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Meal Planning, part 3 {the how}

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This is part 3 of a 4 part series. Start here with part 1, part 2 (the where), and part 4 (the conclusion) to get the full picture of how to integrate this meal planning guide into your normal routine!
meal planning for busy moms

Okay, now that you’ve got your Google Calendar set up with a new category of  ‘menu planning’, let’s put this together with some more practical tips.

1.  Using Google Calendar to create a year’s meal plan

My goal in doing this for myself is to develop a long range menu plan that I’ll only have to tweak but will essentially be something I can use for the rest of my cooking life.

This is going to take time because we like a lot of variety—which means I’m not setting my recipes up to ‘repeat’ very often.

I also love seasonal food so I’ll be tweaking that along the way.  Say, for instance, I schedule beef stew to repeat every 4 months and then it shows up as my dinner for June 3rd.  I’ll look at my menu the month before and change things that don’t go well for that season, substituting new recipes I’ve found or fresh seasonal items that I find in abundance at the grocery store.  If I enter those into my summer recipes then I don’t have to have them repeat at all—or maybe only once—and then next June, I’ll have a great beginning menu, with lots of seasonal items included.

I’m thinking about this long term so I’ll tweak it all year until I get it how I want it!

At the end of a year, I’ll have an incredible, time-saving resource that helps me take good care of my peeps.

2.  Sources for meal Options for healthy, seasonal, easy and even gourmet recipes.

I use three main sources for recipe ideas—-Cuisine at Home, emeals, and blogs/Pinterest/internet.

Cuisine At Home

It’s most definitely my favorite cooking magazine.  I’ve made HUNDREDS of their recipes over the past ten years and they are so consistently good and gourmet.   I’ve learned so much from their tutorials and just this weekend used a 2010 issue to make the best brunch, complete with a hollandaise sauce.  I lost my collection of them after the fire but my mom gave me lots of old issues from her stash.   Get a subscription!  You won’t be sorry!   Their recipes do tend to be a little more involved but are by far my favorites!

Emeals

One of the tools I’ve used to help me with that is emeals.  Their program lets you customize your dietary restrictions with your favorite grocery store to give you a meal plan for the week that costs under $100 per week.  They plan their meals based on the sales at the store and their recipes are usually simple to execute and well balanced.   I am a foodie and have been cooking and meal planning for years so I don’t follow their plan exactly but I do use some of their ideas and recipes and I find it to be perfect for the novice mom who’s just trying to get into the routine of getting regular meals on the table.  You could use their program alone and have good, consistent meals every week.   They have done so much work to provide you with a shopping list along with coupon opportunities at your favorite store.  They also have lots of crock pot recipes (usually one per week) that make it easy to feed your family even if you’re crunched for time.  It’s $5/month and worth every penny.  Click the link below to check them out!
eMeals - Easy Meals for Busy People!

 

Blogs/Pinterest/Food Network

I’m on the internet a lot and I love to find new recipes online.   I have a Pinterest Board full of great recipes and before that I stored some favorite links on my Tumblr site.   I search the Food Network all the time for new seasonal and holiday ideas.  I also love Pioneer Woman!  But then again, who doesn’t?

3. Using Ziplist to organize your recipes/shopping

Christi introduced me to Ziplist this week and she may have just changed my grocery shopping life forever .   I’ve been doing hitchkicks ever since.

It’s a site dedicated to helping you ‘clip’ online recipes, which it uses to make your shopping list.  It also acts as a recipe box for you—a place for you to keep all your online recipes.  And it’s free!  I’ve been using it for a couple days and made my first grocery store trip from the list it created for me.  I DIE!!!!!!  It’s so awesome.

Once you create an account, you can install their ‘recipe clipper button’ to your bookmarks bar, which makes it easy to ‘clip’ your online recipes and make shopping lists from them.

Once you have the recipe clipper installed into your bookmarks bar, you find your online recipe and then once you’re on the webpage of the recipe, you click the recipe clipper.  It’s downloads the recipe into your ‘recipe box’ and then makes a shopping list for you based on those ingredients.  It gives you the option of choosing to unclick the items you already have.  It also organizes the list based on the layout of most stores.  Then you can email or text the list to yourself and head to the store.  You can also download their app to make it easy to add things to your list on the go.

