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.

Displaying holiday and birthday cards can be difficult when you run out of room on your bookshelf and mantle or just when they won’t stand up on their own (like post cards). I have some family members who hand make all the cards that they give and of course these beautiful cards deserve to be displayed. The apartment where my husband and I lived in Bloomington had cabinets in the living room that were perfect for displaying cards and even pictures that we received. But when we moved we lost that convenient display method. My solution? A DIY project of course!

I originally made this frame display specifically for Christmas cards and I thought that it would be put away at the end of the season with all my other Christmas decor. I realized though that it is perfect for all cards and photos that we receive throughout the year and does not have to be holiday specific. However, I do like dressing it up with some poinsettia clip on flowers at Christmastime.

Like most of the projects that I do, this is a very simple, inexpensive, and useful one. It only requires an empty frame (any size and color you like), twine, a hot glue gun, and mini clothes pins.

I cut five pieces of twine to be the length of the frame. You can display the frame either landscape or portrait style, but whichever you choose the twine will need to be attached horizontally.

Making the twine tight, simply attach the ends to the back of the frame using hot glue. As this display gets used, the twine will stretch (as you can see was the case with mine) so it’s important to go ahead and make the strings tight now.

I also did not worry about making the twine go straight across the frame. This is a style preference and can certainly be done either way.

I bought miniature clothes pins from a craft store to pin the cards on the twine. I like the natural look of the wood, but these could also be painted any color that you might like.

Here is what my frame looks like at Christmastime!

A little over a year ago my husband and I moved from our small college town in southern Indiana in favor of city life in Indianapolis. Matt and I met at Indiana University, got married in Bloomington, and lived there for the first two years of our marriage. While Indy was just moving back home for my husband, it has been a completely new experience for me having grown up in a very small town in southern Indiana. I’m not a fan of living in the city (yet), but I do not doubt that this is where the Lord has us right now and I am very grateful to not only be close to my in-laws, but to also be a part of a wonderful church here.

Moving gave us double the square footage that we had in Bloomington and I needed to figure out how to fill the walls and make this new place our home. A song that I absolutely love by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros says “Home is wherever I’m with you” and I used this line to inspire the artwork that I made to hang above our couch in the living room.

Here is a little DIY project that I made. It didn’t take a whole lot of time to create this sign, but it did take a lot of effort because I do not own any power tools.

The first thing that I did was build the sign. Using reclaimed wood from an old pallet, I built my canvas by hand. This step can easily be skipped because wooden signs can be found in almost any craft store (my favorite is Hobby Lobby).

I chose a font online and printed out the words from the song in the size that I wanted. I did the same with the outline of Indiana.

As much as I dislike my own handwriting, I freehanded the H, M, and E because there is something beautiful about not having perfection in a work of art.

I colored the back side of the printouts with white chalk. I then arranged the print outs on the sign face up where I wanted them. Using a pen I traced the words and the outline of Indiana. Doing this will transfer a chalk line onto the wood.

Once the outline was there, I simply painted the sign using black acrylic paint.

Erasing the chalk outline was easy with just a wet paper towel. Then I called on my husband to drill holes and hang it on the wall. We had to use heavy duty hanging equipment because that thing is very heavy and we didn’t want it falling on to anyone’s head while they are sitting on our couch.