Sharing Our Personal Weekly Plan and No Waste Food Menu for 1/20/14 Week – Get Your Free Downloads Too

Time to share our plan and our menu for this week 1/20 –  – 1/26/14.  We actually haven’t shared our personal plan for a few months, so we thought it would be a good time to share again and encourage you to plan for the week and get your free downloads too! Part of the reason for sharing this with you this week is because both of these downloads, but especially the “No Food Waste Menu” will help you to have a smooth penniless week next week (as we know hundreds of you are joining us for penniless week next week to jumpstart financial goals – read about that HERE).

I am going to share two downloads that I complete each week: our THRIFTY Plan and our No Food Waste Menu.

You can also check out these links to help you!

• Menu Planning
• Our Weekly Planner with free download

Here’s my plan this week:

T – stands for Thrifty – what are my thrifty goals for the week?

• Make mouthwash
• Make Baby Wipes
• Make Homemade Bulk Taco Seasoning

H – stands for Home – what are some things I/we need to do around and for our home?

• Clean out Central Closet
• Amazon S&S
• Re-Organize School Room

R – stands for Relationships – a place where I write down who I need to call, send a note to or remember a birthday/event.

• Make mom’s birthday cards
• Finalize Al’s parents upcoming visit details
• Confirm playdate with Amy and kids for Friday

I – stands for Involvement – this is the part of my planner that allows me and my family to be involved in our community and church in small ways each week.

• Collect items for fundraising auction
• Prepare for overnight guests from our hospitality network

F – stands for Finances – What financial tasks do we need to complete this week: (also as we continue to find our 2% cuts each month!)

• Re-evaluate 2014 budget
• Submit for HSA Reimbursement

T – stands for To-Do’s– misc. things I need to do this week!

• Make eye Dr. appointments
• Have car tires checked
• Return un-used spray paint to Hobby Lobby
• Alex call client “L”

Y – stands for You – what are some things that I can do for myself to de-stress and relax for all of the hard work!

• Dr. appt. Thursday at 4pm
• Organize baby stuff for baby scrapbooks
• Get baby pics for scrapbooks developed
• Attend women’s retreat on Saturday at 9am

Plus I have my developing shopping list and other tasks list on the right for those extras.

If you would like to print your own THRIFTY weekly planner, you can do so below. Alex designed it to where it requires very little ink and in fact you can print it in fast draft/grayscale to use even less ink.  But either one uses miniscule amount of ink! I would recommend printing or copy several as I often write plans a couple of weeks ahead too!

Please note, if you are reading this email in our rss feed or our email newsletter, you may have to click to the post HERE to print this download. 

<== Download your printable Weekly Thrifty Planner HERE

 

Here’s our planned dinner menu for the week!

This is the “No Waste Food Menu Planner” and you can get all of the information on it in our previous post HERE. 

Before I make the menu, I first fill-in the right hand side of the page in the box that says “food to use this week.”  This allows me to incorporate all of the foods that will be expiring soon into my menu this week!

I also shared a really cool tool on Google to help you find recipes to use all of those odds and ends.

But in order to fully understand what this menu is about, you need to see the full tutorial HERE.

Here’s the foods I need to use – remember, my menu is not limited to these items, I just need to include them somewhere so I don’t have to throw them out later !

Fridge foods: fresh Mozzarella chunk, cucumber, avocado, red cabbage, kale, broccoli, Romaine lettuce, apples, pears, Artisan rolls, red pepper, onion, baby carrots, cottage cheese, sour cream.

Pantry foods: Bread, tortillas, volcano rice, 9-grain cereal, rice chips, pineapple, hot dog buns, bananas

Freezer foods: ham lunchmeat (nitrate free), beef short ribs, chicken, peas, breakfast hot pockets

So with these foods and other foods in my house right now, here’s the menu we have this week!

Snacks for the week: cottage cheese, apples, crackers, rice chips, pears, veggie chips, oranges

Monday:

Breakfast – Savory Rice, Lunch – nitrate-free uncured beef hotdogs and cucumber salad, Dinner – Sandwiches, green salad, fresh cut pears

Tuesday: (We spend much of the day with our homeschool co-op called Classical Conversations)

Breakfast – quick breakfast hot pockets, Lunch – pizza party at co-op (took sliced oranges, carrots and hummus and rice chips for sides), Dinner – Chicken Marsala, Volcano Rice, Roasted Broccoli

Wednesday:

Breakfast – 9-grain Cereal, Lunch- Quesadillas, Dinner – Pan fried chicken with rice, kale chips and artisan rolls

Thursday:

Breakfast – Banana Muffins made with our Muffin Mix and “browning” bananas that no one wants to eat :), scrambled eggs and sliced apples (we also had guests that ate with us that stayed overnight from our hospitality network), Lunch – Pasta and cottage cheese, Dinner – Crockpot short ribs, green and fruit salad, crockpot baby carrots, 60-minute wheat dinner rolls

Friday:

Breakfast – Toast and scrambled eggs, Lunch – Nachos, Dinner – Pizza Party with extended family of mom’s birthday (I’m making the cake!)

Saturday:

Breakfast – Breakfast Casserole, Lunch – kids out with daddy while I am at my retreat, Dinner – Chef salads

Sunday:

Breakfast – Apple Cinnamon muffins (from homemade mix), Lunch – Tacos, Dinner – Hawaiian Haystacks

In my notes section, I usually make notes on when to get the meats out of the freezer to prepare for the next day, etc.!

And… no matter whether you make a menu or not, don’t forget about “dinner by 10.”

We use the “No-Food Waste” Menu Planner that you can get for free as an email subscriber to our site!

Just click on the header above and you can get yours for free too!

Please share in the comments below what your menu and plan is for the week!

Also, like we mentioned above, these are tools we use every week to keep us on budget and on track, but these will both be especially helpful for next week’s “Penniless Week,” so everyone be sure to get your downloads to prepare!