It’s genius.

Pure unadulterated genius.

Now, I can’t wait to go the store.

Well, maybe it’s not THAT good.

I made a little video to explain it all in case this sounds confusing.   (The video is probably just confusing with a southern twang—my apologies in advance!)

4.  The Commitment to Cook

You will find time to cook when you make it a priority.   And the best way to get started is to have a plan.    You get better at cooking by cooking.  It takes time to feel comfortable in the kitchen and it takes even longer to really enjoy it.  Now, it’s one of my favorite things to do.  And my girls get to learn first hand the planning and preparation it takes to put good food on the table every night.  It doesn’t happen by magic but by smart ( not necessarily hard) work.

Just decide that it’s going to be a priority for you this year.  Your family will love you and thank you for the extra time and effort you put into this very tangible act of love.  And the truth is, it’ll save you so much time and stress because the nagging thought of dinner is not always on your mind.  Get it on paper and suddenly, it’s off your mind!

Happy Planning!

I’ll wrap this all up tomorrow with links to everything in one page and with a giant list of recipe links.  If you didn’t already link to your favorite online recipe in part 1 of this series, do it in this post so we can all benefit from your favorites!

 

Thank you so much for all your comments and thoughts and ideas.  Y’all are the best internet friends a girl could ask for!

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Don’t forget to link up on Wednesday, January 30 for your thoughts on ‘time’ and how to better use it to serve others.  If you implement the meal planning, this would be a great time to share with us how you personalized the system and made it your own.  Get that post ready and link up with us!

Meal Planning, part 2 {the where}

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This is part 2 of a 4 part series. Start here with part 1, part 3 (the how), and part 4 (the conclusion) to get the full picture of how to integrate this meal planning guide into your normal routine!
meal planning for busy moms part series on Meal Planning. Start here!
This was Stevie’s brainchild.  I can’t take credit, which kinda makes me mad.  I think he was just tired of me asking what he wanted for dinner.

One night while I was clearing the dishes, he said,  “Why don’t you just start putting all your recipes into your iPhone and then setting them up to repeat every so often.  Seems like that would be the easiest way to never have to wonder what  to cook.  You’d have a year’s worth of recipes within a couple of months.”

He said it so matter of fact.  Like the logical man that he is.  Blimey genius.  I wasn’t sure if I wanted to smack him or smooch him.

How long had he been holding this golden information?  And why does my creative, free-flowing, glitter-lined brain not think of it?

But I finally got around to giving it a try and I think I’m in love.  I hope to have a year’s worth of meals planned within a couple of months.

I use Google Calendar (because I like using it better than iCal for this) and then sync in to my iPhone.   I’ll give you all the details for how I do it but you could use any system you like.

I’m gonna tell you every step—– so at some point, you’re gonna hate me and say,  “I’m not an idiot.”  I know you’re not.  You’re smart and beautiful and I don’t mean to demean you by writing a tutorial that a 1st grader might scoff at.    But I’m writing, not you:)    And   I like hand-holding tutorials.  So, take my hand, dear friend, and I’ll walk you through every painful step.

Using Google Calendar to create a menu—–

1.  Create a Google calendar

Sign into Google and find the Calendar link.  Google is my home page, so for me, the Calendar option is at the top left side of the home page.  Once the calendar has loaded, at the top right, click on ‘month’ so you can see the month at a glance.  Google allows you to make subcalendars so that you if you want a separate calendar for menu, it’s easy to do.  Then, if you want to see all your calendars together, you just click them.  The advantage to creating a separate calendar for the menu is that it makes it easy to share and print out, without having everything else that’s on your schedule show up.  In this photo, you can see a portion of my calendar when all my calendars are clicked on.

menu planning for busy moms

And  if I want, I can choose just to see my menu calendar, which I don’t have  photo of but you get the point.

