Why You Need to Start Menu Planning Save Time Waste Less and Eat Healthier

Welcome to The Cherry On Top.

I'm jumping in here quickly to share the idea of menu planning, again. It's such an amazing habit to develop and practice. You will thank yourself. Trust me. To help you out, I've designed more coordinating kitchen printables.

Let me explain how I do mine and you can determine if it's for you or if ya need to change it up to make it fit your life.

Every Sunday morning, when all four of us are sitting in the living room with tea and coffee, I find out everyone's week's schedule, ask if there are any cravings and get to work planning our meals for the next 7 days.

I write down each meal, usually just dinner, but sometimes breakfast and lunch, both in my paper agenda and on a piece of 4x4 paper with the menu on one side and a grocery list on the other. Then I simply stick the paper on our familial white board in the kitchen so everyone can see what's on the menu.

Writing down the menu in my agenda is something I've been doing for over 10 years. It's really fun to go back to old agendas and see what we were eating and how our diets have evolved into incredibly healthy and nutritious meals.

You can write down details about the meal. What was the family's opinion or yours or both? Did you need to add something else to pimp it up or suit your family's needs? I often make up stuff according to what is fresh in the fridge and if it turns out great, I can write the recipe in my agenda for future use.

I love flipping through my agenda when I'm not feeling so motivated. I often start at the beginning or jump to the middle, depending on where we are at in the year and can quickly pull together my menu.

A friend of mine shared what her family does: 

"My husband uses Ai to suggest 4 recipes per week. He has it create a grocery list and sort it base on the department it would be in at ... (name of grocery store) I then delete anything on the list I know we have and add anything else I know we need like toothpaste..."

Isn't that a neat idea? I also lovED Pinterest, but some annoying aliens came and destroyed Pinterest. At least I still have my boards with thousands of meal, drink and dessert ideas. Today's lame ass Pinterest is full of ads, Ai and countless Pins of which I have absolutely no interest in. You can always hit up our many boards on Pinterest. They are full of healthy-ish, easy-ish ideas and I even have a vegan board which I like to hit up now and then.

You will save a lot of headache when you plan and when you are prepared to cook. You'll waste a lot less, too. You might even be able to zip through the grocer if you've got a great, ordered list. I sure do! This may be cheeky, but sometimes when I go to a store that is very tempting, I only take two bags and NO cart. I get what's on the list and if I still have room I can get things that are not on the list. This might take some discipline! Hehehe...

I endeavored to write nearly a year's worth of weekly menus that you can access on our blog and or our Weekly Menu Planner board on Pinterest. There's a Lunch for the Little Ones board, too. It has great, healthy-ish ideas for kids lunches and yours.

I've got another blog with some kitchen hacks and another menu planner printable. Here's another blog with more printables that might suit your needs better.

This blog has some ideas as well as some super cute printables for in the lunch box. We have learned to eat a lot healthier than what I posted then. I am in the middle of updating most of my blog and plan on talking about the improvements we've made over the years.

Here's one of my all time favorite blogs.

Both our boys have Autism and they both were such terrible eaters. My youngest didn't even want to breast feed! The youngest was the best breast feeder ever. Yay! Then he got Autism and everything changed. Including his eating habits. He had PICA. Goodness gracious, is that something to go through. I'm feeling ya if you are dealing with this, too.

Our oldest was so darn skinny and so darn hard to get to eat. We really had to get creative. Over the years we found many tips and tricks. Read the blog, share it with other parents that are finding it difficult feeding their kids healthy food or any food for that matter. It might save them a whole lot of hassle.

You're all set now to get planning and get shopping. Remember, if you're trying to eat healthier or trying to not eat processed food, don't frig'n buy it. Hehehe... We gave away our fryer so that we don't eat fried stuff. We eat fried food when we go to restaurants which is hardly ever. You may have to start off with one thing like soda. Don't buy soda. Maybe after going a few days without soda, have a small soda when you're out. If you even need it. Slowly but surly start buying less and less processed junk. That's what we did, too.

