7 Week Meal Plan

How many of you meal plan?  I have been a "meal planner" for quite some time now, but I kept finding that I was spending hours each week planning and making grocery lists.  In fact, I often spent so long doing that part of it that we never got around to eating the things I'd planned!  It was ridiculous.  So I decided this year to plan the entire year, complete with grocery lists, so that I wouldn't have to worry about it anymore.  I planned January, and gave up.  It was too much!

Then I had a new idea - make a few weeks of meals and rotate them throughout the year!  It turned into 7 weeks of meals, complete with grocery lists.  I started by making theme nights.
My themes are:
Sunday - Mexican
Monday - Vegetarian
Tuesday - Italian
Wednesday - Vegetarian
Thursday - Miscellaneous
Friday - Grill Night
Saturday - Open

I left Saturdays open so that if we had a night out or something came up we could switch things around without needing to rewrite the grocery list.  I also left it open in case I wanted to try a new recipe.

We are in our 2nd 7 week rotation now, and I am loving it!  It is so nice to have all of my meals planned and lists written so that I don't even have to think about it.  I put my weekly planner and grocery list back to back in a sheet protector.  Then I take the page protector out of my binder when I am ready to go to the store.  I use a wet erase marker to mark things off that I already have at home (I prefer these to dry erase because they don't just wipe off), and then I use it to mark things off while I shop.  When I get home, the meal plan goes on the fridge for the week.  Between these two sheets I have all of the recipes I need that week.  It saves me tons of time and paper because now I print it once, and have it for the entire year (or however long I keep this up).

Do you meal plan?  What's your planning method?