Did you enjoy your Thanksgiving this year?  We had a wonderful time!  We alternate years between my mom & dad’s house and this year we were at my Dad’s.  It was a nice, intimate celebration for us and we got to spend some quality time with my step-mom and Dad.

Tyson had some Thanksgiving homework (writing down our menu, word puzzles, etc.) and he started off the day by getting that done.  The food was great (I LOVE Thanksgiving food!) and I was happy to bring the Green Bean Casserole, one of my personal faves.

We also sipped on some Chocolate Martinis, MAN were they good (as pictured below!)

I can’t believe it’s already Christmastime!  This year is SO much different with me being home and able to gradually decorate and bake.  I’m wrapping up another BUSY fall season with Ten Tiny Toes, but it’s been the best year yet!  Looking forward to taking some much needed time to slow down and enjoy this season.  I’m taking part in a “Picture the Holidays” Project where you take one photo each day (they send you a prompt) and I’m hoping this will refocus me on the little things about this time of year that I love.  If you’d like to join in (you do NOT need a DSLR or need to be a photographer to join in) you can find more info here: http://www.papercoterie.com/signup/picture-the-holidays/

Time to say Grace!

Just a few of some of the things I’m loving right now!

MomAgenda Home Office Edition - While I LOVE LOVE LOVE my Google Calendars, my husband hasn’t been very keen on checking it (despite me setting up an auto sync on his phone for him). With my crazybusyinsane work schedule as of late, not to mention all the stuff that the kiddos have going on, we needed something in writing to keep track of everything we have going on.  I’m still putting everything on the Google Calendars though so that I have them on the go, but back in September I got this MomAgenda in blue.

My favorite part of it is that it runs based on the school year.  So, August 2011 — August 2012!  For us, that makes more sense because when school is back in session, that’s when things change up and get more hectic.

They are having a great sale on some of their planners to clear them out before year end, and I’m sure they’ll have some fantastic new ones coming out very soon for the new year.

Relish Relish - In follow up to my recent Meal Planning post, we’ve been trying out another site in addition to e-mealz.  As much as I’ve loved e-mealz, Relish! is definitely a bit better.  I like that I can go through and just choose the meals that we like (and there are more than just 7 per week and there are freezer meals) and it will combine them all into one printable PDF document and a combined shopping list.

Also, the meals seem to be quite a bit healthier and have more fresh ingredients.  I’m hoping to make quite a few of the freezer meals in the coming weeks now that things are slowing down a bit!

Menage A Trois Red Wine  I’m not going to sit here and pretend I’m some fancy schmancy wine snob.  I love this wine, and have for about a year now.  It’s yummy, it’s cheap, and let’s face it, it gets the job done  Even better yet, you can get it for about $7 a bottle at Costco! Woooot!!

Pinterest - Have you discovered Pinterest yet?  It’s the latest creative, inspiring, time sucking addiction I have.  Think of it as a virtual bulletin board of things that you want to tuck away for later.  You can follow other people and their pins and boards.  I love to use it for ideas for home decorating, photography inspiration, tips and tricks and all sorts of other random things I want to bookmark on the internet!  Want to follow me on Pinterest?  You can do so here: http://pinterest.com/maniakmama

Kindle - I got a Kindle for my birthday last weekend and have really been loving it!  I mostly wanted one to have to read outside (the iPad just has too much glare outside in full sun) and something to take down to the pool or throw in my purse to read at the kids’ activities.  I’ve got a few books loaded on it, and I love that I can also put e-books on it as well.  So far, I’m loving it!

Erin Condren Year Round Notebook — This one is kind of in line with the MomAgenda.   If I hadn’t already gotten the momAgenda, I might have gotten one of the Daily Planner’s from erin condren instead!  I’ve been using this as my working to do list for work tasks and using the calendar for my marketing planning for 2012.  This thing is so beautiful!  I love the laminated covers and the nice heavy duty spine on it.  Lots of colorful pages, stickers and other fun elements to it.  I highly recommend her stuff and I’ll definitely be getting more down the road!

Some of the ladies over at my favorite photography forum have been discussing using e-Mealz for meal planning.  We’ve been using e-mealz for quite some time now and it has been such a sanity saver for us!  I wrote a post about it a while back, which you can find here.  I mentioned over there that I use a Google Calendar in conjunction with our 3 other Google Calendars for all our going ons, and it’s super slick!  So, I thought I would do a blog post about how I use it in hopes that it would help others.

Before I dive in, I will tell you WHY I use this method.  I am a very electronically based person.  I can’t keep a paper planner and I like my devices in life (hello iPad & iPhone!) So, by using a Google Calendar method, I am able to pull up our menus & recipes on my phone, iPad, or the computer too (or any computer for that matter, so long as I have an internet connection!)  All this to say, this is what works for me, and I encourage you to tweak this so that it works for YOU!

Now…onto the good stuff!  Let’s get started

1.  Create a Google Calendar for Meal Planning.

Start by going to Google Calendars and setup your Google account if you don’t have one, or log into your current account.  Create your new Calendar (just click the Add button at the bottom), I call mine Meal Planning (creative, I know )

Your calendar should now be created and show up in your My Calendars list.  You can also color code your calendars, as you can see, mine is Orange.

