Recipes Contained!

This is what my recipe collection used to look like! 

photo credit

I had a little recipe book with 3x5 cards, but never got around to writing down many recipes on them. In addition to that book, I had a metal recipe box with random scraps of paper and tear sheets from magazines, notebooks full of bigger tear sheets and loose notebook paper with my chicken scratch on them. It was chaos!

For Christmas a few years ago, I put this recipe notebook on my Santa list and Dave's dad got it for me. He didn't understand why my current system wouldn't meet my needs anymore, but he bought it anyways. That's love :)

It's spiral-bound and has divided sections for appetizers, main dishes, breads, desserts, etc. so everything can be organized and in one place! Lovesit! ;)

Each page has room to document ingredients, instructions, serving size, and other details:

Fast forward like two years, it was still sitting on the shelf empty. One day I was complaining to Bonnie about how this is one of those projects that seems so big and overwhelming that you don't even want to start it.  So she offered to take it on (how awesome is that?!?) and transfer all my recipes from my multiple sources and forms into the book! Score!

For my birthday this year, she presented it to me wrapped in a fun bow - I was so excited! She included all the recipes I gave her and added some of her and her grandma's specialties :)

I think it's so awesome that she spent so much time creating this for me! I probably would have taken at least a couple more years to start the project, because I know I wouldn't have been able to do 2 or 3 recipes in a day, take a break, and do a few more the next day. I would have wanted to sit down and do the whole thing, and that time commitment would have scared me away! Welcome to my world...

Now all I have to do is add some recipes that exist only in my head, and some new ones that Dave and I have cooked up recently.

Thank you Bonnie!