Possible Dinner Menu...

Monday... Fend For Yourself?
Tuesday... Cilantro Lime Chicken Tacos
Wednesday... Date Night
Thursday...
Friday... Chicken/Pork Tenderloin with Balsamic-Plum Reduction, Pear Salad
Saturday... Curried Cashew Pear Salad
Sunday...

Bountiful Baskets

Recently I heard about http://www.bountifulbaskets.org/, which is operated out of Utah. Basically, it is a food coop. It kind of reminds me of a CSA and Azure combination. Today was my first time picking up a "basket." The baskets are available for purchase every other week and contain both fruits and vegetables. I also volunteered this morning, since it is a completely volunteer run organization, which was kind of fun! Here's what I brought home from my basket...

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It includes... 

5 apples

2 bags celery

2 avocados

5 heads garlic

6 bananas

4 tomatoes

8 oz. mushrooms

1 head romaine

2 bags grapes

11 plums

6 pears

9 sweet potatoes

Not bad for $15! I'm getting excited about planning meals for this week and figuring out what I'm going to do with the produce! 

I very rarely buy plums, so I was kind of at a loss for what to do with them. Then I went searching around online for some recipes and came up with a couple that I am excited about! One is for pork tenderloin with a balsamic-plum reduction. Yummy! That's on the menu for this week. The other is for an Asian plum sauce that I will make and (hopefully) can for the future. The plum sauce calls for applesauce, which we don't have right now, so I'm making some with a few of the apples from the basket. 

The pears are also something I'm trying to figure out what to do with, since I'm not much of a pear person. I'm confident, though, that I will find an amazing recipe, or that Leif will eat them before I get the chance to find a suitable way to serve them. =D If all else fails, I think they will be good with some cheese, smoked salt, nuts, and wine. A good, easy picnic for movie night?? We'll see. 

I am unsure of what to do with the avocado so far, but will be searching for recipes on that next. If nothing comes to mind, I will either make guacamole (yum!) or puree it for future use. 

The sweet potatoes will probably get cooked and pureed for Thanksgiving yambake (that's what Leif wants me to do with them), though I would like to use them for a sweet potato curry, so we'll see who wins out this week. ;)

I have some other ingredients I'd like to use this week, too, including potatoes, onions, 2 limes, cilantro, basil, and dill. So... seems like we'll have some good flavor to dinner this week!! Woohoo!

THE PERSONAL PLANNER

The personal planner is coming together. In fact, I am really liking it. Here's how it started....

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3 Ring Binder with half size sheets in it and my own dividers...

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Notepad in the back for extra notes...

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Monthly Tabs including birthday calendars. This is how it easily becomes a 90 day planner.

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30 Day Focus sheet for each month...

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Tabs for each of the major areas in my life... Time Management, Money Management, God, Family, Career, and Personal Development including Health and Nutrition.

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Special things for Eliana, like her schedule for the week and important phone numbers.

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A place for notes for the teacher, should I need them.

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Daily schedule sheet...

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Cute fitness and nutrition tracking sheets...

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90 Day reading list... What I'm currently reading.

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Book recommendation sheets for when others recommend books to me.

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And added pockets for the miscellaneous!

That's how it STARTED. I used it for a month or so and then the system I was waiting for came out with their punch so I could customize my own pages to fit into a disk system. I LOVE IT!!

The thing I probably love the best is that my personal planner now fits in this:

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Here's what the cover of the actual notebook looks like:

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A lot of the printable pages I found that I like and use came from these guys:

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In this version of the planner, I have time management focused pages in the front, and then the tabs start.

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God, Family, Career, followed by a pocket, and then my personal and financial tabs. It's kind of nice to separate the sections that way. I start with my daily list of things to do... 5 most important things, routines, meals, exercise, water, shopping list, appointments... all on one sheet. I found this sheet from simpleorganizedliving.com and I love it. I fill it out at night before bed and it allows me to think out and plan my next day. This is my work-from sheet. If I didn't look at the rest of the planner, but just worked off of this sheet each day, I'd be doing pretty good. I also have some sticky tabs so that I can use if I need to remember where I left off, what didn't get done, or just want to mark something. Then I have my Weekly Plan Sheet that I put together on Sunday night for the week. It's an ideal, but gives me something to work from each day as I plan the next day. Notice, too, that my monthly tabs are here in this section, too, before the God, Family, Career tabs.

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Then I have my Daily To-Do List. This is where I track what I want to do and what I'm actually doing, and how I'm balancing my personal/family and business time.

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LOOK!!! I can punch coupons and put them in my planner to use that day!

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This is my weekly meal planner with tear-off grocery list. Leif does the grocery shopping, but this lets me think through next week's meals while I'm out and about and make notes for ingredients we will need.

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GOD tab:

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This lets me make notes, read scripture and journal it, and journal prayers while I'm out and about, too. I find this much better than using a dedicated journal, since I often don't have the journal with me. FAMILY tab:

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Ellie's "I-didn't-get-any-checkmarks-at-kindergarten-today" punchcard and perforated "Let's have a playdate" sheets that make planning playdates easier.

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CAREER tab:

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Current promotion and place to jot down notes as I make phone calls while I'm out and about...

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Blank note pages. PERSONAL tab:

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Current reading list for the 90 days...

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Book recommendation sheets:

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IOU Coupons:

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FINANCES tab:

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A place to make notes about who paid what and what I paid, etc. Not an actual ledger, but a place for me to make notes. And, of course, my receipt pocket:

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My shopping list...

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Tiny notes...

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And my important pocket!

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(and, of course, the notepad)

It's a ton of pictures, but I really love my new personal planner and disk binding system! All of the pages are easily rearrangable, without having to open up the rings and risk losing all of the sheets. I have done that on more than one occasion! Also, the disk spacing makes it easier to include smaller pieces of paper, like coupons! I'm pretty pleased.