Meal planning 101

One of the biggest money saving strategies we have here at maison Milkybeer is to plan our meals a week at a time. Now, I was raised in a household where meal planning was the norm. My mom always had the menu posted on the fridge each week for all to see (in fact, she still does). If you go to my brother's house, you'll probably find their weekly menu posted on the fridge too. Growing up, I honestly thought everyone planned their meals a week in advance. I've since learned this is not the case, and that, indeed, many people think I'm a wee bit crazy for doing it.

To those naysayers, I say puh-shaw!

If you're interested in giving it a try, here's how I go about it each week...We usually do our grocery shopping for the week on Sundays, so that morning, I sit down at the kitchen table armed with the meal planning necessities:

• my favourite recipe book (most of which I've posted at Milkybeer Cooks)
• a weekly planner/grocery list notepad (something like this)
• the family calendar

Throughout the week, we write down anything we run out of so usually there are a few items on the list before I even begin. To begin planning, I make note of any events that week that will have us out of the house for dinners. Then, I peruse the cupboards and fridge to see what we already have on hand (this cuts down on accidental repeat purchases).

Meals are based around the main protein, with the aim of having at least two meat-free meals each week. Once I select the protein, I pick out a recipe that will take advantage of ingredients we have on hand. The recipe name goes on the meal side of the notepad and any missing ingredients go onto the grocery list side.

Next, I plan the veggies. Because we only shop once per week, there is a bit of strategy required. We tend to eat fresh vegetables early in the week, and hardier (or frozen) veg toward the end. We do try to take advantage of the local Farmer's Market and stock up on fresh, local options whenever possible. I always aim to use up what we already have on hand for the first meal of the week, but usually there isn't much left since we just buy what we need, so any required veggies are noted on the grocery list side of the notepad.

The starch is usually the easiest to plan since we typically just cycle through pasta, rice, cous cous, or potatoes or we forgo the starch portion altogether. These are all things we keep on hand in large quantities in the pantry so they don't make a frequent appearance on the grocery list.

If I know the meal will yield more than we need in a single meal, I just write in "leftovers" for the following day or make a mental note that TDSH or I will have leftovers for lunch the next day.

When an item goes on the grocery list, I sometimes make note of the quantity we need in order to avoid over buying and waste. I'd love to say this means we never throw away food, but that would be a lie. Sometimes, we just don't eat as much as I think we're going to.

Some people resist the notion of planning their meal because they don't know what they'll feel like eating on any given day. I see their point, but just because tacos is written on the planner for Wednesdays, doesn't mean you can only eat tacos on that day. We often switch things up from day to day. The beauty in planning for an entire week, is that you now have all the ingredients for up to seven different meals on hand! Which one you choose to eat is up to you.

If you've been reluctant to start planning your own meals, perhaps these cute little printable menu planning templates from Ollibird will inspire you. I'm itching to print one off and frame it for our kitchen.

A remedy for what ails you

Feeding one's child something like this...

may result in something like this...burrito-induced coma.

If this should happen to you, stay calm! There is an easy remedy. Grasp your child by the wrists....

commence spinning, and...

gently release the child after several rotations.

Standby by as they attempt to stagger to their feet...and fail...badly.

Finish the manoeuvre by laughing so hard you fall to the ground.

Yeah, yeah...I'm sure you all think I'm the worst mother in the world now. Trust me, Abner loved every minute of it. I'm just thrilled she didn't puke. Just to prove that she was OK, here are a few more random cute shots from later that evening.

Treasure in the bag (and a winner!)

Let's get the fun part out of the way first. Not to imply that the rest of the post isn't fun. Please don't let that comment dissuade you from reading through to the end...;-). Anyhow, as I was about to say, I used a random number generator to choose the winner and the lucky lady is: comment 5, otherwise known as Cynthia!

Congratulations Cynthia!

Now, onto the rest of this special, bag-related edition of Milkybeer....

I don't know how I managed to overlook it, but I neglected to write a post about my project from last month's (or was it May's?) crafternoon! I alluded to it in two separate posts, and even had all the images uploaded, resized and ready to go, but somehow, I never actually wrote the post!

Without further ado, I give you my crafternoon project: a treasure bag for Abner (and one for cousin Maryn too)!

The inspiration is the Treasure Bag project in Amanda Blake Soule's Handmade Home. It was stunningly easy to do and couldn't look any cuter in my opinion.

The main body of the bag is salvaged window screen and the other materials are scraps I had kicking around from other projects.

Abner is still relatively obsessed with collecting things whenever we go out, so this bag tends to see a lot of action. At the moment there are rocks, shells, dead flowers, a crab shell, feather and several sticks in it.

I can't tell you how handy it is to be able to just shake it around a bit and get all the dirt off before it comes in the house!

Contest closing tomorrow!

I'm going to wrap up the giveaway on Thursday, July 22 at around dinner time, so all you lurkers and procrastinators have until then to get your comments in!

Life's a beach

So summer sure took its sweet time showing up on the West Coast this year. To make up for it, she's been pulling out all the stops lately: blue skies, warm breezes, and evenings that seem to last forever....ahhh, bliss. The only downside to this much-improved weather is that everyone is out trying to get out and enjoy it at the same time!

I'm not one for spending my days among crowds so, this past weekend we opted to head to one of the area's less popular beaches: Centennial (all the way down in Delta in case you've never been). In a word, the day was perfect!

Ready for some sun. Her birthday dress is finally getting some wear!

First priority? Snack.

Our little spot on the beach...one of at least half a dozen green and white umbrellas that day.

The treasure bag I made at last month's crafternoon sure came in handy. I love seeing these little handmade items get put to use and become part of our daily lives.

Bliss on the beach.

There's still time to enter the giveaway from my last post! Don't miss out!

My second giveaway

So I realized the other day that it's been over a year since I did a giveaway here on the ol' blog. When I did my first giveaway it took ages to actually get around to making the promised items for each winner. This time, I'm another year older, and another year wiser so I've prepared the giveaway item in advance!

I'd love to find a good home for this cute little summer bag!

The dots are chocolate brown, in case you were wondering.

If you'd like me to send it to your home, please leave a comment below and tell me what you think the bag fabric was originally. [Those of you on Facebook will have an advantage since I posted an update about it a few weeks ago.] I'll draw the winner from among the responses in a few days or so...basically, if you haven't seen a post about the winner go up, there's still a chance to enter. Make sense? Don't worry, you don't have to get the right answer to win!

Good luck!

A glorious summer evening

A swim in the pool before a picnic dinner in the park. I hope your summer evening has been just as wonderful as ours. Happy summer everyone!

Growing library

Give me a Chapters gift card and I will surley use it to buy more sewing books! Here are the new ones I picked up recently during a buy 3 get the 4th free sale.

From top to bottom:

• 
  
  Handmade Beginnings, by Anna Maria Horner
• 
  
  Martha Stewart's Encylopedia of Sewing and Fabric Crafts, by Marth Stewart
• 
  
  Built by Wendy Dresses, Wendy Mullin
• 
  
  Sew U: The Built by Wendy Guide to Making Your Own Wardrobe, Wendy Mullin

Here are some of the projects I'm drooling over. From Handmade Beginnings...this cute little hoodie:

From Martha, this stylin' bedcover...

and this ultra-cool Japanese embroidery called sashiko...

from Wendy, I've got my eye on this dress for work...

and am quite intrigued by some of her sewing organization tips.

So...who would like to sponsor me so that I can quit my job and just sew all day long?

A very special quilt: Part 1

I've debated long and hard about what to write about this quilt. Do I just tell you about its assembly from a sewing perspective and leave it at that? Or, do I tell you the backstory of how it came to be? Some of you already know the story, but most do not. Here goes...

In late March, my colleagues, Randy and Ingrid Friesen, unexpectedly lost their 17-year-old son Chris. By all accounts, he was a happy, healthy, and much loved young man. His life and his passing have touch the lives of so many people...myself included.

