Monthly Meal Planner

About a year ago I started planning my meals a month at a time.  It sounds like a lot more work than it is.  It actually makes things so much easier.  First I sat down with all my cookbooks and wrote down 20-30 of our favorite meals plus a few new ones to try.  I also surfed the internet for a few new recipes. (this took less than an hour, give or take some minor interruptions!)   I used to just use a printable calendar from Word but I recently found a cute downloadable one here and the cuter it is the more fun I have using it.  You can save it and edit it.  I love it! 

After I have the whole month planned it’s so easy to sit down and write out my meals and grocery list for the week.   Then it’s simple to sit down the next month and plug in the meals or you could just rotate through the last months again.  I usually do one breakfast for dinner once per week because it’s cheap and everyone will eat it.  A lot of times if the meal is geared more for the kids, like hot dogs, Matt and I will have salads.   Of course then I found a great printable grocery list on Pinterest that you can get here.  This is what it looks like…

A friend of mine always say “If you fail to plan then you are just planning to fail”  You know who are! 

Hope this helps make meal planning easier for you!

Melanie