So... one of my big goals (and has been for a long time) is to cook more at home. I'm ashamed to admit how much we eat out as a family. I know that cooking at home is so much better for everyone, because I can control what goes into our food! Also, its sure to save a ton of money. The main problem is planning. Usually I have no plan, so by the time dinner rolls around we have nothing to eat, so we go out. So I knew I needed to put together a meal planning system.
Now there are a ton of different and adorable ideas of menu boards all around blog land and pinterest. But I wanted to take it a step farther and have pre-planned weeks. Let me show you what I came up with and I can further explain.
So here is my menu board. Most of the menu's I've found have a place to hold meal ideas and a place to plan out your week. But that's not what I wanted. I wanted to have pre-planned weekly packets. So I have 6 little boxes. Each box is going to hold 5 recipes for dinner that week, and a shopping list. And I'm going to try to organize each week to use similar ingredients to help reduce waste. So if I use a half an onion one day, the other half will get used later that week.
Then all I'll have to do is at the beginning of each week, select a packet, shop my pantry to determine what I still need from the store. Shop once for the whole week. (What a concept! I'm the queen of going to the store everyday to get only what I need for that day, its awful.) Make 5 dinners throughout the week. We will have leftovers one day and still go out once a week. I love that I'll have everything I need for the whole week, but I can still decide that day what sounds good from the weekly packet.
I'm still working on the gathering and organizing of all our favorite family recipes, but I think once I get it all in place its going to be a brillant system!
The actual board was pretty dang simple to make too.
I just got the board from lowes. I found these "purse" boxes at micheals...
It was the perfect size to hold a 4x6 recipe card. So I took the extra help from the store and got those and just cut the handles off with a jig saw.
Then I glued the boxes to the board using gorilla glue. Spray painted, and then added the cute scrapbook paper to each box front.
The title "Dinner" at the top is also just scrapbook stickers. Easy!
And thats about it! Hang and start planning!
I'm super excited about it and can't wait to get everything organized so I never have to plan dinner again! haha!!
Come back tomorrow (and the rest of the week) to see what adorable "kitchen" ideas the other ladies have for you. They are always fantastic so you won't want to miss it! :)
Thanks for reading!
2 comments:
Love it! I would even grab two weeks worth of cards so I only had to shop every two weeks- with a few milk and banana trips;-)
Inspired idea! Just might have to borrow it :)
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