Welcome to MPM! This week we’ll be celebrating Thanksgiving here in Canada. Well technically next Monday is Thanksgiving but we always celebrate on the Sunday night. Next week will be all about the leftovers. Also because we’ll be busy next Sunday night with the festivities, don’t look for MPM to go up until Monday morning :)
Now I have to tell you about the recipe highlight from last week. Well actually I can’t pick just one because both of these meals were absolutely fantastic! If you get a chance to try either the Cheese Stuffed Meatloaf or the Caesar Chicken Pasta Salad I’m sure you won’t be disappointed. Both are easy to prepare although I was a little worried about the meatloaf for a minute there when I realized I would actually have to roll it up but to my surprise I did it without any problems. Yay me..lol. The funny thing is I don’t normally even like meatloaf but I gobbled up seconds of this recipe in no time flat. Yum!
Oh and one other thing I should mention today. To be wild and crazy, I’m trying out a new linky system below. Hopefully we won’t experience any problems. Let me know which one you prefer, the old Mr. Linky or the new MckLinky. Sorry apparently my site didn’t like the new linky. I’ve switched it back.
Here’s what we’ll be eating this week and as you can see I like to keep things pretty simple leading up to the big event :)
Saturday: Leftover buffet (always a good idea to use up what’s in your fridge before a big meal)
Sunday: Thanksgiving dinner! I’ll be trying some hopefully great new recipes and will be sharing them as part of my Holiday Meal Planning Made Easy handout for Simplify 101’s Holiday Workshop.
WHAT’S ON YOUR MENU THIS WEEK?
Menu Plan Monday guidelines and banner selections are here.
Just a couple of things I wanted to mention real quick this week.
I have drooled over this picture many times in the past couple of years.
Isn’t that something?! I could look at that all day. I recently heard about a great giveaway going on at My Organized Chaos where you can enter for a chance to win your very own Workbox valued at $1295.00!
A couple of weeks ago I did a review of the downloadable organizing video sets that friends Elaine Shannon and Kim Eagles of Organizing Connection recently released. They have kindly offered my readers a $10.00 discount on any single product or $20.00 off the complete set. The discount code is – single set: orgjunkie full package: orgjunkie2. Simply add the code during check out and update the cart before proceeding to checkout. The discount will expire October 5th, 2009 at midnight. They are also holding a fun contest which you can check out here.
Finally Aby Garvey of Simplify 101 has just opened registration for her new Get Organized for the Holidays Workshop. The workshop starts November 3rd and ends January 12, 2010 and includes access to the forums, five lessons and six bonus handouts. And guess what? One of those handouts will be from yours truly, ME! Yay! Be sure to check it out by clicking on the button below.
This week the Juice discussion is about giving more and getting more out of relationships. I watched the video with Christine Koh from Boston Mamas and she had some great tips for how to reach out to others including practicing random acts of kindness and making homemade gifts for friends. As a mom to three, I wanted to be able to incorporate both of these activities into meaningful lessons for my kids on a regular basis. That’s when we came up with the idea of cookie baskets. {read more at The Juice}
I love love love when readers come up with inexpensive storage solutions to fill an organizing need. Marci, from the lovely blog Overcoming Busy, did just that in a post yesterday that brought a huge smile to my face. I knew I just had to share it with you.
Don’t all those charging cords for cell phones, Mp3’s, Nintendo DS’s, etc drive you a little nutso scattered all over the house? It certainly does me but those commercial charging stations can be pretty expensive. Marci decided to create her own using supplies from Michaels all for under $15.00! Check it out:
Beautiful!
Be sure to visit her post to read exactly how she did it. Way to go Marci for thinking outside of the box!
Follow along with me today and then feel free to show us your own organized purse for a chance to win two great storage magazines. Details at the end of this post.
When I put out the call for volunteers to show me their purse and let me help get it organized, Cathy, one of my readers and author of the blogs Strawberries are Gluten Free and Desperately Seeking Wordpress, kindly offered to let us take a peek inside her purse. I loved the comment she left me.
Help!!! Pick me! Pick me! You can take a picture of anything you want! lol (or I can). Whatever!