Though I never had the opportunity to meet Chris, I immediately felt I wanted to do something for Randy and his family. I think this is the phenomena that leads to so many casseroles being made and delivered to families who've lost a loved one...but I digress. Within the first couple of weeks, I came up with the idea to create a quilt out of Chris' clothes and I gotta be honest, it took all of my courage to email the suggestion to Randy. I got even more nervous when he and Ingrid accepted the offer.

We met just once to discuss the items they'd chosen; a mixture of Chris' lacrosse jerseys, tournament t-shirts, favorite t-shirts and a few special items from family photo shoots and other events. The selection also included several jerseys from Chris' teammates who'd surrendered their jerseys following the funeral service (didn't I tell you this guy was loved?) Not trusting my memory, I used masking tape to write notes on some of the items so I'd be sure to handle each one appropriately in the design of the quilt.

Thank goodness for those notes because the boxes of clothes wound up sitting in my bedroom for weeks before I had the time to get started, but once I did, the whole thing came together in less than two weeks. I have seriously never had a quilt, or any sewing project for that matter, come together as easily as this one did.

This morning I had the pleasure of surprising Randy in his office with the finished quilt. His response was very touching and he politely listened while I blathered on about what was what and how to care for it (blathering is what I do when I'm nervous). I hope that he and Ingrid have found some time this evening to sit down and enjoy the quilt together.

Thanks to many of my colleagues who knew I was working on this project and offered words of encouragement. Thanks to The Dear Sweet Husband for helping me free up some time to dedicate to this project. And a special thanks to Randy and Ingrid for trusting me with such precious material.

For the crafty folk who read this blog, the sewing details follow in a separate post.

UPDATE:
If you haven't seen it already, please check out Randy's response to the quilt. Be sure to have some tissue on hand because it's a wee bit of a tear jerker. He gave me a heads up that it was going to take him a few days to write the post, and when you read it, you'll know why it took time.

A very special quilt: Part 2

For the crafty folk who read this blog, here are the sewing details on the quilt I made in honour of Chris Friesen. You can read the first part of the story here.

Knowing that knit fabric can be tricky to work with, the first thing I did was talk to a quilting expert to get some advice. She recommended attaching stabilizer (interfacing) to the back of each piece so that they were no longer stretchy. Expert advice is always so reassuring.

After sorting the items into jerseys and non-jerseys, I began designing the quilt by cutting up pieces of graph paper into squares or rectangles based on the size of the logo, crest or number on each item. In order to accommodate the largest of those, I had to base everything on a 12-inch square. Once cut out, I used crayons to colour each one the same colour as the actual t-shirts so I could map everything out and avoid placing a bunch of one colour together. Then, it just became a matter of moving the pieces around until I had an arrangement that worked and used up all of the items.

With my plan in hand, I cut out each item to the pre-determined size and interfacing to match. I was so worried about a cutting error that I even had a post-it note stuck to my cutting mat to remind me to look at the back of the shirt before I cut to make sure I wouldn't slice through something I needed for another square. Thankfully it worked - no mis-cuts!

Then came the ironing...oh, so much ironing...but it was so worth it. The interfacing worked its magic and sewing up the squares was a dream.

Instead of quilting by hand or with my machine, I opted to try hand tying. If you've never made a hand tied quilt before, I highly recommend giving it a try. It looks best with a lofty fill (which luckily, Ingrid had requested). I basted everything together with regular thread first so that I could get everything aligned before attaching the binding.

I used some fairly heavy material from two coats for the binding. It worked quite well, but I might have gone for wider strips that would have made it a bit easier to accommodate some of the bulkier parts at the corners (where I cut up and positioned two toques to make pockets).

Once bound I used a bamboo-silk yarn to tie the quilt and fasten buttons off the coats onto one side of the quilt.

Like I said in my first post, I've never had a project come together so smoothly!

Daddy's day

Tomorrow is my dad's birthday...Happy birthday dad!

