One of the things that has helped us ease into life with a newborn in the house again has definitely been all the prep work I did ahead of time. Making sure that the house was clean, that there was a plan in place for the kids while I was in the hospital, pre-publishing blog posts, and ensuring that I had stocked up on household essentials before baby’s arrival were all important steps to help make life a little easier with five kids. Today I’m going to be sharing some of my favorite freezer meals with you that make meal planning easier. I’m also talking about how I’m handling shopping trips with my kiddos. This post is part of a collaboration with Binxy Baby, all opinions are completely my own.
meal planning tips and shopping trips
As a mom of five, meal planning is less about planning out meals ahead of time. For me, it’s more about making sure we have a lot of items in the house that are easy to pull together for a delicious dinner at home. I don’t know about you, but late afternoon (you know, when I need to be preparing dinner) can often be the hardest part of the day, the kids are usually getting on each other’s nerves by then and I’m kind of over being an adult… or I’m in the middle of a huge project I don’t want to step away from.
This is where freezer meals come in and below I’m sharing some of our favorite ones! What I like to do is triple the recipe, that way I have enough for dinner that night and two freezer meals, it makes the prep work for the meals so much easier!
easy meal planning
our favorite freezer meals
brown sugar meatloaf (I use turkey meat)
turkey & spinach crepes (I follow this recipe but use turkey meat and homemade crepes)
shredded bbq chicken (follow the instructions for the chicken portion of this post)
other food to stock up on
frozen and canned vegetables
canned fruit
bread items (can be frozen)
rice
cereal
frozen meatballs
items you’ll need for school lunches
make shopping trips easier with Binxy Baby
Obviously, even with all my best planning and prep work eventually I have to go to the store, and with five kids under the age of eight I usually have to take at least a couple with me (and sometimes all five!). One thing that has been helping me on my shopping trips is my shopping cart hammock from Binxy Baby. I seriously wish that I had had one of these when my oldest was a newborn!
Not only can the Binxy Baby shopping cart hammock hold infants up to 6-8 months (until they can sit up on their own), but since we all know no one wants to wake a sleeping baby, you can also safely just strap the entire car seat into the hammock if you prefer (the hammock holds up to 50 pounds). My little one loves her cozy hammock and I can rest easy too knowing that it’s been safety tested. No more bulky car seat taking up the entire shopping cart and a happier baby during shopping trips? Now I call that a mom win.
