Excel Recipe Manager/Shopping List Creator

I came across this fun and free Excel tool for meal planning. It's an Excel spreadsheet that allows you to list your recipes along with the ingredients you usually have to buy to make them. Once you have the recipes entered you can click a button to have it give you a random 5 recipes to make for the coming week. You can pick from those or click again to get more choices.

Once you've selected which recipes you want for the week, simply click the Shopping List tab where you will find a shopping list already generated and ready for printing. Pretty cool!

The tool is called Cathy's Recipe Manager and you can find it here at Juice Analytics, a web page about Excel. The article is called "Instant Shopping Lists, or... How Excel Can Improve Your Marriage."

When I first looked at it I was concerned because the dropdowns did not have the recipes in alpha order so it was a little difficult to find the one you wanted. But then I figured out that I could sort the Recipe Main sheet by recipe and voila - alphabetized dropdowns.

If you have Excel and want to try this out I encourage you to do so. It's super easy to use. And I'll answer any questions if you get stuck with it.

Happy meal planning!

Digital Photo Frame

I mentioned in an earlier post that my mother-in-law got me a digital photo frame for Christmas. What a fun gift! I decided the best way I could show it to you was to actually show it to you. So here is a little video demonstration.

You can click the big button below to view the video here or if you would like to see it a bit larger click here. Be sure your sound is on.

Thank you Genora!



Digital Photo Frame

A New Toy in the House

Clay got some birthday money from his Mom last month. After giving it some thought he decided to use the money to add a new piece of electronic gadgetry to our entertainment center (big surprise!). The new toy is a Samsung Multiformat DVD Recorder and VCR combo.

I am told this gizmo will do all kinds of wonderful things for us. We can watch our Netflix movies on it if we want. We can use it to record programs from the TV in either VHS or DVD format. We can transfer old footage from VHS and 8mm format tapes to DVD with it. And best of all, it will make a nice companion for our recently purchased digital camcorder.

Now if only I could get it to wash the dishes.... Oh wait. Clay does that!

Fun Stuff

Once in a while it's good to stop and enjoy the fun stuff. I received a couple links recently which were well worth a couple minutes of playtime each.

Check out Cursor Theft. After you play it a couple times watch what happens if you move your cursor below the picture and leave it there. You won't be able to resist moving your mouse. Cute!

And if you ever wished you could carve a pumpkin without all the mess, this Happy Halloween site is for you.

Enjoy!