80% of what we eat is made from scratch. We buy local products whenever possible and shop at mom and pop stores. Your neighbors will do all they can to give you good products or you won't go back. Besides, they don't want to poison their neighbors. When you shop at big chains, full of large corporation food companies like Nestle, Tyson, Kraft and Pepsico they don't give a rat's ass how healthy their food is or how healthy you are. Plain and simple! They are rolling in it, too. Unlike your local little guy. You'll feel so good knowing you are helping support your neighbor. I realize this isn't always an option. I have to go out of my way too and shop at a couple of different stores to get everything I need. I'll be going in to much detail about grocery stores, shopping and health in future blogs.

Come on back and learn more about food shopping so you and your family can live healthier, longer lives.

Thanks for checking us out. Enjoy all of the free designs.

Leave us a comment with any tips you've got or recipes that your family loves. Links will work, too.

Bon appetit!

Start Building Your Wedding Scrapbook 36 Gorgeous Wedding Scrapbook Pages for Inspiration and a Lot of Tips

A very warm welcome to The Cherry On Top, scrapbookers, crafters and memory keepers.

Memory keeping is a wonderful hobby. There are so many different ways to document your memories and scrapbooking tops the list. It is an awesome experience, paging through a scrapbook. Each and every time you turn the pages, you’re flooded with cherished memories.

Feel free to download this pretty journal card if you like.

What an experience it is, designing your own wedding scrapbook. Especially the one for your wedding or someone you love. You’ll find yourself smiling, laughing and reminiscing about all of the fun and memorable scenes as you work on your scrapbook.

It might seem like a daunting task. We’re here to make the process easy, fast and enjoyable. Check out these tips and tricks to beautify and speed up the process. You will be totally inspired and itching to get started.

You can use our page inspiration and tips and tricks to scrapbook a traditional, paper scrapbook, too. I have dozens of blogs on paper scrapbooking. Scroll back and see what you can find or use our search at the top of the blog.

There are a lot of things to consider before you get going. Let us help you hash it all out.

Things to consider for your albums:

•  How much time do you want to spend on your album?

•  How much money do you want to spend?

•  How many pictures do you want to include?

•  What kind of order do you plan to go in?

We’ll go over some details for all of these so that it will be easier for you to make a decision and we'll give you ideas for your album as well. Hopefully, you’ll find new concepts, too.

Do you want to get this over and done with as soon as possible or do you plan on taking your time, enjoying the entire process and have zero time restraints?

Consider the style of your scrapbook and how much time you are willing to spend on each page. There are wonderfully easy and fast styles to scrapbook in. Here is an example of an insanely difficult layout, made easy with a layered digital template.

Below, I used a template to quickly crop in adorably fun photos of my niece and her “team”. You can design a page like this in 15 minutes or less! It’s also an awesome way to get a lot of pictures on one page. The page scraps in minutes and I could use a lot of pictures. You could go even smaller with the photo sizes if you have to. That way, you could even double the amount of pictures on your page. If you have a lot of pictures and you want to save time and money, then go for a style like this.

If you plan on going more ornate or if you wear the cluster queen crown, then you’ll need to give yourself more time.

The above page requires more hours, for sure. I am sharing a way to get around this further in the blog. So keep reading if you want totally gorgeous, ornate pages quickly.

If money is of no consequence, then any style and format will do. Lucky you! If your expenditures are limited there are still a lot of options. Scrapbooking digitally will save a lot of time, hassle and money. Whoo hoo! There are very few items you’ll have to purchase and depending on the size of your album and how many pages are in them, you can control printing costs.

You can choose to print at home and creatively bind or print on a smaller format if you don’t have a large 12x12 printer. A super easy option is printing through a company like Persnickety or even a local store.There is typically quite some room to play, financially.  The more pages, the more it’ll cost ya. Shiny pages cost more and the kind of cover you choose can also increase your overall cost. As well as what kind of cover hard or soft, etc.

