Menu Board

A while ago, I saw this on Pinterest: 

Once Upon a Chocolate Chip Cookie

And I decided then and there that I wanted one, and I wanted one now. I'd been trying to keep up with meal planning since I married Gary and became all domestic and such. The thing is, menu planning is really hard! I had to assemble all my recipes and figure out how much of everything I needed, and also remember what I still had on hand from last week's menu that needed to be used up. This usually involved extensive searches on the internet and lots of going back and forth between cupboard and fridge and recipe. And now with Peri around too, it's even harder to figure things out whilst she's clamoring around my knees begging for my attention. Though now that I've finally got her to take naps in her crib, instead of on my shoulder, I have some spare time for a couple hours a day! Yay! 

Anyways, I wanted my own menu board, and about a week or so ago, I finally made one! At first I wanted one just like the above, because it's so cute and orderly looking, but I didn't have a frame, (well I have lots of frames, but not one without glass that would work well), and no clothes pins and not a lot of cute paper to work with. But whilst I was cleaning out some junk in our house, I came across my old college girl white board that we don't use anymore, simply because we have many bigger and better white boards that we do use. I thought to myself, "Oh, that'll work!" And it has. 

It isn't nearly as cute as my inspiration, but that's okay, because it does its job just as well! The days of the week are in German, because that's how we do things here. I wanted to do Speisekarte instead of menu, but I didn't have that many letters. I'll change it someday. I'll also put some cute paper in the background someday too. The menu cards have magnets glued to one end on the back, and the ingredients for the dinners are written on the back, as well as any backing information (temp and time) that I need to remember. This makes getting shopping lists together so much easier! 

The top box is for meals we haven't eaten yet, and the bottom for things we have. Sometimes I just pull things out randomly, but since I have a bunch of leftover meat from last week, I went through and brought out meals that use the meats I have. Or I can just substitute meats and veggies for what I have on hand. Easy peasy! The boxes are held on by magnets too, so when the bottom one fills up, I can just switch them around, instead of moving handfuls of paper around. 

I would have liked to laminate them, since I take the meal card off the board and use it as a reference for things that I need while I'm cooking, but I didn't have any contact paper.

Incidentally, the days of the week aren't stuck on with magnets; I just used glue stick to put it right onto the board. It'll come off easily enough if I ever need it too.  

I also have a couple of fun things on my menu cards such as:

This way I don't always have to cook and we can keep adding recipes to our board.

And of course, I was sure to make plenty of extra cards for the try something new category, if we end up liking it a whole lot!

And that's my menu board! My niece Jeilyn was here last Thursday, and she thought it was just the coolest thing! She wanted to help me take off the cards we used and put new ones on, and asked me what we were having every day of the week. She also helped me to make the tacos! She asked me to make one for her house too. Maybe I just might!