Weekly Menu Board and Grocery Shopping

I discovered Pinterest awhile back, when it wasn't so cool yet.  As a virtual corkboard for all the ideas you can find online and want to remember later, the site is  getting cooler all the time.  One of the great ideas I pinned there came from the Little Birdie Secrets blog by way of makeandtake.com.  

A dry erase menu board.

Little Birdie Secrets' tutorial is for a 12" x 12" board and uses a vinyl cutting machine to make the letters for the days of the week.  The letters are adhered to the glass, and the paper behind the glass can be changed as desired.  

Alas, while I'm hip and up-to-date for having joined Pinterest, I haven't taken the waters from the vinyl cutting machine project flood.  I don't have a vinyl cutter.

I do, however, have a printer.  And I found document frames (frames made especially for an 8 1/2" x 11" sheet of paper) for half off at my local Michael's store.  I also had a couple sheets of scrapbooking paper that I cut to fit into my printer.  After a bit of desktop publishing magic in a word processing program (like Word or OpenOffice), I had my own wipe off menu board.

I also threw together a board for things we need to add to the weekly shopping list.

By the way, the font I used for the boards is Hill House.  I like its Arts & Crafts/Mission vibe.  We hung both boards on the side of our upper cabinets.

Thanks for the idea, Little Birdie!

I've linked this post up to The DIY Showoff blog.

Too bad I'm not superstitious

I just finished knitting a steering wheel cover for my Smart Car. Yes, I wrote knit.



And here's what I wrote on the steering wheel cover's project page in Ravelry:

After 30+ days of 100+ degree heat, I got sick of burning my hands on the steering wheel after work. I know, I’m a leetle slow sometimes. I couldn’t find a steering wheel cover for my tiny Smart Car, so I decided I’d make one. This one.

I predicted that upon finishing the cover, the Dome of Heat over the Midwest would lift, thereby rendering my efforts useless. I was wrong. The day I bought the yarn, a sudden storm whooshed through town, blowing trees, trash, and temperatures down. I delayed beginning the project, and temperatures popped back up for a few more days.

This morning, while I whip stitched the cover onto the car, we had steady rain for hours. It’s still thundering outside. I am afraid of my own powers.

Or, I just ran out of patience about the same time the heat wave did.  But the Jen Almighty take is better.

Sherbet Floats

A couple months ago I had a brief respite in the hospital. Nothing to worry about, just some planned surgery. As a gesture of kindness, a knitting friend brought over two tubs of sherbet and a bottle of ginger ale for post-op sherbet floats.



I already had the appropriate soda fountain glassware.  I'm a strong believer in consuming comfort food in the appropriate vessel.



As it happened, one of my pre-op orders had me drink something nasty, flavored lemon-lime in a futile attempt to mask its gag factor. The flavoring made it worse, in my opinion. And, so, I couldn't stomach the lime sherbet afterwards. Even now my face crinkles at the idea of Sprite or 7-Up or the like.  It would have been a real sad state of affairs during my recovery if my friend hadn't also brought the raspberry sherbet. I hoarded that tub and Would Not Share.  Thankfully, THOMY understood.