I am a terrible planner and organizer, and by extension, a kind of lazy and frantic mother. Implementing long term strategies isn't something I think about in between nappy changes, feeding frenzies, and the snooze alarm. So menu planning kind of scares me. Literally. The words menu and planning could not be less intrinsically karen.

But here I find myself a month into menu planning (project five from One Bite at a Time, which is also available for free download). I'm not talking a freezer stocked with a month's worth of meals, casseroles, and soups. I'm talking a week. One week. That's it. My menu planning is for one week at a time. And then I start again.

Here's how it works:

Start with the sales.

On Tuesday night/Wednesday morning when the sale papers come out, I scour for the cheapest produce. For us, it's usually chicken and/or ground beef (sometimes roast or pork).

Search recipes based on produce.

Once the produce is decided, I peruse my recipe book or my Delicious account for dinner recipes. When I find a few recipes or some meal stand-bys I know we all love, I go back to the sale paper and look for additions: side dishes, snacks, veg, dairy... anything that will complement the meals or feed us in between times.

Only plan for dinner.

The key here is I only plan for dinner (as Tsh suggests). Breakfast is very low key at our house: coffee for everyone and cereal for most (I kid). Lunchtime finds us all scattered, so we usually get by on sandwiches or leftovers or more coffee.

Coupons if you have 'em.

So once I have my menu, and then my shopping list off my menu, I check coupons. Usually those are few and far between. I could shop only off coupons and then have a fridge full of junk we'd never eat, so I'm careful to only clip and use what I know we'll eat. But occasionally they line up and I know I can stock up and save more!



Write it down.

I write my original menu plan for the week in a notebook, but I also put it in our google calendar with pop-up reminders and links to the recipes online. This way, I can see and display the menu for the week, but also receive a daily reminder on my phone or email.

Only planning for one meal a day, one week at a time, takes so much pressure off! And I'm not a terrific cook (we all know the man is the culinary gifted one in our family), but I do get a tremendous sense of accomplishment through the planning, the saving, and sometimes the cooking. And we're not running to the shop every other day for something. And the kids are being well-fed from all food groups. And the man, from time to time, gets the night off. No, really, I am consciously trying to up my game in this area, to free him up to do more of what he loves and needs to do.

This may not be rocket science to you, but it most definitely has rocked our world. Knowing that I can do it, empowers me to want to do it. And if I can and want to do it, there's hope for anyone.

If you're a master meal-planner, got any tips for beginners?


{this post includes an affiliate link. If you click and purchase Tsh's ebook, I am compensated a small percentage}

2011's not totally terrible writing : Toaster to the Fullest

I changed the name of this series because "best of" just sounded so, so, perfect. And me and my writing are so, so not. So it's 2011's not totally terrible writing. This one was an epiphany. Pure mind/heart explosion. And it's still true, but acknowleding it is half the battle, right?

 Right?

***

I don't read owner's manuals. I push buttons.

With each purchase or use of an electronic item, I blindly go forward, pushing buttons at random until I get the response or action I'm looking for. What do the buttons mean? I have no idea. I'm sure it's in the owner's manual. But let me just starting pushing and punching and selecting and eventually I'll get what I'm looking for.

In times of severe distress (or when I start erasing or burning things), I dig through drawers and cupboards, looking for that one coffee-stained manual. My trembling hands fumble deftly through the torn and crumpled pages, scanning for words like "menu" or "battery" or "smoke". If I'm lucky, I'll find the page that informs me how to undo what I just did, fix what I just broke, or dispose of what I just destroyed.

Occasionally I'll wonder if I'm missing something, if I'm not really enjoying these items or tools as much as I could. Perhaps the digital camera or toaster is not being used to its fullest potential. Maybe I'm not really using these items in the way they were meant to be used, therefore not allowing them the full impact they could have on my life. Perfect, unburnt toast. Photos with depth perception and clarity. Distinct alarms and sounds for every day of the week.

Maybe that would be nice.

But I'll never know. Because I don't read owner's manuals. I just push buttons.

