Today I finished one chair. I just wanted to see if I liked the colors we chose. If I didn’t, I didn’t want to keep sanding down all of the bases because that is hard work.
Anyway, I absolutely live the way it turned out. The warm caramel is more of a terracotta color. The oil rubbed bronze base plays off of it nicely.
Now only 3 more to go.
Hannah and I also created and ordered her graduation announcements today. I think they turned out fabulous. Go Walgreens!
This morning I woke up before 5 a.m. and that, coupled with the fact that I couldn’t fall asleep last night, meant I felt lousy. I need at least 7 hours of sleep a night. According to my Fitbit I only achieved 4.2 hours and it was fitful at best. Thankfully Donny took the kids to school and ran our errands after he dropped them off.
I finally started feeling a bit better and we were able to run to Walmart to pick out paint for the chairs. I was going to leave the bases plain metal, but there is a lot of rust on one of them and so we decided it would look better to paint them. I don’t like chrome or anything really shiny. I’m also not found of light wood. All of the wood in our home is dark. We settled Oil Rubbed Bronze for the base and Warm Caramel for the chairs. I was leaning toward a warm yellow, but Donny thought the caramel would work better. I only got one can of that so we are going to test it out when they are ready for paint.
We are also thinking of getting a new TV for our bedroom. The one we have is really big and we wanted something newer and smaller. We need to measure the chest of drawers that it sits on to make sure that it will fit. There are some really big TV’s out there. I feel like ours is way too big for our living room, but it’s what we have and it works so we’ll be keeping it. Our bedroom one only gets netflix. For some reason it won’t let us load any other of our streaming services. It’s old.
Because I felt not myself we decided to make paninis for dinner. The kids like them so that’s a win and it’s easy. Mine was veggie because meat has not been in my taste buds lately.
It’s 9:20 so I’m going to try and get a full nights sleep. I’ve got to much to do tomorrow to feel this way again.
Normally, on Tuesdays or Wednesdays, Jack and I have a mom son date to our 3 favorite thrift stores. We haven’t been able to go lately, so since the kids were off from school today, we decided to make it a day. Donny was off today too so he decided to tag along with us.
The biggest find I found today were 4 chairs. Do I need dining room chairs? No. But they were so comfortable and I really liked the look of them. They were also only $5 a piece. That sounded like a deal to me so I had one of the workers take them up to the front. When I paid for them, they ended up only costing $10 for all four.
Now these chairs are rusted on the base, but I knew that I could fix that. So that’s what I started on when we got home.
Here are the chairs.
They just need a little (a lot) of love.
For being 20 years old, they aren’t too bad.
I took the seat off of the base and started sanding. I was surprised how easy the rust came off.
I can’t wait to see them finished. It will definitely be a labor of love.
Today I had to run by Donny’s work to pick up my Aldi bags that we had put in his trunk when we went camping. He asked me to run by Dollar Tree since it’s next door to Aldi. I really and truly went in with the only intention of getting the bleach and spray bottle he asked for. But then, you know you just have to walk around the store, I found this really cool sun made out of metal. The metal was a weird silver that looked kind of awful, but I really liked the sun.
I brought it home and spray painted it. I didn’t know where to hang it, but then I realized it would look good against our turquoise door. So that’s where it ended up. For $3.00, I think it looks pretty good.
Aldi also had some good looking watermelons. We always leave some meat on the rind for the chickens because they love watermelon.
I love wild looking plants. The more unkempt the better. Aldi had some really pretty flowering ones. My favorite color is yellow so that’s the one I grabbed. I also had to re-pot the palm that was in the rooster because it was flat out dying. I think the metal gets hot and the plant didn’t like that.
It’s suppose to be nice tomorrow but rain the next few days after that. I’m planning on rearranging our flower beds. They are a little sparse right now. I’ll take some pics to show how it goes, hopefully.
P.S.
My brother in law sent the photos he took of Hannah. I can’t wait to share some of them. They turned out so good.
All of our family members are scattered all over Texas. Since Donny’s weekends are Thursdays and Fridays, it makes it hard to get to visit any of them very often. Luckily we got to see some of them this past weekend.
Nikki, our oldest, lives in Dallas. We got to spend a few hours with her two oldest kids before they left for their dad’s.
I wish we had gotten to spend more time with Myles and Everly, but we are planning a weekend together when school get out.
We got to spend more time with Phoebe because she is Jake and Nikki’s daughter together. Y’all, she is the funniest kid. And she loves her PawPaw.
Donny was hiding his face from their puppy and Phoebe joined in.