This morning as I thought about my dad's big day, it dawned on me that I never shared my Father's Day project with you all last month! In my defense, June was a crazy busy month. Please don't hold it against me. I'm pretty amazed I was even able to do a Father's Day project this year.

Without further ado, here's what I made for The Dear Sweet Husband for his third(!) Father's Day.

The idea certainly wasn't my own. I have Sharilyn, over at Lovely Design, to thank for developing the design (and for being prepared a few days ahead of the game giving me enough time to whip it up at the last minute).

What I love about this project is that it's a great use for the stack of artwork Abner's brought home from daycare over the last few months. She's so proud of all of the pieces, but I have to be honest, I don't really know what to do with 60 or so pages of scribbles and paint smears. Now I feel less guilty about recycling the rest of the artwork pile since I was able to pick out five of her brightly coloured pieces and integrate them into the design. It's like we worked on the piece together without actually working together.

Guess who's in a big girl bed?

OK...I'm a little late on sharing this news with you all. We actually switched Abner to her toddler bed at the end of June after she managed to escape her crib one night. To her credit, she was able to swing herself up and over the side safely without falling, but once they can get out, what's the point of keeping them in a crib?

The bed is actually just her IKEA crib with the sides off and the head and foot boards lowered. I highly recommend it if you're in the market for a new crib. It's low enough that she can easily climb in all by herself and it doesn't hurt if she falls out (which she hasn't really done).

I'll be honest, the first few nights were a bit rough. She was super excited with the change and that meant she didn't want to go to sleep...at all. She was up till almost 10 pm each night playing, talking, crying, screaming and getting in and out of bed. Even once she drifted off (actually, it was more of a sudden crash), she would wake up every few hours and get out of bed and come into the living room or into our bedroom. Did I mention she has no door on her room? It's enough to make you pull your hair out having to get up eight times in a row to march her back to bed!

Thankfully, though the crying and screaming continued for a while longer, by the third or fourth night she was at least staying in her bed. By the second week, she also cut out the crying. All I had to do was ask her to stop crying and she did (who knew!).

The move to a bed has also coincided with a change in her bedtime routine. Up to then, I'd sung her the same song each night, tucked her into the crib and turned on her music box to put her to sleep. Now, the song and music box are out and Robert Munsch is in. We have one of his storybook collections and each night Abner lays in bed while I read one of the stories. We have a rule that her head has to be on the pillow otherwise I stop reading. It's been a great tool to help her learn about staying in bed and settling down before sleep. She absolutely loves the stories and I am absolutely loving sharing them with her...they were some of my favorites as a kid.

Berry picking: An annual tradition

It's berry time! Well, acutally, the first of the seasonal berries made their appearance last month and we headed out to Krause to grab our share. And what a share it was...these were some of the most perfect, plump, juicy red strawberries I've ever seen in my life!

Berry picking with a toddler is an event that could easily go awry. I started out with Abner strapped to my back, but quickly realized I have neither the physique nor the balance required to pull it off. Thankfully, by positioning one of us at either end of our assigned aisle, we were able to keep her penned in for the 15-20 minutes it took for TDSH and me to pick 12 lbs of strawberries. We love berries around here, so much so that a few years ago, we bought a small deep freezer for the sole purpose of storing a summers-worth of berries each year.

Abner loved picking berries herself too, of course, but had a little trouble with the idea of picking only the red ones. She kept grabbing the un-ripe white ones and proudly adding them to our buckets. Seeing her able to contribute and participate in a family outing like this is amazing. She's so independent and grown up now!

Raspberries are a little late this year thanks to the crappy weather we've been having. Hopefully we'll be out at Krause again soon to load up on some of those. I wonder how Abner will fare with the prickly raspberry kanes?

Did I mention she has awesome hair?

Rock that fuzzy head look Abner!

Happy Canada D'eh!

There's someone here who wants to wish you all a big ol' happy Canada Day...



TDSH and I wish you a happy Canada Day too!