Meal Planner

I know, I know. Neither papercrafting or jewellery today. But as I was pondering what to write about I ALSO happened to be working on my meal plan/grocery list, and I realized, DUH, I had something to share. :-) I mean, when I saw the idea for the first time I thought it was GREAT, so hopefully someone out there will agree with me and find it useful, too!

I have some friends who are far too artistic and one day saw a post on Facebook from their company, Ollibird, about a meal planner. Well, I happen to have a degree in kinesiology and am studying to be a bona fide health care professional, so I LOVE all things health-related, and to me, meal planning fits in that category.

So I clicked on their link to see what was up.

Sheer genius. I LOVE it. And then I started surfing around and found other design options for the same thing - a beautifully designed weekly menu planner you print out and pop into a frame, then write on with an erasable marker.

I can't tell you how much I love these, and how WONDERFULLY the fun, bright colours will go in my kitchen!!

Buuuut...even at a measly $10, with neither my hubs or I working right now (BOO to layoffs!), I couldn't justify spending the money, even though I was looking at this for myself and a friend as a Christmas present. (I TOTALLY will purchase one as soon as I have a job - I LOVE LOVE LOVE the colours of the 'bright & mod' planner! SO FUN!)

So...I made my own!

It's not NEARLY as fun and fancy - I don't have any of the mad skillz the Ollibird group do, but I can click and drag shapes in Google Docs like a superstar; here's what I came up with:

I then bustled my butt over to WalMart, where I found some fabulous black frames for like, a buck, and grabbed a black "lumocolor" marker (you know the kinds your profs use on overheads in lectures?).

Voila!

I currently have two weeks' dinners planned out on it - necessary when relying on outside assistance for groceries, OY! - and LOVE that each day instead of trying to rack my brain to answer "what should I make for dinner" all I have to do is glance over at my meal planner and get started. It's wonderful!

Feel free to download my amateur version, above, but definitely look at the fun options Ollibird has to offer - they are only $10 (USD) and you can print them as many times as you like! AND they're way prettier than my perfectly adequate copy.

Happy Thursday, everyone, and get your meals organized! It's FABULOUS!