We also were able to go visit Donny’s mom who lives in the Fort Worth area. I didn’t get any pictures because we were all too busy chatting.
Saturday Donny’s brother James and our nephew Justin came up from Austin to take Hannah’s senior pictures. It was so good to see them. We did a photo shoot downtown and boy was it windy. I can’t wait to see the final pictures.
I don’t think I can thank them enough for taking time out of their very busy schedule to do this for us. We all got to have dinner and then they drove the 6 or so hours back home. I wish they would have just stayed the night.
We closed down Don Benito’s.
When we were at Nikki’s we were looking through my old wedding album to her dad and this is one of my favorite pictures of my friend (much more like a sister since I’ve known her since birth) and me after she caught the bouquet.
Oh my Lord, we were so young.
Hopefully during the summer we will get to visit more of our family. Nothing like a little road trip.
And a bit off topic, but I found out that I could remove the candle in my lantern and my oil diffuser fits perfectly. No more ugly white plastic.
We had a little bit of time to kill the first day in Dallas, so we decided to check out the Goodwill outlet a.k.a. The Bins. I forget how long it actually takes to get anywhere in the DFW metroplex.
If you have never heard of the bins, it’s a giant warehouse with row after row of bins that you just dig through. When we got there they were bringing out new bins. Everyone has to stand behind a red line and after they put them out they say “GO” and the race is on. People run and grab. I had no idea what to expect, but I got the hang of it pretty quickly. Even Donny and Hannah were having fun looking through everything. There are no prices, you just pay by the pound. I think clothing was $1.49.
These were the “older” bins.
It’s such a crazy fun experience. Well, if you like thrifting that is.
This is what we came away with.
A pair of Levi cropped jeans and an Old Navy dress
Donny found the Bob Seger Tshirt for me because I absolutely love Bob Seger. I found this Johnny Cash shirt.
Hannah found an H&M dress, hoodie and some Pink yoga pants. I also found her some Seven jeans that aren’t pictured. It was a pretty good haul for the short time we were there. I wish we had something like this here.
The next day, on the way home, Jack asked if we could go to one of his favorite stores. Well, of course!
We made it inside before a torrential downpour. We decided to have lunch in their cafeteria and to our surprise most everything was half off. Jack and I weren’t really hungry so we shared chicken strips and fries. They were only $4.49. Hannah had the salmon and Donny had what we had. They always have such good food. The Daim Bar cake is Hannah’s very favorite.
Here’s what we bought.
Both of the kids got these stuffies. Jack’s was a cat astronaut that he took the suit off of and put on the alien. Apparently, these stuffies are popular with the teenagers. Who knew? I got two candles that were on sale. Pillowcases, also on sale. Veg peelers and kitchen scrubbers. I love their light bulbs, so I picked up 2 boxes. Jack needed a new charging cable and I found this awesome collander that stretches across the sink, also on sale.
Can’t wait to go back to both places!
Several months ago Jackson decided that for his 17th birthday he wanted to go to the Hatsune Miku concert in Dallas. We kept the kids out of school on Thursday and headed to Dallas. Luckily our oldest daughter loves to go to concerts and happens to live in Dallas so she was escorting Jackson and Hannah to the concert in Deep Ellum.
Of course, we had the obligatory stop.
Since it was Jackson’s birthday (well, the next day was his actual birthday) he got to choose where he wanted to have dinner before the concert. He wanted to try Jollibee. We had never heard of it, but it was on the way, so that made it easy. He actually asked me to take his picture with the bee.
Here’s the whole gang.
Jake and Phoebe headed back to their house and Donny and I dropped Nikki and the kids off at The Factory in Deep Ellum. The doors opened at 7 with the concert starting at 8. We got there at 6 and the line was wrapped around the building. Deep Ellum has gotten a lot sketchier since I used to go to concerts there back in the day. I’m so glad we decided to have Nikki go with them. The concert is not your typical concert. It’s an anime hologram with an actual live band, but the hologram does the singing. Jackson was right when he said, “Mom, you will not like going to this concert”.
Donny and I decided to hang out in the West End. It’s not far The Factory, but a safer more walker friendly area. We decided to get a drink and some chips and salsa at RJ’s mexican restaurant. This was the HOTTEST salsa. Donny loves super spicy food and even this was almost too hot for him.
The weather was nice, even though it was a bit muggy. There was the world championship high school robotics competition going on so we got to people watch. It was funny seeing people from other countries coming out of the western shop next door with cowboy hat boxes.
We had a few hours to kill so we decided to go shop around the western shop
I really wanted this Tshirt, but they didn’t have it in my size
We found this park that was just in the middle of all the buildings. There were swings that seemed just right to sit a spell.
