Lots has been going on in the Frugal Family house over the last few months so I thought I’d give you a bit of a family life update and share some of our Christmas decorations at the same time today…
You might have seen in a couple of posts lately that we have a new addition to our little family!
This is Monty, our new little puppy! He’s a cross between a Bichon Frise and a Shih Tzu and he’s an extremely cheeky, mischievous little guy who’s demanding a lot of attention right now.
We’re working on the toilet training and so far, he’s been a good boy who hasn’t done any damage other than to the carpet on the upstairs landing where he’s chewed it a little bit. We were planning on replacing the carpet anyway and have almost saved up enough for it a few times now before spending the money on something more fun (Milan and Monaco and now Monty) so I’m not too bothered, especially as it’s not too visible.
I can’t say that Buddy and Monty are best buddies just yet as Buddy spends most of his time pretending that the puppy doesn’t exist but hopefully, when Monty starts to chill as he gets older then they’ll bond a bit more.
We’ve been thinking about getting a new dog for a good while now but with all of the travel we had planned last year we decided to leave it until we came back from our last trip before making a final decision. We were planning on buying another Bichon Frise but we saw a photo of Monty and the way he was looking at the camera made him look so grumpy that we decided he’d be a good match for grumpy Mr Frugal who, in all honesty, was the least keen on getting a puppy.
After my wobble earlier on in the year about whether the kids really needed me to be at home with them after school every day, I’ve increased my hours at work so I’m working almost full-time hours again for the first time since Miss Frugal was born. I have considered giving up my job entirely a few times over the years to concentrate on blogging but I genuinely do love my job and I don’t think I’d enjoy blogging as much as I do now if it was my job.
I’m struggling a little bit at the moment as my Dad isn’t well at all and is living in a care home after some bad times earlier this year. We had a very rough three or four months earlier this year and although I won’t go into it too much, the fact I had to get social services involved should indicate a little of just how bad it got. He’s definitely been better since he moved into the home and knowing he was somewhere where he’d be cared for left me so relieved that I sat and cried for about an hour on my own at home one day with the relief that everything wasn’t my responsibility anymore.
Don’t get me wrong though, him moving into the home hasn’t made everything better and it’s still very difficult, especially as he had a fall last month that led to a hip replacement operation that he’s taking longer than expected to recover from.
He’s such a stubborn old man and knows exactly what he wants which makes it very hard for me as I can’t give him the things he wants. I wish I could though.
The kids and Mr Frugal have been amazingly supportive and understand when I’m stressing out and need a bit of a break. At one point, I felt like I was going to break down with all the stress and I definitely would have done without their support.
Speaking of the kids and Mr Frugal, they’re all great with not much to update there. The kids are counting sleeps until Christmas and I can’t wait until Christmas morning to see their faces when they open their presents. They’ve been so good this year and so supportive that I really wanted to give them a few extra treats this Christmas.
Thanks to the arrival of Monty, we decided not to go with our usual Christmas tree which is a big floor to ceiling bushy artificial tree. We wanted one that we could sit on a table in our room out of Monty’s reach but I really couldn’t justify buying a second artificial tree as we’d literally only be using it for this one year. The alternative was a real tree which we bought for about £12 last weekend.
We had to buy some new lights as ours are a massive long string of them as we bought them for our usual tree. The lights we got are just cheap ones because again, we won’t use them again next year.
I don’t LOVE it but I can live with it. 😉
The table is wrapped in wrapping paper to make it look more Christmassy!
I also have my little mini snow tree in the kitchen which I do love…
Another Christmas thing I’m loving this year is my Christmas garland which I have along the back of the sideboard in the living room. I bought the plain garland from Tesco for about £9 I think and added some fairy star lights that I bought from Asda last year and some dried oranges that I made. It looks (and smells) amazing!
We don’t have a wreath for the door yet as I think our handmade one was left in the loft along with a fair few of our other decorations when Mr Frugal brought the decorations down. There’s no chance that he’s going to make a second trip up there though so we’ll be doing without them this year – not such a hardship I suppose as we’re definitely toning it down anyway this Christmas thanks to the puppy! 😉
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