Weekly Meal Plan + Grocery Haul!

If you've been following along on YouTube for a while, you'll notice that a video that used to come standard on my channel has been missing since the beginning of the year. At the beginning of 2017, I announced that I was going to be doing "More of This, Less of That" - with part of the less being grocery hauls, which previous to that I had frequently released each Monday of a haul purchased on Sunday.

Grocery Haul items from COSTCO - These will last a few weeks.

I had a number of reasons for discontinuing these videos (or at least doing them LESS)... personal reasons of they just weren't personally my favorite videos to watch or edit. Fun Fact - grocery hauls are literally the ONLY type of video of mine I've fallen ASLEEP trying to edit. Fallen asleep, people. It isn't a type of video that I watch from other creators, and although I understand the appeal (ideas! chit chat! mom life!)... it just hasn't been my favorite.

Top that off with the business decision to lessen them because grocery hauls are the top of video on YouTube that have a cult following, they quickly gain views - mine usually went to 3000-4000 views within the first day - but for me anyways... after that initial audience. They fall flat. They plateau. They are not a highly searchable video for me, nor are they a video that people had been finding my channel according to my channel analytics in 2016. I made the business decision that since they weren't some of my favorite videos anyways, and some of my favorites WERE highly searchable videos that were getting their initial views and then growing immensely in months to follow. (Check out this American Girl video if you don't believe me, initial views were at 4000, it is currently around 16,000 views at the time of writing this post. Or this Target Come Shop with Me video, that also started out around 4000 and is currently at around 25,000 views.) I planned to lessen the amount of the "plateau videos" on my channel to be able to focus more on the ones that create more growth.

However, one thing I have always tried to do on my channel is listen to my audience. Your requests and feedback... and some people really didn't like that I had stopped doing the grocery hauls and weekly meal plans... I mean, REALLY didn't like it!

After giving it some thought, I think I've come up with a plan that *may* (Key word, may) work for all of us!

I posted an abbreviated grocery haul on Instagram Stories today! No editing for me, you still get to see food from me. I've been trying to use IG Stories more lately, so make sure to follow me on my Instagram if you don't already. It's my favorite social media platform besides YouTube!

Then, here on the blog - which I've made a goal this year to create more content, richer content, and some content that differs from what is going on my YouTube channel - I can give you a quick write up of our meal plan for the week, share our grocery haul, and if you want to see any meals that I make I can follow those up in a future post. (And possibly a video if needed.)

I feel like this solution may work out well for everyone... so let's give it a go! I'll try this for the next few weeks and then get your feedback to see what you think!

Here's this week's Meal Plan (2/19/17 - 2/25/17):

Sunday: Caesar Salad Appetizer, Meatballs with Mashed Potatoes Entree
Monday: Pulled Pork Sandwiches with beans as a side
Tuesday: Sloppy Joe Sandwiches with green beans as a side
Wednesday: Crock Pot Chicken Tortilla Soup
Thursday: Ham Steaks with vegetable salad
Friday: Pizza (A Friday night staple, as you know if you've followed our meal plans previously)
Saturday: Saturdays are commonly what I like to consider or call, "Kid's Choice Night!" - we frequently eat "kid's food" this night like chicken nuggets, mac'n'cheese, and the like.

As always, I run my meal plans from Sunday to Saturday since that is how I write them on our meal planning board in our kitchen and my grocery shopping day is Sunday.

Here's this week's grocery haul!

A few of the meals I have planned for this week are crock pot meals, and I also picked up items for lunches and snacks. The Kroger brand Carbmaster yogurts is one of our staple items, we prefer the taste and consistency of this particular type of yogurt and the kids and I love the "Cinnamon Roll" flavor! My husband's favorite is strawberry!

Here are a number of items I'm planning to use in crock pot meals! I can some of our meals throughout the week as well if you guys would like to see those.

Overall, I feel like this might be a workable solution for us all! I'm sitting here writing this blog post in-between unloading the groceries and getting dinner started, and I feel like other than seeing my bright, shining face (lol!) the information you get should be relatively the same.

I will check in a few weeks to see what you think!

** This is not a sponsored post. All opinions are my own.