Tag: #familytime #ourhome #familyfirst #frugalfamily

Why We Airbnb

On By thefunkyfrugalistaIn Weekend GetawayLeave a comment

A few weeks ago we drove to San Antonio to visit our daughter and her family. She lives in the Denver Heights area that’s very close to downtown. Because we don’t really like staying in hotels because with two teenagers it can get cramped quickly, we opted to find an Airbnb.

i couldn’t believe it when I found one just a couple of streets over from my daughter’s home. (If anyone is wondering why we just didn’t stay with them, it’s because they have a 2 BR, a 10 month old and 4 dogs and we have 2 teenagers)

The price was right on budget so we booked it and was pleasantly surprised. It wasn’t “fancy”, but neither are we. It was clean, spacious and well stocked.

this was the morning we were leaving. You walk straight into the living room from the front door. Super comfy couch.
Tv in the living room. It was small, but it had all the streaming services and we even watched The Batman. There are larger TV’s in the bedrooms, but we seriously didn’t really watch TV much.
the dining room was spacious.
I loved that our host included a little library that had all different genres. (Excuse our stuff. We were getting ready to load the car)
The kitchen was older, but clean and well stocked. The laundry is off the kitchen with the door leading to the outdoor patio and yard. I didn’t get a pic of that.
We didn’t really cook anything except some pizza for a late night snack.
The bathroom was clean.
The shower head was awesome.
Hallway with bedrooms on each end and bathroom in the middle.
One of the bedrooms. Both beds were super comfy.
Bedroom.

We stayed here 2 nights, then it was on to Hurst to see Donny’s mom and brother. We got into the DFW area around 6 and went to the hotel we normally stayed. Completely booked. Turns out unless you wanted to pay $300 for about 15 total hours in a room, you were out of luck. We sat in the parking lot and called everywhere to try to find a room. Finally found one with a king bed and pull out couch. It was more than we paid per night for the Airbnb, but we were tied and cranky.

Turns out there was a big Elvis convention in town ( they were crowning the new reining Elvis impersonator and there were Elvis’s from all over the world. Ya can’t make this stuff up) Also there was a board game convention. Again, who knew that even existed. Throw in 2 graduations and you have overload in the fort worth area.

So, this is the hotel room we stayed in at holiday inn express grapevine. This is why we will always stay in an Airbnb. I got this pic off the website because our room was so jam packed with our stuff all I could think about was packing and leaving.

this photo makes it look much bigger than it was.

Yes, you get a free breakfast at hotels, but trust me, a free muffin is not worth it.

Halloween 2020

On By thefunkyfrugalistaIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Halloween 2020 is in the books. This is the first year my kids haven’t wanted to go trick or treating. They’re getting older, plus we are just now recovering from covid. We aren’t contagious, but the lasting effects seem to never end.

I LOVE Halloween! It’s just such a fun spooky holiday.

One of my coconut pumpkins. The candle holder and pumpkin was purchased at goodwill, for a song, as well as the little signs from Big Lots.

Just some of our indoor decor. I move the outdoor decorations around on the actual day of Halloween to make it spookier for the trick or treaters. My favorite houses were always the ones with spooky sounds and decorations.

Luckily I didn’t buy anything new because we only got two trick or treaters. We still had fun. The kids came outside to sit with us and we had Alexa playing creepy sounds and music. At 8 we headed inside, popped some popcorn and watched the best horror movie that I’ve watched every single Halloween season.

The original 1978 version. No other will do!

I can’t believe Christmas is right around the corner! See ya next year Michael Myers 🎃

Car Convos

On By thefunkyfrugalistaIn family, Home lifeLeave a comment

I think some of the best conversations we have in our family takes place in our car.DSCN1465.JPG

We only own one car. That is pretty shocking to most people. We just don’t need/want two vehicles. It doesn’t make sense for us to have 2 car payments when we live in a small town and my husband works 7 minutes from our home. If one of us has to go out of town, we just rent a car. Much cheaper than a monthly car payment on a car we would never drive except maybe once or twice a week.

Three times a week our daughter has before school workouts. It’s amazing when you have your child one on one, the good conversations you can have. On the days that she has workouts I drive our son to school. Not having to compete for attention and having a parent completely to yourself seems to just let them open up about what’s going on in their lives more so than if we were at home just sitting around.

I also love the time with my husband to and from his job. Nothing is distracting us and we are able to have some mighty fine conversations together.

Three separate trips. Three good talks. That is what made this day start off in such a good way.

Well, there’s also this.DSCN1549.JPGHoosiers might be an old movie, but it’s still such a good movie. I am a sucker for feel good sports movies.

I’m also happy to say that I’m getting back on schedule from the holidays. I don’t know why it seems to take me a few weeks. Normally Monday is deep clean the house day. That’s it. But since I hadn’t done a big grocery haul in quite a while, if we wanted to actually have normal meals, I had to add that to my day.

I’m very happy to say I got the shopping done and the house done. My fitbit did not have to vibrate once to remind me to take steps.

DSCN1552.JPGDSCN1551.JPGNothing beats fresh sheets and a shiny house.

It was a good Monday.

I hope yours was too.