Meal Planning Made Easy (or easier)

The hardest part of meal planning for me is figuring out what to cook, and then hoping we actually have the right ingredients to make it. I have never been good at planning meals ahead of time even though I know it should make things easier. I've tried writing out menus for a week or a month on paper, or just keeping a list of meal ideas, but I haven't been good about making sure I have the ingredients ahead of time. Another problem has been that when I see what I planned for the day a week previously, it doesn't sound good anymore and I don't feel like making it.

So...I think I may have found a solution! I found this online through pinterest and wanted one right away!

http://orgjunkie.com/2011/01/magnetic-menu-plan-board-giveaway.html

It is a magnetic menu calendar with meal ideas on cute, magnetic strips of paper. There are several things I love about this: 1) The meal ideas are all right there in front of me and I don't have to go searching through recipes to decide what to put on the menu for the week - I can just glance at my board and see what pops out. 2) The meal ideas are on magnetic strips and easy to move around - if I don't feel like making something that is on the menu for that day, I can easily just switch it with another day - no erasing, no re-writing, just quick and easy. 3) Chad volunteered to use it to plan the meals for August - yeah! 4) It's cute!

I invited some of my good friends to do this project with me. We went to Wal-Mart and bought magnetic strips for $2 and the magnetic, whietboard calendars for $10 (we were going to make our own with sheet metal - this was much easier). We already had the paper to make it cute and we used scotch tape to "laminate" the meal ideas. After brainstorming meal ideas (and going through recipes and cookbooks - hopefully saving me from doing that much in the future), printing, cutting, laminating, cutting again, and attaching magnets, here is my first finished meal calendar. I made this one for my mom who is the one who has given me almost all the meal ideas I have and taught me how to make them - I hope I can cook like her some day!


Then I made this one for our house. I decided to spray paint the frame so it matched our kitchen and front room.

I haven't started using this yet because we just got back from a trip to Idaho and now I'm waiting for Chad to plan the August menu, which is just a few days away. Hopefully this will really help me to plan ahead and make better meals. We'll see!