something better: My first craft!

I am really excited to share with you all my first craft as a married person! To start off, I got the idea off of Pinterest, of course. I am always looking through my "good ideas" board for a new craft to do more specifically a craft that doesn't involve too many things, isn't difficult and is practical for our home. A few weeks ago I came across this:

And clicked on the link: http://www.cgdickson.com/2012/01/08/the-ultimate-menu-board-2/

And decided to make a menu board for our kitchen!

Austin though that would be a good idea as well and he reminded me that I have a magnetic board that I am currently not using in the closet. It was perfect because it was a simple craft and could be easily displayed in our home! It is also very customizable and you can create one in so many different ways.

As for me, I started with my magnetic board. I already had some wooden clothespins from our wedding decorations and definitely grabbed those to use for this project. I did my best to follow the directions but I also decided to do things my own way. I stopped by Michael's one very rainy day after work and picked up a big booklet of pretty scrapbook paper (it was usually $19.99 and I got it for $7.99!), kraft cardstock and magnetic tape.

Here are all of the things I used: my laptop, Sharpie fine point pen, magnetic tape, clear packaging tape, scissors, wooden clothespins, kraft paper, scrapbook paper, a ruler, glue and my recipe book

I made this recipe book at my last Young Women's activity before I turned 18. Haven't filled it with much but I hope to learn more recipes!

So the first thing I did was make my "Menu." I just wrote it by hand on some scrapbook paper and wrote it using my "fake calligraphy" techniques :) I also "laminated" it with clear packaging tape and let me tell you, it is such an awesome, easy, cheap alternative to laminating small things! Then I stuck two small pieces of magnetic tape on each side.

Next, I covered my wooden clothespins with a strip of a variety of scrapbook paper and glued them on. I then cut strips of my magnetic tape and stuck them onto the backs of the clothespins. I then wrote the days of the week in fake calligraphy on little squares and "laminated" them. Then I glued the letters onto the right end of the clothespin with basic school glue (34 cents at Wal-Mart).

I typed up all of the different meals we would have for dinner on Microsoft Word and used a pretty font called "Just The Way You Are" which I downloaded for free from dafont.com (I fell in love with fonts and finding cool ones on this website when i took Visual Media at BYU-Idaho).

These are just a few of the recipes we currently make on a weekly basis. I definitely want to go back to this document and add more recipes once we discover more that we enjoy! I also typed the recipes out on the landscape layout and with three columns so I could fit more to a page. It also helps to right-align the text so that there is space on the left for the clothespin to pin them on the magnetic board.

After I printed them, I cut them out carefully and made sure that they were roughly the same size. Then I "laminated" each meal card.

THAT'S IT! I'm not even kidding. You can seriously go above and beyond what I did but this is as simple as it gets. One last thing is that I bought a small wooden box (made out of really thin wood like balsa) from Michael's to store all of the meal cards that are not being used. I stuck a strip of magnetic tape on it and it sticks right onto the board!

Here is the final product: