Creatively Flexing My Muscles

This week on the podcast we talked about taking our crafts when we travel. I have to admit, I’m a proCRAFTinator. I just made that word up. I honestly don’t normally craft when I travel. Last summer, when I went to New Orleans, I took my craft bag with me on the trip and didn’t open it once. That being said, I do take some sort of craft when I travel…and that means across town as well.

I am a beast of burden. I carry my backpack with me everywhere, and in that backpack, I may as well have bricks for all the use its contents do for me when I travel. Every day to work I carry my backpack full of crafty things and occasionally I will carry my craft bag with me as well. In my backpack, I have practical things that I need for work such as my laptop and planner but I also have a plethora of other things I carry with me that I don’t necessarily use but hope for a fleeting moment of free time to get a little craft in.

Crafty things I always have on me:

• All three sets of my pens: In my backpack, I carry three sets of pens in three different pen bags in case I need them. I carry my gel pens (Papermate™ and Pilot™) in case I want to write something down in my APN (all-purpose notebook) in many different colors. I carry my flair pens because sometimes you need a bit of flair instead of gel. I also have my Sharpie™ pens because they can be used for a completely different purpose than my other two sets of pens.
• Scissors and glue: You never know when you need to cut or glue something. If I remove either of these things from my backpack, I always find an occasion when I should have had them.
• My list journal: This is a given. My list journal is one of my current projects that I am always working on. I carry it with me if I get to add to it. I also use all three sets of my pens in this journal. I mentioned this list journal on our “Current Projects” podcast.
• My art journal and pastels: I usually carry my art journal with me as well, and if it is not in my backpack, it is in my car. I don’t use this journal regularly, but it is always nice to have it when I get the inspiration to draw or collage (this is where the scissors and glue come in).
• My All-Purpose Notebook: I carry this with me everywhere. Other than my planner and gel pens, this is the one thing I carry with me consistently. I started keeping an APN when I was in middle school but I started carrying it with me everywhere when I was in high school. The full ones are dated, numbered, and cataloged on my bookshelf.
• My Happy Planner™: This is where I do all of my planning. I mentioned my planner and how it transformed my life on my Day Planners blog back in April. I carry my planner with me everywhere and I keep everything I do not keep in my APN in my planner such as my daily activities, my classroom activities, and my grocery lists.  Sometimes I have things in both.

Other things I carry with me everywhere:

• A book: I always have a book in my purse.
• Crossword puzzles: I always have my ColorCross™ book with me.

My takeaway is that you don’t always have time to craft when you travel, but, I have the things I enjoy with me in my bag in case I get those little stolen moments to craft (or read). I want to hear from our readers. What do you take with you for your downtime when you travel? Let’s continue the conversation below or on our Facebook Group: MMC Chat.

I Love to Craft When I Travel

 

Yesterday on the podcast, Amber, Christen, and I talked about some of the crafts we take with us when we travel, whether it’s to the doctor’s office or an extended vacation like a Caribbean cruise. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine what that might look like, so I thought I would use my blog today to share photos and video walk-throughs of some projects I’ve worked on while traveling.

The largest, and most obvious, projects I’ve done are my travel albums. I’ve done everything from digital 12” x 12” scrapbook layouts to tiny little sketchbooks completed with nothing but a pencil, a pen, and some colored pencils.

New Orleans Smashbook:

For this album, I used a Smashbook to record our trip to New Orleans. 

Aggie Moms Cruise Traveler’s Notebook:

I used a mixed-paper travelers notebook to create this chunky album on the fly while cruising with friends.

Las Vegas Traveler’s Notebooks:

For this album, I used three small traveler’s notebook inserts – one for each day of our trip. As Amber mentioned in the podcast, Christen and I had a lovely time crafting in our hotel room during a bit of downtime.

Arkansas Sketchnote Traveler’s Notebook:

As I mentioned in the podcast, I took minimal supplies on a recent camping trip with my family. This prompted me to try my hand at sketchnoting the trip. The project is a hybrid of sketchnoting with smashbooking since I added photos of our trip as well as the sketches. I haven’t created a video flip-through of this one yet, but here are some photos of the unfinished project. 

I’m hoping to add flip-through videos of all my travel albums someday. I hope these albums have inspired you to take a bit of scrapbooking or other crafts with you on one of your upcoming trips. It’s a great way to wind down after a busy day, and if you’re scrapbooking, you have the bonus of documenting those memories while they are still fresh. 