I have separate calendars for cleaning and cooking but everything else is just added to my main calendar.  (In the above photo, the left column, you can see color coded labels? ‘Edie Wadsworth’ is my main calendar and then I created sub calendars for meal planning and household chores.  Most of the time I have them all toggled to ‘on’ so I can see all my stuff in one place.)

So, to create a calendar, to the left where it says ‘My calendar’, click it and then choose ‘Create New’ and name your new calendar.  Right above and slightly to the left of where you named it, you click ‘create calendar.’  Okay, now you have a menu calendar.  Hurray for you!  (This way, when you complete your monthly menu plan, you can print it out and post it for your family, without the clutter of the rest of the stuff.)

2. Start adding menu items.

I posted some links yesterday to menu options, so we’ll use those as examples.   We want to add Greek/Lemon Chicken Soup, so that it looks like this on our calendar.

Go ahead and open the link to the recipe (it should open in another window) and we’ll use it to copy and paste portions of it into the calendar.
meal planning for busy moms

First, click on today’s date on the calendar and this window will open.

In the ‘what’ box, put the name of the recipe and then choose which calendar you want it to go into.  If you didn’t set up a separate meal plan calendar, it’ll just put it onto your master calendar. Then click, ‘edit event’.  This will bring you to a page that looks like this.

meal planning for busy moms

Under ‘Repeat’, choose how often you want the recipe to repeat on your calendar.  Every family is different.  We like lots of variety so I don’t have my recipes ‘repeat’ very often.  But if you had every recipe repeat once per month, then it would only take you one month to have a year’s worth of recipes!  I chose 14 weeks for this soup and some things that are seasonal, I might choose yearly or every 6 months.  You get the idea.  It will take me 3 months or so to get a year’s worth of recipes but then I’ll have my meal plan for the rest of my life if I want—then I just tweak it to add new recipes.

Under ‘Description’, you will copy and paste the recipe.   For the Greek chicken soup, I just clicked on the link, copy and pasted the ingredients and the directions into this box.   You can choose to color code your menu just below the ‘Description’ box under ‘event color’.  When you’re done, save it (top left corner) and you’re ready to enter your next item.

If you don’t have a link to the recipe that you can copy and paste, you could type the recipe in.  I don’t follow recipes very well so I usually just put a few basic instructions for myself if I’m using a recipe that can’t be copied/pasted.  However, if you take the time on the front end to get the recipes in there, then you’ll have them forever. This could come in handy if you’re at the store and need a reminder of what you’re making this week and what ingredients you’ll need, although I think Ziplist just changed all that for me.  (I’ll talk about it later this week.)

meal planning for busy moms

 3.  Sync your Google Calendar with your iPhone.

I’m sure there are good tutorials for doing this with other phones but I can only help you with the iPhone.  This shouldn’t be as cumbersome as it is but follow along because soon, your recipes and menu plan will be right at your fingertips!

Go to the ‘settings’ menu on your phone and then go to ‘Mail, Contacts, Calendar’.  Click ‘add Account’ and add your Google account to your phone. Once  you’ve added it, it will show up as ‘Gmail’.  Tap Gmail and make sure the calendar setting is toggled to ‘on’.

Now, go to your computer and sign into your Google account.  THen click this link and it will let you choose which calendars you want to sync with your phone.  Click the ones you want to sync and then click save in the bottom right corner.  Now open your iCal on your iPhone and you should have the recipe you just added!

Here’s the screen shot of my iPhone when I click on today’s date—-see the recipe at the bottom?

 

I don’t know why garbage pick up is on there twice but I’m sure I need the double reminder 🙂

And here’s what I see when I click on the recipe.

 

 

Okay, this is all nifty and you’re getting excited about the possibilities, I hope.

Tomorrow, I’m gonna show you how to put it all together with my favorite tips and tricks and a program that will help you in your grocery shopping and you’ll be on your way to being the Menu Planning goddess of the world!

Let me know how your set up goes and I’ll be in the comments today to answer any questions that come up.

While you’re getting it all set-up, let me know if you come up with any other wonderful ideas!

