Meal Planning & Menu Board {tutorial}

I decided about 6 months ago to start meal planning in an effort to save money at the grocery store (and loose weight!). It also keeps us from eating out too often. When we know what we are having for dinner and something is planned, there isn't temptation to just grab something quick out. Here, I will share my process for how I meal plan.

First, I went through the mess that was my "recipe cabinet". I got all my cookbooks, ripped-out-magazine pages, recipes I have scribbled down, etc. and I wrote down the recipes that we liked/looked good on index cards. It took a lot of time and several hand cramps to get everything down, but now I have a nice stash of recipes that are easy to look through and uniform. (Have I ever mentioned I'm an organization junkie? No?) Now everytime I get a recipe, I write it down on a index card and stash it in the recipe box and everything is in one place. No more looking through books, papers and pages for good recipes. There were a few things we like to eat that don't require a recipe (tacos, breakfast, ect) and for these I just wrote them down on a colored card stock.

Now that I had all my recipes in one place, it was easier to decide what we want for dinners every week. I do all of my grocery shopping on Sundays. So, Sunday morning Chad and I go through the recipe cards and choose what we want to have for dinner that week.

Then, I make my grocery list based on our meals. I have all the ingredients written on the index cards. I go through my pantry and fridge and then whatever I don't have goes on the list.

I take the index cards and put them on my awesome Menu Board that I made (see below). I don't necessarily plan what we are having each night specifically. That night, depending on what is thawed out, any time constraints and what we feel like, I decide what to make.

Menu Board:

In January, I saw this really cute menu board on pinterest and decided it would fit perfectly into my menu planning. It was super simple to make and it's adorable. Here's how I made it.

Supplies:

1)1 piece of canvas (or anything large and flat: cookie sheet, piece of wood, etc)
2) Hot glue gun
3) 7 Clothes pins
4) Markers
5) 1 piece of fabric large enough to fit over the canvas
6) Nails (to hang)
7) Card stock

Steps:

1. Hot glue the fabric to the canvas.

2. Cut out your card stock and write your days of the week on them and make a cute "menu" title.

3. Hot glue the clothes pins evenly down the side of the canvas.

4. Hot glue the card stock letters to the clothes pins

5. I covered a small box in card stock and hot glued the box to the board to keep pens and misc papers in.

6. Glue the "menu" title on.

Enjoy!

I love having this in the kitchen. I can just look at the board and see what's for dinner that night and it's decorative!

50 "First" Dates Restaurant Guide

Happy Valentine's Day! ♥ I have to admit I'm not one to make a big deal about Valentine's Day in the past. This year Chad and I decided that with the money being spent on the basement we wouldn't get each other gifts. So it worked out prefectly when I thought of a great "homemade" gift: A Restaurant Guide!

Chad and I LOVE to eat out at different restaurants. We have our favorites that we frequent often but we also love to try new places we have never been. I thought that it would be nice to have a book full of places around the city we have never been to eat. I put together a book "50 'first' dates" (credit to our friend Ben for coming up with the name). There are 50 places to eat in the book and they range from fast-food-type burgers and fries to extremely fancy steakhouses with everything in between.

I started by asking our friends for suggestions of really good restuarants they have eaten at around town that they would recommend. Boy did they respond. I got some amazing suggestions. It was important that these were all places that we have never eaten before. (This seriously slimmed down our options, but that's what makes it fun!)

After that I had about 25 places our friends had suggested. (I was only half way!). I researched on cincyusa.com and Yelp for local places that have good reviews. I found another 15 places that were highly recommended. The last thing I did was look on GoogleMaps for "food" near our house. I found another 5-6 places close to our house that we have been wanting to try/looked good. I thought this was important because most of the time when we go out to eat we don't really want to travel far. So having a good portion of the places close to our house was crucial.

Then I had 46 places to eat. 4 more to go! It took me longer to find the last 4 places than it did to find the first 46. I had exhausted all my options! I am pretty sure I had gone through every restaurant in the city! Either it was on the list already, we have eaten there before, I knew Chad would not eat the food they served (i.e Thai, French, ...etc) or it was way too far away. Finally, after going back through our friends and the websites again and again I had reached my goal of 50!

Once I had all the restaurants in a list. I put the restaurant logo at the top of the page with the name, location (what part of town), what kind of food they have, any description/saying/fun facts, price range and who recommended it to us all listed below. I sorted the binder by price range and then by location. I put a set of instructions on the front and we were good to go!

The idea is that on "date nights" when we can't decide where to eat, we will go to the binder and choose a place (based on price, location...etc). I got a set of stickers (green, orange and pink) and once we went and ate at a restaurant, we would use the binder to mark whether we loved it (green), it was okay (orange) or we would never return (pink)! I left a spot on each page for "opinion" with a box for the sticker to go.

Over the years we can add to the binder and I think it will be a fun keepsake. If nothing else, it will help with the hour long battle of "where do you want to eat tonight?" "I don't care, where do you want to eat?"

He gets a recycled Victoria's Secret bag....

I had to buy the 1/2 inch binder $3, dividers $1 and colored stickers $2 for a total of $6.  It was a cheap, cute and personal Valentine's day gift! Those are my favorite.

He loved it!

I also made him some Valentine's day cake pops out of his favorite cake (Marble Fudge) and icing (cream cheese). I colored my chocolate a festive pink and added sprinkles for fun and flare!

