my top 5 favorite fabulous craft bloggers

Thanks to Trop 50 for sponsoring my writing about fabulous bloggers. This year Trop50 is granting 50 fabulous wishes. Click here to enter for a chance to win $1,000 to help grant a friend's wish!

A friend asked me the other day how I keep coming up with new ideas for this blog. I told her I believe there are very few "original" crafting ideas out there. All of us are getting inspiration from things around us and making them our own, whether it be a clothing catalog (think Anthropologie) or a another blogger. I'm not talking about stealing ideas, just taking in colors, concepts, and techniques and molding them to fit your creative needs. I don't spend a lot of time blog-hopping (I would like to, but I just don't have the time!), but there are 5 fabulous craft bloggers that I follow religiously, and they all have something wonderful to offer the crafting world from their own creative perspective. These are a few women who truly inspire me.

Cluck, Cluck Sew
Allison from Cluck, Cluck Sew is a quilter, and she dreams up the most wonderful quilts. My favorite thing about her quilts is the way she puts fabrics together. Not only does she have great taste in fabrics, but she has a real flair for pairing them. That is a real talent! Many of her quilts are pretty simple, but the fabrics make them amazing. She's also got great quilting tips, sewing tutorials, and patterns for sale. She inspires me to make gorgeous quilts! And my husband curses her for all the fabric I've bought and not made into a quilt (yet!). Her posts are short and sweet because who wants to spend all their time on a computer when they could be quilting?


V & Co.
I am also a huge fan of Vanessa Christensen, blogging as V & Co. She is super talented and creative, but also just so REAL! I love the way her voice comes through in her posts. You feel like you know her. She is hilarious! And she's always really honest about, well, everything, but specifically I love how she's honest about how blogging/crafting fits into her life. She has her priorities and if her blog doesn't happen to fit into what's most important to her, she gives herself permission to not blog. So refreshing. Plus, she thinks of things my brain is NOT capable of contriving, like this amazing houndstooth quilt that I am obsessed with! She has lots of great patterns in her shop as well. Love you, V, and all your references to pooping your pants.



Dear Lizzy
One of my friends accused me of having a little crush on my next favorite blogger. It's true--I would like to be her when I grow up. Elizabeth Kartchner is a scrapbooking celebrity to be sure, but her blog is so sweet, silly, humble, and yes, majorly inspiring. I have about 20 of her scrapbook pages bookmarked for future scraplifting, and I looooove her photography. She inspires me to take more pictures and enjoy life more!



HowDoesShe?
The next fabulous blogger on my list is actually several bloggers--friends who collaborated to answer the question How Does She. . .? Their categories include How Does She Celebrate Seasons, Cook & Bake, Love Her Family, Make It, Run A Household, and This & That. All those things that we as women wish we could do! I love their printables and amazing home projects, not to mention their recipes (you've GOT to try their cinnamon bun pancakes--they'll rock your world!). The site is so organized and chock full of stuff--I could get lost in it for days! They've definitely answered the question of how I can do it all--I just go to HowDoesShe.com!



Make and Takes
My final top fabulous blogger is Marie from Make and Takes. This site is all about crafty moms and kids. She has the best ideas for simple kids crafts, plus parenting tips, holiday ideas, recipes, and even home decor (that's me--I'm a regular contributor!). But what I really love about this blog is how simple and clean it is. It's easy to navigate, the ideas are fabulous but not over the top. She inspires me to get back to basics with my kids. Think about what's fun for them, not just for me. She strips out all the fluff that I often find myself wrapped in and presents great, wholesome ideas that you can actually do something with. Whenever I get a little stressed out about a post I'm working on for Make and Takes, I think, Marie keeps it simple. You can keep it simple. (I think I can, I think I can.) Marie inspires me to simplify and really enjoy time with my kids!



As a blogger, I know how much time and effort these amazing women put into their sites, and that is inspirational to me. But what I really love is knowing that they're all just regular women, with kids and jobs and homes and everything else we have on our plates, who also have a passion for what they do. I'm so glad they are all willing to share some of that creative energy with me! I hope you will check each of them out and give them a little comment love. And leave me a comment with your favorite craft blogger--who inspires you?

Don't forget to enter the 50 Fabulous Wishes contest for a chance to win $1,000 to support a friend's wish. I was selected for this Tropicana Trop50 sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do. I received compensation to use and facilitate my post.

menu planning saves me money at the grocery store {true story}

Since I know we're all still thinking about resolutions for the new year, here are some awesome menu planning ideas from Jennifer that will help you get organized and save money. This would work great in conjunction with our weekly dry erase menu board!

Menu planning saves me money at the grocery store. I love grocery shopping. I especially love going to upscale grocery stores like Whole Foods and Central Market. My favorite aisle is the fruit and vegetable aisle, I love seeing how they are displayed. My love of grocery shopping usually overcomes my food budget and I gather everything that looks good to me into my cart. Recently my budget has been protesting about all the extras that I bring home. Sometimes I have so many fruits and vegetables that we can’t eat them all before they go bad. Something needed to change. I have tried several different meal planning methods over the years, but this time I found something that the whole family could live with.

Our family usually eats at home every night, we only eat out once a month or so. Here is how I plan my menus to save time and money at the grocery store.

*To have seven meals worth of dinners I discovered that I needed to cook 5 nights. The other two nights were leftover nights.

*I chose themes for our meals, something broad enough that everyone in the family would like it. The themes that we are using right now are: breakfast for dinner, Mexican, Chinese/Thai, soup (winter)or salad (summer), and beef or chicken.

*I organized all of our favorite dinners into one of these categories and put them all in a tabbed notebook.

*When its time to go grocery shopping I look through my notebook and choose 1 meal from each category. I add what I need my shopping list and voila, I have a week's worth of menus planned and a shopping list in about 10 minutes. I used to have a night for each theme, but I discovered that I needed more flexibility. Now I just have a list of meals for the week (sometimes I do two weeks at a time) and I usually decide in the morning what we are going to have that evening.

I have found that just this few minutes of meal planning saves me tons of money by buying only what we are going to eat this week, not what looks beautiful. This method gives me plenty of flexibility to try new recipes. I usually try something new at least weekly and sometimes several times a week. If we love the new recipe, I put it in my notebook behind its tab and we eat it again. If we didn’t like it, I just throw the recipe away. A couple of tips:

*When someone loves a recipe I write on the recipe who liked it and the day we ate it so I can make sure to have it again and put it in the notebook. This has brought several new family favorites into our dinner rotation.

*I usually clean out the fridge and check the freezer and pantry just before I choose my menus. This gives me a better idea of what I already have on hand so that I don’t buy things I already have. I stock up on things that we eat all the time when they go on sale. Things like beans and pineapple tidbits. I know that they will get eaten and they taste better when they are on sale.

*Leftover nights are really fun at our house, I either take all the leftovers out of the fridge and put them on the table and let everyone make up their own dinner or I tell everyone that I am too tired to cook and its “nuts and berries” night. On “nuts and berries” nights they forage in the cupboards and the fridge and come up with their own meal.

We hope this system will help you reach your goals in 2011, or at least save you a little more time and money for crafting!