My First Printable!

I have always admired the printables that are available on so many of my favorite blogs. They have kept me on task, helped me with my finances, meal planning, cleaning schedules, and so much more! I have been in awe of how they are done, because I have only ever made cute little things in Word, but they have paled in comparison to these works of art!

Enter: Pinterest. Specifically, this link that I found there. How to Create Printables Using Picmonkey. I read it, followed her along, and made my first one!

She uses Picmonkey which has a free portion, but the paid bit is free for a month. She also uses Graphic Stock for royalty free photos, illustrations, and vectors. The free trial there is only a week, and you can only grab 20 images per day in the trial. I haven’t decided if I will continue; but $99 for a whole year of unlimited access seems worth it.

What do you think? Personally, after the cray of this whole year, I’m determined to see this year out!

Finally, from me and mine to you and yours; Happy New Year! Be safe out there!

 

Menu Planning for Winter Break

In our house, we have a couple different schedules to keep up with. Child time-sharing between 3 households, school vacation time, and the added joy of 2 holidays to sort through makes meal planning “challenging”. Yeah, “challenging” is a good word!

With anywhere between 2 – 9 mouths to feed for every meal, it’s a little “challenging” to put it all together so that it makes sense. That’s where my meal planners come into play.

First, I completed the “My 21 Meals”. This is a list that I came up with, using the hubby and kids input, to figure out our favorite meals that everyone likes. Or, at least, most everyone likes. I use this list as a base for my meals, and add in some from a list of “want to try” recipes. Once I try a new one, if we like it, I add it to the big list. Right now, I’ve started on my second set of 21 Meals, but that’s cool! I like how it has a spot for me to show where I got the recipe, and what are some sides we like with it.

From the list of 21 Meals, I was able to create a Sample Month (this is the first one, I will make a few so that we have some variety). It’s not complete – it’s much harder to plan for just Dave and I than it is for all the kids. He’d eat steak and baked potatoes every day if I let him!

I’m working on a collection of “Monthly Meal Plans” that can be turned into any month I choose. This way, all the work will be done when I want to plan a month of meals.

Normally, I create a weekly meal plan jotted in my binder, but because of the 2 week school holiday, I decided to knock both weeks out in one shot. Especially since I had to include breakfast and lunch to the kids as well.

2 week menu planner

This menu planner, and a ton of other printables, came from www.listplanit.com and It. Is. Awesome. I joined List Plan It through a Homemaking bundle that I purchased a couple months ago, and I am thoroughly addicted. I’ve printed out menu planners, cleaning schedules, chore lists by child age, conversation starters, date night planners, and so much more! One of my favorite goodies on this site is the Homemaking E-planner. It has so much crammed into it that It’s an invaluable resource for anyone wanting to get a handle on this whole home-making thing.

An amazing resource of everything Home!

$5 a month for new content every week, as well as access to some great e-books. I’m currently stumbling through the 100 Days til Christmas e-book. I’m kinda behind! They take PayPal, and that’s just a little piece of my ebay and crochet & knit pattern sales for a month. Not too shabby. Also, I am total a list girl!

Now, I’m off to take a peek at the new Blog Planning lists!

 

 

Putting the Printer to Work

This morning I got up early, and decided to get some things done. I have been complaining a few things, and it’s time to actually do something about them.

Scripture plan: A friend of mine shared a post on Facebook from Life 88.5, and it was perfect for what I was looking for! This 31 Day Scripture Writing Plan is thoughtful, easy, and beautifully laid out.

I also had a list in my head of projects that need to be done around the house, and I really needed to start writing this stuff down. I found this Project To Do List from My Love For Words that works great! I also did a Workshop from Living Well Spending Less that isn’t available anymore (sorry.), but she has a ton of other great material on her site!

One of the things that is on my list is working on bow orders. I had a huge order that I was waiting on some ribbon to come in for. The rest were already in stock, but I finished these up on Friday. I’m pretty excited about them!

