So I’ve completed my first week at new my job! I haven’t received much feedback, but I feel things are going pretty well. This blog post will be used to highlight my first week; things that went well and things that are a work in progress. I will go over my to-do list, my menu planning, craft planning, and current projects.
To-Do List
The first thing I did to prepare for this week was to make an in depth check-off, to-do list. This was extremely important for me. I wanted to make sure I was prepared for each day, running on a schedule and planning activities. While doing research on stay at home moms, there was emphasis on the importance of establishing routines and having things planned out. I think this is important so everyone doesn’t spend their whole day in front of the TV in their pajamas. I framed the list I created and used a dry erase marker to check-off items and write in notes, like what I was planning for lunch. Even though I am sure I will use it less and less as time goes by and I become more confident in my routine, for now, it keeps me on track. Checking off on my to-do list gives me a feeling of accomplishment similar to when I completed tasks when I worked outside the home. Below is a copy of the check-off list that I created. It’s very detailed, in that, it lists literally everything I wanted to make sure I did everyday.
Menu Planning
The next thing I set out to do to be prepared for my first week as a stay at home mom, was meal planning. I am completely new to this. Usually my husband and I would get home from work, play with the kids, feed them dinner, get them ready and to bed, and then scramble around trying to make ourselves dinner before 9:00 pm. We are both extremely indecisive when it comes to making decisions about dinner. Sometimes we’d make a quick pre-packaged dinner meal or someone would be running out to get some fast food.
Clearly this was not a healthy behavior or habit we had, and now that we are down to one income, it is even more necessary to be conscious of what we are eating. Because of my past history of failing to plan and think ahead, I really wanted to make meal planning as simple as possible. I sat and wrote down every recipe or meal that we really enjoy eating and any that seemed like ones we’d like to try. When I planned out the meals for the week, I was conscious of using any freshly bought meats first and preparing extra to freeze or to have for our designated “leftover” night. I planned the meal so we would have variety, but also so we could utilize things we bought in multiple recipes. I also designated Friday as pizza night and Saturday as Tyler’s choice, which means my husband is in charge. This gave me two days that I really didn’t have to worry about.
All this week, we have not only ate the home cooked meals that I planned, but we have also eaten all of our meals together at the table, as a family. No more 9:00 pm dinners for us! The added benefit of completely following a meal plan is also following a budget. We designated a certain amount of money to go towards food, and we didn’t spend any extra. We didn’t eat out at all. This was definitely a great success from the week.
The best help I had was from my phone app “Anylist“. On the app, you can enter all of your recipes or import them from a website (super easy). From there you can add specific meals and recipes to the meal planning calendar and then, pick ingredients to add to your shopping list. This was very convenient and basically saved me a lot of time because I could do everything at one time in one place. In case you were curious, our meals from this week are below.
Monday – Chicken Chimichangas (We made extra and froze the rest!)
Tuesday – Taco’s
Wednesday – Beef and Barley Soup
Thursday – Leftovers
Friday – Pizza
Saturday – Tyler’s choice!
Craft Planning
For my three and a half year old, I wanted to make sure we had planned crafts and activities to do each day. After doing some research, I decided I would spend each week focusing on a different letter of the alphabet and plan crafts around those. This week was the letter A, and below is a list of the activities we did.
Monday – We made an “apple” garland. This turned out cute and we ended up using it hang the rest of the weeks activities from
Tuesday – Mayson placed stickers in a print out of the letter “A” and also started tracing
Wednesday – We picked apples off of a construction paper tree and sorted them into baskets that held either uppercase or lowercase A’s
Thursday – We painted apple plates and practiced writing the letter A
Friday – We painted with apples and trucks
I then decided to place them all in a binder so that along the way we can create an alphabet book full of the crafts that he made!
Current Projects
Currently I am reading “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” by Marie Kondo. I love a clean house, but…. we definitely need to work on our clutter problem. We own a lot of things and we need help with sorting and putting things in their own place. I also follow this daily organization calendar. It’s fun and challenges you on a daily basis to get your house in order. This is definitely a work in progress for me. Next week we move on to the letter B and I already have some fantastic projects planned. I will also be working on finishing touches for Jackson’s first birthday party!
Overall I would say we had a pretty fantastic week, and I hope that the momentum continues. We have a lot of things planned for our Etsy store, so stay tuned for new products being introduced daily! And if you have time please like us on Facebook and share some pins on Pinterest. I hope some of the information I have provided have been helpful or motivating in any way. I’ll keep you posted on my next projects, meals and tips! Have a fantastic weekend!
OutOfNormalblog 