The Ultimate Menu Board

I'm a sucker for lists, charts, and ultra-organization. I find a new technique and go crazy on it, totally committing myself for life to it...for about 2 weeks. My husband just kind of shakes his head now when I tell him about the latest and greatest thing that I'm trying out.

I made a dinner menu board from a Pinterest pin a few months back and I was really excited about it. I spent a lot of time putting it together and used it faithfully. For about 2 weeks. But after having our second baby and slacking off for 6 weeks while I recovered and got to know her, I'm ready to get my household affairs back in shape, and cooking dinners for my family is high on my list of priorities (after trying to keep up with the new girl's feeding/eating rhythms and showering/brushing my teeth every day :p ). But having a toddler at home, I have 3 meals a day that I really want to plan out in advance so that I make sure he's getting good, balanced meals. (This drive may have been strengthened by the fact that while I was in the hospital and for a few weeks after, his breakfast consisted of his dad pouring some dry cereal on his tray and giving him a banana.)

So I designed my ultimate menu board to cover breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I drew from a bunch of different aspects and ideas from menu boards I'd seen on Pinterest, and here's what I made:

Ta-da!

I have all of the entrees, side dishes, and desserts I like to make and we like to eat written on individual cardstock tags. They're stored by category in the boxes along the bottom of the frame, and each box is divided into two so that I can put meals we've already eaten on one side to keep them separated from the "fresh" meals, so we don't end up doing the same thing all the time (unless we want to!). I love having everything on its own tag so that I can "layer" each meal with an entree, sides, and dessert to make it as simple or elaborate as I want. On the back of each tag, I have all of the ingredients listed so that I can put together my shopping lists quickly and easily. I also note where each recipe is found in my cookbook library, and how much time it takes to prep and cook so that I can make sure to save the time-intensive meals for days when I can cook at my leisure and stick with simple, fast meals on hectic days.

I got the corkboard (17"x23") from Hobby Lobby using a 40% coupon from their emailer, and spent some time in the scrapbook aisle with Jason picking out printed paper for the day, meal, and box labels. The boxes along the bottom are made from an "upcycled" Lucky Charms box, and the individual meal tags are cardstock. I want to switch the brass thumbtacks to plastic pushpins (clear plastic for aesthetic purposes) because the thumbtacks are a huge pain to take out of the board.

Enjoy! :)