This morning when I went to unload the dishwasher I realized that I needed to organize our cup cabinet. We had some wine glasses and other coffee cups that we just don’t use on the regular. I got that cabinet done.
When I started putting the glasses on top of the cabinets (it’s where we keep the bar ware) I noticed that the glasses and other items that were on there had that greasy film. I pulled everything down off the top of the cabinets and got to work scrubbing the top and the walls.
After everything was washed I realized that there were some more canisters that I wasn’t using that needed to go up there also. That lead me to cleaning out the baking cabinet.
I also found some foodie magazines from 2018 that I had stored on top. I wanted to go through them and tear out the recipes that I wanted to try.
I’ve had this binder for almost 20 years. I worked for a catering company and kept a lot of the recipes we used. I also added recipes from magazine and some I had printed out. I use sheet protectors and it works pretty darn well.
There were so many that I removed because I knew I wasn’t going to be making any of those recipes.
I have a thing for cookbooks. I prefer them to using online recipes. I had almost forgotten about my binder. It doesn’t really fit anywhere so I just put it on top of my cookbooks.
And how cute are these vintage bowls that we use for our cats water?
Since it was a short work day for Donny we went to the gym after he got off. I have found that if I just ride the bike my legs don’t hurt at all. That’s a win.
Donny and I had some time to kill in Kilgore. I had seen this cool antique shop on my Tiktok. I knew it was in Kilgore, but I didn’t know where. Well, as we were driving into town I saw the sign for it. I pass it every time I drive into Kilgore. Like it’s right there off the main road. We decided to stop in and see what it was all about.
It’s called Relictivity. It’s a huge warehouse that has so many fun things to browse through.
It’s not booths, the couple that own it curated everything in it.
The husband said that they just started collecting items until they had enough to fill up the store. We almost bought this wrought iron moon trellis. It was tucked into a corner. When I got it out to look at it I noticed that one part of the iron had come loose and that the legs of it were different sizes because I looked like one had rusted part of the way off. I still really like it, but it was $44.99 and I’d have to get the one part welded. I’m still thinking about it though.
We still had a little bit of time so we drove next door to Atwoods which is a general store/farm store. We picked up a new garden hose and a watering can. I have been using a plastic water jug and the water just comes out too fast.
I am bummed that I didn’t wait and get a metal can, but this one works well so I guess it’ll do.
We didn’t really have any afternoon plans so I found an estate sale that was going on it’s second day. Normally everything is almost gone by then, but we decided to go check it out anyway.
I did find a rubber mallet that I need for my rings. It’s a little crusty, but once I clean it off it will be perfect.
I saw this lantern that I thought was so cool. I had never seen one like this before. The bottom looked like a tin can. When I did a Google image search that’s exactly what it is.
It was a fun day to just mill around doing nothing. The weather was perfect.
Oh, and the kids and their friends went to Dallas for a concert so I took the opportunity to deep clean Jackson’s room. It was so dusty it was causing his allergies to flare up. I cleaned every nook and cranny out. I washed his curtains, bedding and shampooed his carpets.I filled up our trash can and had to load the back of my car to take the rest to the dumpster at Donny’s work.
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!
I had some time to kill in Kilgore on Thursday. I love Hope’s Closet. It is one of my very favorite thrift stores. We have two of them in Longview, but they just aren’t as good as the one in Kilgore. I wasn’t planning on actually buying anything I just needed to fill some time and this was a fun place to do that. I had walked around the store with nothing really catching my eye. There were some ladies looking through some carts that were just sitting in the middle of the store. I happened to glance in one of the carts and that’s when I saw them. Now, I have been looking for these particular glasses for a very long time. I NEVER see them in the thrift stores and when I find them online they are way too expensive for me to justify buying them because we have some very nice hand blown glasses but they do not go with our vintage dishes.
The first one I picked up didn’t have a price sticker. I just knew they would be pricey because these vintage glasses are hot right now. Imagine my surprise when the next one I picked up had the 69 cent sticker. Y’all, I got all 7 for under 4 dollars!!! Like what????? Finding something that I have been wanting for so long and at that price was unbelievable.
