New Years comes with new resolutions. I don’t make resolutions, but I do make monthly goals. One goal was to plan my meals, not only for the health aspect, but budgeting wise as well. Its not a big secret that those who menu plan and make their grocery lists, and stick to them, save more money than people who eat out all the time, or even create dinners on a whim at the store that night.
I think thats the first thing you find when looking for ways to save money, “Stop eating out, plan your meals, brown bag it to work/school” its Duh 101.
I try to plan my meals, while I’m at the grocery store. Dumb. In December I started making lists, and not only did I get out of that packed full maze called Trader Joe’s faster, I also didn’t spend as much. I’ve always tried to meal plan, but its so tedious.
So, I have given in, tedious or not, I need to start doing it, especially if I want all my working out to actually work for me. With sites like Shape, FitSugar, NYTimes Health section and so on and so forth I have found a good amount of new recipes to add to my already large collection.
What to plan with? I wanted something cute to put on my fridge to display “This is what you eat today” I originally was printing out template I downloaded for free a year or so ago, with blocks for everyday of the week. I got bored of this.
I then found a large graphic design that inspired me to make my own. I put my Utahn scrapbooking ways to work for me and headed over to Michael’s.
One thing I don’t like much about San Diego is the lack of really good fabric stores, and lack of scrapbooking stores. I get that its hard to stay in business with scrapbooking since everyone is moving to digital S.B.ing, but I like glueing things to paper, making creative cuts, and all that jazz. That’s one thing I miss about Utah.
Michael’s had some okay stuff, I settled on a vintage looking floral design, and choose 2 complementary block colors. I only ended up using 2 additional colors.
Since I have a small kitchen and don’t have room to hand things horizontally, I picked a long vertical frame, I think its a 12×22. Of course I overspent on the project, but if you want to make your own, its actually quite cheap, especially if you have one of those 40% off 1 item coupons from Michael’s that you can get from their website.
Materials:
Bought:
12×22 Frame, this was $8.99 then I used my coupon for it, el cheapo yay! (or any size of your choosing)
2 12×12 scrapbooking pages, of your choice
2-3 8.5×11 complementary colors of your choice
Already had:
Alphabet stencil
Hole Punch
Glue
Alphabet stamp set
Ink Pad
1 Brown grocery shopping bag
Ruler
Wet Erase marker
You can also use fabric to cover the back of the frame in whatever design you want. I plane on doing this when I make an inspiration board later on.
I used an old case my cell phone came in to measure the blocks, but they are about 3×4″.
So, it has 7 days, I was going to just do M-F, but since I work on the weekends I planned those too, then made a large block for a Grocery List.
I use a wet erase marker to plan it all out, then I can just use a wet towel to erase it all, or you can go dry erase. I plan for about 2 weeks at a time in my personal planner, but this is nice to have in my face because I barely look at my planner once I am home.
The ideas are endless, this took me a couple of hours, with stenciling and having to redo a few things to get it the way I wanted it. It was fun to get crafty again though. I love artsy projects!
Sorry the last pic is fuzzy, I couldn’t focus it, oh well!