As it got dark we heard live music and ended up at Jack Ruby’s. The guy playing was really good and I was able to drink about 4 glasses of ice water to try to cool off my digestive track from that salsa we had earlier.
There were only a handful of people there, but we had a lot of fun singing along to the music and chatting with the bartender and other customers.
Finally it was time to go pick up the crew. It’s so strange being in a big city with super tall buildings. I think our tallest one is 7 stories.
Anyway, Jackson had a great birthday. They all had fun at the concert even though there were only 100 light sticks (bad planning on the company that puts these shows on) so they didn’t get one. But they did get a concert Tshirt and they were really happy with that.
I vowed at the beginning of Spring, that any day that wasn’t raining, I would do some type of work out in the yard. There is so much that needs to be done and I feel like if I don’t stay on top of it, it will never get finished.
Today, because there is a lot of rain in the coming days, I mowed the front and the back yard. I also had to pick up all of the cardboard that Donny had laid down in the greenhouse to kill the grass. Since the greenhouse is no more, we need that grass to grow.
It’s brown right now where it was, but it will get better.
I thought I’d go gather the eggs that were in there, but Penelope was busy doing her thing.
Our tomatoes are starting to bud.
The potato plants are getting really big.
I moved the front stepping stones, which we never really used for what they were meant for, to the side garden. We need to get some more and these need to be repainted.
I got the pineapple top planted and the random cantaloupe seeds I planted are sprouting. All in all, it was a productive day.
Oh, and I also ran by an estate sale near our home and picked up these goodies.
Now I’m off to bed. We start Jackson’s birthday celebration tomorrow. I can’t believe he’s about to be 17!
I had three major things on my to do list today: clean out the shed, clean out the laundry room and remove the winter “cat house” from the patio and get it back into usable shape. I honestly did not think I would be able to get them all done, especially when I walked out to look in the shed.
It was SO bad. We had just been throwing stuff into it, especially me, because I was always being stalked and chased by the homicidal rooster. Now that he was gone, it was time.
Here is what I walked into. The right side that holds our garden tools and lawn/coop stuff.
Before:
After:
The left side before. It holds holiday decorations, camping gear, suitcases and just miscellaneous stuff.
After:
This took me about 4 hours because I had to take everything out, sweep and then tetris it all back in. I have to call the city tomorrow to schedule a bulk pickup for everything I got rid of.
I was able to clean the laundry room out. It was just really straightening it up. The hardest part was the patio because we had a large heavy wool rug on the table and containers underneath so the stray cats could stay warm in the winter weather. I didn’t take any pictures of the before because I was running on fumes and just forgot, but here are some afters. We still have a lot of work to do on our yard and the patio, but now at least we can eat and sit out there comfortably.
I found that my rug I’m not using makes a great table cover and protects the table from any sun damage.
The trunk Donny picked up at the estate sale makes a fine little table. Now I’m just praying that I can walk tomorrow because I’m already so sore.
I have a dry erase board right by our side door. I’ve started writing the things that I need to get done under the To Do category. I feel like if I have the list where I can see it, I will get it done. So today was basically just checking off the chores that needed to get done. Boring, I know, but much needed.
I was so tired of playing Jenga every time I opened the pantry, a.k.a. two cabinets, If you have an actual real pantry go give it a hug right now because having to use two precious kitchen cabinets is the pits. But when your kitchen is on the small side, you just have to make due with what you have.
I honestly don’t know how it gets this bad. I think we all get a bit lazy and end up just stuffing items back in.
Ok, that’s a little better. My home will never be pinterest ready, but that’s ok.
It’s pretty bad. I was just waiting for a can avalanche.
At least I can find everything now.
This one wasn’t too bad, but I realized that I keep replacing spices that I already had in my restock area. I also threw away anything that was expired or that we just didn’t use anymore.
Next I started on our shared closet. The weather has been getting warmer so I knew it was time to switch out my winter clothes for spring ones. I really wanted to quit halfway through. I share a very small closet with my husband so every square inch of it is used.
I guess it has to get bad before it can get better. Hey, at least there is cutie Dean Winchester on the screen. I love Supernatural and it helped me get through this mess.
Purses get hung on hooks to save space.
I have plastic drawers to the left that holds my shorts and ball caps. The baskets on top hold my jeans and pants. I still need to pare everything down, but first I want to see what I wear and if I don’t wear it, out it will go.
All bagged up ready to get boxed up and stored in the shed which is on my clean out list tomorrow. That’s going to be a project.
And just because, here is our stoner cat Monkey that is always high on catnip.
The Funky Frugalista 