Menu Planner

This year we are determined to put an addition on our home. Our house has been for sale for 3 years and we've only had 3 showings even dropping the price considerably. In order to make room for our 4th child and to be happier in our house we are adding a new living room, bathroom, bedroom and closets. This means Penny Pinching.

Today was the start of our frugal living. I hung all the clothes out on the line to dry, I didn't drive anywhere and I taped a bunch of shows so that I could suspend our TV for the summer and save $50 a month.

I also decided to be more efficient at planning meals. Here is a Menu Planner I made today based on the design at Clairs Fairy Tale.

Of course I had to use my Cricut, for the lettering (Plantin Schoolbook), the boxes (Once Upon a Princess) and it helped me make perfect squares for the recipe cards. I wish I had done them smaller but I had to fit the ingredients on the back of each card. 

Here is the original I found on Pinterest:

I love being able to use all my little tools. I even got out the Laminator for the cards to make them more durable. I figured I can grab them and take them grocery shopping with me and they will still hold up. I purchased the Laminator off Amazon back in December for $16.99, I never realized how much I would use it. Here is the link, maybe it will go on sale again: Laminator and you can get one too!

I haven't hung the Menu Planner up in my kitchen yet because I am really short on wall space, but I will find a spot because I think it is really cute and should make meals more convenient.

I went through my cookbook and found 32 recipes that are tried and true. No new ones were included. So I have a months rotation before we have to start over again. I think this will help me incorporate more fruits and vegetables into our menu.

I entered this into the Copy Cat Challenge at http://www.kraftygirls.com/ I could enter so many projects into this challenge because I love so many things that people do but this is my favorite right now.

Cricut Creations

Here are two of the newest cards I made. I found the designs on http://fantabulouscricut.blogspot.com which is an excellent site for getting a lot of ideas. Since I am still new to this I just wanted to get the hang of layering them together and adding embellishments before I started creating my own ideas. Cricut takes practice! It also takes a lot of paper! If I didn't live 45 minutes from the craft store I would have already turned in my change bucket for more paper even though I have a lot already. I wish I had purchased more solid colors.

I used the Once Upon a Princess and Create a Critter cartridges for the cute little guys. I also used the Wild Card cart for making the shape of the cards. For the fairy I cut the card at 5 1/2" and the fairy at 4". I have not attempted envelopes yet because I am afraid to waste paper, but I will soon. You can't tell but I brushed the fairy card with a glitter from Martha Stewart that gives it a pretty gleam.