Happy New Year!

I just couldn't miss the "happy new year" post. Well, at least not THIS year!
2012 has been an amazing year for us, in particular the second half.
-We moved in june, to a cheaper, much smaller flat in Frederiksberg (an independent municipal "island" within the city of Copenhagen).
That required some major adjustments in the way we organized our everyday life.
Although we really could use (read: "are in desperately need of") some more space, cleaning is done in half a day (*yaay*) and the location is almost perfect ( I still think it's cool to have a partial seaview when we live so far away from the coast).

- I enrolled at Niels Brock Business College Online and got a HgS in 13 weeks, despite some nasty pelvic girdle pains and a quite hard pregnancy)

- We've been enriched with the cutest baby girl on the 27th of August:

Arya

She's four months now, happy, healthy and cute as a button! 

- In October, Daniele finally got the oh-so-longed-after job in IT... after more than 3 years in Denmark we were just about to give up the idea. I'm really happy about that and so proud of my husband: he's REALLY good at his job and extremely professional. He sincerely deserved that!

- And then there's out little big star! 

Tristan

He turned 2 in October. He's very intelligent, opinionated, charming and IMPOSSIBLE! <3 nbsp="nbsp" p="p">

He coped extremely well with the moving and the arrival of his little sister. In fact he's proven to be a sweet and caring big brother and he's always ready to give hugs and kisses to Arya.

He already reads numbers and letters in English, Italian AND Danish... he couldn't make us more proud!!

So here's to 2012! Goodbye!

Hello 2013! Hope you'll be at least half as good as your predecessor! 

This week's menu

I am so glad I have a menu plan! 

It is a super easy way to save time and money when it comes to food. Plus, it helps me keep track of what's in the freezer ( I tend to forget food in there for moths and months otherwise = not good!!)

I designed my own version with Microsoft Word, found some cute kitchen-related images on the web (via Google Images) to embellish it a little, printed it on a normal A4 piece of paper and eventually I laminated it... I guess it did not take more than half an hour! I use a whiteboard marker to write on it and it works really well!

It hangs on our fridge now and both Daniele and I love it! Everybody knows what's for dinner and we remind each other of some last minute shopping that needs to be done. An the smartest thing is that a post-it fits perfectly in the "shopping list" box. :D

If you don't have a menu plan yet, I can only say : what are you waiting for??? It does not have to be anything fancy... a piece of paper and a pen will do the trick (wink) and there's ton of inspiration to get on the web! I personally like Pinterest (here's my own Food board), foodgawker and Alletiders Kogebog (with Danish recipes) but once you start looking for new recipes, I'm quite sure it will be difficult to stop! 

For some more planning inspiration, you can take a look here.

Happy menu planning!

A .pdf version of this plan is available on request