I found this gem on www.pinterest.com. My first day on the site & I come across the most exciting, useful thing!! I completely swiped this idea bcs it is absolutely brilliant! I cannot take ANY credit for the idea, but here’s my version of the ultimate menu board!
Here’s the idea and How To.
What I love about this particular design—
1) It’s weekly. I shop weekly and plan my dinners weekly.
2) Meal cards have ingredients listed on the back, so I just gather my cards for the week, flip them over, and jot down the ingredients I need on my shopping list.
3) Using the two pockets I can store all of my meal cards right on the board. With a rotating system, I start with all the cards in the lower box and then after we have that meal, I place the card into the upper box until we go through the majority of the cards. Then, I start over choosing from all of them again.
4) It uses clothespins so no slipping and no holes. I was afraid that after I laminated my meal cards that they would get too thick/heavy for magnets.
5) The base is a picture frame—easy to hang and by using two nails I can keep it from tilting under the lopsided weight.
HOW TO MAKE THE ULTIMATE MENU BOARD
You will need-
11×14 picture frame
2 sheets of decorative 12 x 12 scrapbook paper
2-3 additional coordinating decorative papers
several sheets of solid colored card stock (for meal cards and pockets)
7 clothespins
the boxes from two 16 ct crayon packs
Elmers glue
Hot glue gun and glue
Mod Podge
Meal cards—
Before using your board, gather several meal ideas and their recipes. I have about 30, some are new recipes that I can’t wait to try & some are things that I make all of the time. Make a 2 column word document- typing your menu on one side of the page and the ingredients in the column next to it. One thing I messed up on the first time was on the side of the card that says what you’re having. Make sure you have that column centered to the RIGHT hand side, otherwise the clothespins will cover the words=not fun when you have to reprint them all! You should have room to print about 5 menus/ingredients per piece of printer paper. After printing, cut the meals/ingredients out into strips and fold each strip in half, giving you a front and back. Laminate the cards. I used self-laminating paper which worked okay but not perfectly, I have a love/hate relationship with the self laminating papers! My cards measure around 1 ½ inches tall (some are wider because the recipe calls for more ingredients) and then half of the width of an average size paper (4.25 inches) across.
This picture was taken with my FIRST batch of meal cards BEFORE I decided the left column needed to be all the way to the right, so the clothes pin wouldn’t cover the words.
Frame Background
Trim the decorative scrapbook paper to fill your frame. You will use one full sheet and just need a couple of inches of a second piece of paper in order to fill the entire frame. Where the two sheets overlap, you can place a thin piece of coordinating paper across the width to hide the seams (I didn’t think mine needed it). Put the title above that line using scrapbooking letter stickers OR, what I did was just print the word “menu” on my fancy paper. Make sure you practice on plain paper first. Place in the frame. Secure the background into the frame. Everything else will be done on top of the glass.
This is another BEFORE picture. I printed out “menu” and then realized it needed to be more to the RIGHT, so the menu cards wouldn’t overlap and then not be able to see that it says menu. **learn from my mistakes!! Always reference my TOP photo of the completed board. I made several mistakes, until I got it right.
Clothespins
Trim strips of paper to fit on top of your clothespins (I traced my clothespins and cut them out). I printed out the days on white cardstock and put them on top. You could do a variation of things , like M, T, W, Th, F, etc with stickers or whatever, but I like to print things out & use girly fonts, so…. Using a mixture of 1 part elmers glue to one part water (homemade mod podge, or Mod Podge, if you already have it,) brush the glue onto the clothes pin, place the paper on top and add more of the glue mixture. I think I did about 3 layers of the glue. When the clothespins are dry.
Pockets-
I used 16 count crayon boxes as the base for my pockets. Turning the box horizontally, cut out one long side- this will be the opening of your pocket. Lay the box out flat onto a piece of card stock and trace it. Cut the card stock out and glue it on top of the crayon box—making folds to match the boxes folds as you go. Reassemble the box, gluing or taping together the open sides. I left just about a half-inch extra along the long sides so I could wrap my paper over the top edges of the box for a smoother look. After assembling your boxes, cut a strip of coordinating paper to use as an accent and glue around the pocket. Hot glue the pockets directly onto the glass of your frame. One of mine stuck fine with the hot glue and one fell off. I think I waited too long to figure out where to line it up. IF this happens to you, instead of going out & getting another crayon box and re-doing it, do what I did. take the hot glue of the back and just use some heavy-duty tape. Packing tape did the job!
Here’s my finished project after all the re-dos and mess ups. It turned out SOOO cute! (it’s the same as the top photo)
And… here are my girls, excited to pick out what we’re having for dinner next week 
*I posted most of our menu recipes HERE.
