Last night I was really excited to get to attend a Women's Conference with my friend Lindsay at her church.
The night was full of great little snippets of wisdom and faith talk but one of the things that the speaker said really stuck with me.
Maybe it's because of this road I have been on with my dieting and giving up almost all of my former junk food addictions.
Maybe it's because it was a slap in the face from God Himself.
Probably it was a mixture of the both, but either way I thought I'd share it with you.
The speaker gave the illustration of a mother and father slaving over a hot delicious gourmet meal. The parents went into the living room to call their kids to dinner only to find them cramming Twinkies and Cheetos and pure junk down their throats. When they told them to come eat they responded, not surprisingly, by saying "I'm not hungry!"
In the same way, if we fill ourselves up with the junk of this world (lies, addiction, lust, self-pity, laziness, etc), we will ALWAYS approach the throne of God and His Word with an "I'm not hungry" attitude.
That just really stood out to me.
The conference was great and it is one more reason that I am so glad God put someone like Lindsay in my life.
I've also been really busy this week trying to reorganize our life a little bit. While on vacation it hit me that I am just NOT happy with the pace that our lives have been running at lately. It seems like my to-do list keeps getting longer before I even have a chance to cross anything off.
So, the hubby and I sat down and had a talk. What can we do to organize our everyday schedules and routines and condense things down to make them more manageable and more realistic.
Thus the household cleaning list and monthly meal calendar were born.
I got the idea for the household cleaning chart from an article that I read in the paper. Basically, I created a form that details all of our chores (from daily all the way to yearly) and then included a check-off box next to each chore. Then I stuck it in a 8x1o photo frame so that we can use our dry-erase markers to check off each item everyday. This will not only keep me accountable but also help when one of us might not be here to make sure everything gets done.
I won't share all of the chores on our lists but our daily and weekly chore list looks like this:
Daily Chores:
Make bed
Tidy Up
Laundry (1 load a day)
Dishes
Wipe Down Counters
And Weekly Chores:
Monday: Coupons, dust,
Tuesday: Floors
Wednesday: Bathrooms
Thursday: Windows
These were things that I was doing every week anyway I was just usually running around on Saturday hoping to get them all done. Now, hopefully we can enjoy our weekends and get things done a little at a time throughout the week.
The other thing that we did was create a monthly meal planner calendar.
Earlier this week I rounded up a bunch of our recipes, categorized them, and then decided which night of the week to designate to each category. I rounded down my categories to:
Sunday: Family dinner (we always eat out with family after church)
Monday: Crock pot
Tuesday: Date Night
Wednesday: Quick and Easy
Thursday: Family Faves
Friday: Pasta Night
Saturday: Grill or New Recipe
Then I just mapped out the different meals we wanted on the calendar.
After I got this all organized I created a shopping list and went through my shopping plan (which I will detail next week).
I thought that since you guys have been so awesome, and in celebration of my first full week offering blog sponsor spots I would treat you guys with a free printable version of the Meal planner that I created for ourselves.
So here ya go!
And if you decide that you would like me to customize it for you in anyway I would be happy to do so for a $2.00 fee. This would include any customizations you desire as well as pdf copy of the file to be used whenever you wish!
You guys have been so stinkin' awesome and I am so excited to see where the future of this blog may be headed! Thanks for all your kind words and encouragement and I hope to hear from you soon!
Awesome post!
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