Finish installing kitchen cabinet handles (and childproof latches). This is another home improvement project that I did the bulk of years ago, but never quite finished. Most of the cabinets and drawers in our kitchen have pulls, but there are a few — all drawers — still lacking because I didn’t have a proper jig. (I really need to quit doing projects only halfway!) I also need to install child safety latches on a few key cabinets that Emma really shouldn’t get into.
Sew myself a top. I’m debating between just making one on my own (by following a pattern, of course) or taking a class at a local sewing shop. The upside of the sewing shop is that I’ll have someone to provide help and advice, since I’ve never made any real clothes before. The downside is that I don’t have a choice of which pattern to use, and I suspect the one done in the class will be a bit dated.
Plan Emma’s 1st birthday! I can’t believe this is actually an item on my list. Oh my goodness. My baby is going to be 1 in just over a month.
Try a menu planning service for a week. There are a number of different websites that let you basically pick a meal plan for a week, and they provide recipes and shopping lists. (Some are free, some charge a subscription fee.) On one hand, I think this is an awesome idea! It would eliminate Jose and I getting home from work, turning to each other, and one of us saying “so…what do we have in the fridge for dinner?” On the other hand, I worry that it’d just be one more thing to stress out about. What if I can’t find certain ingredients? What if it takes too much prep time? What if we just don’t feel like having XYZ on a given night? This month I’d like to try it for a week and see how it works. If any of you have used one of those plans before, I’m open to suggestion.
Complete 1 M.A. book layout. So the new option for my M.A. Project isn’t going to work out. Sigh. Nonetheless, I’m moving forward with my Plan B.
Keep the kitchen island (mostly) clean. I have a bad habit of junking up the island with assorted stuff — mail, papers, bits and bobs, miscellaneous items that need other homes. The fact that our island is so large just makes the problem worse! When it becomes hard to cook because theres too much stuff in the way…well, that’s a problem. This month I want to get in the habit of clearing the clutter each evening so it doesn’t get out of hand.
I tried Relish a few years ago, I am not sure it even exists any more, but it provides 5 meals with a grocery list that is supposed to be less than $100 (as long as you have some pantry staples). The grocery list was always more for me because I tended to “upgrade” ingredients but it worked pretty well. I hear the “Fresh 20” list (which uses pantry staples and you need to buy 20 fresh ingredients weekly) is a good service, haven’t tried it yet.
I meal-plan every Sunday for Sunday through Thursday. Sunday is often laid back, but I have to have complete plans for Mon – Thurs because the nanny cooks. I have a book of recipes, most copied from books, some hand-written, and I pick from that book. I then do all grocery shopping for the week on Sunday. That generally gets us through Saturday morning, and we’ll do a quick trip Saturday morning.
Anyway, it is really nice never to have to: 1.) Do any shopping during the week 2.) Wonder what we’re going to eat for dinner
It takes a certain amount of discipline, and I am always feeling lazy about doing it Sunday, but it’s totally worth it. I have never tried a service. I try to stick to simple meals that make decent leftovers so the nanny only has to cook every other day.
I’ve been using fresh20 for almost a year now. It is great. We make 3 of 5 meals and that is plenty.
I haven’t tried a meal planning service, but every year Real Simple has an issue where they provide a whole month of nightly recipes with a grocery list. We found that there are very few that work with our tastes. But often there is one or two a week that are fun to try. I’d worry that for us a recipe service wouldn’t fit with our tastes, but that would have been less of a problem before the kids ate with us.
We do sit down every weekend and meal plan before our main weekly grocery trip. It’s varied over the years – sometimes I get out all my cookbooks and get creative, sometimes it’s just 7 words so that we at least have an idea that food will be there. I need that pre-planning for sure.
The kitchen island has been on my “figure out a solution” list since we moved in here years ago! I look at Catie and think – she’s been alive less time than most of the things on my house fix-up list!
I have looked at meal plans before in magazines but they always seem unrealistic and over-complicated. I would recommend starting a week planned with some super basic recipes that you are already familiar with, mixing in a couple more complicated or new ones. I know I would find it tiring to try *new* recipes every day for a week.
A couple years ago I took out all my cookbooks and wrote down a list of about 40 meals that Joel and I both like, that I refer to each time we feel like we are running out of ideas or eating out all the time. A lot of the meals on the list are super basic like spaghetti or baked chicken or tacos, but I found just having a list to look without digging through cookbooks every week was really helpful in meal planning.