DIY - Menu Board

I've spent quite a bit of time pinning some do it yourself (DIY) ideas on Pinterest this summer.  Then, earlier this week, I realized that if I don't try one of these DIY ideas now (when I don't have a baby and I'm not working) then I may as well give up the idea of ever doing a DIY project.  So, in the last week of my summer vacation, I decided to make a menu board for my first craft/DIY project.  So what's the purpose of a menu board?  It just helps you get your dinner meals organized for the week and hopefully makes you take just ONE trip to the grocery store each week.  This is really important as I go back to work.  Usually Ray calls me or I call him on our way home from work and we have a conversation that looks something like this:

Jessica: Hey, how was your day?

Ray: Busy, but good.

Jessica: Well I'm starving.

Ray: So what should we cook?

Jessica: I don't know.  The chicken is frozen and we don't have any veggies and I just want to fall on the couch.

Ray: Yea... so... pizza?

Jessica: Yea, I guess pizza.

And then we end up ordering a pizza and I feel gross because I just ate a greasy pizza rather than something fulfilling like veggies or chicken.  I'm hoping that the menu board will save us from this scenario as fall and my third trimester approach.  See, I love to cook, but I hate to get home when I'm starving and then have to go to the grocery store and then cook.  I give up long before that happens.

Here's the final product!  And then I'll show you how I got there:

To start the project, I spent about an hour in Michael's looking at my options.  They had every type of paper you could imagine and I took advantage of that.  I decided to use yellow and black paper because my living room, dining room, and foyer are all yellow.  I liked the black accent color because my counter tops have some black in them.  Michael's did not have the variety of cork boards that I would have liked.  I had to buy a cork board with a wooden frame and attempt to paint it.  It seemed that a lot of ladies on Pinterest did this, so I just assumed that I would buy a wood frame and use black acrylic paint to get it how I wanted.  Check out the epic fail:

NOTE: Don't try to paint something that's finished with acrylic paint.  You probably already knew that, but this non-crafty girl was clueless.  On the bright side, I was able to wipe the black paint off and I can use this cork board in another location in my house at some point.

So what do you do after that type of fail?  You go to Target.  I should have started at Target because I can always find things that I love in that store.  It's often a problem.  Anyway, I went to Target and TA-DA!  A black framed cork board like I originally wanted and it was cheaper than the one at Michael's.  NOTE: Always go to Target first.

So here's what I actually used for the project:

- Pretty paper from Michael's

- Scissors

- 2 sided permanent tape

- Target cork board

- Push pints (not pictured)

- 3x5 index cards (not pictured)

- A sharpie (not pictured)

- A black pen (not pictured)

If this picture were a picture of a class in a school yearbook, I would be the worst teacher because half my class is missing.  O well... moving on...

First, I wanted to put down the yellow checkered paper as my background.  To do this, I outlined the paper with the two sided tape.  I was worried that it would not stick very well, but let me tell you, that paper is stuck and it's not coming off.

Now I have my pretty background:

After that, I decided that I better get my recipes and meal ideas together.  I cut 3x5 index cards in half and I wrote the name of the meal on the front of the card:

On the back of the card, I wrote the ingredients that I need to make the dish.  I left out staples that I always have in my house like olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper, or milk.  So the idea is that when I pick my meals for the week, I can just make my grocery list by looking on the back of my cards.  I also put the location of the recipe (if I use a recipe) on the back of the card so that it's easy to find later.

Then I got slack with taking pictures, but you can basically see what I did with the final product pictures.  Again, here's the final product: and here's a breakdown of the features:

- Title (Menu)

- M, T, W... stand for the days of the week.

- I put a background of the black and white paper under each day of the week to frame my meals that are written on the index cards.

- The bottom of the menu stores all the types of meals.  I considered a meal either "fast," "favorite," or "other." "Other" is for things like eating with family, small group, or eating out.

I made the "envelopes" at the bottom of the board by putting thumb tacks around the edges.  It makes for simple storage and I can easily pull the meals out and sort through them as I prepare for my next meal.

I put the black and white "frame" around each meal for the week so that it adds some color and so that my meals will be centered when I use the thumb tack to put them on the board each week.

And I just have to say that the two sided permanent tape was wonderful to use!  It was easy and everything looked professional in the end.

To finish it off, I made the title for the board.  I decided to get some wooden letters to add some texture to the board.  I just used the same tape to attach them and it worked well.

So there's my first DIY project!  Hopefully it will work all as planned!  If not, at least it's something pretty on that boring white wall in my kitchen.  Here's to lots of happy weekday evenings because Ray and I are well fed :)