Meal Plan: February 2013

Finally, back into the swing of things with monthly meal planning and prep.

*huge sigh of relief*

The holidays threw our family for a loop and it has been helter-skelter trying to get back into a routine. I have been absolutely lost without a meal plan to go off of. 

On a positive note, hubby now understands WHY I started doing meal planning in the first place! What a mess at 5:30 pm trying to figure out what to make with random ingredients in our house while acting out children have us bouncing off red line. 

Eesh! No more, no how, no thank you!

So, in all of it's grand splendor, I present to you our February 2013 (dinner) meal plan!

I (also) plan on getting some of these recipes loaded up in the next few weeks so that will make my wonderful plan more applicable to my readers. Things to come, things to come... (adding to I-really-need-to-do list)

Target's New Low Price Promise

I discovered this past year that Walmart will price match identical products with any local retailer's print ad. While this definitely opens up possibilities for great savings, it has a drawback of having to make a special trip to Walmart to capitalize. 

A regular month's shopping for me includes grocery shopping twice a month at a local store (most often Safeway but I am considering a switch to Albertson's), one Costco run, and one Target tour. Walmart is completely out of the way and not on my list of normal activities. Nor is it going to save much money spending the extra in time at the registers and gas to get there. =/ 

So great concept, just not attainable by me. 

Thanks to this article by GeekMom at Wired.com, I am especially excited to discover that Target has decided to go the way of price matching with major competitors! While not exactly the same as Walmart's policy (item must be in stock online and not on clearance), most particulars of Target's new Price Match Guarantee are the same. One notable exception being that Walmart has to be print ads and Target is willing to accept online prices from selected sources! Meaning you can price match with Amazon.com, just not the smaller third party sellers!

I plan on taking extreme advantage of this new policy the next time I head into Target! You can find the particulars for Target's new Low Price Policy here. 

Meal Plan: November 2012

Goal #1 Completed: Dinner menu created for the month of November.

Goal #2 Half Completed: First two weeks of November shopping done in one day with a trip to Costco and one to Safeway.

This time I was sneaky about creating the menu and got hubby to help choose some meals for the month. I waited until he was comfortably posted up in bed with his laptop and then brought in every single cookbook and recipe card I own. Plopped them right down in the middle of the bed and told him if he didn't want fish and vegetarian meals all month he better go through and pick out some man-meals. And it worked! Two hours of time after the kids went to bed on Halloween and I had not only a month of meals decided on but I also had a shopping list created for the first two weeks of November! Woohoo victory lap for me!

In my overly-proud excitement I, of course, had to text my sister the awesome news. She then proceeded to advise me that I now needed to organize her life since I had mine under control. Ha! When does one ever have life under control? Being the awesome little sister that I am, I took photos of my menu and shopping list and sent them to her. See, I finally learned how to share. Only took a quarter of a century, no big deal...

I also learned how to share documents on Blogger. You too can see and print the awesomeness that is my November Menu! (Mini preview below)

While hubby may laugh at me and my ecstatic mood, I am uber proud of myself for completing the meal plan for the month and having a set grocery list before going to the store. Baby A and I dropped Miss K off to school and proceeded to spend two (just two!) hours getting everything we needed for the next two weeks! Oh, and I also remembered to eat before we went grocery shopping so I didn't feel the need to bring the whole store home.