Meal Planning

If you're a newlywed like I am, you may struggle with meal planning as I have. Unfortunately, I forget grace to myself so when I would plan in my head to do something, when I would get home from work we usually didn't have all the ingredientsand then we would end up eating dinner at 8 or 9 PM....which is LATE! Thankfully, my friend Ashleigh introduced me to meal planning and a fun way to do it too! Enter the Menu Board.

Now, apparently, this is old news - my mom informed me that she used to do this all the time! She thought I already new. :) Anyways, this board is really easy to make and it's brilliant.

All you need is:

 an 8x10 picture frame

a piece of scrapbook paper; whichever color/print you'd like

letter stickers

decorative stickers (optional)

a dry erase marker.

Directions:

Make sure that your scrapbook paper is cut down to 8x10 and then put it in the picture frame.

On the glass of the frame, using the letter stickers, add the word: "MENU" (or whatever you want it to read - MEAL TIME, MEALS, GRUB, etc.)

Then on the left side of the frame, add letters to signify the days of the week.

Add additional decorative stickers if you'd like. And you're done!
Just write on the glass with a dry erase marker, and you've got a nice dry erase menu board that can be made for under $10!

Another thing that I have found to really help with this is this spread sheet of sorts frm theprojectgirl.com:

This is absolutely fantastic - and I have no idea why I didn't think of it before I found this! It's a printout to help organize the weeks shopping list - not only does it help with meal planning, but it helps the entire grocery store trip not be overwhelming or excessively long since it's broken down into department. I actually enjoy going to the grocery store now, which is something I used to HATE doing. And I mess up dinner a lot less now that I'm planning more adequately and intelligently.
I hope that this helps anyone who may be struggling with overwhelming grocery store trips or making dinner :)

Happy dinners!
S