2.  Start Adding Meals to your Calendar!

This is where the fun begins!  I do this step about once a week, at the same time I’m ordering groceries.  I log into my e-mealz account,  and download the current menus for our meal plans (our family subscribes to the Low-Carb and Portion Control Meal Plans for Any Store).  The meal plans are in PDF format, which fortunately, allows you to copy and paste.

So, to add a meal to your calendar, create a new event in your Meal Planning Calendar.  Then, title your event the title of your meal.  Next, simply copy and paste your ingredient list from the menu into the description of your event.  Do the same with the cooking instructions and save!

You can also do this with your family’s current favorite recipes as well!

3.  Plan ahead 

This next part is my absolute favorite part.  You may have noticed it in the graphic above…see if you can figure it out…

.…

.…

Repeat.

You can plan your meals out for months and months ahead by simply clicking on the Repeat box in your event!

I usually choose to have them repeat every 6 or 8 weeks, and that way, you have an ever-growing list of recipes for your family that are automatically showing up on your meal planning calendar!  If there’s something we want to skip, then I just delete that particular “event” (don’t delete all of the instances) but then the meals continue to show up at my chosen increments.  It’s so slick!!

So, when my week is done, this is what my calendar looks like (I have my other ones hidden).  I can easily see what meals we have coming up and what days we are missing things on (or maybe are eating out that day).  It’s easy to click and drag and move things around to different days.

Whew!  Ok, that was a lot of steps and info.  There is one more little bonus thing that I do as well, but I will save that for another post this week.

Feel free to post questions if I missed something or if something isn’t clear!  You can also email me at amylemaniak@gmail.com too.  :-)

Happy Meal Planning!

Um yeah, so that’s me, the one who hasn’t posted since APRIL!!!  Let’s just say this working from home thing is HARD and much more time consuming than one could ever have imagined!!  But, I am SO happy I took this leap of faith, so far so good, although of course we’ve had a few bumps along the way in this change.

Just a brief update on everyone:

Tyson finished Kindergarten back in June, crazy, I know!  He’s very excited for summer and has been busy enjoying it with all of the neighborhood kids.  He played baseball this spring and flag football has started this week.  He’s still our little jock!

Bailey is amazing.  She is such a little stinker, but at the same time so adorable and sweet.  It’s been so fun to spend so much time with her these last few months. Especially when it was just me and her when big bro was in school.  She’s a little fishy in our neighborhood pool and is talking up a storm!  She’s starting a dance class with her neighbor friend next week and it might just be cuteness overload!!!  Will definitely be taking pics of that!

Tony and I are busy plugging away at life!  Working lots and playing lots too though.  We’ve been having a lot of bonfires (and a lot of wine) with our awesome neighbors.  I just love our neighborhood, I feel so lucky to live here!!

Now—back to my post title.  One of the things I have realized over the last few months is that I am completely time management challenged!  I NEED to be organized and I WANT to be organized, but getting there and STAYING there is a battle for me and always has been!  I’m really trying to work hard to teach myself some new habits and routines to simplify our daily life for my family.

Are you a list maker?  I sure strive to be.  And you know what?  Since I’ve started using more lists, I’ve been feeling much more organized and forgetting fewer things!

I stumbled upon this amazing site for all things list related. I just had to share in case anyone out there is looking for a way to help them stay organized and sane!  It’s called ListPlanIt.

They have a list for just about everything that you can think of.  Right now, my favorite are the business lists though, they help me plan out my business blog posts, newsletters and marketing.  There are also some fantastic daily planner, meal planning and to do lists.  I also cannot wait to use their holiday specific lists as well!

What kinds of things do you use to keep you on track and organized?  I would love to hear about them!

I’ve officially survived my first whole week as a stay at home mom and full time photographer.  Of course we haven’t been sick all winter and Tuesday B came down with a cold, then Wednesday Ty got it, and of course, Thursday was the lucky day for me!  But, despite that minor setback, I managed to get in all 3 days of training in the Couch to 5K Week 1 and it went much better than I anticipated!

I also started an Herbal Cleanse last Monday too and we’ve really been working hard to clean up our eating habits.  Not only for our own health, but to set a better example of the kids.  So, I thought this would be a great way for me to start it off, rid my body of all the bad stuff and start with a clean slate, literally!

A co-worker of mine from TR had told me about this line of products and said most people lose between 5–10 lbs on just this cleanse.  So, I decided to give it a go, as I really had nothing to lose.  Well, so far I’ve lost 7 lbs and still have 2 more days to go!  And the best part?  I feel SO much better, healthier, and am sleeping better at night too!  I’m sure it’s a combination of eating better, exercising and the cleanse, but I must say, if you’re in need for a kick start, definitely give this a shot!

I also signed up as a distributor so I could get all of their products for 20% off because I can definitely see us using these more long term, the energy drinks have been fantastic before workouts and the Oasis, wow, that stuff is simply amazing!  So, if you’d like to give any of their stuff a try, you can shop right through my Shop here!