Shiny New Menu

Ever since I started meal planning back in September, it has become a little bit of an obsession. I've become compulsive about it (and there you have it, a diagnosis, just like that.)

I'm always on the look out for new recipes, keeping an eye open for what's in season and how I should cook it (which is really not a lot right now here in the icy, but not just snowy, state of Iowa.) Our evenings are so much smoother and our diets are so much healthier. The times that we just give up and go for a fast food run have been cut drastically.

Since this has become such a big deal, I couldn't continue just using a little sheet of paper stuck to the side of the fridge.


No, this was much more important than that. So much bigger.

So, I did what any normal, compulsively planning menu obsessing woman would do. I bough a can of chalkboard paint and painted out a large rectangle on a wall in my kitchen.

I love my new chalkboard menu (although I would like to point out that the walls in our house are textured, not flat. Hubster mentioned this to be just as I was starting to paint and asked if I wanted to sand the wall first. I didn't. I was in the zone and just ready to do this already. Turns out, he was right. A textured chalkboard isn't the most ideal writing surface. Another point to Hubster.)

Each week, I write out the week's menu (from the scrawled on monthly menu sheet on the side of the fridge - that's not going away.)


Now, not only is the hard work I spent planning meals for the family nicely displayed, but there is finally something on the blank walls in our kitchen. I personally think it goes with everything else quite nicely.


Everyday, the boys run into the kitchen and read out loud the dinner planned for that night. Sometimes the meals are a little nicer, a little fancier.


Other weeks, they are not.


The trick is still actually getting the boys to eat anything, no matter how pretty the menu is.