It’s been over a year. And what a year it has been. I’m not sure where I would even begin, were I to re-hash the year. So I’ll stick with the biggest highlight…

I married my best friend on a beautiful, rainy day in August. Some day I would love to do a post about the wedding and planning a budget wedding in 4 months, because it’s so incredibly doable.

As you can imagine, since then it’s been a whirlwind of settling into married life, getting used to having a boy roommate, and lots of newlywed adventures. We are working hard to pay off student loans and living on a Dave Ramsey style budget. One thing that helps with the grocery bill is meal planning. And of course I love that! I sit down with my grocery list and my planner every week and make a plan. The cook and the planner in me collide. But… I’ve been having a lapse of inspiration lately, so I decided to try and make a crockpot dinner every day for a week! It gave me a focus for recipe searching and something to get excited about.

The planning might have taken the most amount of time, but that’s probably my own issue…scouring recipes and making sure there was ‘balance’ to the week took me a couple hours. The shopping and prep was a breeze.

It took me 1.5 hours on Saturday of measuring, mixing, and chopping and I have all of the meals ready to be thrown into a crockpot each morning! Kind of like those pins you see where someone makes 50 crockpot meals in 2 hours under $100. That might be exaggerating, but it always seems that impressive to me.

The Menu:

1. Sunday – Sesame-Orange Chicken (Against All Grain cookbook, Danielle Walker)
2. Monday – Ropa Vieja (PaleOMG, Juli Bauer)
3. Tuesday – Venison Chili (adapted from Bison Butternut Cocoa Chili – Practical Paleo, Diane Sanfilippo)
4. Wednesday – Split Pea Soup (Family Fresh Meals)
5. Thursday – Pulled BBQ Chicken (Against All Grain cookbook, Danielle Walker)

The Prep Plan:

1. Mix all spices and separate in baggies, write all instructions for day of on this bag.
2. Mix all sauces and jar – I used tape to write the instructions on the lids of the jar.
3. Chop all veggies and bag, labeling each one.
4. Chop meats if necessary and bag, labeling each one.

Follow on Instagram to see each meal and I’ll let you know how it goes! I told Josh he has to vote for his favorite!