Family Binder Takes on Family Diet! Pow Ya!!!

 This is a picture of my refrigerator after doing a MAJOR overhaul on our families diet. It contains healthy foods all purposed for each meal next week! I used the EAT Sheet below to list all the meals of each day and on the other side all the ingredients that I needed. This is kept in my family binder (see post below).  All 6 of us went to the store looking for organic, fresh ingredients for our week. We plan to do this intense planning for each week, so when I start teaching in August we have meal plans and shopping lists already completed for crazy busy weeks. We also have decided to plan the meals on the weekend and do as much shopping as possible for those meals. The crazy part is we even stayed in budget! It's amazing how much money we have spent on junk food believing that we couldn't afford the healthy fresh choices! I decided to use a box of colored pencils and color code my shopping list! I'm very proud of this idea, because I am not an organized person naturally. This was my color code idea:
Green-Vegetables and Fruit
                                                                   Yellow-Dairy items
                                                                   Orange- Spices and sauces
                                                                   Gray-Can Goods

You may be wondering why I have changed our families eating habits. My husband has been complaining for years that he would like to eat cleaner and I wanted that too but lacked whatever to make it happen. I picked up the Skinny B@%&* by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin, a week ago thinking that it would be a casual book to read before bed NOT, I couldn't put it down and stayed up half the night reading. Now I will say that the books title is a profanity (I didn't want to offend anyone by writing it) and is an appetizer to the book, but it is a serious book packed with great information. If you are up for it read it!

Let me know what you think, or if you have read this book!

Julie

Teacher Dry Erase Craft and teacher fun

          This is a project that I made for a Teacher Friend Pintrest party I hosted a few weeks ago! Yes, I said Pintrest party. The idea was to make several interesting recipes found on Pintrest followed by several crafts. See pictures below of my teacher friends in my kitchen (:
          This craft was inspired by dry erase type boards I saw, but I wanted to jazz it up much more. I glued on a bow, paper flower and metal embellishment that reads "inspire" using E000 glue (Gorilla glue would also work). I used a clear word sticker that reads special. This works for me as a special education teacher who always has a LONG LIST of to-do's every day. I am not a well organized person naturally, and will often use sticky notes for this job only to find I have lost them!!!! This black frame was a $3 find at Wal Mart, the paper is scrapbook paper cut to size (you could use wide ruled paper) placed inside a frame. I will use a small tip dry-erase marker to write my daily or weekly to-do's. This will look nice on my desk with my black and red theme. I painted my desk red last year and plan to add my name to the front using cricut vinyl cut with a cool font (yes, I will take pictures when I do this)

Let me know what you think! 

Yes, we all cooked and crafted and had a BLAST! What a fun summer activity for teachers (: 

Getting Organized! Step One

      As you can tell from my blog title I am a VERY busy lady especially when life kicks in high gear when the school year starts. I started teaching agin last year after staying at home with my children for 11 years! It was a HUGE adjustment for all of us. One major lesson that I gained was my need to get REALLY organized. If you are a teacher you know that work is not over at 3:00 p.m. and if you are a mother work is NEVER completed. I am in the process of "pulling myself together" wink, wink by implementing several strategies. 
FIRST:
The Household Binder
I am using a large binder, Index Maker Clear Pocket Dividers by Avery 8 tabs and fun scrapbook supplies, cricut.
I have categories for: 
*Menu- I need to have a plan or the plan will be fast food = my 15 pounds gained last year, ugh. Yes, I am working on getting it off before school starts (: 
* School Calendars-this means my school's calendar and my children's because we are in different districts
*1st grade-teacher information, classroom events that we sign-up for or need to remember, grades
*3rd grade "
*5th grade "
*6th grade "
*Family and Friend Birthday Chart-this is a one page list of the months with spaces to write people and birthdays. I am sick of forgetting birthdays, especially when I need to mail ahead.
*Basketball- dates, games and coaches names + phone numbers
*Dance - a place to keep information on dance class and tickets (I lost $60 worth of tickets last month)
*Soccer- with four children all in activities, I am always saying I lost a paper! This section will come in handy for reference for dates and times.
*Daisy Scouts- with a Daisy and Jr. I have a lot of items to keep organized. I am also going to keep patches in the pocket divider until I have time to iron it on.
*Cub Scouts- a great place to keep camp-out dates, patches and meeting times! 


I am sure I will be adding to this family binder as we go, but you get the main idea. 
My next post will be all about a Teaching Binder (: Let me know what you think!