Good Eats

I decided that I wanted to become a little more organized and I created a menu planner.  I have thought about doing this for quite a while and here it is; finally done and it looks pretty good if I do say so myself.

This was a pretty easy make.  The frame used to be attached to a mirror that had been left at my house years ago when I was renting my bedrooms to single girls.  I've never used the mirror, but I rather like it as a frame.  I was able to disconnect the mirror and put scrapbook paper on the backing.  The little basket at the bottom came from the dollar store and I the cute stickers that make the "Good Eats" and the little dots that have the Days of the week on them came from a scrapbook kit that I bought years ago and have never used.

I chose 4 different categories for my food:  Mexican, Italian, Breakfast, and Other.  We eat breakfast for dinner quite a bit in my house! The 5th slot is "Used".  I put the meals in there after we eat them so that we get a variety and then I will sort them back in later.  I have color organized my meals to help with sorting.  After using this a few weeks I have started putting other ethnic foods in my "Italian" slot.  I felt like my "Other" was getting rather full.  I do have one more color that I just hide behind my "Breakfast" category (it's the least full slot).  I have a few cards that are red.  They include:  new recipe, eat out, and left overs.

To fill up my menu with recipe cards I first went through my cook book from my mother and a few other books that I have and wrote down the recipes that I liked.  Then, when I was at my sister-in-law's house a little while ago, she has a menu board and I wrote down all of her recipes.  I made them into cards.  It is kind of fun because I don't know exactly what all of her meals are, so I choose one out and then look it up on the internet,  It is a fun wild card.  I have also been doing a freezer meal group and once a month I get a bunch of freezer meals.  If I like the recipe I've made cards for it.

What do I think of my menu?  I haven't been using it long, but I will say that the weeks that I have used it; I have been happier when dinner comes around.  I am not stressing about what to put on the table.  This week I was sick for a couple days and didn't use it.  I can definitely tell you that I prefer to use it!

Every time my mom sees my menu board she tells me that it needs to go on pinterest.  So, please, fill free to pin :)