Meal planning

For years I have loved meal planning because I'm a big planner!! I love knowing what is coming next and having a schedule to stick to. While I was in college and living with my husband (fiance at the time), I was also working nights and weekends. I would write out the list of meals that I was going to be making for the upcoming 2 weeks, while keeping in mind the nights that I wouldn't have to cook due to having leftovers or working. Then I would plan my grocery list based on what I needed to make those meals and would make a big shopping trip once every 2 weeks. I would have to shop for small things like eggs, bread, or milk before my big trip, but it was nice to just have to make one huge trip.

I continued this routine for quite a while. Even when Big E was born I was still doing this but not as often as I used to. Then last year I found a printable cleaning schedule. It had one page for each week of the year and on the bottom part of it there was a meal planning section. I used this sometimes, but as the year went on I used it less and less.

Recently I started a bullet journal and it has been great for me!! One of the spreads I make each week is a meal planning page and a shopping list page. I've found it easier to just shop for meals once a week. We just got a Sam's Club near us this past fall and to say we love shopping there is an understatement! We get 2 gallons of milk each week along with some produce and other various things. We have also been trying to go to Aldi to get the things we don't need to get in bulk. And then there's Walmart, we do some of our grocery shopping there as well.

Here is my current spread that I just started and am filling in with our meals for this coming week. My hubby will be away for work and I have a 5 day work week, so I'm definitely going to be planning some easy meals.

And here is one from 2 weeks ago. You can see how I made some changes to it and then I can just take my whole journal with me and cross out each item as I add it to my cart.

How do you plan out what you are making for dinner each week? Leave me some comments!

Weekend Recap- 5/14/17

Friday night my mom and I went out to do some karaoke! It wasn't as crowded as it always is when we go there so we were actually able to sing 3 songs each instead of just 2. My mom's last song was dedicated to me; she sang "In My Daughter's Eyes" by Martina McBride. And my last song, "Mama's Song" by Carrie Underwood, was dedicated to my mama!

Then on Saturday morning we went to the grand opening of the new YMCA in our area. They were offering 30 minute classes of some of the popular classes they teach and one of them was Zumba! So my mom watched the kiddos while I got my Zumba in for the day! I was looking at the class schedules and just found out that one of the branches near me offers Zumba on Friday mornings, so I'm gonna start going to that one along with my Thursday and Saturday classes!!

Little E took some more steps on his own, 17 to be exact!! He's gonna be a walker any day now, I just know it!!!

Saturday night around 10, my hubby had to go into work for a few hours. It was supposed to be on Sunday around noon, but it got pushed to Saturday night because they were ahead of schedule with things. So I sat downstairs in the living room, enjoyed a bowl of birthday cake ice cream, and watched my favorite movie, The Wizard of Oz.

I ended up falling asleep (after I was done eating my ice cream of course) and woke up around 12:30. My hubby was still at work so I went up to bed and ended up getting to sleep in till about 8:30. I would have gotten breakfast in bed if it weren't for Little E waking me up and needing fed. There's always next year! We went out and did a little shopping at Target (walked out with nothing though), Five Below, and Lowes. Both the hubby and I took a nice, long nap while the kiddos did and then we went outside to play for a bit. I was so happy it was finally a decent day so we could play outside! It was a bit windy, but I'll take that over the rain!!

After both kids got a bath and got all cleaned up, we had dinner and then just relaxed the rest of the evening before putting them to bed. Then my hubby and I played some video games before we went up to bed. But before we did, we got all caught up on Last Man Standing, which I just found out the other day that it got cancelled! So needless to say, I didn't like how the last episode ended because they didn't know it was going to be the last episode when they filmed it.

There you go. It's a little late but there's my weekend recap. Hope you had a great weekend!!