Important Notes About Your Wedding Pictures

Look how simple! Crop and fit your pics on the page, add a fun, textured and stitched frame around the edge and get quirky with a chunky framed pic in the middle.

Carefully place your clusters on your page and don't be afraid to keep it simple.

As you can see with the above layout, the pictures are not great quality. This is what happens when you use pictures from a cell phone. Keep that in mind, for sure! If you can afford a photographer to click all the way into the night, it is highly recommended.  Especially, if you are wanting a high quality, gorgeous scrapbook.

Size matters! In regards to your pictures, keep size in mind. If you are going to design your scrapbook from start to finish, all on your own, page by page, then just size the pictures as you go. Let me show you what I mean.

If you were to print out all of your pictures professionally, in the same size, you wouldn’t have this kind of flexibility. This is not only a huge sized photo, but it’s crazy easy and fast to scrap. It looks pretty amazing as well and the photo is significant enough to enlarge to this size, too.

Another tip about photos that will help with choosing a process, style and type of album, is picture organization. Gather and group photos how you want them on the page. You can do this physically as well as digitally.

Organize photos in an envelope and put a page number on the envelope (in pencil, you will probably change it a lot). If you’re doing it digi then simply slide the photos you want on a new page and scrap later. Each page represents a page in your album. That’s how I did mine.

Another thing to consider is where you want to start? Will you start from when you were dating? The proposal? The bachelorette party? The shower? Will you simply scrap the wedding and reception? Think about all of the things we already mentioned as well as this and the order you want to go in and you’re nearly ready to get started.

Chronological is probably the easiest way to scrapbook and organize.

Coordinating a Scrapbook for Your Wedding

Considering our above questions, it’s time to start thinking about the details. If you are one of these mitchy matchy types, then I’d suggest purchasing an enormous digital (or physical) collection that would include: embellishments, journal cards, word art, borders, paints, paper and graphics. That's what I did.

This way everything and or all of your pages throughout the album will match. This style is most often the one preferred by most. If you notice throughout this blog, that was what I’ve done. This is also a huge way to save time. You won’t have to keep looking and searching for a style, theme and colors that all match.

If ya can't find your exact palette, go for neutral colors like these.

Make sure you stay cohesive with your theme and style. Cutesy, whimsical on one page and vintage on the page next to it, may not give you the affect you are looking for.

Look for a collection, coordinating packs with a fair amount of colors and elements. This way, you won’t get bored by page 5. If the color palette is extensive, it will go a lot further.

I totally recommend sticking with a style. Use it throughout your album for the best cohesive look. If you’ve got just a little software savvy, you could tweak the colors in all of the different packs so that everything fits perfectly together with your palette.

Also worth mentioning, when you’re surfing around type in different things in the search like, “romantic, love, wedding, bride, hearts…” and all kinds of different items will appear.

I customized this entire collection to match the colors in my niece’s party. Tip: If you’re finding it difficult matching the colors exactly, go for a palette that is neutral. Perhaps mostly white, off white, light grey, beige and slip in some colors that coordinate with the colors in your pictures.

See how colors like these might go with any kind of wedding photos? Super light colors and or black and white is versatile, too. Also note the color repetition. It’s a great way to keep a cohesive look on your page.

Save Time Designing Your Scrapbook With These Tips

Another awesome time saving tool for scrapbooking your wedding album or any album or page layout are templates. Templates are amazing! Shave off hours of scrapbooking time and you don’t have to think about “how” you want to scrap your page because the design has already been laid out for you. Fantastic, right?!

Nearly all of the pages I designed for my niece's wedding were from my templates and they don't have to be wedding templates.

Above is my cover.

This is the last page of the album.

Gather as many packs of templates that would look awesome for weddings and change them up when you can, by turning them on their head or even just 45 degrees to the right or left. Check out the two pages below. It's the same page, with different pictures and the pretty cluster is shifted to other side of the page. These look gorgeous side by side.

