Laura W. Godfrey

Some of you might not know that I grew up in a family of eight kids. My mom (rock star that she is) was an incredible meal planner. She pretty much had to be since we had a tight budget and lots of mouths to feed.

I can still remember as a little girl watching my mom plan out our meals two weeks in advance. Then she would make a grocery list and get everything she needed for those two weeks. She had it down to a science and it was an incredible thing to behold.

Once Matt and I got married, I remember trying to plan our meals the same way my mom used to do it. It didn’t quite work out in the beginning… I was used to buying food for LOTS of people! Let’s just say in the first few months of our marriage, we threw away a lot of spoiled produce. Ooopsies.

I did finally find my stride and I want to share with you what works for us. I realize everybody has their thing so best case scenario is that you take a little something from this and tweak it to make it work for you.

First things first, we sit down at the beginning of the week and talk about our plans. If we will be eating out certain meals, we write them down so we don’t end up with extra food we don’t need. I then plan out what we are going to need for each meal that week.

I love using my Simplified Planner for meal planning. It’s so nice to have my calendar, to-do list. and menu all in once place. Not to mention it’s just so pretty!

Once we figure out our schedule, I make one trip to the store for the week. Sometimes I get stuff to carry us into the next week, especially if it can be frozen. Most of the time though it’s just what we need for that week.

A normal week looks like this for us:

Monday: 

Breakfast: Toast with raw honey, scrambled eggs, oranges

Lunch: Carrots with hummus, rolled up turkey with cheese, apple sauce

Dinner: Honey baked chicken, green beans, sweet potatoes

Tuesday:

Breakfast: Waffles (frozen organic) with sliced banana

Lunch: Smoothie and pretzels

Dinner: Kids Eat Free at Fickle Pickle (Yes, Lord!)

Wednesday:

Breakfast: Smoothie and scrambled eggs

Lunch: Chick fil a play date with friends

Dinner: Baked salmon, broccoli, and brown rice

Thursday:

Breakfast: Toast with raw honey and peanut butter

Lunch: Black bean and cheese quesadillas

Dinner: Nachos with ground turkey, shredded spinach, black beans, and cheese

Friday:

Breakfast: Cereal and almond milk

Lunch: Carrots and hummus, turkey and cheese, strawberries

Dinner: PIZZA

Saturday:

Breakfast: Chick fil a (don’t judge me)

Lunch: Leftovers

Dinner: Date Night!

Sunday:

Breakfast: Gluten free Pancakes and chicken sausage

Lunch: Family Lunch after church

Dinner: Pasta with spinach and chicken sausage

In addition to all the items I need for meals, I also get snack foods to keep for me and the girls during the day. Matt isn’t much of a snacker and with his diet limitations, snack foods are hard to come by!

The biggest game changer for me when it came to meal planning was just deciding to actually plan. I know that sounds ridiculous but I spent many years just kind of flying by the seat of my pants. Cooking when I felt like, begging to eat out when I didn’t (can I get an amen?). Taking the time to sit down and plan out our week set us up for success in so many ways. We found we were eating cleaner since we were making eating decisions in advance. We also found that we were managing our budget better by knowing week to week what we would spend.

I hope this helps to get you off on the right start. If you aren’t a planner by nature, just start out planning a few days out of the week. I’ll tell you though. This way of planning things out frees up a lot of time in the long run! You might just learn to love it!

Happy Meal Planning, y’all!

Happy New Year, friend!

Each year, rather than making resolutions, I like to find a word to focus on for the year and then add some goals that I want to start or continue.

My word this year is Abundance.

I find myself operating out of a scarcity mentality in so many areas of my life and I really want to shift my thinking in that area.

There’s more than enough of God’s sweet blessings to go around. I want to rejoice in the victories I see in other people’s lives with total abandon because I know that a rising tide lifts everyone up!

This means that ANY form of comparison has to go. In my line of work it is so very easy to get caught up in comparing yourself to others but this always leads to toxic thinking. So no more!

I also want to believe and claim abundance over our marriage, our health, our finances, our girls, our home, our present, and our future. Dreaming BIG dreams over here and I’m not going to shy away from writing them down and giving them over to Jesus so I can watch Him blow us away!

