she's crafty

my super friend danielle found this super cool menu magnet project, and me being me, said, "oooo, crafts AND food? awesome!" and of course, me being me, decided to make it way more complex than the original.

the gist of the project is to print out meal/food names and stick them onto magnets, so you can do a menu on your fridge. i thought to myself, wouldn't this be a perfect opportunity to create a learning tool for oliver? and thus decided to add pictures of each food item. and since our family cooks many and varied offerings, i had to print out roughly 200 different things. which meant buying magnets (instead of using extra ones, like the original project suggests). and i thought, well, printed paper glued onto craft paper won't possibly be strong enough to hold up... i better glue it onto foam board and then exacto knife all 200 pieces out.

yea, what was i thinking?!

it took me roughly forever to complete the project. but it turned out really cute, and oliver is pretty intrigued. mom had suggested she let me laminate my print outs, and while i initially thought they still wouldn't be strong enough, in retrospect, it probably would have been perfect. yet another lesson that one should always listen to their mothers. if you do this project, skip my steps 6, 7, & 8 and get thee to a laminating machine!

so here's what i did:
1) made a table in Word and typed out a bajillion food items
2) added pictures from the interwebz
3) printed and cut them out
4) glued them onto scrapbook paper
5) cut them out
6) glued them to foam board
7) cut them out, a la exacto knife
8) covered them in contact paper
9) glued a magnet on the back
10) had a beer

the result? a big mess of cute little food cards.



yea, i really wasn't exaggerating when i said 200. this basket is about 8" deep.



i also made a cute "what's for dinner?" header and the days of the week, so that you can organize and display on your fridge like so:



cute, right? now i just have to find the time to change them up every week. hmmm, i'm starting to think i didn't think this project through completely.

and to be completely honest, i'm still not 100% done. i have about 5 more cards i need to get onto foam board, but i ran out. and i also bought some neat white board paper, so i want to make some large magnets with that, so we can write our actual menus on them. but i'm going to take this time to revel in completing this much of the project, and it being actually usable.