Meal Planning

So, today I tried something new.  It's something I've been wanting (okay...needing) to do for quite some time.  I actually planned out an entire week's meal on paper!!!  My final product looks like this:

I am over the moon thrilled that I finally did this.  I'm hoping to make it a weekly habit, possibly growing into a full month meal plan.  Only time will tell if that will actually happen.

I've always been pretty good at cooking at home and really do enjoy it.  However, since Meredith came along it's been too easy to say, "let's just go out to eat", if we can't easily find something to make.  I'm big on crockpot meals, but I've noticed lately that I will be short one ingredient and have to run to the store for that one item, which I find to be a pain with a 1 year-old.  So, I looked in our pantry to see what items we had and checked out the meat in the freezer, looked at some recipes online, and came up with my tentative daily meals.  This entire process took about 20-30 minutes.  Not too bad for a first timer.  Then, Meredith and I headed to Aldi and Meijer to pick up the additional ingredients we didn't already have in stock and voila!  I don't have to hit the stores again for at least 5 days and it feels awesome :)

Now I better get back to the amazing smell of chili drifting through my house....