Thursday, February 9, 2012

I Made This



I've been seeing menu boards all over Pinterest lately, and I love the idea. I found this one in particular:

(found here)
and loved it.

So I decided to copy it.

This menu board is great because:
1. It's a spot to put down what you're making for the whole week and takes a lot of the stress away from planning dinners.
2. It is a nice list of what meals you make, for those times when your mind just goes completely blank even though you know you make tons of recipes.
3. You can put all the ingredients required on the back, which makes compiling a shopping list so much easier.

I did a few things differently- in the interest of cheapness, ease and my own taste.

First, I couldn't see wasting a perfectly good picture frame, so I just got a piece of wood and cut it to 11x14. Then I mod podged my paper onto it.

Also, since I don't have crayon boxes at my disposal, I used jello boxes. They were thicker than I wanted, so I ended up cutting them all the way along the side, then fitted the 2 pieces together and glued them in place. Does that make any sense? So they were still the same height and width, they just didn't stick out so much when I attached them. I just needed 1 box- I cut it in half and used the top for one box and the bottom for the other.

I used ribbon and Stickles for my clothespins, and cut out my letters on the Cricut and used a gel pen and Stickles to decorate them. I hot-glued the clothespins and the boxes to the board.

I drilled holes in the top and used wire to hang it.

I didn't laminate my cards (cheapness and ease- it will be easier to add new cards whenever I get new recipes this way), so I had to print on both sides of the paper. It took me a few times to get it all lined up, but it worked pretty well. I entertained the idea of color-coordinating the cards for main ingredients, but I haven't done that yet. If I decide to then I will just ink the edges.

Here's my sister's:
It was made using all the same techniques except we used a mac and cheese box.

This was all very easy and could have been done in an hour or two. (If you don't spend twice as much time messing around than you do actually working, like we do.) And it cost me $0 to make, since I already had all the supplies!

3 comments:

Deb said...

Cute idea!!

Kelsey said...

Thank you for sharing this. I've been planning on having my MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) group do a menu board for a craft and was having a hard time finding an inexpensive way of creating it. I just have a few questions if you don't mind. What kind of wood did you use? What was the thickness? And what type of wire? What was the gauge and length? (Just trying to configure how much of everything I will need to make 30 boards). And lastly, what size clothespins did you use? Thanks so much!

Team Smith Adventures said...

I'm so sorry Kelsey, I just now saw your comment! I am sure it is much too late for your activity but I am still going to answer you. I found some cheap plywood laying around that was the right size so I used that. It is pretty thin, just thick enough to not be flimsy. The wire is probably 18 gauge, but I'm not sure. You could use any size strong enough for your board, even string if the board's not too heavy. I used about 18 inches. I used standard-sized clothespin from the dollar store.