Monthly Meal Planning

 My sweet baby boy #1 is about to start school in just a few short weeks I will pause here for the dramatic gasp from all you fellow mamma's  and we are not talking about a couple of hours of preschool a week here folks... I am talking about the sending my little baby almost 3 year old ON A BUS (that has a car seat of course) to SCHOOL kind of school (long half days for the month of July and then full school days when school starts back up in Sept)!! This is going to change the dynamics in our family swiftly and I wasnt quite prepared for this for a couple more years yet! Am I really old enough to have a kid in school? lol   Anyways on the point of this post!

I have always despised planning and felt like it boxed me in! I see the potential benefits this type of planning has dont get me wrong  but even now the thought of planning stuff in detail  leaves me feeling slightly claustrophobic...but like I said above soon I will be dealing with school schedules, lunch packing, ect ... and I have to face the facts...as I am sure many of you moms out there can attest to, that saying "the baby ate my brain" well thats totally TRUE! and it gets worse the more of them you have! Dont you wish someone would have warned you about THAT one? Its either that or my brain is aging at a peculiarly fast pace ... so I am sticking with the first option! Thus I am diving head first into this planning mayhem and trying to remind myself that its just a PLAN if I feel like changing it ... whoopty freakin do! :P 

The first thing I wanted to do was try out monthly meal planning ! I know a lot of people who do this and I always thought... :O .... how do you plan a whole month at a time when I can hardly pick out enough for a week! But I have to tell you it really wasnt horrible - granted I havnt actually implemented it yet... (coming July 1st) But I honestly thought it was going to be this mind numbing project to put together where I stared at recipes for DAYS! But no... it only took me a couple of hours to whip together!

Step one: 

I created a word document with a list of main course dishes we like or I have been wanting to try! I shot for aprox 31 of them for now but I hope to expand on this list as we go! (If the dish was from a website I included the link next to it) 

Step two:

I downloaded a fee calendar online and using word arranged my dishes in an appealing order (of course keeping in mind I will probably still juggle things around some within the week) You can view our dinner menu here   but dont judge me on the health factor.....lol its a work in progress and I try to work in at least a couple meals a week that I know the picky little Mr. will eat! 

Step three:

This is to be completed yet but I am hoping to plan out lunches as well (at least for Owen on school days ) 

Also stay tuned for a little crafty project involving a meal planning board that will make this even easier!

I linked up to Wow Me Wednesday