Dry Erase Menu Board

I have been busy with my new Silhouette Portrait again.  I have wanted to make one of these menu boards for a while now and I am hoping that it helps me with meal planning. I have a tendency to be lazy and just want to order something or eat out if I don't have something planned.

This project was pretty simple.  I bought a long frame at Michaels and found this great graphic pinkish orangish wrapping paper at Target.

Just ignore the Mod Podge and brush in the picture.  I tried that method first and had too many issues with bubbles so I tried it a different way.

I took the frame backing and traced it on the wrapping paper and cut it out slightly bigger than the traced area.  Then I wrapped the edges over the the back of the frame backing and taped them down.  Then I put the backing back in the frame which took a little bit of effort but eventually I ended up with this:

 Then I designed the words in the Silhouette Design Studio software.

The fonts were ones that I downloaded.  The font for the word "menu" was called Fancy Pants and the font for the days was called Janda Apple Cobbler.  I bought the flourish and poppy at the Silhouette online store.  I thought the poppy would tie in nicely with my faux roman shade from this post. 

I printed the designs on black adhesive vinyl just like the labels for my spice jars.  

I really like how the black vinyl pops against the graphic background.

Then I hung it on the wall and wrote out the menu for the week.  There are a lot of leftover days because I work for the local independent league baseball team during the summer so I am not home for dinner very often.

Here is what this corner of the kitchen looks like with the addition of the menu board.  I like how it adds an extra pop of color.

I have also been working on organizing my kitchen cabinets so here is peek at some of the work I have done with that.

 

I should have taken a before but it was a crazy mess in there before.  I had thrown away all the rings that came with my measuring cup and spoon sets so I used some shower rings that I had hanging around.  It is nice to get them out of the drawers where it takes me forever to find the right size spoon.

Spice Jar Labels

So several months ago I posted this very long post on some kitchen updates that included the story of how I wanted to make one of those magnetic spice racks but it was a major fail so instead I ended up with this:

Well I have really enjoyed having my spices so accessible and organized but there has been one little problem.  The names of the spices are written in sharpie on the bottom of each jar which means that if I want to find out which spice is which I have to lift it out and check the bottom.  And while this might seem like a fun carnival game akin to picking rubber ducks out of a kiddie pool and checking the bottom to see if you won a prize, the game got really old really fast.  

So, enter my new toy: the Silhouette Portrait.  

You can find all the info on this awesome machine here. It is basically like a printer except it cuts a variety of materials including paper, cardstock, adhesive vinyl, fabric, etc.  I have been contemplating buying one for a while now so when I received some money for my birthday from my in-laws, I decided to take a leap and buy one.  I LOVE it!

My first project was making labels for my spice jars using adhesive vinyl.  I bought the label shape in the Silhouette online store.  The online store has tons of shapes for download that cost 99 cents a piece.  It is so much nicer than buying multiple cartridges of designs like other similar brands of cutting machines. There is also a featured free shape each week.  The font I used was called stencil and I think it was one that actually came with Microsoft Word but who knows now that I have so many free downloaded fonts.

 After putting all the labels on, I put them in alphabetical order to make them even easier to find.  I love the way they look.  This project was phase one in organizing my kitchen.  Yesterday I finished organizing everything inside the cabinets so the kitchen is nearing completion.  My next Silhouette project is a menu board for the kitchen wall.  I'll share as soon as I finish!