My First Attempt

Before I get in to that, I wanted to share something I read today in my bible reading. I have a leadership Bible and it had an interesting quote in one of the side notes:

    "Adversity makes a person choose one of two paths: character or compromise" Now, that's a different way to look at adversity!

Ok, back to my first attempt at menu-planning. Keeping it simple: Tonight we went out to eat! Now, before you think I have gone all crazy against my new goal, this dinner out was, in fact, on the menu. :) Planning for those nights out not only gives you relief from cooking, but also gives you something to look forward to when you have a weak moment. That is, if your like me and cooking is not your favorite thing to do. 

Saturday starts our vacation, so here's our menu plan for Tuesday through Friday:

     Tuesday: Beef stew in the crock-pot with whole wheat dinner rolls. 

     Wednesday: Spaghetti and caesar salad, whole wheat rolls

     Thursday: Dinner w/ Dad (Happy Birthday '50') 

     Friday: Chicken, Scalloped potatoes, Broccoli

In case you were wondering, for our vacation we're going to spend a week in Orlando at a resort; from Saturday Oct. 4th to Saturday, Oct. 11th. My in-laws are letting us use one of their time share weeks. It should be really fun. The room we will have does have a full kitchen so I AM planning on bringing down groceries to deter us from going out for every meal. 

Along with my attempts to change our budget, I am working to change our eating habits, too. We are trying to eat more whole wheat instead of white pastas/breads and I am going to try to incorporate a vegetable with every meal. (Now, I am really trying to be super mom, huh?)

I bet you are wondering how I did on my first shopping trip for this week's menu..

I stuck to the plan and bought very few items that were not on our list. One of the extra items was because I needed to use a coupon that was about to expire in a few days. It was for baby wipes, an item we use all the time and can never really have too many of. Plus, they were already on sale and I got to use the coupon. Go me. :)

Sounds like I did pretty good... but as I was writing this, I realized that I don't think we have any brown gravy mix, and I forgot to buy ground beef for the spaghetti. Oopsie!

I will get the hang of this eventually. I guess another grocery trip is in my future.

How I got started

How I decided to start Menu-Planning

I started by reading a short ebook called "Menu Planning Made Easy". After reading it, I felt like most of the information was generalized and basic... and it didn't give me too many new ideas. BUT, I have wanted to start implementing menu planning for a while now and it gave me the initiative to start it.

Here's what I did learn from the book : 

 1. Make a list of your family's favorite foods :breakfast, lunch, and dinner (that is, if you plan to cook all those). We only cook dinner, really, so I made a list of our favorite dinners. Having an extensive list makes it easy to pick new recipes and not get bored of the same few. 

 2. Check your pantry to see what items you already have before you go grocery shopping. If you already know what you're eating, then you should know what ingredients are needed to make your meals and you should be able to check what you already have before you go to the store.

It sounds simple, right? Well, it just might be... A normal trip to the store for us would have gone something like this: I would have a list made of all the items that week that we had run out of already. When we get to the store, we would pick up the items we need and browse every single aisle for things we might want to eat during the week. (Not a good idea!) So, we would come home with all kinds of odd and end items that looked tasty while we were at the store, or better yet we would have dreamed up some dinner ideas while at the store - buying ingredients that we may or may not have already at home... and hoping that we remember what we wanted to eat when it comes to dinnertime the upcoming week. :)

Thus, the reason why we need to change. 

This week I decided to keep it simple as to not talk myself out of this whole menu planning thing. As I get better at it, I will start doing more complex dinner recipes and hopefully turn our dinners into something delectable instead of something I dread.

Here are some other tips from the book that might help make things easier for you:

1. Cook in bulk and freeze part of it (for instance, beef) so it makes dinnertime quicker and less stressful.

2. Plan meals a month at a time.  (How can anyone do this? hehe)

Organization...

So, all this new blog reading has inspired me to get organized. How am I going to do it? Well, I purchased this calendar to start. It is a post-it calendar that I got at Target. Isn't it beautiful? It is set up to be a weekly calendar, but I modified it to be monthly to fit our needs. 

Some may call me old-school for not going digital, but using this helps for me to visualize things as I walk around the house. And, it so colorful and pretty... it makes me want to use it. :) Not to mention I am a sucker for (ok, semi-obsessed with) post-it notes. 

What do I want to organize? 1. Bill paying, 2. Upcoming events/birthdays, etc., 3. Meal planning.

Number one and two have been slipping my mind way too easily lately and I need to make a change if I am going to get them in order! Number three is really my new venture. We have always been the kind of people that decide what we are going to eat at 6:00 in the evening when I'm supposed to be cooking dinner already. Many times that has ended up in "I don't feel like cooking tonight, want to eat out?" and lots of money spent and food in the refrigerator/pantry wasted. I want to eliminate this. I have read lately about how meal-planning can help you save money because you already know what you are going to eat during the week, so you already have a plan - and don't get sucked in to dining out. Aside from that, my husband gets frustrated when I ask him 'what do you want to eat?' at dinner time -- after he's spent a long day at work. He's like 'you don't already have that figured out?' So, I am going to try to be a good wife and get on the ball. hehe

Why are we trying to save money? Other than being like every other American who is suffering from the way the economy is right now, we have another challenge. My husband and I had our first baby girl on April 23rd of this year, and I am trying to do my best to stay home with her. Cutting our budget is key to meet that goal!

Back to menu planning: So September 29th marks the beginning of week one on our menu-planning venture and we are looking forward to roast, spaghetti, tacos, and chicken. Yum. The stinky part of starting this week, though, is that next week we are going on vacation. BUT, better to start now than never, right? At least I am telling myself that. 

About Me

On a whim, I decided to start reading blogs... now I am addicted! Thanks to some of the blogs I have started reading, I have been inspired to get more organized and find more ways to save us money. The Lord knows we need it! 

I have also been inspired to start my own blog. Weird - for me, anyway, but I am going to give it a shot! 

So, I am Danielle, 23. Christian -first, wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend, bookkeeper, mac user, etc, etc. Enjoy!