Whatcha Got Cookin'?

Pre-dinner time is never fun in our house because coming up with a variety of foods the kids will eat on a nightly basis is challenging, and also, I'm not the biggest fan of cooking.  While, I can't do much about my interest in cooking, 4 pm every day would be less stressful if I had a meal plan that was easy to follow.  What to do?  Any ideas?

The solution, of course, is a menu chalkboard!  (In addition, to my throw pillow obsession, I have a chalkboard obsession as well.  See here and here and here for other chalkboards in our house.) 

So, about a month or two ago, we popped the mirror out of this frame:

This mirror was in the master bedroom at our old house, but didn't have a home in our new place.

Bill primed and painted the frame use Glidden's Truly Olive (free sample courtesy of Glidden):

And then we used chalkboard paint on a piece of chipboard cut to size at Home Depot (It was about $12 for a huge piece of it...lots of leftovers.).

Bill rolled on 3 thin coats of Rustoleum's chalkboard paint for a nice, smooth finish.

We put it all together and now it looks like this in our dining room:

 

I am loving it!  And now, when Lucky makes her daily request for tortellini's (which went on sale $2.50/bag last week, down from $3.79!), I can show her which day of the week we have tortellini's scheduled using our new chalkboard.

Our total cost for the project was about $12 for the chipboard since we already owned the frame, used a free sample quart of green paint and we already owned the chalkboard paint from a project at our old house.  Yeah for cheap, fun and practical updates!