Have you taken your crafts with you when you travel? I’d love to hear about it! Tell us what you think by commenting below or joining the conversation on our Facebook group MMC Chat.

Crescent City on a Dime

Hi there, it’s Christen! This week on the podcast Amber brought up a great topic, dining out on a special diet. I enjoyed this topic because not only do Travis and I both have special dietary guidelines we try to follow, but we also have budgetary restrictions when it comes to dining out. He is diabetic, and I am a bariatric patient. We are also hoping to buy a house in the near future. Planning ahead and committing to the plan will ensure you don’t get too crazy and go off our budgets, not only with the calorie intake, but financially.

As I mentioned last week on the blog, the three of us went to New Orleans, Louisiana, also known as NOLA. If you are not familiar, NOLA is well known for its unique culture. The cuisine, music, history, and religious practices are a mixture of French, Spanish, Caribbean, and African-American, commonly known as either Cajun or Creole. When I travel, my main goal is to explore the local culture by enjoying the eateries, visiting history and art museums, and enjoy the present moment, by either relaxing, having a high adventure, or just doing something I love with people that I love. So since we were planning a trip to NOLA, I wanted to ensure we got to try it all. I hope you know me well enough to know where this conversation is going… planning!

You cannot go to Louisiana without trying the simple, yet sinfully delicious deep fried pastries called beignets! They also are known for their use of crawfish, andouille sausage, boudin, andouille sausage, grits, the Holy Trinity, duck, frogs, alligator and shrimp. One of the things that I love is trying new foods. Thankfully, Travis is also somewhat adventurous when it comes to trying food. I am still working on him with seafood, but we are getting there. I make it a goal to try all of the quintessential dishes, especially when traveling to a place so well known for their food. I decided that I needed to have a bucket list of must haves while on our trip.

• Po Boys
• Étouffée
• Savory Grits
• Pontchartrain Sauce
• Crawfish Pie
• Gumbo
• Jambalaya
• Red Beans and Rice
• Fried Frog Legs
• Fried Alligator Tail
• Beignets
• Chicory Coffee

Budget

We had already set a budget when we set money aside for our trip. I recommend paying cash so that when the waiter brings your check, you can pay, tip, and leave without having to wait for them to bring your card back. Seeing the money in my hands helps me keep an eye on how much we have left. Knowing how much we could spend on our trip helped us narrow down what types of establishments we could afford. We also opted for water instead of expensive beverages at restaurants. This helped us stay hydrated and probably saved us anywhere from $36-$48 plus the incremental tax and tip that would have accompanied. The one drink I did manage to purchase was planned, and I was so glad I spent my money on it!

Research and Recommendations

When you are traveling, it can be hard to make quick, smart decisions on where to eat. It almost feels like decision fatigue, so, to prevent that from taking up time on our trip, we planned where to eat ahead of time. I did a lot of research to find the best places for certain things; I wanted to make sure that we got a wide variety, not just quick and cheap, but also try some fine dining and local favorites. My first step was to listen to what my friends and family had to say. Amber and Cindy had both been to NOLA recently, so they both had great recommendations. We were not able to try all the same places, but I picked out the must-haves and worked them into my itinerary. I ensured that each restaurant I chose was near whatever tourist destinations we were heading for that day, since we were on foot most of our trip. This ensured that we made it on time and spent less time wandering around lost. For the other meals, I used Google maps to locate high rated eateries within my budget. I could easily determine if the restaurant was in my price range and offered the type of food that I wanted based on other Google users' photos and reviews. Most of the restaurants have a photo of their menu, just click on the images and scroll through to see if the food is appetizing and affordable.

Don’t Over Eat

Be open to sharing your food! Travis and I knew we wouldn't be able to try all of the foods that we wanted on such a short trip. We opted to order two menu items that we both wanted to try so we could split them. The first day, all three of us ordered individual meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Although we shared the food we ordered, we still over-ate. That totaled 9 meals for one day. By the time we got to dinner, our eyes were hungry but we filled up fast. We learned the next day to order less food. Since I am a bariatric patient, I can only eat so much as it is, so this was easy for me to munch off of both of their meals, or have a smaller portion if something was offered a la carte. This helped cut back on food waste, too, since we can’t take it home with us. 

