Meal planning made simple!

You asked and you shall receive! Every two weeks I will post how I meal plan, 2 weeks worth of meals every other week. I only meal plan supper, breakfast and lunch are usually pretty simple to whip up on short notice, so supper is the only meal I bother to plan. So here it goes, first things first, get some flyers and shop those sales, once you have figured out what is on sale, then you choose what your recipes around that.

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Now that you have figured out what is on sale, choose your recipes, grab your favorite recipe books, there are great recipes on www.pinterest.com or on www.facebook.com and then use all your family favorite meals that bounce around in your head. When ever I see a great meal I would like to try I save it. Next time you are doing your meal plan you will have a list of new recipes to try!

Now I go to my calendar and figure out how many days we will be home each week, sometimes we are going out for dinner, sometimes we are away etc, so count how many meals you really need.

This time I need 7 meals one week and 5 meals another week, so in total I need 12 meals, time to search my brain and recipes to find 12 meals. So here is my Meal Plan. The red meals are the ones we have already ate, the black ones are ones we still have to eat. I choose meals and add them to my list, i do 2 weeks at a time, so                       what you are seeing is week 1 & 2 are the past 2 weeks,                                    and week 3 & 4 are the next two weeks:

I prefer to do it this way instead of using a calendar I find this much easier cause then I am not committed to a certain meal on a certain day, you don't want to BBQ one day, that's cool, pick another meal, you get the picture. So now you have all these beautiful meals picked out, I often leave room for leftovers, cause we love leftovers and we cook big meals, so chances are you will be able to get away with one day of left overs :)  Easter Dinner with the family is supposed to be on there twice, we are having two dinners here this year.

Now that you have chosen your recipes, take a look at each recipe and see if you have the ingredients on hand, if you don't add it to your grocery list. Go through each recipe until you know you have everything either in your house or on your list. So, now the hard part is over, you have your Meal Plan and your grocery list. GO SHOPPING! I love to shop, I go once every 2 weeks and I get everything I need for those 2 weeks, I rarely have to make a random trip to the store for items, when we get snowed in, and lets face it we are in Canada, it happens often enough, I know for a fact I always have 2 weeks worth of meals in my fridge/freezer. It gives me a great sense of security when the snow starts flying.

So now you have your Meal Plan and all the groceries you need to execute it! Turns out when it comes to cooking, deciding what you are going to eat is half the battle, I have been meal planning for over a year and I would never go back, this makes life so much easier! 

So here we go, you wake up in the morning one of the first things I do is check my Meal Plan to see if I need to take anything out of the freezer, I have many meals to choose from, I choose the one that sounds best for that day, and I pull the ingredients out of the freezer if need be. When it is time to prepare supper everything is defrosted and ready to go, this makes our life so much easier! Meal Planning has also helped us eat better, there are no more last minute trips to the store to grab anything quick, everything is planned out so there is no need for that. You must try it, you won't regret it! And there you have it Meal Planning, made simple!  If you have any more questions, feel free to ask me! 

Happy Meal Planning! 

Springtime Bucket List!

It is finally feeling like Spring around here, it sure took it's time this year and here is hoping it is here to stay! So this means it is time to make our Spring Bucket list, every season we make these, we don't always accomplish everything on our list, but we sure try, the list is a great idea, it keeps you on track for Spring and helps you remember what you wanted to accomplish this season. Whenever we have a day with nothing to do, that is when I go to the list and see what we can accomplish! Here is our list for Spring 2014, have fun making your list and get everything checked off of your list too! 

Here's hoping you all have a wonderful Spring, Enjoy!! 

How we renovated our Kitchen for 50$ out of our own pocket 350$ total!!!

