A Look Into Our Notebooks – Week 40 of 2020

I like to spend Monday mornings looking back on the last week. It’s so fun to document my days, even though they are relatively quiet and simple.

I’m still enjoying the Travelers Notebook weekly insert. Instead of using colored pencils, I ordered another pack of my favorite pastel highlighters – Pilot Highlighter Frixion Light. I love the subtle colors and it’s much faster to swipe the area I want highlighted rather than coloring it in.

Today marks day 183 of journaling and I consistently worked on my blog last week (journaling and writing time is highlighted in green). Those early morning hours are really life-giving for me. We played outside every day this week except for Friday, which was full of rain and a bit too cool to play in it (our high that day was 58). The pink shows my reading time and you can see that I didn’t do any reading the second half of the week! I tend to do most of my reading in the evening while knitting or sewing, but last week was filled with television. I was glued to the news, despite knowing better. But I’ve worked a ton on my hexies quilt (yellow) and can’t wait to share my progress with you on Wednesday.

You might remember that I struggle with meal planning. I’m trying something new with this weekly insert. This picture shows what the monthly spreads look like – they are also vertical! I really like that. I scoured pinterest for freezer meals that can be made ahead and then popped in the oven or crockpot. I put together a giant grocery list and plan to send my husband to the grocery store this morning and and then I’m going to be busy in the kitchen this afternoon. Not everything on this list is something that I can make ahead (or need to make ahead – some things are just dead easy) and some meals require fresh ingredients like cilantro or green onions. Those meals are notated with asterisks and my plan is to try to pay attention and pre-shop for those little things.

You can see lines beside a lot of the meals – I currently have all of the ingredients needed for those meals on the grocery list. Once I prepare that dish and put it in the freezer, then I’ll turn that line into a checkbox. Once we cook and eat the meal, I can check it off. The hope is that this will help me keep track of what’s left at the end of each month and then transfer it over to the next. I don’t have to follow the meal plan rigorously; I can easily skip around to what sounds good that day and just check off meals as I go. I left a few blank days towards the end of the month because I know that we’ll need days to work through the leftovers. That means that we’ll have random days when we’ll have the luxury of not needing to cook!

I hope this works out like I’m anticipating. I resent cooking. I always have to stop something I’m enjoying in order to cook. But it’s sort of my job to plan for meals and make sure my family eats, so here’s to figuring out how to do that!

I invite you to share a link to a recent blog post about your own notebooks in the comments. I always enjoy the inspiration!