Dinner planner DIY

Simple, colourful and cute!

In our home (and probably yours, too) we want our dinners to be healthy, home made and tasteful - and we have realised that in order to manage this in daily life we need to plan in advance. We started making weekly dinner plans using our smart phones back in January, and we have in general been able to follow our plan. I wanted to make a visual, "real life" dinner plan to keep in the kitchen, and I found lots of inspiring menu planners on Pinterest. Pinterest is so much fun...I really liked this menu board by Sarah Potter, and I love how you simply change cards for various meals.

Source

Our dinner planner

 All you need is 

- 7 wooden clothes pegs

- paint in various colours (I used acrylics), 

- coloured cardboard / paper (I used paint swatches - I always help myself to quite a number when we are in hardware stores)

- contact paper

- 14 magnets

- appropriate glue

- whiteboard pen to write on your cards

What to do

Paint your clothes pegs - I used 2 coats of paint. This is where you can go bananas and decorate your clothes pegs. When the paint is dry you glue two magnets to the back of each clothes peg. Make sure the magnets are far enough apart from each other, otherwise your clothes peg will sag to the one side. Cover your coloured paper with contact paper (this so you can erase and rewrite your menues).

And...you're done! Now, wasn't that fun?!

Two magnets on the back

I made a simpler version than Sarah Potter, but I might just add a little box with for storing cards with different dinners on - as it is I have to erase and rewrite our menue every week. Chances are that I will get lazy with time and "forget" to edit our planner...

Let me know if you make a dinner planner - I'd love to see!

Clothing Kasper - sleeved shirts

Sewing clothes is fun, and even more so when the recipient is your own child! Seeing him in stuff I have made makes me feel so accomplished! Other sewing mothers tell me to really appreciate it, because soon enough he will be old enough to choose his own clothes - and what I make may not be his first choice...

Mommy's monkey boy!

I've been sewing some sleeved t-shirts lately, and learning a lot during the process! I'm glad to say I'm learning from my errors, and actually enjoying doing them (yeah, really!) and seeing each t-shirt turning out better than the one before. For example, I kept cutting into the fabric of the monkey shirt  with the blade on my overlock - repeatedly having to sew further in (and making new holes in the fabrics with the overlock blade...). The shirt, which is the only one of the three which currently fits Kasper, is therefore rather tight despite the original measures being closer to a size 92. I did the same mistake on the next one (the envelope style shirt), but only once this time - so I did learn a little. And I'm glad to say that by the third one there was no erroneous cutting involved (though I forgot to add seam allowance to the sleeves and had to recut an additional pair). All in all I'm happy with the results, a little wonkiness included!

Take 2, penguin style

Stripey happiness

The two raglan shirts (monkey shirt and the striped one) are made from the Little Lamb pattern (Ottobre 4/2012), and the envelope style shirts is made using the Happy Animals pattern (found in Ottobre 3/2011). All the fabrics are from Stoff & Stil.

My new friend (the Juliana wrap)

My new, favourite winter wear

Ah, don't you just love when a project turns out better than expected?! This is my Juliana wrap, which is currently keeping me warm through our Norwegian winter. We're having some freezingly cold days - lovely and sunny, but -oh- so cold!

laid out flat

I began this project back in...March 2012, and finally got around to completing it in November. I used this lovely pattern, which was easy to follow and (mostly) fun to make. The shawl is made using Drops Alpaca from Garnstudio, crocheted on 6mm and 3.5mm hooks.

fastened with a wooden brooch

...from behind

and a close-up on the details

I guess you can tell from the amount of photos that I am rather pleased with how the shawl turned out...

Visit my Ravelry profile for more details (and add me as a friend)!