I don’t really make New Year’s resolutions anymore…I’m more of a year-end evaluation kinda girl. Over the holidays, while I was enjoying the many delicious pasta dishes, turkey leftovers, and cookies, it occurred to me…I’m an adult, and I still don’t eat my vegetables. And it’s not that I don’t like them, but I guess I just need some reminding that they exist sometimes! Now, for me, the most difficult meals to keep healthy are weekday dinners because I have more than just my own mouth to feed and I’m usually feeling tired and rushed. I made a planner only for these meals, but you can easily personalize this project for whatever your particular situation might be.
I’m sure many of you have seen the dinner plate pie chart that replaced the USDA food pyramid a few years back, and I thought this was a good place to start because I love a good visual. My pie charts here don’t follow the guidelines exactly, but that’s because I like to follow the rules about 80% of the time and make room for a little error. You can find several nice pie chart designs in the Online Store and I felt this one represented my healthy eating goals the best. I opened my shape up in the Studio software, positioned the pie pieces, and clicked “Make Compound Path” to start.
To add the letters to my charts representing my different food groups (fruits and vegetables, carbohydrates, proteins, and dairy), I first picked a font and typed out each abbreviation on my workspace. Then I used the “Text to Path” control button to drag each text box to the desired location on my shape and re-positioned the letters to fall within the shape’s boundary using the vertical slider bar. You’ll want the letters to overlap the border of the pie chart in order to create the single shape I’ve used in each pie chart on my chalkboard.
Once all the letters were positioned correctly, I selected all of the elements and clicked “Weld”. Then I just made four more copies of this shape and spread them out to fit within the dimensions of my chalkboard. The text representing each day was created using the same steps as above, except that I spaced them slightly above the chart because I wanted them to remain separate from the shape. After adding a few more elements to my workspace like this gorgeous title from Lori Whitlock and a place for shopping list using this font, I cut the entire design out of white adhesive vinyl. I weeded and moved the design onto my chalkboard using transfer paper and it turned out like this:
I used a store-bought chalkboard that I already had on hand for this project, but you could also turn a number of other items into your own chalkboard using the chalkboard adhesive vinyl if you’d prefer. I plan on mounting mine right outside the kitchen as a constant reminder to eat my vegetables and to get my husband involved in healthy meal planning as well. Wouldn’t this be a great way to teach kids healthy habits too? How are you using your Silhouette to keep your New Year’s resolutions?
Shapes:
Fonts: