Sara's Menu Board

Sara is graciously sharing content from her own project blog with I Was (p)Inspired, and the first thing that caught my eye was her amazingly organized menu board!  Here is what she had to say about the creative process involved-


Ive been spending FAR too much time on Pinterest lately!

Something I repinned the other night was a homemade menu planning board. I thought about all the things I could buy to make my cute little board a reality... Then I scrapped the idea. Why you wonder? Because I already have everything to make one, I just needed to put a little more thought into what and how to make it come to life!

I keep cheap 8x10 frames on hand for our family photo wall. Thanks to my addiction to shutterfly and my desire to have pictures taken constantly, I need a lot! 

I still manually scrapbook occasionally. Shutterfly's photo books have kind of taken the place of sitting down with piles of paper and embellishments... And it's cheaper! But anyways, I still work on my husbands "Army Life" scrapbook by hand, so I still have some stuff. 

And then there's my stockpile of paint and wood cut outs from my side business... 

The gears start turning!

(I REALLY wanted to take a picture step by step of the process, but once I got into it, it just didn't happen!)

I took a simple black frame and made a funky collage of all the colors in my kitchen. I placed that behind the glass so the glue can cure and the paper can flatten, but at the same time I can use the background for ideas of where I can place everything else. (the glass is going to be removed)

I wanted to spell out 'MENU', but I didn't have any U's on hand, so I took the letters to spell out 'DINNER' and painted those. In addition, I also took 7 clothes pins and painted those.

I didn't think construction paper would be sturdy enough on its own, but I have card stock/scrapbooking squares and I cut those into strips. I've seen some ideas where people write the meal on one side and all the ingredients for the meal on the other, but that's a little too in-depth, even by my standards! 

We have about 35 favorite meals, so I wrote all those onto the strips, left a few blank and added some that say things like "eat out", "leftover night!" or "date night".

So, take all these things... Stir in a big pot and then cook at 350 until done and you get THIS! 

Editor's note: I mean, seriously, look at this gorgeous piece of work!

Isn't she pretty?

My thoughts on the end result:
-The letters for "DINNER" were a little too big and I couldn't get them on just right so I resorted to scrapbooking letters..
-The "stitched" effect didn't work out so well.. I put the bow on the wrong side..
-The orangey color doesn't work that great (I'll probably change it later)..

But overall I like it!

Now I'm toying with the idea of hanging it on the wall, or getting super industrial magnets for hanging on the fridge... I'm still undecided with this!

But total cost out of my pocket so far: $0

If you were to go and buy everything because you had none of this on hand, maybe $20 or less. The magnets I'm considering will run me about $3-4. Still - not bad at all! :)


EDIT: I went to Walmart and spent $2 on an 18 pack of stick on magnets. It took all 18 because this thing was HEAVY! But it works! We're happy with it! :)

- Sara D.

Author of Operation: Domestication