Recipe Book

I have been busy getting my recipes all organized. Recently I found "Controlling My Chaos" blog and she had the cutest dividers for your recipes. I knew I had to print them and put together a VERY organized recipe book. Woo Hoo!

As you may have guessed, I have been working on learning to be a better cook and learning how to cook with long term food storage items. One thing I have loved about the blog world is all the great cooks who share their recipes with me and share all their creative juices too! You all are very amazing women! I absolutely love blogging for this very reason ...... being motivated to greater heights every day. Thank you for all being great women and great examples to me and my life. I am becoming a better person everyday by the things I read. You are all awesome!
Here is my book from the print outs from "Controlling My Chaos". This is the front, back of the book. How cute is that?

I wanted a book instead of a box ... so I modified it a little.

Here are the dividers..... Cake, Pies and Cobblers, Fish & Seafood, Meatless Main Dishes.

Grilling, Salads and Dressings, Vegetables and Sides, Sandwiches & Spreads.

Appetizers, Breads, Beverages, Meat.

Poultry, Cookies, Soups & Stews, Pasta.....

And the last one is Candy. You can print all of these off at the Controlling My Chaos site at this link here.

To make my binder pages I used a real divider as my template. I added about a 1/2 inch to the bottom before I traced the pattern. I used 12 x 12 scrapbook pages and cut them out, added the picture (I used another scrapbook page under the picture and cut a boarder around the picture with fun scrapbook scissors - just to dress it up a bit).

I don't have a laminating machine. I've never really felt like I needed one, because I have always used clear contact paper. Recently they have made a Laminate contact paper - which I love and it's easy .... no machine I have to find a place for. Plus, over all - I am sure it's much cheaper. It's the frugal girl in me.

I covered all the pages with laminate contact paper and cut them out. Then I added them to my binder and went to work organizing all the recipes I have printed out from my blog and all of yours. It's very nice to get some organizing done and in a pretty way.

I also think it's a great heritage to have your recipes done in a scrap booking way for my children. I think I will make them a book for Christmas (I hope they are not reading this).

However, when I was putting my recipes in the binder.... it was missing some places I would like to keep certain types of recipes. Like Zucchini for instant. I felt Zucchini needed their own place - so when I am overwhelmed with zucchini I can go to one place and be inspired in what to cook. I had to then get my creative juices going and make my own pages. These are the pages I came up with on my own. I think they turned out pretty cute too.

I had recipes that didn't fit in Cakes, Pies, Cookies or Candy..... So I had to have a general Dessert page.

I have lots of recipes to use my powdered milk ..... so I came up with this divider. Now, I was really sad when I put it together that I miss-spelled Powdered with just Powder... Oh well... It's fine and I wasn't going to re-do it.

I am trying to figure out how to incorporate beans in everyday cooking. It needed it's own page too... It could have been with Meatless meals or even Meats... but I needed a section to get BEAN inspiration from...

Plus.... I wanted a section for Breakfast only too. I had a bunch of breakfast recipes. I thought this picture was cute.... a smiley face to start your morning out with.

I also needed one for sauces.

Don't you think this is such a creative cute way to organize your recipes. Most of the recipes I have in the book are step by step instructions... All have a picture of the final dish. I have them all enclosed in a plastic page protector to keep the recipe clean while I am cooking.

It's nice that as I continue to go through my other recipe books, I can take pictures and add them to my "Tested and True Recipe book". I hope to condense all my books into only 1 book. If it gets too big for one binder then I can expand it to two. Still .... it will be less space then the many cook books I currently have with recipes I don't use. I'm excited that I ran across this amazing woman who inspired me to control my chaos. :-D... Thanks!