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Even though I’m not big into resolutions, I do love treating the first of the year as a benchmark of sorts to help me stop, take a breath, and just reflect. Here are a few areas of reflection… hehe. 🙂

I’m still going to continue my normal workout routine but I want to clean up my eating, especially after this Christmas eating extravaganza. #worthit

The key to clean eating is planning out my meals in advance and not keeping sugar in my house. Sounds simple enough, right? Yeah, you haven’t seen the chocolate situation that unloaded itself out of my Christmas stocking into my pantry. Jesus, take the wheel.

I’ll have a blog post coming up on meal planning as well as the workout routine that works with my crazy mom life schedule.

I think my biggest shift this year is going to be putting forth an effort to plan ahead more diligently. We had so many changes happen this past year that we just kind of rolled with. Most of the year I was just winging it. All of it. I find I approach daily tasks with a lot more joy if I have a plan to implement and if I have the time in advance to make sure I can get things done the way I want to.

I want to play more with my girls. They are both at such a fun age! But they have also just recently gotten to the point where they will play happily together for long stretches of time so it’s tempting to always let them do their thing while I get stuff done. But seeing how their little faces light up when I join them is worth it every single time. I’d rather have dirty floors and happy kids. Actually, I’d rather have happy kids and a housekeeper that cleans my dirty floors! Let’s be real.

Matt and I have always been pretty consistent about going on dates, but this year I want to be more intentional about the time we have at home. Less TV and phones, more talking and laughing. Easy peasy. I hope. Ha!

Finally, I always like to evaluate my relationship with Jesus and make sure I’m continuing to walk with Him on the regular. For me, this looks like a consistent devotional that I can do every morning. Also just spending time in the Word AND writing down the things I’m grateful for, worried about, or just what’s taking up room in my thoughts. In Psalms it says to “cast your cares on the Lord because He cares for you.” I find myself sinking into anxiety only when I’m keeping my thoughts to myself instead of trading my heavy burden for the light one He offers.

Y’all I can honestly say that I’ve never been more excited for a fresh and new season! I would love to hear from you about what you’re taking time to reflect on and adjust in this New Year.

As always, thank you so much for reading! You are loved!

Hi, friends!

Hope you’re having a great start to your new year. I just wanted to pop in to show you some of my favorites from The Loft’s HUGE 60% off clearance sale. Yes, you read that right. It’s an additional 60% off clearance!

Now who is getting pumped for the premier of The Bachelor tonight?! I can’t decide if it’s going to be incredible or the literal worst. Only time will tell. But one thing is for SURE… it’ll be the “most dramatic season yet”. Oh, Chris Harrison, how I’ve missed you!

I know what you’re thinking.

There’s NO such thing as a stress-free holiday!

It’s so easy to believe that. We all know that the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas is jam packed with cookie exchanges, school programs, Santa visits, family functions, office parties, and on and on and on.

If you’re one of those people who doesn’t operate well in high stress environments and goes into the Holiday season with a plastered smile trying to make everything and everyone happy, while inwardly you’re feeling overwhelmed and burned out, I get you.

While it might not be possible to put a halt to all the activities and just stroll thru December, we can at least have some tools for managing the stress and actually ENJOYING this sweet season!

For starters, let go of expectations. These always have a way of getting me into trouble. My secret weapon for any situation is to identify my expectations (especially with my kiddos) and let them go before they try to ruin everything. Maybe your expectations revolve around finishing a to-do list within a certain time frame. Give yourself grace on grace, friend! I’ve always put a lot of time and energy into wrapping gifts but this year we have had so many other things going on that the presents might not have bows! Who cares? There’s always next year. Stop with the guilt over not doing enough and just enjoy the present moment… even if it’s messy!

Remember to take time to reflect. My favorite thing to do around Christmas time is to wake up before anyone else (not easy to do!) and go sit in front of the Christmas tree. I don’t journal or read. I don’t take my phone with me. I just sit and soak and it’s glorious. It’s my way of being centered. It allows me to just slow down in the midst of the craziness and be still. In the same way that the Bible says Mary “treasured up all these things in her heart” concerning the birth of our Savior, let’s take time to treasure things in our hearts as well.

