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.