31 days of LIVING in transition :: it's curtains for you {day 31}

Ok, girls (and man), it's the last day of this slightly underwhelming series. :) I hope there's at least been a nugget or two that has inspired you to live wherever you are for whenever and however long you are there. It's good for me to remember that we are offered life to the fullest, and we have only to say yes to take Him up on his brilliant and beautiful offer.

Yesterday we did something that I'd wanted to for awhile, but with not really knowing when or how or where this year might take us, I put it off and waited for the next step or a sign or a plane ticket. But those things haven't yet come. What did arrive, however, was a sense of peace and an intense desire to live in a place that looked a little more like home, even if only for a week or a month or a year.

We put up curtains.

Our bedroom "suite", frantic and messy and crazy at it is (for being an office/bedroom/bathroom/storage closet), is now framed with lovely inexpensive curtains that kinda match the random assortment of items that were so graciously given to our family when we returned to KC. I love them. And I stayed up late looking at them until I fell asleep with a smile on my face.

It looks like my home. And I loved waking up to them. And I look forward to walking in there and cleaning or reading or working... a smallish investment for a huge payback: feeling at home.

So that's where we end. Tomorrow I'll keep trying to live with intention, but I'll enjoy not having to make it all make sense in a blog post. Sometimes it's hard to make sense of. But I truly appreciate you allowing me to try and joining me here with comments or notes of encouragement.

31 days of LIVING in transition :: love the one you're with {day 9}

No matter how long you live somewhere, or how short-lived you think this season in life might be, it is impossible to live it to the full - to live it with intention and without regret - if you don't invest a little bit of time and energy into where you find yourself at this very moment.

I say that having missed out on this key point. For the first few years of our transitoriness (yep, it's a word - i just made it up), I was just waiting. And waiting. And checking my inbox. And our support account. I just didn't have the energy to prepare to leave AND attempt living. And that, itself, was exhausting. I never had a break from the waiting or wondering, and I didn't really enjoy the process, or the journey, which is sorta kinda the point, right?

near our "home" - for five short weeks - in North Carolina {2008}

You gotta love the one you're with. Love the town you are calling home, even if it's just a few weeks. Explore it. Take pictures of it. Meet the people. Plan an excursion. Find a church. Read the paper. Love it so that you can call it home and really mean it. And so you can miss it a little when you're gone. Trust me, it will be a sweeter memory if it's mixed with a smidgeon of homesickness, minus the regret.

Toaster to the fullest

I don't read owner's manuals. I push buttons.

With each purchase or use of an electronic item, I blindly go forward, pushing buttons at random until I get the response or action I'm looking for. What do the buttons mean? I have no idea. I'm sure it's in the owner's manual. But let me just starting pushing and punching and selecting and eventually I'll get what I'm looking for.

In times of severe distress (or when I start erasing or burning things), I dig through drawers and cupboards, looking for that one coffee-stained manual. My trembling hands fumble deftly through the torn and crumpled pages, scanning for words like "menu" or "battery" or "smoke". If I'm lucky, I'll find the page that informs me how to undo what I just did, fix what I just broke, or dispose of what I just destroyed.

Occasionally I'll wonder if I'm missing something, if I'm not really enjoying these items or tools as much as I could. Perhaps the digital camera or toaster is not being used to its fullest potential. Maybe I'm not really using these items in the way they were meant to be used, therefore not allowing them the full impact they could have on my life. Perfect, unburnt toast. Photos with depth perception and clarity. Distinct alarms and sounds for every day of the week.

Maybe that would be nice.

But I'll never know. Because I don't read owner's manuals. I just push buttons.

As opposed to the bigger things

I was gonna wait till tomorrow to link up with Gypsy Mama's Five Minute Fridays, but it just so happens that...

• the kids are all in bed and 
• it's not yet 9pm and 
• the dishwasher has already been filled and started and 
• I'm not going to go into our bedroom yet to survey the disaster there, 

so I think I've just about got five minutes to write, prompted and unedited, and share the bits with you.