If you are not familiar with digital templates, they are like sketches and can definitely be used as a sketch. Here's a preview from a pack of templates I recently designed. Many of them would work for a wedding album. Find many more templates in my shop and if you need help on how to get started, this blog has hundreds of entries to get you going and help you along. The You Tube Channel has step by steps, too. Here's a link with a FREE template AND kit. I hold your hand through the entire process. Cool, right?

Consider journaling because you won’t remember everything. Trust me on this one.  Leave some space to journal, use quotes, poems and even things that your guests may have said that brought a laugh or warmed your heart.

Choose a font or three and stick with those for a more cohesive look in your album. Consider the style of text you are going to use.

Another cool way to save time and get creative is by using svg’s geared towards romance, love and weddings.

Hiring someone to design your scrapbook might seem like a great idea. Let me point out some pluses and minuses with that. You will still spend time gathering the photos you want the designer to use. You’ll still have to choose colors, themes and give information like dates, names and perhaps help with titles and journaling and tweaking it all together at the end.

It is very expensive and after all of that, you might not even love the end result because it isn’t all yours. The process of scrapbooking is very fulfilling. You don’t have to be an expert or have a lot of experience or supplies.You just need a little guidance, some examples, great templates and fabulous designs for your album pages.

I design professional scrapbooks for people and it costs $40-$70 a page! You can choose your style, colors...I can even design an entire scrapbooking collection for the pages like I did for my niece, but it'll cost ya! Hehehe...And it will take a few months to complete. Then you have to pay for the printing and the cover choice.

You can spend as little or as much time and money on a scrapbook and get great results with these tips.

Hiring someone to design your scrapbook might seem like a great idea. Let me point out some pluses and minuses with that. You will still spend time gathering the photos you want the designer to use. You’ll still have to choose colors, themes and give information like dates, names and perhaps help with titles and journaling and tweaking it all together at the end.

It is very expensive and after all of that, you might not even love the end result because it isn’t all yours. The process of scrapbooking is very fulfilling. You don’t have to be an expert or have a lot of experience or supplies.You just need a little guidance, some examples, great templates and fabulous designs for your album pages.

I design professional scrapbooks for people and it costs $40-$70 a page! You can choose your style, colors...I can even design an entire scrapbooking collection for the pages like I did for my niece, but it'll cost ya! Hehehe...And it will take a few months to complete. Then you have to pay for the printing and the cover choice.

You can spend as little or as much time and money on a scrapbook and get great results with these tips.

You can totally do this!  Start planning your wedding scrapbooking album, today.  Peruse shops for templates and designs that appeal to you. Look through our YouTube channel for helpful tips and pop over to our community to ask questions and get ideas.

Gather those pictures, write down some memorable quotes, look for fabulous designs and get your crafty scrap on.

If you still need more inspiration, take a look at the rest of my pages and I've got a super fun run through of the album in a video, too. See it quickly and all at once, here.You might be surprised how nice a digital album comes out. I know I was!

I'll quickly run through the next pages and add tips and tricks where I can to help you even further.

Above, is just a really pretty paper from the collection, a fun frame also in the collection and a very few elements arranged in the corner.  1, 2, 3...and you are finished!

Slip in some papers to a great template, design some word art with your coordinating papers and add a few other elements if you even need to.

How quick and easy is this page?! 5 larger photos, one journal card from the Reason to Celebrate collection and a lovely pic of the bride. This is a pretty sweet arrangement to show off the entire wedding party on one page. A great idea if you've got tons of pics or want to keep the album smaller. It's just pics, a coordinating color background that matches most of the pics and a journal card.

I don't know if you noticed the details? I used the awesome, dark navy background paper from the collection, which was ideal for the dudes. Then I took a paper with a wood look to match the wood in the pictures and tweaked the colors to match perfectly.  I really, really recommend trying to match the colors of your pictures with your papers and elements you use on your pages. I'll talk more about that as we go.