 

 

 

Meal Planning for Busy Moms, part 1 {the why}

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This is part 1 of a 4 part series. Read part 2 (the where), part 3 (the how), and part 4 (the conclusion) to get the full picture of how to integrate this meal planning guide into your normal routine!

meal planning for busy moms

This month our theme here is time. How can we better use our time to serve others?
This is part one of a three part series on meal planning that will help start your year off right and save you lots of time and stress!

At the bottom of this post, I link to a few online recipes.  Would you pick your  one favorite online recipe and link to it in the comments?  I’d so appreciate it!

It was ten years ago and I was standing in the middle of my kitchen at 5pm  with four hungry kids pawing at my legs and a hungry husband who would soon return home from work.

I had just graduated from residency and was working part time at the ER on the weekends but most of my days came to a climax in this very spot, at this very hour, in my kitchen.  This particular day something shifted inside me and I decided that 5pm, when everyone’s tired and hungry and whiny, is not a good time to think about what’s for dinner.  I also decided that it was high time I started taking this job, that I was apparently going to have to think about every day, seriously.

At first I was angry and thought,  “How dare them get hungry at this very time every. single. day.”  (Doesn’t it seem like they’re always hungry?)

And then I began to realize that of all the things I could spend my time and effort doing, learning to cook well and plan meals is probably among the  most important for a busy mom.

So, I made myself a student of the Food Network and  of cooking magazines and the more I learned about cooking and practiced it myself, the more I began to love it.

We tend to dislike things we’re not good at and many of us have a disdain for cooking and meal planning because we haven’t yet tackled that area of our lives.

I’m here to convince you that it’s so worth it!  I’m still figuring it out but I want to bring you along with me so you and your family can start reaping the benefits of this.

Rome wasn’t built in a day so be patient with yourself.  Take baby steps but take steps!

There are so many benefits to cooking at home and having some semblance of an idea of what you’re gonna cook.

1.   It reduces stress.

I had come to hate the bewitching 5 o’clock hour back then.  It was like a daily reminder to me that I didn’t have it all together.  The guilt would ensue and then I’d start making all kinds of excuses for myself.   “I have four kids, for crying out loud.  Do you expect me to keep them alive and cook TOO?”  or   “That’s just not one of my spiritual gifts.  Some people cook every day.  I don’t.”

And don’t get me wrong, there are some seasons in life where it feels impossible to put meals on the table.  I know.   But all the more reason to have a plan.   Any plan.  I promise you that when you put some effort and thought into this daily, recurring stressor, it will pay dividends.  You won’t be nearly as stressed and you’ll have a sense of control over your life that is very empowering.

2.  It’s healthier.

Cooking at home with a plan has so many advantages, healthwise.   You know what you’re eating and you can control how much salt, sugar, and fat there is.   You can also be in control of buying more local produce and eating seasonally.  (Better yet, start a small vegetable garden this spring and eat as local as possible!)   When we eat out, we almost always eat more calories and we often eat on the run, losing the benefits of the ‘family around the table’ and also impairing digestion.

3.  It costs less.

Eating out is terribly expensive.   Learning to cook at home with some sort of purpose of plan will save you lots of money.  I’ll give you examples tomorrow of how it works but you probably already sense that it’s true.  And just think of all that you could do with that money you spend on mediocre food.

4.  It’s  a great way to serve your family.

I know, I’ve said it before but hospitality begins at home.  And what better way to serve the ones we love than to feed them well.  Meal planning is a great way to keep you accountable.  You’re not tempted to eat out all the time if you have a plan for what you’re eating.  These beautiful people?  They like to eat.  Regularly.

 meal planning for busy moms

 Things to consider–

Now you’ll have a different list but here’s what I take into account when making my meal plan:

1.  Schedule—-I usually make something  easy-ish on Mondays.  Mondays are frought with enough resistance.  Often, we have soup because I can cook it in the morning and let it’s flavors meld together.   On Tuesdays, my girls have an early ballet class so I try to make something that can be made ahead of time and reheated easily.  On Wednesdays, there’s no dance and I have more time to cook so I’ll do more gourmet-ish things.  You get the picture.  You have to figure it out for your family’s schedule.

