One thing that I really do not enjoy is grocery shopping. I could vent on this subject for days, but instead I am going to share one thing that makes shopping for groceries just a little bit easier: having a menu. I find that when I have a weekly menu planned out for my household, I am less likely to forget to buy an important ingredient and I am less likely to have food that goes bad before it gets used. Usually on Mondays I will sit down with my recipe book and decide what meals we will be having for the week. From this I am able to make a grocery list and do a shopping trip. Of course I do not stick to the menu like it’s written in stone… Sometimes I just don’t feel like cooking or maybe some better offer comes along, but I still find the menu to be a great tool for avoiding the “what do you want for dinner tonight?” conversation as well as for staying within our monthly grocery budget.

A fun and decorative way to make a menu each week is to have a menu board. Or in my case, a menu wall. This project was simple and inexpensive to make and it is a lot of fun to use!

First I went shopping! I found all seven picture frames at Goodwill for under $10. They are different shapes and sizes and I opted for worn-looking black and wooden frames. You could easily choose more uniform frames, but it might be difficult to find seven frames that are exactly the same at a second-hand store. It is important to get frames that have removable glass. There are some decorative frames that are made without access to the glass which will make painting them difficult.

I removed the glass and spray painted them with chalkboard paint. I bought my paint, but I have seen tutorials for making your own chalkboard paint that might be worth checking out.

After the paint was dry, I used acrylic paint markers to write the days of the week. This was my own handwriting, but if there is a specific font that you prefer you can always use the chalk transfer method that I explained on my “home is wherever i’m with you” post.

Finally after putting the glass back into the frames, I did a lot of measuring and calculating to hang the frames on the wall in my dining room.