Of course, if you would like to order bows, please visit my FB page Hook N Stick Designs.

Now, it’s time to get the rest of the house up and moving, and get one of my freezer meals in the crock pot. I’m pretty excited about this one!

Chicken Broccoli Alfredo from Six Sisters Stuff!

One Little Thing… Freezer Inventory

Keeping track of what you have makes it easy to see what you can make!

I organized my freezer and decided that I needed a better way of keeping track of what I had and didn’t. I used to use that white board and write down what I had by category(ish) and use the Xs like I do here. Line one way for each item you have. Line the other way as you use them – making an X. It’s so much easier than changing a digit each time you grab something out of the freezer.

I took the one from this one from NW Edible (scroll down a little) and changed it up. The awesomeist thing about this printable is that it can open in Word, Pages, or as a PDF. I changed it up to make it something more usable to me by adding another column, changing the fonts a bit, and giving it smaller margins. It’s perfect for my needs.

If it were mine, I’d share my changes… but it’s not. Sorry.

I put mine in a sheet protector so I don’t have to reprint or erase. I also used a wet-erase market instead of dry erase so it is less likely that my marks will go away just by writing on the thing. It would suck to put all that work into counting to have it rub off! I also have this on my Menu board. I make a menu each week so that I can see what I need, and most importantly so I don’t have to answer THAT question 15 times a day! Posting a menu also helps me remember to get out the meat in the morning. MUCH easier than deciding what to make that night, seeing if I have all those ingredients, and then remembering to get the meat out!

Of course Pinterest has eleventy seven other freezer inventories, depending on what you like and how your family eats. Print one, protect it, fill it, out, use it.

It’ll help – trust me!!

One Week Challenge

This is my first week, in almost a year, of unemployment. I have big plans for this week! It’s Spring Break, so I have no school, and the kiddos are in Day Care for their Spring Break (it was paid for well before I knew I wouldn’t be working)… so I have a house to myself for a whole week. I am going to attempt to get this place in some sembelence of order in that week, so I am going to do my very best to get as much deep cleaning as I can.

I think that my first step today is to do ALL of my normal weekly cleaning, so it’s done and I can concentrate on the NOT-normal cleaning that I need to do. I imagine that once the deep cleaning is done that the normal weekly cleaning will go so much smoother!

So, lets look at the goals for today.

1. Clean the Kitchen (counters, wipe appliances, sweep/mop the floor)

2. Clean the Bathrooms (Here’s my Orderly list to help! Clean the Bathroom )

3. Change all bedding (I’ll probably strip the beds and Fabreeze them first)

4. Tidy every room

5. Sweep/Mop/Vacuum every room

6. Shine glass & screens (computers, tvs, windows, glass doors, china cabinet)

7. Dust flat surfaces

8. Do some laundry

I plan to drop the boys off at 8 and pick the boys up around 4. That gives me 8 hours to do all of the above and eat something. I think I can manage if I can stay away from the electronics!! As helpful as Pinterest is… it’s detrimental to my time-management skills!

Clean up the bathroom with this handy list!

One Little Thing… Make a plan

I am a list person. I make lists for everything that needs to be remembered. If I don’t, my crap memory won’t let me get ANYTHING accomplished. I also tend to get sidetracked and very easily discouraged.
Because of said sidetrack-ed-ness, I sometimes don’t get the things on my list done, but do get completely unrelated other things done. Then I add them to my list, and feel somewhat better about my accomplishments!
That led me to create a sort of master list with all the stuff I need to get done in a specific timeframe. This kind of list helps me because even though I don’t need to, say, change the batteries in the smoke alarm every week, it helps to have it jotted down somewhere to remind me when it should be done (its coming this weekend… But that’ll be another post!).
I hope that others can use what I’ve done to help them stay on track. I could post this as a .docx if anyone wants to make some changes. Comment if ya want it!

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