One of the projects I've wanted to do since before I started this site was to teach people how to meal plan. There's TON of meal plans on Pinterest, but none of them fit every family's needs. Every family is different in their budget, tastes, time available, stores near them, and dietary needs. Over the next several months, I'm going to teach you a way to meal plan that focuses on your family first. Here's a little preview of what's to come: Part I: Making your master meal list Part I continued: My master meal list Part II: Finding your meal planning style Part II continued: Sample meal plan Part III: Making your shopping list You need a master meal list so that you remember all of the meals that work for your family. Eventually, you'll get to the point where meal planning is as easy as choosing meals off a master list! But it can take a bit to come up with and to refine the master meal list. Before you start, figure out your family's par...

I've been in a rut lately. A meal planning, writing, reading, outfit-wearing rut. That means I don't have much to write about. The heat must be sucking out my motivation! That means the things that have made me smile in the last month or so are even more special. The rut makes me grateful for the little things. 1. Two new meals we've tried have been awesome! These ground beef gyros from Mashup mom are delicious. I used Penzey's Greek seasoning in them. We also just tried Instant Pot ragu from Damn Delicious. My son literally cried for 10 minutes when dinner was over. This is a keeper for sure. Both take a little bit more time than I'd like for a weeknight meal, so they'll be double batch weekend dinners for sure to give us some awesome leftovers. 2. This book captured my heart and made it so I didn't want to read anything else for a while. I learned a lot about another culture and got caught up in a beautiful but sad story. I couldn't stop talki...

When I got the positive pregnancy test, I just assumed that nine months later, I would be living the stay at home mom life. That was what I knew. I couldn’t even fathom the alternative. But as doors continually slammed shut to make that happen, I was faced with the question all working moms face at some point: How can I be a good mother if I work? I truly believed for nine months that God’s will for me was to be a stay at home mom in the season of new motherhood but I ignored the call he had for me. The call for me that was so much harder for me. He was calling me to something higher than the ideas I had for myself and our family. ““For my thoughts are not your thoughts  neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts (Is 55:8-9 NIV).” Now, being a working mom or being a stay at home mom isn’t inherently better or harder than the other across...

Right around the time a more expensive chain bought out our favorite affordable grocery store nearby, an Aldi opened 20 minutes away. I gradually transitioned to shopping only at Aldi, and doing it every other week. With the driving distance, it doesn't make sense to me to take a chunk out of every weekend. This means some sacrifices. Aldi doesn't have everything. They don't have the name-brand of pasta sauce we love. I can't pin any recipe and buy the ingredients for it. I have to bag our own groceries. I go shopping at Aldi every other weekend with the goal of spending under $200 for everything except pet supplies and a small handful of personal care items and and cleaning supplies we get through Grove Collaborative (that order is about $15 every month or every other month). In between Aldi trips we often have to stop to stock up on bread, milk, eggs and the occasional item Aldi doesn't have. We buy diapers, wipes, trash bags, dishwasher detergent, toilet ...

A while back, I wrote a post on the number one thing not to say to a working mom, "I could never have someone else raise my kid." But that's only part of the things I've seen and heard. Because working moms are so busy and stretched thin, their voices aren't the predominant ones out there despite 64 percent of mothers with children under the age of 6 working outside the home. The reality of it is that a majority of mothers work. Here's some of what it's like: It means choosing your battles . You only have so much time in your day and you want to maximize the time you have with your family. It means things like cleaning, exercising, cooking, self-care, doing your hair and makeup religiously can and will fall by the wayside. It means coming to terms with picking what is more important each day: the attention-starved dog, the pile of laundry, the sink full of dishes or your unshaven legs. It means being forgotten. After so many times of declinin...

I've been talking to a coworker about meal planning recently and her biggest issue is that she doesn't have enough time. When she gets home from work, she spends the evenings at sports practices with her kids. While I still have the relative luxury of a quiet few hours of home after work before my son goes to bed, I can sympathize with her. After all, I don't want to spend those precious few hours in the kitchen. My style of meal planning might be too much for someone who is used to getting a majority of their meals on the go, but here's some baby steps toward meal planning and prepping ahead of time to save time and money throughout the week. 1. Prep produce on the weekend. If you have older children, have a kitchen party for an hour each weekend and chop up salad ingredients, veggies for wraps, fruit for fruit salad and snacks, veggies for snacks, etc. 2. Boil, roast, or blanch some veggies ahead of time then refrigerate or freeze them so all you have to do i...