Ribbon Ribbon Ribbon

Ribbon can get messy it gets shoved places and forgotten then you buy more (of the same kind) then it too gets wadded up and shoved somewhere else. Here is an easy fix.

Find some cardboard (mine is a baby wipes box). Trace a tupperware lid and make a straight cut for the bottom (the lid should be bigger than any of your spools of ribbon). Poke a hole in the upper middle using a pen, line up the second using the first as a template so the holes match. Mod Podge both sides with cute paper. Then take a cardboard pant hanger and pull off the rod part this will be your dowel. You may need to poke your spools of ribbon with a pen too to fit on the rod.

Then if you don't have spools for some, cloths pin them to the edge.

Easy, fast, free, organized.

I think next time I will try a double stacker.

Meal Schedule

I recently made up a calendar of every meal for every day for an entire month. I figured that we could follow this food schedule and then just repeat it each month. I did a WHOLE BUNCH of shopping and just multiplied the things I'd need over the next few months. Which has been a big help to get food storage and meals done.

So NOW, I know what's for dinner!

I am going to share some of my tips, calendar, and recipes in posts to come. Hopefully it will help someone else.

So here is what I've done. I figured out Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner for each day, (figured how much we eat on weekdays, the kids and I, then on weekends remembered to count daddy.) I'm super luck to have such generous and helpful parents and they have all of they're kids over every Sunday night and have dinner. So you may need to think of an extra meal. I usually have a "fill in meal" for those nights you didn't remember to put it in the crock pot or you just don't feel like making the chosen meal of the day. I have a bag of frozen pot stickers for our "fill in meal" it's easy and yummy and no one minds the "fill in meal." We have left over night on Monday's because it usually works best for us on that day. You may need to move it to a different day. And if you have no left overs, that is a "fill in meal" night. I also keep cans of soup handy which also makes for a good "fill in meal."

*These meals are what we normally eat, but I think I would like to implement more meals that have more 'food storage' ingredients.

I made the calendar first and then figured out what I'd need for each meal for the whole month. This may be different for your family. We have two adults and two small kids in our family. I'd say try to stick with the schedule for a week and see how much food your family eats and then calculate the numbers according to your family. It was a lot of work but it was worth it. These are meals I know my family likes and will eat. If you don't like the meals you may want to make up your own using mine as a guide. Here is a tip if you have your menu for an entire month you can watch the deals and sales on the meats you buy and then stock up. I have all my meat frozen and I can either stick it in the crock pot frozen or since I know what the weeks meals are I can thaw it.

Don't forget snacks: yogurt (I freeze mine), cheese, crackers, pretzels, pudding, Jell-O, apple salad, frozen/can fruit, muffins, cookies (make a batch every once in a while freeze the dough and you have a few cookies whenever you want them), cake, vegetables, raisins. I didn't calculate real specifically on the snacks.

Organize

That is a funny word now that I have to spell it out. It has nothing to do with an organ yet when you spell it out it seems it should.

Anyway on with my tip. I do like to be organized but I'm just not one of those that has months of plans in advance. Which is fine if you do but I just don't. I do keep a calender though and I love Google Calendar. It allows you to make different "calenders" which are different colors and it has a task option, a little check list, on the side you can see mine.

I have my chores that I should do each day on my calendar. These I can repeat however often I want them done. (For those odd jobs you want to remember to do on a more scheduled basis.) Most are rotated every week but I have some rotating every other week and some every 6 weeks or something strange like that. And it emails me each day of the things I'm doing that day! It's easy to use easy to look at and makes my life easy.

My point is that Google Calendar helps me to stay organized even for my chores.