This post is all about our new kitchen! We were on a very limited budget, but we sure got a lot of bang for our buck! It all started with the old kitchen, I loved the red when I did it, but it was dark and it went with the Coke Cola theme we had which neither my hubby nor I were really into anymore. So we needed a change, I had wanted to change it for a while, but we never had the extra $$ but on March 4^th I decided I wasn't going to let no money stop me and that I would just figure it out. So we started by taking our Kitchen Coke Cola collection to the Antiques store near by, we sold out entire collection and we got 300$ my hubby and I were both shocked and thought we would be lucky to get 100$ so 300$ was my new goal for my reno, sadly we went over by 50$ so we did have to invest some of our own money, but it was totally worth it, as you can see....Here are the before pictures, red, pine, dark, I hesitated to paint the pine, but it was worn out and had served it's time, so time for an uplift!!

 When painting pine good paint is a must, our reno would have cost much less with cheaper paint, but paint is one place you do not want to cheap out!! Our reno took one month give or take a few days off for appointments and to save our sanity lol! I am extremely grateful it is over. I don't want to see paint for a very long time! And now for the after pictures!

What a difference, it is so nice to see my vision come to life, in all the rooms in the house but this one in particular this was the hardest room we have done yet, we put our blood, sweat and tears into this one. So here is the break down:

-Everything got painted, ceilings walls trim doors, everything

-Our appliances stayed the same, but we plan to save our $$$ and get “new to us” ones soon

-At this time we couldn't afford new counter tops so these are covered in Contact paper Granite, which is supposed to last up to one year given no one cuts on it or puts hot pots on it, so far it is holding up great!

-All of the ornaments were either purchased or made by hand to save money, all the creative ideas are copied off of www.pinterest.com it is an amazing site with tons of useful tips and information.

-We opened up the top of the cupboards and put in big baskets which are filled with extra kitchen supplies (fondue pot, foil pans, cake pans) things we don't need everyday.

-We added new Hardware on all the cupboards and drawers

-We added a bead board backs plash, which adds so much, I love it!

My husband and I did this all ourselves with the help of pinterest and youtube videos we taught ourselves everything we needed to know, so now what you have all been waiting for, the break down of the budget.

White Paint – we bought Beauti~tone Designer paint, pearl Cabinet and furniture paint in white, this painted all the trim, walls, cupboards, shelves, ceiling, everything you see that is white, the paint was regular 49.99$ per can, since we needed 4 cans I asked my local Home Hardware for a deal and they gave it to me for 42$ per can savings of 32$ Love's it! White paint total 168$

Wall Paint – Scuba Green by Benjamin Moore, I brought the chip to my local Home Hardware and they made me the perfect color. We used the same color on the bead board for the back splash. In total this paint cost us 20$

Miscellaneous: TSP 5$, sand paper 5$, caulk 5$, paintbrushes 5$, paint roller 5$, Baskets 35$, decor 20$ (some of the decor I already had around the house), spray paint 10$, totals 90$

Bead Board, we bough 4 sheets of bead board 32 inches by 4 feet, and we have some leftover they are 10$ per sheet and once they are painted they are sealed and ready for water :) Love that feature! so since we have some left over our total was 35$

Counter tops, as I said earlier this is in fact Cont-tact paper, we applied this using a credit card and it worked great! When using this product you want to make sure you pay more and get the real Cont-Tact paper in granite, there are a couple colors to choose from, anything else might be too thin, this was 5.97$ per roll and I used 3 rolls and did all the counters! My counter top upgrade came to a total of 18$ 

The Hardware, this one was a tough one, hardware is so expensive and what we had was so out dated not even a coat of paint could save them, so we opted to make our own by bending our own spoons to use as hardware, they are so cute! We have 42 handles counting the drawers, and with our small budget nothing was working, till we found this spoon idea on pinterest, we did all our hardware all 42 handles for 11$!!! Love it! As for the hinges we spray painted the ones we had and they turned out great!

Totals 342$!! Reno'ing on a dime doesn't come easy it takes a lot of time and research, but if you have more time than money like me, you can totally make it work, I think for 350$ we got a great kitchen!!