Projects!

Anyone who knows me, knows I love to make crafts and projects.  I swear I have about 50 projects waiting to be done. Not to mention my scrapbooking. . . Anyways, the craft juices have been flowing, especially since I started following a couple of awesome craft blogs.  Thanks to iGoogle, whenever a blog I follow is updated, it comes straight to my home page. No more clicking links to see who's updated for me. I love it and I am having so much fun creating.  Many of you may be asking, "When does she find time with 5 little kids?"  The answer : I don't know, I just do.  I love it, I need it, so I do it.  So I thought I would share with you some of my latest creations:

Meal Planner  I saw someone selling these dinner idea kits.  They send you recipe cards with meals for a month that you can put into pockets and plan for.  I loved this. I know that when I plan meals ahead of time not only do we eat better, but I shop smarter at the grocery store too.  So it saves time trying to decide what to eat each night and saves money at the store.  A win-win situation.  I used a similar template as they did seen below:

 

I created the above card on an Excel spreadsheet and made a list of the dinners I most frequently make (there were more than I thought).  Then I broke down the ingredients into the columns by meat, spices, pantry, fresh, frozen.  I randomly picked out 14 for the next two weeks meals.  I used these cards to make my grocery list adding anything I didn't already have at home.

 

 Next, I made the above pocket system to put up on my wall.  I used a 12x12 piece of scrapbook paper and cut out 7 - 3 1/2 inch strips for pockets. I sewed the pockets 1 1/4 inches apart to allow me to see the titles of the meals.  Then I sewed up the middle.  I hung it up with some cute ribbon  and !voila! 2 weeks of meals planned up.  I've been using it for about 2weeks so far and I love it.  No more late dinners trying to figure out what sounds good to eat tonight.

"Spuritos"
I am a big sucker for fun holiday inspired treats and food to do with the kids.  Above is our spider burrito or "spurrito" as the kids decided to call it.  I used refried beans shaped in a circle, then made a smaller circle of beef inside. I used two dollops of sour cream for the eyes and fried tortilla strips for the legs. I let the kids design with toppings - tomato wedges or red peppers for the mouth, onion, olives and cheese to decorate.  It was a huge hit.  When they were all done decorating, we rolled them up and ate them. And the best part is that the kids ate more veggies than usual because they were having fun decorating.

 

I've also been working on my fall decorations.  Above are my new little pumpkins for my mantle. I had some felt ones I made years and years ago, but there were getting a little worn out.  I've been seeing lots of cute variations of cloth pumpkins this season and knew I wanted to do it.  Jared works for a company that sells window treatments and came home with all these cool swatches of material left over from patterns they no longer sell.  "I can use them."  I loved these fall colors. I different sized squares and carefully gathered them at the top. Instead of stuffing I used plastic grocery bags (how's that for recycling). I had more than enough on hand.  I cleaned up the top edges, snipping away the tips of my squares and tied it off with ribbon.  I found some sticks in my yard for the stem.  Love these!
 

I also created some cute wind socks for my porch.  I used an old hanger and curved it around one of my drink pitchers to hold the tops.  The kids love it.  And I feel more festive having this kind of stuff around.

Hope you enjoyed my new projects. I'm sure there are more to come.  Hopefully I'll blog more this way.