DIY Menu Board

Introducing a new baby into the family flow makes simple things, like dinner, much more difficult. To help solve that I made a menu board where we can plan out our meals for the week and our shopping list in one go! 

The meal cards (not pictured) have a meal on the front and the ingredients on the back, so when we pull out what we want, I just flip them over and voila! The grocery list practically writes itself.

The second box is for side dishes, so we make sure to get a healthy variety of veggies. 

If you want to make one of these here's what you'll need:

1- 11x14 picture frame ($13 at Hobby Lobby)

1- roll of blackboard adhesive ($7 at Hobby Lobby)

7- mini clothes pins ($1.99 at Hobby Lobby)

1- sheet of scrapbook paper ($0.89 at Hobby Lobby)

2- small boxes (I used crystal light boxes cut in half)

2-3 sheets of card stock 

Gold Paint Marker (you can use a chalk pen or regular market)

Acrylic paint (or you can leave the clothes pins plain)

Elmers glue

Hot glue gun

It's as simple as putting the chalkboard adhesive on the glass of the frame, and writing your own menu title. Then cover your boxes with scrapbook paper and hot glue them to your new framed chalkboard.

Paint your clothes pins and glue them on too and you're ready for the hard part- remembering all of your recipes! 

I'm still adding more recipes as I remember them, but I recommend you open an excel spreadsheet and type a meal in each box, then format it so that there are two columns on each page. Next, print the meals on card stock so they're more durable. You can choose to laminate them if you want, I wasn't too concerned with that.

Then I printed and cut my meals and flipped them over and wrote down the ingredients.

If you're really motivated (or can't remember recipes by heart) you can write a reference to what cook book/page the recipe is on. If you're like me, you just write a list of ingredients, because measurements and instructions are for chickens!

Once you're done with the tedious task of listing your meals and side dishes, put them in the boxes and BOOM! You're ready to get meal planning!