Card Box

One of the things I am really going to try to do in the new year is to gt my cards to people on time! I have gotten better about making the cards and having a "stash" of ready made cards, but they often arrive just a little late. To help with my organization problems, I decided to put together this box. I started with the photo storage boxes from Hobby Lobby, just the plain black boxes. I wanted to decorate them with my own paper since I wasn't crazy about the colors they had to choose from. (Enabler alert: these boxes are on sale half price this week). I just used some paper that I believe is from My Mind's Eye to decorate my box. Since my box is black, I used black construction paper and the Sizzix Twang alphabet to punch out the letters to label the box. I didn't take a picture of the inside, but the boxes come with index cards and I used the Card Categories from Clear Dollar Stamps to make my index labels. That is a really great set, it comes with 33 different categories for you to use. This is also the project that we will be making for craft night at church on Friday night.

Since I mentioned my marathon cooking session, several people have asked me to let them know how it went. I actually had four freezer, cook one day eat for a month type of cookbooks already. I decided to go with the 2 week plan to start since it is normally only the two of us eating dinner, but we still wanted to have leftovers to use for lunches. I decided to use the Frozen Assets Cook for a Day Eat for a Month book by Deborah Taylor-Hough. There were a couple of reasons that I decided to start with this one. The first one being that a friend had given me a couple of recipes to try and I enjoyed them and they tasted good when they were thawed and served. Another was that the recipes seemed to be a little more economical than the other books I have. Here is a picture of my fully stocked freezer:

So we are set for a while! It was a long day of cooking but hopefully I will be able to really notice a difference during the week when our schedules are more than a little crazy. That's pretty much everything I made, except the soup that is in the refrigerator. I do have a couple of suggestions if you want to try this:

1. See if your library has some books for you to look through so you can get an idea of the recipes, but the one I mentioned above is my favorite. There is also a Lite and Easy book with the same name that has different recipes.

2. Start with the two week plan.

3. Buy aluminum foil even if you think you have plenty!

4. Read all the information before attempting to cook. I am a fairly experienced cook and have made Thanksgiving lunches to feed 200+ and dinners to feed 40-50, but cooking like this was a little different and it helps to do everything in the order that it is laid out in the book.

5. If you have a small family separate your meals before you freeze them to keep from eating the same thing for three or four days.

Feel free to email me if you have any questions!