On tonight's menu, we have ...

We needed something to help us be more organised with our meal planning so I found an old frame and some scrapbook paper and ... ta-da! ... another Pinterest inspired creation was completed.

The inspiration (here and here):

The idea is to use the glass in the frame as a whiteboard with the paper behind the glass just being for decoration.  You can use ordinary whiteboard markers to write on the glass and best of all, it comes off with just one quick swipe of a cloth .. no scrubbing or cleaners required!

I went for a cross between the two types as I couldn't find the 12x12 frame that I was going to use to copy the right hand version.  (Still way too many boxes to unpack!!)  Here's the (almost) finished result:

We lived with it like this for about a week but the frame colour was really bugging me so I painted the outside edge matte black and left the raised section around the glass in the timber colour.  Left it like that for another week and decided I didn't like that either, so I painted the raised section in gloss black.  This is the final result:

I think the gloss section highlights the letters more and just finishes the whole thing off.  Of course, I may be slightly biased!  The only thing left to do is to make some sort of shelf/attachment for the marker to sit on.  At the moment, it sits on top of the frame, but with people walking past it all day it sometimes has a tendency to disappear.

So far it has worked wonderfully .. we all have input into what's planned for dinner and as a result, there's less stress on me when I get home from work.  It also means that we are eating less 'junk' and more real food as we are all making sure that the appropriate ingredients are out of the freezer in time.  (I know you can defrost things in the microwave but I reckon it makes the meat taste funny so I don't like to do it .. fussy!)

I should just put Friday's one (Fend for yourself) in permanent marker though ... I don't think it's changed in four weeks!

To sleep; perchance to dream ... please?

Brad had a couple of friends over for a sleepover last night ... the same two friends he had over for his birthday party.  I'm kind of regretting allowing the sleepover part.  If my brain was functioning properly, I'm sure it would be beating me about the head mercilessly with whatever large object was at hand, trying to beat some sense into me.

Now don't get me wrong, they are all good kids; not wilfully destructive, not (purposefully) rude, generally good kids.  But, and that's a big but, they are loud!  And apparently nocturnal.  And completely starving ... all.the.time.  Thankfully though, they are all relatively house-trained.

I sat them all down at 9pm and had a little chat re the noise and lack of sleep from last time then gave them instructions to keep the noise down to a dull roar and to allow the brothers (who weren't home last time) to get some sleep.

Alex and Andrew were given the option of sleeping in the spare room or their own rooms.  I did tell Andrew that if he was truly desperate for sleep, he could sleep in my room as Pete was up at the shed.  Alex elected to sleep in his own bed (being somewhat nocturnal himself, I figured that would be the case).  Andrew decided on the spare room but ended up coming down to my room at about 4am as he "couldn't take the singing any more".

We both tried to get some sleep after that but the dog had found a ball and kept barking at one or the other of the boys to play with him.  I took the ball away from the dog and sent the child who was on the elliptical machine back to bed at about 4:15am.

I took the other ball away from the dog at 5am and told him to be quiet or else.

At 5:45am I heard the sound of the kettle and the tea/coffee/sugar jars being opened and closed.  I went out to investigate and found the three of them standing in the kitchen making themselves iced coffees.  Yep .. coffees!  As if those three need coffee ... it would have been like giving a hummingbird speed!  Or a meerkat crack!  Or Hammy the squirrel coffee (Over the Hedge reference there).  Or ... I think you get the picture.

After rapidly setting them straight and telling them to have Milo instead,  I went back to bed and tried to sleep in.  Tried being the operative word there ... made it to 7:15am then was wide awake.  Why is it you can never sleep in when you want to?

Anyway, they all crashed and burned between 9:30 and 10am while I couldn't have gone back to sleep if my life depended on it (well, I probably could have under those circumstances but then again ... the stress of my life depending on it may have put paid to any restfulness ... who really knows?  I'm sleep deprived .. can you tell?) 

So what do you do when you're really tired and you're not thinking straight?  That's right .. you re-arrange the furniture.  Nothing like dropping something heavy on your foot to wake you up!  Even better if it's the bed you should really be sleeping in, not trying to move around the room! 

Oh well, the extra boys have gone, the bedroom is re-arranged and I managed to have a nanna nap this afternoon.  A pretty good day in all ...