Now if you yourself don't particularly feel inclined to partake in this exercise, that's totally ok. I get it and I get you and don't feel pressured to join in on this little bandwagon... (if I were to be brutally honest, I would say that I really despise the idea of being a Mommy Blogger (gasp!shock!horror!) and for this reason waited a long time to join the conversation of other Mommies and share in their journeys, though my anti-sentimental heart really wanted to) ...But if you've got something on your heart or a weight on your shoulders and five minutes of typing it out will relieve some of that pressure, I really encourage you to do so. I know that every week I have permission to spend five minutes writing, and if that's all I get, then that's really all I need.

Ok, so that took like eight minutes right there, and now I've got to start over again. So, without further ado...

On Forgetting...

Yesterday was the field trip. I remembered the permission slip. I remembered my child. I remembered to show up as I was chaperoning. But I forgot my lunch.

Today was the field day. I remembered to sign the husband up to help. I remembered to put play clothes on the boy. But I forgot to order the special "school field day" t-shirts every other student was wearing.

The sister and I made plans weeks ago to get haircuts. I forgot to make the appointment.

The girl was invited to a birthday party. I forgot to RSVP.

The wee lad is in need of cloth diapers. I forgot to wash them last night.

I am a frazzled mother, an unorganized person. I have grand ideas and schemes I hope to achieve, but I have a hard time actually remembering to make it happen. I have emails that go unanswered, phone calls unreturned, plans that need to be made...

I am trying to figure things out, to not procrastinate, to not forget (in truth, I think it's the procrastinating that leads to the forgetting). But I do think that it is maybe better to forget these little things, instead of forgetting the bigger ones. I hope I remember the latter, even at the - somewhat frequent - expense of the former.

a moment in time I don't ever want to forget

I'm that kind of mom

Last Friday it hit me: I get to be that kind of mom.

The kind of mom who accompanies field trips. The kind of mom who makes treats to send to school for birthdays. The kind of mom who parades the grounds with six preschoolers on field day, jumping through literal hoops and tying shoelaces. The kind of mom who reads to rambunctious seven- and eight-year-olds for an hour. The kind of mom who can and does say, "Yeah, I'll do it. No problem"

Because right now, it isn't a problem. We are flexible, transitioning, practicing equally-shared-parenting (most of the time), and incubating this brief familial era, holding it close to our hearts and gratefully investing in its eternal value.

This time in our lives comes, too, with a fantastic perk: I get to be that kind of mom!

Twelve years ago when we jumped off that matrimonial high dive, I didn't envision this, wasn't sure I wanted this, and there are times when I wake up kinda don't feel like doing this... but for the moms who don't get to, or because of life's circumstances can't, I don't want to throw away this priceless gift.

Because, the truth is, I couldn't have known I needed this.

Like the three-toed sloth

After I write something painfully personal, I always feel a little self-indulgent. Should I really have written that? Did I say too much? Is my life/experience/situation really all that rare/difficult/important? I hem and I haw and I chew down some fingernails, and sometimes, I submit.

Today you can find these mildly indulgent, overly confessional, and hopefully, familiar thoughts that also seem familiar to you, over at (in)courage. Here's a sneak preview:

We had a wedding, then a marriage, then a baby, then a family… all of it spread out over time, but passing me by in a blur, simply because I let it be that way. Living intentionally as a wife and mother was something I assumed would come naturally, like singing harmonies or delivering punch-lines at parties. And when it didn’t come naturally...

Visit me (us) over at (in)courage to read the rest!

The non-lameness of a Family Purpose Statement

Here you have it: our family purpose statement. We'd been reflecting on such a statement for about a month now, with prompting from Organized Simplicity. We made lists, discussed dreams from the past and hopes for the future, reflecting on what we wanted to be like and how we felt God made us to be. We started with a super, simple statement:

Love a lot: Love God. Love people. Love eachother.

We liked this general purpose a lot, but wanted to have some concrete descriptors as to what that love would look like on a tangible level. In the end, we came up with this:

We want to display this somewhere in our apartment, small enough that we can take it with us anywhere and still know that we're home. Thoughts?