This next one is a tough one, but I think it might be the most important one. Say NO. Part of the reason we get ourselves into such a Christmastime tizzy is because we are so over committed. I love carving out nights at home where we have nothing going on. Some times this means we don’t go to the Sunday School Christmas party. Sorry, guys! There are certain things we really must attend, but if there’s anything we can cut out, we will do it! Try to resist the urge to be everywhere and simplify as much as possible in any area you can.

Another thing I love doing is trying to turn seemingly stressful activities into fun events. For instance, wrapping gifts can be super overwhelming (especially in my family of seven siblings and 12 nieces and nephews!). So light your candles, build a fire, turn on a Christmas movie, get all your supplies organized and get it done. If you find yourself in the car a lot going here and there, turn it into a game of who can spot the Christmas lights. We talk a lot in our family about finding the bright spots. But in order to find bright spots, you have to be looking for them.

I hope thinking through some of these ideas will help you to get yourself a little more grounded. I won’t pretend that I’ve got it all figured out and I’m constantly having to remind myself to take my own advice! But while we can’t control all the stress that comes our way, we can control how we respond to it. So take a deep breath, sweet friend, and take time to rejoice in this season of Hope.

Hi!

Oh my goodness, y’all. We just recently returned from the MOST magical stay in NYC!

This was my second time going to New York and I feel like it’s one of those places that the more accustomed to it you become, the easier it is to navigate. BUT you just can’t get used to the sites and sounds of this place. It really is just amazing.

Here’s a recap of how we spent our first day in New York!

We decided to take a really early flight out Friday morning so we could take advantage of having a nearly full day of site seeing. As soon as we got to our gate, we fueled up with Starbucks and chick fil a biscuits. Just the essentials, y’all. Our flight was great (thanks, Delta!) and fairly quick. Once we landed and located our luggage, we called an Uber and headed to the hotel.

We weren’t supposed to check in at The Lotte New York Palace until 3:00 in the afternoon so we were just hoping we could store our luggage. But when we checked in, they already had our room ready. Holla! Oh, what a room it was. When we walked in, there was soft music playing and the most beautiful view of St. Patrick’s Cathedral across the street. The room was HUGE, the bathroom was also HUGE. Praises. We spent a few minutes getting unpacked and settled in before we hit the streets.

Coming in and out of our hotel lobby was one of my favorite parts of our whole trip. It was breathtaking! The tree near the entrance was stunning so it was delightful to walk past it multiple times a day.

We were also only about a block away from Rockefeller so we got to see that tree as well!

We got our first meal at Melt Shop. I had the grilled cheese with caramelized onions and it was delicious. I’d also highly recommend the tots as a side. The tomato soup was ok but nothing groundbreaking.

Next we headed over to Bryant Park to meander thru the open air shops. It’s a beautiful spot for ice skating if you want to avoid the craziness of Rockefeller and Central Park.

We ended up right near the New York Public Library so we decided to pop in there real quick and I’m so glad we did. The architecture was so beautiful and I loved reading about some of the history.

Once we were done exploring the library, we went to Herald Square to see Macy’s and 34th Street. The entrance to Macy’s is unreal but the rest of the floors just look like a department store so don’t waste your time going upstairs!

By this time it was late afternoon so we decided to head over to The Empire State Building. We hadn’t even thought about the fact that we would be getting up there right as the sun was setting. But gracious it was gorgeous! We got to watch the sun set over the city and felt like we were going to nearly blow off the top due to the incredible gusts. Totally worth it!

Since we were getting close to our dinner reservation, we decided to head back to the hotel to rest, change, and get ready for supper. We ate our first night at PJ Clarkes at Lincoln Center. It’s a quaint little spot that has some really great menu options. I’d recommend the burger.

After dinner we went back to the hotel to change into some warmer clothes since we had planned on being outside most of the remainder of the night. We headed straight to Rockefeller to see the tree and watch the amazing light show in front of Saks 5th Avenue.

A short walk from Rockefeller is Magnolia Bakery, which is known for its banana pudding. Thankfully the line wasn’t too bad but there really is no place to sit inside so we decided to take our dessert to go and enjoy it at our hotel.

I’m pretty sure we all fell asleep the very second our heads hit the pillow. And it was a good thing because we had another very full day ahead of us.

Later in the week I’ll recap our second day, which included some hilarious misadventures.