Make your own meal planner

I don't know about you, but I was getting into a bit of a rut where every evening it was a struggle to decide what to cook for dinner. Then on some occasions I decided what to have only to look in the refrigerator and realise that I didn't have that food in.

On browsing Pinterest one day, I discovered people had designed all types of menu boards to help plan their meal for the week.  Such as...

  

or

These inspired me to have a go at creating my own.

I liked the idea of using mini pegs to pin the meals so I ordered some from eBay. I then started to look for something I could make into a board. Then a Graze box popped through my door and after eating my tasty snacks I kept the box with the thought of finding a nice decorative paper to cover it. 

The box was left laying around for a couple of weeks until I had another brain wave. Inside the graze boxes there are pictures. So I thought I'd see if I could turn the box inside out and eliminate the need to cover it.

The boxes are put together by folding, so I carefully undid it like so...

Note this is a different box to the one I used on the finished product.

Then I put it back together inside out, and put a little tape on the side to hold it together. Next I took my pegs and wrote the days of the week on them, then glued them on the box with PVA evenly spaced out.

Then I took some other brown card (more recycled packaging) and made two little pockets to put the removable food cards in. I did debate over how many pockets to have and what catergories to use. I saw one on Pinterest that had "favs" and "quick" which I really liked the idea of, but then I knew I'd end up confusing myself if a meal fitted into both fav and quick! So I decided to go for meals that I have in and meals that I don't.Again I used PVA to glue these on.

Then I cut out the cards to write the meals on from an old cereal box. And fially here is the finished meal planner! Not the neatest or most professional looking, but it does the job and has got me out of the meal decision quandry every day.

The Graze Craze - free voucher code

Graze boxes have been around for a couple of years now. For those that don't know it's like a food version of a Glossybox. You sign up to receive either fortnightly or weekly boxes at £3.89 each including P&P and the box comes through your door with 4 snack boxes inside.

The food you get given is based on preferences you put into the website. You can give foods a rating of either "bin, try, like or love" and this will affect how often you get those foods in your box. Ratings can be updated as often as you like.

I thought I'd give it a go as I had a voucher for a free box and I was really impressed with my selection, so I'm going to keep it up for a little while longer and see how it goes.

In terms of feedback for Graze, I do wish there was 5 foods in each box rather than 4, as this would give me a breaktime snack for each day of the week at work. Also, it would be good if there was other options than just weekly and fortnightly. But overall, I really like it.

If you would like to give it a go, have a free box on me, using the voucher code: W6H7RT1D