They were made for each other.
These are our other glasses that I still love and still use.
A dear friend who has since passes away gave me a set of them. I love the bubbles and the imperfections in them.
Oh and I took this picture of what looks like a portal that was on my closet door. It was the sun reflecting off the inside of my lamp. Looks cool though.
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.
If it ain’t broke don’t fix it pretty much describes why I just love certain brands and products. If they work for me I just keep using them. This dawned on me when I went to get more of our body wash. Jackson and I went to Drug Emporium to pick up another bottle of Dr. Teal’s Lemon body wash. We have been using Dr. Teal’s for years but the lemon scent was new and we just loved it. I had gotten our last two there and was sorely disappointed when the body wash shelf was extremely empty. We went to Walmart to see if they had it there. No luck, so we just picked up the magnesium one. A week later I was a Drug Emporium and just decided to see if it was back in stock and it was.
Another brand that I have used for years and will continue to use is Mad Hippie. It’s such a good skincare line and very reasonably priced.
I have been using Zum products for over a decade. I love the laundry soap and am so happy several places here carry it.
This is my go to scent although I have tried the patchouli and I really like that one also. The body mist/room sprays are amazing.
I mainly use these in the hotter months because they act as an allover frangrance.
The only “perfume” that I use is this. I’m over the moon that Sprouts carries it and I don’t have to order it anymore.
I don’t like flowery scents. I really like more of the earthy spicy scents. This oil goes with the hair mist/body spray that I found at Dollar Tree. I’m always hesitant to buy beauty products there, but I scanned it through Yuka and it got a very good rating.
This leave in conditioner, also from Dollar Tree is so good. It’s not heavy and I normally just spray it on my ends after a shower.
I love lotion and actually go through it pretty quickly. These are my favorites that I use.
The Patchouli Buritti and the Raw Shea Butter are both so thick that they have to be stored upside down. Of course, I will always have the Zum on hand. Eos lip balm is the only lip balm I use and I love it. With the heater being run now my lips can dry out at night if I don’t apply it before bed.
I find it funny that I worked for Lancome for several years yet this is my go to makeup that I will continue to always buy.
I’ve used the same color eyeshadow for years and years. Maybelline fit (dewy) is wonderful and I love the fit powder. I have used the wet ‘n wild eyeliner and Big Poppa mascara also for years. Same with the covergirl blush. It just makes it easy to know what I like and I can just run into the store and not have to think or guess if it will work.
As far as hair products go, I love this heat protector spray. I rarely actually put heat on my hair, but when I do, this one is great. It’s not heavy and doesn’t make your hair feel heavy or greasy.
After I dropped the kids off I had about an hour and a half to kill in Kilgore. I decided to drop by Goodwill just to look around. I found two cute tshirts that were red tags (half off color) and a olive green cardigan.
I love oversized cardigans. I thought the one I already had was olive green but it turns out it is brown with a green tint so I’m really happy I found this one.
I also picked up 3 gluten free cookbooks. I know I can probably find all the recipes online, but I just would rather work out of a cookbook.
For 99 cents each, I couldn’t beat it.
Also, I don’t just buy myself things. I just never post what I get everyone else because I feel like it’s an invasion of their privacy in some weird way.
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.
I finally got my bender mounted. I didn’t drill a pilot hole first and it’s mounted into solid wood this time.
I did one spoon and then messed around with some wire.
I love the little flowery detail.
Yep, I truly needed some hand lotion. Making the rings was really fun. I spent two hours trying to bend a spoon that I knew was really too thick to bend. I finally gave up because my palm was bruised and my fingers were so sore. Hopefully I’ll make some more spoon rings tomorrow. I have quite a few to make.
My cat Milo has finally healed up after having a puncture injury that required a vet visit. Well, O’malley came home with the same type wound. His was between his shoulder blades. I doctored it up and waited to see if I needed to make a vet appointment.