2.  Variety—- I don’t always succeed but I try to vary the meats, the textures, the flavors, etc.  I try to vary the method of cooking and use seasonal items as much as possible.  I wish I could say that I shop only the sales and then make my meals based on that but I don’t always do that either.  I think finding a system that works for you, no matter it’s limitations, is better than the ‘winging it’ that most of us have always done.

3.  Flexibility—–One of the reasons I’ve resisted long range meal planning is because I’m SO fickle.  How can I decide today that I want to have cheese tortellini soup two weeks from Monday?   I might totally change my mind.  I might die at the thought of cheese tortellini soup on that particular Monday.

Side note:  I had the same trouble as a child.  I could NEVER agree to picking out my clothes the night before.  These decisions change moment by moment.  Who could possibly know the night before which outfit might be ‘right’ for this given day???

I get around this by giving myself room to change my mind whenever my little heart desires.  But in three months, I could have a wonderful year-long meal plan.

And that?  Gets me very excited.

Don’t worry, tomorrow, I’m bringing the nitty gritty.

Today, think about how you might start to implement a plan.  I recently started using Google Calendar and will tell you step by step how I do it but that might not be a good fit for you.

Give it some thought and come back tomorrow for details!

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I wanted to leave you with some tried and true recipes that you can scan and see if they’ll be a good fit for your family.   You can add these to your Calendar and I’ll show you exactly how I’ve been implementing mine tomorrow.  If you don’t have any ideas for this week, this will get you started.

 Skillet pork and peppers

Cheese Tortellini Soup

 Lemon and Garlic Roast Chicken

 Chicken and egg soup with Pastina

 Beef Stew

Ruth’s freezer meals

 

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Don’t forget to link up at the end of the month with your post on time management.  How are you finding strategies to make the most of your time?  What is your favorite ‘time hack’?  We’ll meet here January 30th!

Winterplace, 2012 {and someone’s birthday!}

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Stevie and I are lucky enough to have two sets of kids; the older ones and the younger ones.  In other words, we started early and kept going, where baby making was concerned.  If you happen to have this same arrangement, you’ll identify with what I say. We were younger when the older ones were young. (duh?) So, we were more adventurous. Fearless, in fact.  We took them all to New York City for Christmas one year. {I get a panic attack just thinking about it.}

We traveled with them all the time; to the beach, to Disney, to the ski slopes, etc. We never hemmed and hawed about it. We just went.
Fast forward 10 years. We’re old-ish. We take a lot of Motrin. We like to sleep in our own beds.  We eat alot of  fiber.

We’ve got bad knees and torn calf muscles.

But our small ones are young and want to see the world.  They want to travel and eat out and have sleep overs.  You know, like their siblings used to do.

So, occasionally, we just have to buck up and do it.  And it was the perfect storm.  My birthday, the holidays, the restless crew—-Stevie took matters into his own hands and surprised us with a ski trip.  We packed a lot of motrin and a heating pad and up to the mountains we drove.

{Don’t you worry.  Stevie’s still got it :)}

He got down the hill like an old pro.  He’s actually a really good skier but he’s not 22, if you get my drift.

It didn’t take long before everyone was skiing and having a ball!

Even the least one got the hang of it by the day 2!  And it was so fun to have the older ones there to teach the younger ones.  It’s so much cooler to learn to ski from your 22 year old brother than from your mom!

As much as we love our homebody lifestyle,  traveling with kids grows you.  It stresses your limits and stretches you.  I’m glad we went.  And really glad we’re home!

We found this cute cabin on VRBO, owned by the nicest lady, who was so helpful in making our spur-of-the-moment trip possible.  You can rent one of three levels or all three if you’re taking a big party.  It’s ski-in, ski-out and is on an easy green hill so that those learning could get some good practice in.

Our dear (and younger) friends Sara and Sebastian joined us for a day and night of fun.  They brought raclette, which is fun Belgian tradition of communal eating over a hot plate with individual cooking plates.    We ate so much good food that night!

So, thank you Stevie for a great change of pace and for making us cool again to our kids!

