Sunday, February 26, 2012

Monthly Menu Planner

Ok, so one day I was looking through pinterest and saw a pin that said "an entire years worth of weekly menus, complete with recipes and grocery list". I thought to myself "um, amazing, I need to check this out". I went to the website, Eat At Home Cooks, scoped out the menus and ended up saving about 4 months worth of weekly goodies! Yesterday I spent the day compiling the papers and crafting an incredible menu planning binder!

What I did:
You will need a binder, decorative scrapbook paper, a paper cutter, decorative letters and a 3 hole punch.




The first thing I did was make my binding display. I cut the scrapbook paper to fit inside the binder and added my letters. My binding says "Menu Planner", I probably should have gone with the blue letters, seeing as how they would have been easier to read, but I'm a fan of green.



You will then need to cut two pieces of your paper to fit the front and back side of your binder. You will then have 3 pieces total.



I used one of my green papers to print a list for the front side of the binder. I printed out " Weekly Menu-Grocery List-Coupons-Recipes". I then cut down the paper so it would cover the bottom half of my binder.I also added some decorative elements that you will see on my finished product.



I used my green pieces of paper to print divider tabs. Each tab will keep track of the week. Example: Week 1, Week 2, Week 3 etc. Print them on the longest width so they will stick out past your 8.5X11 piece of copy paper.



Use your paper cutter and cut them into strips. Once you have them cut, punch one hole at the opposite end.




Next, print out your PDFs and organize them accordingly.



I also added a clear sleeve to keep my coupons in.


The binder is now complete!





You can add the rest of your grocery list to the list page. Keep your recipe pages neat and tidy and you can re-use them in a few months, only needing to re-print the list page. This will save you tons of time planning!

Be inspired and create!

4 comments:

  1. Genius! I'm really not organized to do something like this way in advance though- the closest thing I have is a detailed list divided into categories (mostly just what my family likes and doesn't like, so I know what's safe to make for dinner!). This would be really brilliant for people with big families:)

    xoxo

    Ashley

    http://textbooksandtofu.blogspot.com/

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    1. It was really easy to do and didn't take too much time! It's just me and my husband, but we both work 40 hours a week and even with just us two this will make a big differnece!

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  2. I love how you've organized the menus and grocery lists! Thanks for sharing.

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    1. Thanks for providing! We are excited to go through all the recipes!

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