Menu Board

"Seriously why do they want dinner every single night?" or "It's that lovely time again, Dinner... what is for dinner?" These have been my facebook posts for a while now, with hubby not home for dinner it just made it harder to plan a menu and then stick with it. So after a slump I've decided to stay ahead of this meal called dinner.

After looking at a ton of ideas off Pinterest for Menu Boards, I finally made ours and I really like how it turned out. Even my 6 year old looks at it and announces what is for dinner to her 4 & 2 year old brothers, it's great! So here is what it looks like:

I've FINALLY decided on a color scheme for my kitchen, since the cabinets are white and the counters have a gray & black marble look to it, I've decided to go with gray & yellow as the primary colors. :) So when I made this board I kept those colors in mind.

The overall cost of this project FREE!!! I had all the materials on hand to make it! So here is how I did it:

Supplies:
12x12 scrapbook paper
12x12 piece of Carboard, I just cut a piece from an Amazon box.
1 box of jiffy cornbread, cut in half
7 clothespins
Colored paper to cover the cornbread box
Menu ideas printed onto 1" strips of paper
Days of the week squares
Glue Gun

I used my hot glue gun to glue everything on. First I made a list of all the meals my family likes to eat, and did a search to find a few new recipes that I thought they'd enjoy. Then I went onto Microsoft Word and put them all into 7 different categories and assigned each category a color. I Listed them below along with a picture.  I chose categories that worked best for us, and it just happened to work out that there are 7, so the idea is there won't be any duplicated colors in a week. If it was a crock pot meal I put a tiny (cp) next to it, so I knew where in my recipe box to find it.


Chicken- Gray
Beef/Pork- Green
Fish- Blue
Italian- Red
Mexican- Pink
Misc.- Yellow (dinner out, leftovers, and breakfast meals are in this category)
Sandwiches- Dark Gray

My original idea was to print them out on different colored paper, BUT I didn't have 7 different colors on hand so I "highlighted" them instead. Then I typed out the days of the week and "Menu" and made a thick yellow border around it and printed them all off. Next I cut the Menu Ideas into 1" strips.

 I cut the cardboard box and glued the scrapbook paper on. Then I cut the cornbread box in half and glued yellow paper to it. I glued the days of the week to the clothespins and placed everything on the board to figure out where I wanted to glue everything, once I was satisfied, everything got hot glued on.







The top box contains all the printed out Menu Ideas. The bottom box contains blank paper strips for any new menu ideas along with a pen.




I just used a 3M picture hanging strip and hung it on an empty wall in my kitchen, next to our calendar and the grocery list.

Speaking of... I ALSO made a Grocery check List that is right next to it so when we run out of something I can just check it off as needed. :) I just printed off about 15 and clipped them together. When it's time to go shopping I can just take the list off and there will be others behind it, as it gets low all I have to do is open the document and print more off. I thought about making it all colorful and pretty but then came to my senses and realized it is only a list that I'll have to print off numerous times and will eventually get thrown away. So black and white it is.