Eating Our Way Through a Yummy To-Do List

Submitted by Kellie on July 12, 2011

Topic: Home Helper

Tags: Organization Lists Kitchen

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Kellie's blog

I love lists! Top ten lists, best-dressed lists, and more. To-do lists? Well, they’re not so much fun. (Blogger Leah likes them – she’s sharing her reasons why later this month.) However, our Out of Office blog team recently saw some adorable summer to-do lists for kids. They include things like building forts, having a water balloon fight, going to the beach…things every kid should do in the hot summer months to have fun and stave off boredom.

The bloggers behind We Are the Champions and eighteen 25 both made delightful versions of this. Since I’m past the days of fort-building and water ballooning fighting, I got to thinking about other ways I could use the lists. Solution: A decorative piece for my kitchen with a list of all the local restaurants my husband and I want to try!

If you haven’t guessed already, in my household we love to try new places and we used to eat out often (remember my “What’s For Dinner” solution book?). With Baby G on the way we eat out a little less, but we still have a mental list of local places that we want to try while we’re still able to get out of the house on a Friday night without calling a babysitter!

I transformed my old list of “must try” restaurants from this:

To this:

Much better, right?

Here’s what I did:

1. Pick a frame first, so you know how much space to fill. Almost any shape or size will do, it’s totally up to you!

2. Make your list. Don’t let it be tedious work – have fun with it and think big!

3. Start crafting. I had old scraps of wrapping paper that I wanted to use, but you could also use scrapbook paper or make your own design for each line. eighteen25 shares a template that may help you too.

4. I used regular 8.5” x 11” paper to fill the frame, then I pasted my wrapping paper strips on. At this point, you could laminate the list so that you can re-use it. With dry-erase lamination, you can mark items off again and again.

5. Next, I wrote in the list! I had to use my best “teacher” handwriting here to make it legible.

6. Now you’re ready to frame it up. Remove the glass in the frame – you’ll need easy access to the list to mark off your progress, so you don’t need it any longer. And you can get creative with how you check things off your list. You don’t have to use basic check marks. Consider using colorful push pins, stickers, buttons or magnets to signify a completed item.

7. The last step is to add your list, close up the frame and mount or post the finished product. Now you’re ready to get busy crossing off items!

The Out of Office team loved this so much that we thought of other ideas in addition to a summer to-do list and restaurant to-eat list.

· Have the kids list the gifts they want from Santa. Maybe they could take a photo and include it in their letters to the North Pole.

· Use the idea for goals or milestones, such as a healthy eating plan or exercise regimen.

Tell us how you’d use the idea in the comments below.

Related FedEx Office Solutions: Lamination

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