If you pick me or not, I’ll TRY, but I’ll probably do a better job AFTER I get to see the inspiration at the end of this month. For about 2 months I’ve been thinking of purchasing another bag. But I’m totally stuck!!
I want mature – but I want fun. I want leather, but I want color. Orange leather with buckles? ROTF
Other than the bag, i also need to be able to FIND stuff! I carry only a few touch-up things, chapsticks, but then I keep coupons, (coupon organizer too), as well as receipts, to-do lists, and phone numbers jotted down on scraps or the back of business cards. Plus I’d like to find my business cards to give away without digging through the ‘emergency pad’ in the view of everyone.
Do I sound desperate? :) I think I have a home for most everything in my junk drawer, and in our office- 2 places are still crazy – the van, and my handbag!! Ugggg. I have 3 different wallets – none of which fit all those cards, temporary discount cards – that change every season(!) – cash, change, and the essential cards – drivers license, debit, etc.
Oh dear, poor Cathy! She does sound a little frustrated. How many of you can relate? I sent her some recommendations based on the information and pictures she sent me and she took it away and came up with a pretty amazing solution. Let’s walk through what she did. Here is her purse “before”:
and the inside:
I didn’t mind the purse actually, it had a lot of pockets and plenty of potential so I didn’t recommend a new one, sorry Cathy! :)
Right away I could see that all that was lacking in Cathy’s purse was some boundaries. Everything was sort of muddled together. It’s no wonder she was having trouble finding what she needed. Containerizing your purse is similar to how we do it anywhere in our homes. It’s important to provide a separate container for the various collection of items you have in order to keep “like with like”.
The Pouchee is a purse insert that keeps your purse essentials super organized and makes switching purses a piece of cake. You can read my review of it here.
These type of organizers are great for purses or bags with no inside pockets. Look at all the sorting possibilities, such fun!
Let’s go even more inexpensive now shall we. Take a trip to the dollar store and you will find all sorts of things that can be used for purse dividers. Pencil cases, makeup pouches, even ziploc bags. Any of these will do the job. Cathy took a trip to her dollar store and was able to find herself some great zippered pouches.
here it is all containerized and ready to go back in
How excited was I when Cathy told me she even had a color coded system:
- black – my sophistimacated makeup, compact, girls hair ties
- red – STOP (as in inedible): meds, hand sanitizer
- green – GO eat: snacks, breath mints
She could also use one for coupons, loyalty and business cards. However I think Cathy decided to go with a black card organizer though for those and now has them all in one location. Yay!!
Cathy also found at the Dollar Store an eye glass case to stop her glasses from getting all banged up in her purse.
To take care of never losing her keys again, I highly recommended to Cathy the carabiner method. She was able to pick up one of those at the Dollar Store too and it works like a charm!
Also on Cathy’s to do list:
- purge expired coupons – check
- get rid of old receipts – check
Finally after getting all that together Cathy realized that all she really needed her wallet for was bills, credit cards, license and various bits of important paper.
Let’s check out the after pictures. Oh and guess what, she couldn’t resist and bought herself a fabulous new purse!
and the newly organized inside:
Beautiful and aside from the cost of her new purse she only spent $8.00 for supplies at the Dollar Store. Not bad at all I must say for less stress and chaos!
So remember, sort like with like, purge excess, and then containerize to set some boundaries.
Well done Cathy, that was fun!
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Now it’s YOUR turn. Show us your newly organized purse by adding your link to the Mr. Linky list below and I’ll chose one lucky participant to win both of these storage magazines….Better Homes and Gardens Summer 2009 issue and Storage 2009 issue.
Please remember to show us your before and after pictures and as well link directly to your purse post and not to your home page to make it easier for us to find the link in the future. And remember you need to link up prior to Oct 3rd at 6:00 pm PST to be eligible for the giveaway.
More details about past round-ups can be found here.
Updated to add: This giveaway is now closed. The winner is #24 Colleen!
Isn’t that new button so cute? I’ve been helping Cathy from Desperately Seeking Wordpress with some purse organization (that I’ll hopefully be showing you tomorrow) and she went and made a lovely MPM button for me in return. I just love it! You are more than welcome to use it on your own site as well if you like. Thanks again Cathy!
So last week we did it, we made it over 400 participants! In fact I believe we were at 430! That’s a lot of happy households my friends, woohoo :) I said that if we made it over 400 I’d giveaway the Summer Slow Cooker Meals Taste of Home cookbook to a random winner. That winner is A Couch With A View!! Thanks everyone, I hope you enjoyed a week of less stress for having had a menu plan :)
Since last week was so much fun I’ve decided to do another giveaway this week except I’m making this one open to everyone. In other words, you don’t have to link up a menu plan to enter, all you have to do is leave a comment on this post. I’m so excited to let you know that this week you have the opportunity to win some menu planning help from Kate at Stolen Moments Menu Planning! Kate is offering either a 3-month subscription to the complete (breakfast, lunch and dinner) plan or a 6-month subscription to the basic (dinners only) plan. The winner can pick which option they’d prefer.
This service is different from other menu planning options out there because it is fully personalized to your family’s size, likes, dislikes, cooking styles and budget. Kate takes your answers from a brief survey to create unique menu plans tailored just for your family. Each plan includes the menu, recipes and a corresponding grocery list. You can choose to have your plans delivered monthly or weekly. For more information, check out the Stolen Moments Menu Planning site and order page. I haven’t seen another menu planning service that offers this much personalization and attention to your family’s unique needs. In honor of today’s giveaway Kate has set up a unique discount page for orgjunkie readers here. Simply put in the password frugal and you will be able to lock in at the rate of $5.95 per month for basic and $12.50 per month for complete. Sample menu plans can be seen here. To enter the giveaway just leave a comment on this post before Wednesday, September 30th at 6:00 pm PST to be eligible.
Okay so here is what my family will be eating this week:
Almost two months ago I experienced a devastating loss when my best friend of 27 years lost her 9 year old son. Having not ever gone through loss as painful as this before I was so grateful for those who stepped up to help us through those first couple of weeks as we muddled our way through all that needed to be done. In particular, having meals delivered to the house was an amazing blessing to the family. Here are some tips I learned throughout the process that I thought might be beneficial to others wanting to prepare a meal for someone in need. {continue reading at The Juice}
This month Org Junkie’s Monthly Organizing Round-Up is all about getting our purses organized. Not only the inside of them but also the number of purses we have and how we store them. I saw this very neat product on the Daily Grommet today and just had to share it with you.
Check out the video below Updated: Click here to see a very handy way of organizing 14-28 of your purses and bags on the back of a door or hanging on a wall. Love it!
I know a pattern must exist out there online to make one of these yourself if you happen to have some sewing skills, which I unfortunately do not. If you do know of one please share in the comments. Thanks!
PS: Just so you know I am not affiliated with this product.
So another week is here! I’ve had the most beautiful day of puttering around, one of my favorite ways to spend a day. No commitments, just a little bit of this and a little bit of that, getting all those itty bitty details taken care of that seem to pile up during the week. Of course I still have four loads of laundry to do but I’ll get to those eventually :)
So it seems that as the school year gets going and fall sets in we have many more participants joining us for Menu Plan Monday. In fact, we were six short of 400 last week!! It makes me so happy to know that people are starting off this season on an organized foot. Menu planning makes a huge difference and I just want everyone to see how taking a few minutes once a week to plan your meals can literally change your life. It doesn’t have to be complicated, it doesn’t have to be fancy, it just has to be enough to give you the peace of mind that you don’t have to worry about what you’ll be serving your family each night for dinner.
I purchased Taste of Home’s Summer Slow Cooker Meals cookbook back in July to giveaway here on the blog and then life happened and I never got around to it. However even though we are no longer in the midst of summer (at least not in my neck of the woods!), I’d still like to give it away to one of YOU to enjoy.
So this is what I’m going to do. If today we get over 400 Menu Plan Monday participants I will giveaway this cookbook to one random participant from the Mr. Linky list below. You’ll have to link up to your menu plan before Wed, Sept 23rd at 12:00 pm PST to be eligible. If we don’t happen to get over 400 participants then I’ll carry the prize forward to the next week and so on.
Last week’s recipe highlight goes to the Kid-Pleasing Spaghetti which I made for my girlfriend. She tells me her four kids gobbled it up. It’s a nice one dish inexpensive meal to make and take to someone in need.