Luckily his wound healed up with no infection. In fact, I heard a crow going crazy. When I went outside to see what was going on this is what I saw.
That’s O’malley up in the tree. He’s fine.
On a gluten free note, I found some strawberry GF pancake/waffle mix. We decided to have breakfast for dinner Saturday night and everyone loved them.
The picture is a little steamy because of the waffle maker, but I found it at Walmart.
I made homemade whip cream and strawberry sauce. We also had eggs and sausage. There’s just something so comforting about breakfast for dinner.
Tonight I made crawfish etoufee with the GF all purpose flour. I am so glad I found it so I can actually eat flour based things like the roux in this dish.
It was so good!!!!!
Donny and I have started watching The Pitt. We really like it. If you need a good medical show to watch I highly recommend it. Each episode is in real time and it’s intense. Plus I just love Noah Wyle.
I decided to take most of the day off. I don’t have an actual “job”, well at least I don’t get an actual paycheck, but I take care of everything around our home. Monday I had deep cleaned the house. Yesterday I did mountains of laundry.
I thought after all of that I needed a little break. I have been looking for a frame for Hannah’s Girl with a Pearl Earring adaptation that was one of her art projects. I had found several, but the frames ran vertically instead of horizontal. I could have changed the hanging mechanisms, but since the ones I liked were all professionally done I really didn’t want to mess with it and have it fall off of the wall. Today I hit the jackpot and found exactly what I have been looking for.
I just had to take the backing off and her picture fit perfectly.
It’s big and I have hardly any wall space left. I took down my jester picture and I think it looks mighty fine in its place.
I couldn’t not find a place for the jester so I moved some things around and now he’s in the dining nook.
I picked up a few more things from the thrift store while I was there.
I couldn’t pass up this wooden shelf. I needed one for above my nightstand and this one was perfect.
I also found some cute shirts in my Fall colors.
Both of these look grey for some reason but they are actually olive green.
I absolutely love this mustard yellow blouse.
Couldn’t pass up this candle. I have a couple of this brand. It’s made here and the smell is amazing.
Donny needed me to run to Office Max to pick up some desk calendars for his work. I needed a new planner. I’m so picky about my planners. Office Max had no cute ones and they ones they did have were SO expensive. I walked down to TJ Maxx and they had no good planners either. Books a Million is in the same strip mall so I checked there and I did find one I loved but it started in July 2025 and ran through December 2026. I cannot stand to start a planner in the middle so that was a no.
I decided I would go check in Ross and no matter what, I would have to just take what I could find there. Ross is where I got last years planner that I absolutely loved. I found the exact same brand!!!!!
This is 100% my favorite planner.
This is the brand and you can’t beat the price. All-in-all it was a good day to get out and get stuff done. It was also in the mid 70’s. I don’t think we’ll get to wear any of our winter clothes very much this season.
Oh, and my second daughter let me know last night that she thinks she was a ghost baby because there are no pictures of her when she was a baby. I sent her over 20 this morning and have so many more. This is one of my favorites.
It’s hard to believe that these little pumpkins have kids of their own now. Dang how time flies!
I got a metal bender for Christmas. I have been collecting spoons to make rings. I knew I had to find a way to mount the bender and I thought I had the perfect solution. I told Donny I was going to mount it to one of my big thick cutting boards. He looked appalled at that idea so I searched around the house and found a shelf that wasn’t being used and decided that could work.
I drilled the pilot holes, got my drill out and it seemed sturdy. I tried it out on an earring my mom had gotten in New Mexico that I didn’t like as an earring and had always wanted to make it into a ring.
This was super easy to bend because it was sterling silver and thin.
I had another earring that was also sterling that I thought would make an awesome ring.
I then got out my bolt cutters measured and cut a spoon. When I went to bend it the whole apparatus pulled right out. I tried screwing it in tighter but the MDF board just couldn’t support it.
Back to the drawing board. I think I just need a good hardy wooden plank. At least I got two rings out of it for now.
The Funky Frugalista 