 

For a short time, the girls don’t think we’re old fogies.  We’re young and hip and well, sore.

p.s. I got a little behind on my resolution fury but I did finish two books while we were gone—-Turning Pro: Tap Your Inner Power and Create Your Life’s Work
and The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles.  I highly recommend them, for those of you who are serious about finding your life’s work and doing it well.   I have so much to share about that, which I plan to do in my first ever newsletter, which will be sent out to all subscribers to this blog. Make sure you subscribe before Friday!  Get those books too.

Mwahhh to all you and hope your new year is off to the perfect start!

 

My Cottage Christmas

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If you’re new to life{in}grace, welcome!  And especially if you’re from Nester’s Home Tour or Melissa’s Home Tour or  Sarah’s Tree Party!  Thanks for hosting, friends!  I just updated my about page and don’t miss my newly painted stri-ped bathroom!  Thanks for visiting!  Hope you find something that makes you smile!

I’m 42 years old and I’m pretty sure I’ve never decorated for Christmas tree the same way twice.  It’s a blessing and a curse.  Thankfully, I like to use simple, natural, easy- to-craft items.  Otherwise, I’d spend a fortune changing my mind every year.  I also never really ‘finish’ decorating.  I’ll be spray painting  pine cones and adding fresh greens until it’s time to take it  all down.  In a way, my Christmas decorating is a lot  like me—-it’s never really ready to meet the Christ child.

I love every last square inch of my new house even though I never meant to spend last year rebuilding.

There are  two problems with my house.   1.  I have no dining room   2. There’s no room for  a tree in the living room.

I get around those obstacles  by soupin’ up the mantel and moving my lemon tree (WHICH IS BLOOMING!) by the fireplace.

Rabbit trail:: I need to do a whole post on the amount of baby-ing we do to that lemon tree.  I almost got my mom one for Christmas but then I remembered that it would be the equivalent of giving her a small child to care for.  Okay, not that bad.  But our lemon tree is so baby-fied that we take her outside to sit in the sun when it’s nice  and then hem and haw about whether or not it’s gonna get too cold for her to stay out overnight.  We’re hoping for lemons by February.

Okay back to the tree.   SO,  that means that my *real* tree has to stake its claim in the eat-in kitchen.  It makes for happy dinners and a floor full of fir needles because someone brushes past it approximately every 3 seconds.


I wanted a tree that looked relaxed and cottage-y and natural.  My Christmas Pinterest boards helped me decide what I liked.  I used large starfish, pine cones, paper birds (template here), paper garland (inspiration Miss Mustard Seed), dried orange slice ornaments (Shannan gave me the idea),  newspaper print leaf garland and magnolia leaves (I don’t know where I saw it first), and my cowhide rug for a tree skirt (spotted under Nester’s tree last year!).  In my humble opinion, it needs something outrageous but I haven’t quite decided what.  I’m thinking giant paper antlers but I’m taking suggestions!

I poked little lights through the orange slices for effect and I made the banner garland out of book pages that I cut and stapled onto twine.

And there’s a few honest to goodness ornaments just to keep up appearances:)

And apparently, I can’t be suited when it comes to paper bird patterns.  I looked through eight million until I finally found this one on Martha’s site.  Of course, it’s the perfect shape.  I would expect nothing less from Martha.  Which I like to pronounce Mah-tha.  I made my girls make these today for ‘art’.  In other words, so I didn’t have to make anymore.


And I’m having fun this year with the packages.

I wrap them in white or brown paper and then look around for something to stick on them.

It’s all very exact and calculated—-branches, left over pom poms from the wreath project, burlap, or whatever else is in reach!

This one is my favorite so far.  I used this template for the antlers,  spray painted the paper gold, added some fresh greens and then wrapped it in twine.

I used the free printables here for the tag.


Now, here’s what I need to know from you.  Do you always decorate your tree the same or do you do it different every year?  If you always decorate it the same, do you know exactly how much money you have in your checking account right now.  That’s what I thought.  We can still be friends.  I’ll come change up your tree and you can balance my checkbook.  Deal?  (Actually, I love sentimental trees filled the same ornaments year after year but that’s not possible for me now, so I make the best of it :)))

Because I may in fact be insane, I decided to paint the bathroom last week.  I love how it turned out and you can read all about it here.

