tag: kitchen



Jan 07
2012
 

free printable – meal planner – updated

Since I originally posted about my meal planning, I have made some tweaks based on my own use and some comments from people. I added 2 more days for those who like to plan the whole week, turned the paper upright, reduced the amount of groceries and added an area for notes (or a recipe). I am adding this version to download but keeping the original as well. Let me know what you guys think.

free printable: meal planner v.2

Download this free printable PDF (for personal use only).

So I have been meal planning for about 2 months now and can’t get over how awesome it is. We save money on groceries, but more than that, we aren’t throwing out rotten food that never got used, and I don’t stress in the evenings on what to make.

Now my meal planning system is based on advice I have been given from good friends and is very simple:

  • Pick 5 evening meals per week and buy groceries for those. (I don’t meal plan breakfast or lunch, just supper.)

  • Don’t decide what meal for what day, on your first day pick the meal you feel like cooking and cross it off your list.

  • Work your way through the list until you have made all five meals.

The reason you choose five meals is because two of the days will be leftovers. That depends really on what you make and how much you make. Often I find day 3 is a good leftover meal of day 1 & 2.

I love that this system is simple and flexible and just allows me to decide daily what I want to make but also removes the “what should we have for dinner” frustration in the kitchen.

I have made myself a pretty meal planning PDF that I am now using in my kitchen household files that combines my meal list with my grocery list. I added checkboxes to my grocery list as I HATE missing things when I am at the store.

free printable: meal planner

Download this free printable PDF (for personal use only). Enjoy!

Linking up to: I’m an Organizing Junkie’s Menu Plan Monday

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Posted by Janet under create, free printables, organize
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Oct 15
2011
 

under cover

I am enjoying this new “game” of trying to finish stuff up in the house without spending money. I have learned my ability to think outside the box, to be inventive and resourceful and to not assume the best answer is the one I have to go out and buy.

For example, since I moved my office to the basement, I also took my under desk cable organizer from Ikea with me. This one:

ikea signum cable organizer


And while it is a great solution and I love it for the basement, I didn’t like the loss of being able to hide my cables in the kitchen. I still use my desk area for my laptop and a lamp and now Little Man’s DS charger so I still needed a solution.

So I went shopping in my house. And I found these:

my supplies


This is a dollar store basket, a couple of extra spacers from our television wall mount (for the smaller sizes) and some screws.

And this is what I came up with.

my homemade cable organizer


I attached a power bar to the underside of my desk and right next to it I attached the basket using the spacers to keep it slightly lowered from the desktop for easy access. I cut some of the holes in the sides of the basket to make bigger spaces to wind the cords through.

So for $0, I was able to come up with a solution I like and NEVER have to look at. Here is what my desk looks like now:

organized desk

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Posted by Janet under create, organize, our house
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Sep 12
2011
 

things change

So things in the house are a-changing. I have an office (which is completed & painted & functional but disorganized & messy & not picture ready – future post!) and because I was moving stuff downstairs to their new locations, I made some changes upstairs.

First off, the kitchen desk area. I had NEVER taken a picture of this area while I worked there because I could never seem to get it all organized or tidy looking. It was such a small area and things tended to get placed, piled and shuffled. But I did find a picture my son took of it on his Fisher Price camera (hence the blur).

Before:

kitchen desk: before

Yup, it was THAT bad! Ack. But now that my computer, printer and paperwork are all finding their ways downstairs, this desk area has been reassigned for homework and my morning coffee/laptop time. Ahh! So tidy!

After:

kitchen desk: after

You will notice that above the desk I removed the painted stars. I love my stars but wasn’t loving them in this location anymore. They didn’t have enough presence to stand out & didn’t blend enough to only add texture. So I moved them into the dining room.

Before:

dining room: before

And I moved the silhouettes to the other side of the kitchen wall and framed them in black (didn’t like the black frames next to the black hutch but like them next to the white drapes)

After:

dining room: after

And lastly during all this change-a-roo-ing, I added to my kids art gallery wall. I realized I wanted something more filled up and had seen a picture on pinterest that I loved (and reminded me a lot of our wall!).

Before:

gallery wall: before

Inspiration:

inspiration picture from pinterest.com


[Source: asoftplace.net via janet on Pinterest]

So I added some great art the kids made (and a couple by their cousins during their visit). I painted the word “create” black (wanted it to stand out.) Made a “make art” painting myself. And just filled the wall.

After:

gallery wall: after

These changes have sparked a new energy into me and is pushing me to move forward with other ideas around the house. After all, if I don’t love it in the end…

I can always change it!

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Posted by Janet under decorate, our house
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Apr 10
2011
 

the art wall

I finished the creative wall space in the kitchen today with two magnet boards, one for each kid to showcase their art. I found two discount frames from Michaels and bought a piece of sheet metal from Home Depot which I was able to use an Xacto knife to cut down into two pieces the correct size. The great thing about the metal is that it was thin enough for me to keep the piece of glass behind it in case I ever want to use them as picture frames again. I also painted my wood “create” the same blue as I have been putting throughout the kitchen and house.

I am looking forward to the constant stream of artwork now.

the creative wall space

the creative wall space

Now I just have to paint that vent to blend into the wall. Someday.

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Posted by Janet under decorate, organize
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Mar 31
2011
 

colourful stars

So I don’t have a real before picture of this area, but next to the desk area in our kitchen (currently where I work until I get my office next month!) I had hung my three barn stars that I had collected over the years. Two were brown and one was blue. Now one thing that I realized when I looked at them daily is that they bugged me! They really bugged me.

I am learning that in my design tastes, I don’t like high contrast. It is knowledge that is really helping me to figure out the areas that draw my eye (in a bad way) and to change them to be something I love. So I knew I had to change these dark stars that sat on my yellow walls. But I liked the stars, so what I need to do was keep them but change them.

And then I came across the blog junk garden girl which was FILLED with lots of inspirational photos for me. And this one in particular caught my eye:

kitchen stars

source: junk garden girl

The stars! Look at how great they look, all textured and painted. So I pulled out my trusty acrylics and some awesome stencils I got from the dollar store and came up with this:

kitchen stars

my new stars

Here are the close ups of the designs:

star close up

green & swirly

star close up

green & floral

star close up

blue damask

Can you tell what my favourite colours are?

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Posted by Janet under decorate
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Mar 30
2011
 

french to farm

So I have had this sign in my kitchen for years. I can’t even remember where I originally picked it up at, but it was perfect for hanging under my cabinets on the back splash where I wanted a little interest. It worked o.k in our last house as you can see from this picture:

sign before: cafe

sign before: cafe

As a designer, there was always a few things that bugged me about this sign:

  1. The letter spacing was TOO wide. In fact the sign was too wide for only the word “cafe” but it was a nice size for a sign.
  2. The large letter “c” was too fat for the other letters, it is a problem that bugs me with all small cap designs, but really bugged me here.
  3. The fake texture looked cheesy up close.

So when I pulled out this sign at the new house, I knew right away it wouldn’t work. At first I just put it aside and then decided it was a perfect opportunity to MAKE it work and fix all those issues I had before. So going with my country/farmhouse theme on the main level, I looked up some vintage signs for inspiration and then came up with this:

sign after: farm fresh eggs

sign after: farm fresh eggs

I love it! It now adds a little colour above the stove, doesn’t bug me anymore and fits with our decor.

Now what else can I paint? ;)

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Posted by Janet under create, decorate
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