From Polkadot Palace: When did binding become so much fun?

On Sunday,I mentioned that I was working on some binders to help me become a more efficient home maker. I've long aspired to Marla Cilley's flylady programme, but my ability to keep up went out the window two children, three bedrooms and one bathroom ago. That's how much my family has grown since I "found" Flylady.

Along with the programme comes her concept of the control journal-it's a brilliant idea and I do have my lever arch file (I even have her "office in a bag" bag which was given to me as a gift by a friend who had never heard of Flylady). Its cumbersome though, and I cant seem to make it "fit" my whole family.

Im blessed with one of those husbands who realises really random things (like laminators and binders) please me very much,so its rare for him to say no to me. He is however, also known to set conditions for me (and I am known to fall for them every time) but he was easy this time. He said that if I kept the living room in order, with kids in the way...and finished the filing I started before Christmas,I could have a comb binder. You understand of course, that I doubt he would ever stand his ground-but he knows I cannot stand to not meet a challenge.

My plan is to keep a series of smaller binders in a tote (including one for each child with their own themed calendar) so I started with a meal planner.

I used the Apple Pickin' sampler page from "A-Manda creation" for the cover along with the free Aged-Dots Alphabets from Granny Enchanted and then I used a page from the sampler as the back for the inside. I printed each week across two pages formatted to landscape. Ive never found planners that I felt had sufficient space to note your whole meal, and it frustrates me that people seem to only plan the evening meal.

Ive also been "on" weight watchers and I always lose interest, because I can never plan every meal and outline the propoints cost for each, so I've added a small column after each meal for Propoints.
This is what the result was....

While I was binding it, the boys were watching Sqiggle it on Ceebeebies. In the 5 minutes that it had been on, I was interrupted four times.Once by each boy to ask for a piece of paper and then again by each of them to ask for a pencil. Just as an aside for my South African family-Do you remember ZET? Squiggleit is a big fluffy doll like creature who teaches the kids how to draw like ZET was.Now if you aren't a South African and you ever hear one talk about ZET-you have a mental picture:)

So I put a few sheets of printing paper under my guillotine and then bound them between two sheets of cardstock and a clear acetate cover. I pasted on the "pad cover", which you can find on the ceebeebies website, and then I bound them. The boys have taken such pride in them and just like that, Im not throwing away what feels like hundreds of half drawn on sheets each night. The smudges are where their names were printed on them.