Fried Brie Burger at Trenasse

Louisiana Crawfish pie at Trenasse

You can always go back

One thing I had to remind myself when I was in NOLA was that I can always go back. I don’t have to eat everything in sight, and buy every souvenir I see. We decided to purchase a Cajun cookbook as one of our souvenirs so that we can take the cuisine home with us and enjoy it for years to come. 

You don’t have to eat out. 

Call ahead and see if the hotel room has a fridge or a microwave, or pick a hotel that has extended stay amenities. Food can be kept in a cooler with hotel ice and taken to a park for a picnic. Imagine mocktails (non alcoholic) and a charcuterie on a blanket in a park like Congo Square/Louis Armstrong Park, where you can enjoy the statues and manicured lawns in a historic place. It never hurts to get a little grounded and relax during your vacation, too!

What are your methods for planning meals on your trips? Do you just go and eat what you see when you see it? I want to know how you stay on your monetary and health budgets while traveling! Pop on over to MMC chat and let me know, or post in the comments below.

Traveling on a Special Diet

This week on the podcast we are talking about go-to quick and easy meals. Two weeks ago on our podcast, we touched on the topic of traveling with a special diet. This week, I will be leaving for my first vacation in two years, and I have a plan to eat healthy (and budget-friendly) while still on the road.

I follow a low-carb and mostly dairy-free diet as my boyfriend calls it, boring. I’m lucky that so many places have these options while dining out now. You are probably wondering why I use the word “mostly.” Sometimes we are put in situations where we need to eat something and we may not find that particular option on a menu. I could be extremely strict about it, but sometimes we all need to live a little. For example, I can eat cheese. I say I am primarily dairy-free, because, as I mentioned in my last blog, I get sick when I drink milk, eat yogurt and various other dairy products, but a small amount of cheese (like a cheese stick) does not make me sick.

Two years ago, I traveled to Las Vegas with Christen and Cindy for Christen’s bachelorette party. While there, I tried to stick to my diet plan, which required a lot of prepping. Here are my tips for traveling on a special diet:

1. Know the parameters of your diet. What can you eat? When can you eat? What needs to be refrigerated? What can you eat that can withstand long plane/car rides? I have to eat a certain amount of protein per day, and I need to supplement my diet with protein shakes. If I were buying shakes on the road (yes, they do sell them at gas stations), I would be paying twice as much as buying protein powder or shakes ahead of time.
2. Plan! Plan! Plan! Yes, you can “wing it,” but there will be no guarantee (as I’ve learned the hard way) that you can find snacks along the way for your special diet. It’s always good to have an idea where you are going to eat and what snacks you want to eat ahead of time. I suggest doing some research on restaurants before traveling so that you can pick the right restaurant. For example, if you follow a vegan diet, you may need to find vegan-friendly restaurants near where you will be staying.
3. Buy in bulk when possible. This is a big one for me because buying low-carb snacks on the road can be unhealthy and expensive. I typically go to my local bulk foods store and buy individual bulk ingredients to make my own trail mix. I also make sure I stock up on protein bars, peanut butter, low-carb crackers, and celery sticks. If you are taking a road trip, you can buy a case of water instead of paying individually for water at a gas station.
4. Pre-portion your snacks. The last time I went on vacation, took tiny zip lock bags and made tiny portions of my snacks before storing them in my suitcase. I didn’t check any luggage, and I was able to get my snacks through with my carry-on bags with minimal security issues (apparently my individually packed protein powder could have been a powder bomb, so they had to take a closer look).
5. Always be prepared. There have been many times that I have been stuck in the middle of nowhere and unable to eat when I need to eat because I was unprepared, or I was dehydrated because I didn’t have a bottle of water. Now, I carry a protein bar or a protein pack of almonds in my purse and I have another in my work backpack. I also make sure I have a refillable bottle or cup in my car or in my backpack for those times that I don’t have anything to drink.

I know it seems like a lot of work but preparing my travel snacks ahead of time really does save a lot of money when on the road. Yes, you still will want to eat at the cool, local restaurants but the more money you save on snacks, the more money you can spend dining out or on souvenirs.

I want to hear from our readers. What is your favorite road-trip snack? Do you plan it ahead of time or do you “wing it” when on the road? Let’s continue the conversation right here or on our Facebook Group MMC Chat. Don’t forget to check out our podcast as well!