life as a Losey: Weekly Menu

Every Sunday, I head to the grocery store with a shopping list in hand. This is normally the only time I am in the grocery store, so I need to plan accordingly. For a few years, I have been using a menu planner notepad that looks something like this:

The sheet of paper seems to get either shoved at the bottom of my purse or lost in a grocery bag. Then I forget what I planned for each night. Greg goes out to lunch a lot at work and likes to have an idea of what is planned for dinner. This way, he tries not to eat the same type of food two meals in a row.

I wanted to create a menu planner and have seen some on Pinterest involving a chalkboard. I can't stand to use chalk and normally don't like the look of it. Greg and I brainstormed a bit and had an idea when renovating our laundry room. This was the wall we were working with:

We started with an orange magnetic board from IKEA (that must be discontinued because I can't find it). This board was covered in fabric and used in our laundry room to hold coupons. On the way out the door, we were able to glance at it and see if we needed to use any. It didn't make the cut when re-organizing our laundry room. The size was perfect for the skinny wall in the kitchen, but how could we use it for a weekly menu?? We ripped the fabric off and were left with the orange board. It definitely didn't fit our color scheme and I didn't want it to stand out so much. So Greg painted it white using a small foam roller.

In the meantime, I played around with my Cricut to figure out what size and font I wanted to use for the letters. We decided we wanted to put the word 'menu' on top and then just the first letter of each day.

Gather your supplies that you will need for the project. I planned on using scrapbook dots to put the letters down on to the board. This would allow them to stay put, but not be super permanent. I used super glue to make the 'menu' word with two different colors. Greg gathered what he needed: driver, screws, level, measuring tape, mirror clips and a stud finder.

We played around with spacing. We measured the board then divided it by the number of spaces we needed. We used a yard level and piece of paper to help us keep the letters straight all the way across.

Once you have the letters where you want them and the spaces marked, start securing them down. Run some scrapbook dots along the back of each letter and put it back in its original spot.

Almost done, now you just need to make it reusable. We had a piece of glass cut at Lowe's to the exact size of our board. The glass cost about $6 and they cut it for free. I will now be able to write on the glass with dry erase markers. This will remind me if something has to be prepped or thawed and Greg can know what not to eat for lunch.