Above I used one of my templates and designed the truck element to match the collection.

I knew, well in advance, what the colors were going to be so I could make them match perfectly. I didn't know about the truck until I saw the pics, after the wedding. I quickly designed this truck to match the one in the pics. It was a nice vintage, manly touch. Consider the subject of the pictures when choosing papers and ellies for a layout.

Another technique to save time is to duplicate a cluster and move it around the page. Change the position if it looks right and tweak to perfection. Notice the color coordination? It's what helps make a scrapbook page look exceptional.

Another very simple page designed quickly. Large photos take up most of the page so I only need a few elements to finish it off. The ellies match the colors in the pic, the papers...All things to consider.

I used a template for the page above and some huge, light shadows to make my pictures and elements seem to float. Use shadows from your software program or buy great ones in the form of styles.

The album in its entirety, is fairly square which helps with the flow of the book. I am a fan of right angels. Play around with the papers until you get the perfect combo. Use the matting to contrast your pictures and make them pop.

This page wouldn't be all that easy for a beginner unless you had a great template! Hehehe...Templates are an awesome tool for your scrapbook pages and albums.

Sometimes, you're in the middle of a page and something just isn't right. It's often a contrast problem. I was a little stuck on this page until I added that black outline to the journaling. Use shadows and outline when ya need more poppage.

I used the same people for this page and the hearts were turned into envelopes. Jodi did the design for this page.

This album was designed a few years ago and I feel my designing has come a long way since then. I might have to take another attempt at a template like this, but this one is ok. If you find it too busy, delete some of the decorative bits on the cake.

This is a similar page I designed for Plus that you can grab.

It doesn't take hours to make a beautiful page!  Pump up the size of your ellies and use a large picture to save time.  Sneak in a smaller picture to get more pics on one page in a fun way.

Here are some designs from Plus in Design Bundles that you can purchase. Type in, "scrapbook wedding" and most of the collection will pop up.

Using the same elements repetitively is another really good scrapbooking layout technique.

See how the colors from the picture match everything around the page?

More templates in use. Too bad my shop is no longer open at GingerScraps. My apologies for this terrible inconvenience. If you're really wanting anything from this blog in the form of templates or the huge collection, send me a shout and I'll see what I can do. Many similar items can be found in Plus.

The black on gold is so luxurious, no? I only used a few elements on the page, above. Copy, paste and position to perfection.

These pages are a great way to get a lot of photos on one page. Change the juxtaposition of the template and use it over and over again.

Go big with those elements and use dramatic shadows for pop.

How you crop your photos depends on the space you've got when it comes to getting a lot of pictures on one page and depending on the template shape form. Ya may have to get a little creative at times. Just don't ever distort your pictures. Leave some extra background or maybe even cut off part of a person. Look carefully above at what I've done.

Every now and then I get stumped on a page and I just can't get it to look right. Rarely, I go for a black and white photo and it's just what the page called for. This is a unique look for a page, right? 

Don't be afraid to put stuff over your pictures. Use smaller pictures over photos where you've got too much background or over unimportant or even unwanted details. Same goes for elements.

I started this blog months ago. There may be wonky links and it sure as hell isn't easy to manoeuvre around Plus for my goodies. I linked up what I could from there and along the way I found a lot more gorgeous designs for weddings.

I hope you've found this blog helpful and by all means, take a peek at the video with all of the pages and the actual, printed wedding photo album. It's really, really awesome. There are also more pages than shown in the blog.

I've got loads of tutorials as well as, Watch Me Scrap videos.

I just designed the above wedding products so I could give ya a freebie. If you want them all, pop over to my shop and make them yours. CLICK HERE to see which design is today's freebie.

Thanks for checking out The Cherry.

Good luck with those wedding albums. You can always hit me and the ladies up in our group for questions you might have. We can seriously help you with any of your scrapbooking questions and needs.

Happy scrapping!