I added some fresh greens and a rosemary tree to make it even more festive for the season.

The girls and I also made a cute pom-pom wreath and then added a Christmas cactus and a pink poinsettia to this little vignette.

And one more thing.  Did you see the preserved boxwood wreaths at Lowe’s??  They’re already on clearance.

I LOVE them and have two hanging in the kitchen!

It’s beginning to be festive around these parts!

And since I now have a partial tear in my calf muscle and am gimpy, Grannie’s in the house, making fudge and all kinds of yummy treats.

And due to said injury, I won’t be putting a tree on the screened porch this year.  Which makes me very sad.

So, here’s the fun from last year!

Happy preparations dear friends!!!

Striped Walls in the Bathroom

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From the very beginning of our rebuild after the fire, I knew I wanted a statement bathroom.

The half bath on the main level is tiny and I’ve thought of nearly every possible  option for making the tiny space shine. I started a ‘bathrooms’ board on Pinterest and had my eye on this striped bathroom for a year.

I almost tackled this project before Better Homes and Gardens came in September but I had plenty to keep me busy then and was still hemming and hawing around about what exactly I wanted to do.

It all changed when Emily painted her foyer in the most gorgeous stripes ever.   And since I adore her and everything about her, I knew it was time to dig out the rollers and brushes.

Except then I saw this on Pinterest.  And even though striped walls and I had been going steady for nearly a year, I almost ditched them for this brooding beauty from Lonny Magazine.

After a little contemplation, I decided that I  shouldn’t  have to choose.   Why can’t I have the best of both worlds?

So, I painted the strip-ed walls (from here on out, we shall call him stri-ped, with emphasis on the ped, for reasons I can’t quite articulate) and then added the moody/broodiness with my main man, the bust of David, and some quirkily hung art.


The bathroom is the love child of those three gorgeous rooms and now seriously competing with this room and this room for most favored room in the house status.


I had my girls’ bedroom painted with stripes a few years back and loved it. I learned a few things from watching the process being done and I knew I could do it on the cheap.  My trusty side kick, Nick, did all the hard work of taping it off.   It took several hours and it’s not rocket science but it is most certainly tedious.  I would advise all my ‘fly by the seat of your pants, ‘it looks pretty straight’, friends to let the OCDers have this one.  I sat this one out.  I know when I’m defeated.  Some things I’m good at.  Some things I’m not.  Painstakingly taping all those straight lines is definitely not one of my spiritual gifts.

Nick did great but even his tendency towards perfection was challenged.

In my humble, ADD slanted opinion, it just walls and paint.   And someone smart once said, “It doesn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful.”

So, we got it pretty close to perfect and then the next day, we painted it in a couple of hours.

I measured the wall before we started and it was 96 inches, perfectly divisible by 8.  So we decided on 8 inch stripes.

And I loved Emily’s foyer so much that we used the same color as she did for the charcoal stripes.  The color is Urbane Bronze from Sherwin Williams.

The walls were already painted Sea Salt by Sherwin Williams, so we started with that as a base.

I would HIGHLY recommend painting the wall all over with one of the colors you want in your stripes.  Let that dry for a day and then begin the taping extravaganza.

Two keys to painting striped walls:

1.  Take a credit card and smooth the tape down.  DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP.    It will keep the edges from ‘bleeding’ paint.

2.  Dry brush the edges of the stripes before you actually paint them.

And by that I mean, get just a little paint on the brush and do a thin, almost dry layer of paint to seal the edges of the tape.  Then when you go back to actually paint the stripes, you won’t get any bleeding through the tape.  We used Frog Tape and got great results.  Our edges are perfection!

The corners bled a little and Nick is at this very moment touching those up.  I probably wouldn’t even have gone to the trouble but I love that he cares!

We used a 6 inch roller to roll the stripes on, once we had dry brushed the edges.  This is one of those projects with a huge pay-off and very low cost.

I would definitely do it again, although I’m sure Stevie (and Nick) hope I don’t:)

Before::

After::