person. Here’s a good example. Donny likes watching the news. I don’t like to watch the news. Instead of complaining to him I just do something else.

He also puts up with my craziness. When we were living in Corpus I had this feeling that this woman (my step sister in law who was an evil person dedicating her life to ruining ours) had put an evil eye on Donny. I made this bath with all these herbs and oils that literally looked like swamp water. He actually got in it. I’m sure he thought I was nuts, but he knew it meant something to me. I don’t know if it even worked, but it did mean a lot that he did it for me. Looking back I can see that it was a totally crazy idea, but I could write a book on what my step father and his family did to us. It was a horrible, terrible, no good time that could have destroyed us but, in the end, made us so much stronger

Donny is 100% better at this than I am. If I want to do something he will just go along with it. Sometimes, until I saw the video, I would harbor a little resentment.

Thursday I decided that i needed to winterize the flower beds. We had dead tomato vines, dead plants in pots and weeds. It was bad. I know that Donny is not fond of yard work whereas I really enjoy it. It was his day off and he was inside watching a program on TV. I could have gotten upset that he didn’t want to help me, but since it’s not his thing I let him be. It looks so much better and he came out to help me put the weeds in the bag, tape it up and carry it to the curb.

That’s just a small part of the beds. My phone died before I could snap another picture.

I’m glad that I’m married to a man that understands me and I understand him. It truly makes all the difference in the world.

On another note, I finally finished my orange garland. I decided to hang it in our dining nook.

Does anyone else see the face on the cookie? So creepy!

Hi, my name is Stacy and I’m addicted to sunflower seeds. These are my absolute favorites.

They are SO good. Sometimes I just have these for lunch.

Over The Hump

On January 5, 2026 By thefunkyfrugalistaIn Home lifeLeave a comment

Yesterday was the first day I started feeling better. My joint pain had eased up. My leg muscles still felt like I had tried to run a marathon, but it was manageable. I went shopping at Aldi because we had almost no food in the house due to my being sick. Look what I saw.

Gas is under $2!!!!!

This morning I actually felt like taking a nice long walk. It was a gloomy morning, but it felt so good to get outside.

From New Year’s Eve until just yesterday I have been bed rotting. Donny has been sleeping on the couch in fear of catching this demon virus again. We had heard that it’s very easy to relapse and no one wants that. I didn’t even pull the covers down. Nope just moved some pillows, grabbed a blanket and would pass out.

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It feels so good when a body starts feeling better.

I’m also very thankful that we got the Roku tv for the bedroom. Now I can watch all of the streaming services instead of our old TV only letting us get Netflix. I think one of my favorite features is that you can pick different art to display when you’re not watching.

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I am also getting my appetite back. One of my favorite breakfasts is an apple and peanut butter. I used to always hate mixing up the peanut butter until I realized I could just shake the heck out of it to mix it up. SO much easier and way less messy.

Now that I’m on the healing end I needed to get some things done in the kitchen. We love pomegranates. To buy the seeds ready to go is SO expensive. I did a quick Google search and they cost around $4.97 for 4 oz. That is ridiculous. I bought 3 pomegranates for $1.57 each.

It is so satisfying to pop out the seeds. If you have never done it you should give it a try.

For a little over $5 we got a large jar filled. Plus there are no preservatives to worry about. Just plain ole seeds.

Yum!

Oh 2026

On January 2, 2026 By thefunkyfrugalistaIn Home lifeLeave a comment

Well, our 2026 started off very weirdly. Donny called from work telling me that he had found a snake that had gotten wrapped up in some packing tape. Did I want to try to save it or should he just put it out of its misery? Of course, we wanted to save it. I let Hannah know and she was up to the challenge.

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We used a q-tip and avocado oil. The tape just started sliding right off.

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Before we knew it, he was free.

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Donny released him into the tree line.

On actual New year’s eve, Donny was supposed to get off at 12 which ended being closer to 4. The kids had left to go do a Christmas exchange with friends. I hadn’t eaten all day because I was waiting on Donny to get home. I’d planned to do hamburgers but when he got home a I had texted Jackson to see if they were going to have dinner out and he said yes, we decided to order Don Benito’s. Then Jackson texted back saying they were not eating out and were on the way home. Then Hannah texted me asking if I wanted to watch the Stranger Things finale with them. I asked, well, who is them? Gavin was meeting them here and Olivia wanted to come over also. So we just waiting for them and put in an order.

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Donny went in to pick up the food because my whole body was aching. I thought it was because I might have lifted something weirdly, but it was every single joint in my body. I’d also been fighting a headache all day.

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Everyone ate and we started the finale. Donny has never watched it so he was watching something in the bedroom. Olivia and Jackson don’t watch it either so they went to go see the Spongebob movie.

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It ended up just being Gavin, Hannah and myself. I thought it was good. I didn’t make it to midnight because, as it turns out, I’m sick.

I woke up on New Year’s day feeling so weird. My limbs felt like they were made of lead, my head was killing me and I was so congested. Donny made burgers and I fell asleep around 5. I woke him up at 8:30 and asked if he could please go get me some NyQuil and a coca cola. I never want any soda until I’m sick. He also ran by Sprouts and picked me up my favorite smoothie and some coconut water.

I am still feeling bad today. I’m thinking it’s that strange virus that is going around. I do have tamiflu, but am resisting taking it just due to the side effects that come with it. Hopefully it will run its course quickly and I’ll be back on my feet. I hope everyone else has had a healthy new Year’s because this stuff is no joke.

How To Torture Your Cat

On December 18, 2025 By thefunkyfrugalistaIn Home lifeLeave a comment

This weekend I noticed that the wound that Milo, our tuxedo cat, had on his lower spine was not healing as fast as I’d like it to. I had been doctoring it, but on Monday when I went to look at it I noticed it felt spongy. I was moving his hair around and it started oozing. I doctored it some more decided to give it a day to see if it was any better. By Tuesday I decided to call our vet. They asked for me to send in a picture so the vet could look at it and make a decision if we needed to come in or not.

Because his hair is thick and black it was hard to actually see what the wound looked like. The vet called and said it would be best to bring him in, especially with his wound history. (that’s how he became our cat. He wandered up with a horrible neck wound that almost killed him)

I got an appointment for 3:40 that afternoon. At 3 I got out our cat carrier. Because Milo is SO docile I thought, for sure, he would go right in with no problem. Boy, was I wrong. It was like trying to get a angry octopus in a bag. I had the kids try to help me. We took the lid off and put him in. Nope, he almost broke the carrier. Jackson suggested tipping it over and dropping his through the opening. That sure didn’t work. By this time it was 12 minutes until my appointment. I called the vet frantic because I didn’t know what to do. They said just put him in anything that I had. Say less. I remembered a Chik-fil-a catering bag that I had.

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To say he was not happy would be an understatement, but I got him there. He actually did so well at the vet. The vet and I agreed that he caught his back going under the chain link fence. The vet shaved the area, flushed it out and gave him an antibiotic shot.