There’s a Chalkboard in My Kitchen
I have always liked Chalkboards. The ability to write things and then erase and start over. (I wish I could do that in real life, when I am always second guessing myself.)
When my kids were little I had thought about painting a whole wall with chalkboard paint; this was before Pinterest and all the new décor ideas. So when my husband came home one day several years ago with an extra large chalkboard, I knew exactly where I wanted to put it. (Yay for free things!) It has been a permanent fixture in our kitchen for about 3 years now. Above it hangs a board with our last name and a place to hang different art work or anything that I feel we all need to see on a daily basis. Currently, it holds each of our words for the year with our names.
The chalkboard has served differing purposes throughout the years:
- Inspirational Quotes
- Scripture verse of the week
- Character Quality of the month with definition
- Words of Affirmation
- Chore list
- Celebrating Birthdays of each family member
- Happy New Year
- Merry Christmas
- Chart for my son to have mindfulness (it really was helpful for all of us)
- Reminders of what to do for the day, week, month
- Spanish words to learn and work on (we are a bi-racial family, so the kids are learning Spanish)
- Homeschool reminders
- A place for my 5 year to practice his letter writing
- Conduct chart
- List of consequences for bad behavior
- List of rewards for good behavior
- Motivation for exercise
- Ideas for developing good health
- Christmas lists of wants/needs
- Changes that need to be made around the house
…. You get the Idea!!!
One year I put Christmas lights all around the edges and left them up all year to highlight what was written. I have since taken them down. Back to simplicity.
In all honesty, it has been blank for the past few weeks. I’ve been trying to think of something inspiring to write in order to spur us on in this cold, wintery beginning of a new year. However, this month we have a big birthday, my son turns 15, and I thought it might be nice if we put encouraging thoughts for him every few days: things we love about him, thoughts of past memories, or inspiration to encourage him as he is growing into a man.
My daughter is the creative one in our home, always getting ideas off of Pinterest. I swear that my Pinterest boards are full of all stuff she has pinned, since I don’t really do Pinterest, except to look up recipes from time to time. I have seen her pins about lettering and learning how to write fancy fonts. I have had the good intention to look at the tutorials, but have never taken the time to actually look at them. Thankfully, I have pretty good handwriting and I just go with that. I mean, it gets erased so quickly.
Anyway, the basic idea behind the chalkboard is that there is a central location in our home that promotes positive thinking and is a daily reminder to stop and think.