Recipe:

1 box cake mix (egg, oil, water)

1 jar icing

Bake cake according to box. Allow to cool. Then cut up cake into small pieces. Place cake bits in mixer with jar of icing and mix away! Put remaining cake/icing mixture back into cake pan and cool in refridgerator over night (at least 2 hours). Form mixture into balls.

These are cake balls, not meatballs..... I got 50 cake balls out of my recipe but it depends on the size ball you make.

Melt chocolate in microwave (add coloring of choice). I used Crisco to thin out the chocolate, when you add the coloring it tends to thicken up. Also you will have to microwave your chocolate several times thoughout the process because it will harden up on you. Dip balls into chocolate, I used some candy sticks to dip the chocolate with, a toothpick will not work, it's not strong enough. You can use nothing but its REALLY messy that way. I recommend the candy (lollipop) sticks. Add sprinkles or design and allow to dry!

They were super easy and amazingly cute! Enjoy!

I'll leave you with my Valentine's Day Chalkboard design! I hope you all have a 

♥ HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY! ♥

DIY Laundry Detergent {tutorial}

Unfortunately, I don't have any basement updates for you today. We took a break this weekend. I was on matron of honor duties making centerpieces and Chad was away visiting his brother so no renovations took place! I thought I would take this time to share my homemade laundry detergent recipe that we have been using. 

Let me start out by sharing our laundry detergent dilemma. I am a Tide girl. My family has used Tide my whole life. I think it smells great and gets clothes clean. Chad is a "whatever is cheapest at the store" kinda guy. So when we got married we went back and forth between Tide and cheap off-brand detergents. I didn't think that the off-brand soaps got our clothes clean enough and Chad couldn't stand to spend $15 on a small bottle of detergent that would last us 2 weeks. I will admit, when I saw these pinterest posts about making your own laundry detergent I was a little skeptical. I needed something that smelled great but also got our clothes clean! 

Then I stumbled upon this post and she seemed to have the same dilemma as me. She promised clean, good smelling clothes for a CHEAP price. So I thought I would give it a go and I am very pleased with the result. 

Here is what I used:

one. two. three. four. five. six

Here is the recipe: 

1 (4lb) box of Arm & Hammer Baking Soda

1 (3lb 7 oz) box Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda

1 (4lb 12oz) box Borax 

5 (5.5 oz) bars Fels-Naptha soap

1 (3lb) container OxiClean

1 (55oz) Bottle Purex Cyrstals Fabric Softener (I used the Lavender Blossoms flavor but they have others)

You will also need a cheese grater and a LARGE tub or bucket. 

Start by grating the 5 bars of soap on the cheese grater into the tub/bucket. This is the hardest part and gives you a nice arm workout! Be sure not to grate your hand! Once all the bars are grated, dump in the rest of the ingredients and mix well. The OxiClean came with a measuring cup which I used to stir it all up. It takes awhile to get everything mixed together and it makes a TON of detergent! Save the Purex bottle and cap. I filled the Purex bottle with the homemade detergent and this was easier to work with than the HUGE tub. I use the cap to measure the detergent for each load. Just 3/4 of a cap full for a large load of laundry. 

I made this back in September (5 months ago) and I still have over half of my tub still left over. I have no doubts that this will last us a year. I do about 4-6 loads of laundry a week. 

Okay here is the best part. This only cost $33. I got everything from Kroger, most was found in the laundry isle. $33 for a year supply of laundry detergent cannot be beat. It leaves our clothes with a subtle clean/lavender scent and it really works to get the clothes clean!

I am super happy with this recipe and recommend it!

Chalkboard {tutorial}

This post will prove to you how much of a procrastinator I am! This time last year I got inspired by blogs like  littlebabygarvin and becomingthebarrs and I decided that I wanted to make my own chalkboard. I went to my local second hand store in search for a picture frame with a wooden back. I was in luck and found one for dirt cheap ($10, I think). Take a look at this beauty....

Can't you just picture this hanging in your dining room? Okay no, you can't because it's hideous and that's why I found it at St. Vincent de Paul! Anywho, Once I got this bad boy home, (which was not as easy as it may seem. I have a little car and this is a pretty big picture) I disassembled it. The wooden backing was held on by staples that were bent up holding it on. Much like a real picture frame does to the glass/cardboard. So I had to bend ALL those staples and remove the wooden back. Once that was off I proceeded to paint the frame white. I used just normal white paint (I think we had white trim paint in the garage). 

Looks much better already!

Then I sat that up to dry and started on the actual chalkboard part. For this I used a mixture of paint and grout. I mixed it until I had a good consistency. There are recipes out there, feel free to google them, but I just eye balled it. For the record, they do make chalkboard paint. And somewhere in some store it is sold. However, I looked everywhere I thought it should be (Walmart, Joann...etc) and had no luck. So I resorted to the DIY version, which seemed appropriate anyways! The paint is thicker than normal paint and you want to do a couple of coats. 

Viola, a chalkboard!

Then all that was left was to let it all dry and reassemble the backing to the frame (with the little staples). The only other thing I did, which was recommended on little baby garvin's tutorial was I coated the entire chalkboard in chalk and then erased it. This "set" the chalkboard so that when it was written on it wouldn't leave behind an imprint once erased.

Now, back to my procrastination. I was so proud of myself for making this chalkboard and so excited to use it. Then I couldn't find anywhere to hang it. So I did what all procrastinators do and I put it in a corner in a room and forgot about it. 

Until today! I finally got it out of its hiding place and started to doodle. It's nothing fancy and I need some practice with my art skills but I think it's cute and a good start for my first go at it! Yay, go me!

Now I still have to find a place to hang it!