Project Eight: Menu Board

Here's the thing...I suck at being an adult.  I rarely have the necessary groceries to make a full meal, and when I do, usually the meat portion of the meal is frozen and requires thawing, which of course I forget to do until it's 6:45 and we're staring.  So...time for project eight...the menu board.

The menu board is by no means an original project, there are multiple versions floating around pinterest, but here's my take on a menu board that cost me next to nothing.  Basically I went from this:

To this:

In about an hour or two.  Here's how:








I started by taking apart my cereal box and getting a good solid piece of it from one of the large panels as my base.  I used a cereal box because it was free and it's nice a lightweight so I could hang this whole thing on my fridge when complete.

I covered my cereal box with a pretty piece of scrapbooking paper:

Then I cut the word "menu" out of two coordinating colors of scrapbooking paper with my Cricut.  I used a lighter green for the top "menu" and then used a darker green and cut out the shadow version so that the word would stand out a little more against my background.  I used Mod Podge to adhere the letters and also did a nice coat over the whole thing.  I figured if it's hanging in the kitchen, it may last a little longer with glossy Mod Podge over it.

Once I got the base ready, I started working on my clothespins.  I used different coordinating papers and mod podged them onto the clothespins so they'd be a little prettier than plain 'ol clothespins.

Pretty  huh?  Minus my gross hot glue covered cutting mat (which after this project FINALLY made its way into the garbage).

Next I worked on a little pocket to hold all the menu items that we won't be eating for the week.  I used coordinating scrapbook paper and cut out a square.  I scored a line an inch in on both of the sides and the bottom of the square so that I could fold those sides back and glue that portion onto my mat.  I then cut out the two squares formed in the bottom left and bottom right hand corners of my square.  So it looked like this:

Then I folded each of those tabs I created under and glued them onto my board, creating a little pocket.  I should also note that I put mod podge on the front of my pocket just so that it was glossy and had the same appearance as the rest of the board.

Next I hot glued my clothespins onto the side of the menu board - measuring their distance apart as I went so they were even and lined up.

I used my Cricut and cut out some little labels (from the essentials cartridge) out of an ivory cardstock.  I cut .50" sized labels for my clothes pins to mark the days.  I then used stamps to stamp the first letter of each day and glued the labels onto my clothespins. I just used good 'ol elmers to attach those to my clothes pins.

After that, I cut out 1.25" labels to hold all of my menu items.  My fiance lovingly wrote out the menu selections because his handwriting always looks so much neater than mine.

See, that boy can write.

Finally, I glued some heavy duty magnet action onto the back and slapped this puppy onto my fridge.  I'm hopeful that we'll actually use it.  If not, I think it still looks pretty good :)

TA DA!!!  One more project down and I had a ton of fun with this one!