Tutorial Review: Menu Board

Enough was enough!!  I was sick of not knowing what to cook for dinner each night, being totally unmotivated to cook and staring into a pantry full of food saying ‘There’s no food in here!!’.  And not to mention spending more on groceries than needed and doubling up on food we already had.  I needed some inspiration – so I went surfing and pinning!!  I came across heaps of ideas, and then found this awesome menu board from the Clair's Fairytale blog.  How cool is it!!

Clair writes about her search for the ultimate menu planning idea and created one that combines all the elements she likes about others into one.  Lucky for me she had done the hard yards!

It was very easy to make and Claire outlines everything very clearly on her blog.  I happened to have all the materials I needed in my craft supplies and put it altogether in one night.  I did however make a few minor changes to suit my own needs.

Firstly I didn’t bother laminating the menu cards – I do own a laminator, but if I waited to do that, the board would never have got finished!  Instead, I cut up heaps of blank cards and have left them in the box.  For the next few months I’ll fill them up with meals and before I know it I’ll have a whole library of meals to chose from. Plus I didn’t have the time to sit and choose a heap of meals and write them down in one go as Claire suggests. 

Secondly I decided to replace one of the boxes with a space for a baking list.  Claire uses her boxes to rotate the menu cards.  I like to bake each fortnight so instead I added an extra peg, cut larger pieces of card out and I use them to write a list of baking recipes for the fortnight.

 

I really love that on the back of each menu card, there is a basic list of ingredients.  This makes for writing the shopping list much easier.  Also, as I shop fortnightly, I just peg two menu cards into each peg and remove the top one when I’m done with it.  I added a card label ‘toast night’ and ‘night out’ for those easy night or take away.  Here’s my finished board:

 

All in all I’m loving this!  It was easy to make, someone else had put in the hard yards already (with four of my own kids why re-invent the wheel?),  it has taking out the stress each night for cooking and so far has even saved us some money!  What’s not to love!

 -Sarah C, independent crafter.