About ten years ago I revamped my recipe collection in a big way. First I threw out my dilapidated recipe box and hauled out recipes that I never used. Second, I found a cute whimsical Susan Branch cookbook kit with scrap booking pages and stickers. The book was cheap enough but cheaply made too, as I found out this year.
Like many housewives who cook everyday, my recipe book started to show wear and tear. Then one day after making a delicious meal for my family, the books’ binding fell apart. I busily shoved it on my little shelf in the kitchen and soon forget it’s desecration. Every time I reached for my recipe collection, the broken book with pages falling out reminded me that I had been doing this awhile and my book couldn’t keep up.
Last week, on an energetic whim, I set my mind to repairing and giving new life to my book. I searched our file cabinet and found a 1 ½ inch binder that one of the boys had used for school. I recycled it at the end of that year and put it in my stash of “ maybe I’ll use that someday.” I’m grateful for that because sometimes I throw things out in an organization fit.
Next I found plastic page protectors to slip all the handwritten and computer copied recipes in. I highly recommend this step because we all know cooking can be messy and can stain and alter our nice cards.
What I especially love about the Susan Branch cookbook kit was that it supplied folders with heading for extra recipes. What I’ve always done is displayed my favorites, family favorites,my mom’s recipes, Tom’s mom and dad’s and meme’s staunch winners on the pages and others can rest in the folders.
I bought the cookbook scrapbooking kit on Amazon but you could do it yourself, if you have the supplies needed. You would need a 1 ½ inch binder, scrapbook pages, stickers, recipe cards, pouches for the miscellaneous recipes and page protectors. If you do buy the scrapbook kit, try to find one with a sturdy binder or buy the binder separately.
Now I can’t wait to cook and use my cookbook, that I gave new life to. It’s the little things that make me happy in the kitchen.
Good luck scrapbooking and happy cooking!
All My Best,
Heart and Soul
so lovely Mary – and I love that you are keeping the handwritten cards – they will become cherished memories and keepsakes for a long time
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Thank you, Jodi. Yes, I think so. 💜
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A worthwhile project with a fun result.
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Thank you, Ellen. It was fun to do!😊
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What a fun project! and don’t you feel so organized now?? My old binder cookbook fell apart a few years back and I had had it so long, they didn’t even make binders to fit the pages I had, so I rewrote all the recipes on new paper to fit the new binder– well, it was so nostalgic, copying recipes from friends and family– brought back a lot of good cooking memories! Happy cooking Mary!! hugs!
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Hi Rhonda, it must have been well worth your time because now you can enjoy your recipes newly made! I use my cookbook a lot but I confess the search engine Pinterest is also ,y source of recipes.💗
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I’m with you on that Mary– I go through all my Pinterest pins whenever I’m looking to make something new. But I use my old tattered recipe book for basics–pizza dough and oatmeal cake… Fun to see your recipe book– and I love Susan Branch! copied a fruit/flower garland out of her summer cookbook to paint all the way around my kitchen. Happy Weekending!! xo
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I bet that really makes your kitchen special!💜
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I loved this post! I bought a hardly used American diary or a journal it seems like, that someone had given away in some charity place I guess, which landed up here at the second hand book fair I vista daily. it was a find, as I got to read a few entries in it! I am now filling it up with my own new recipes!
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That’s great, Daksha. That’s amazing that it ended up over there!😀
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