Corral your Recipes !

Recently I asked my friend if I could help her with the loose recipes that she had been collecting for years. She hadn’t yet had the time, or inclination, to put the recipes into easily accessible book form.

She said yes, so…. I took the piles from her home and transported them to my home for a quick makeover! Thank goodness she’s used to my ‘presumptuous’ approach to other peoples projects that I deem interesting.

The first picture shows the piles of collected recipes on my dining room table (my husband is very understanding!).

The next picture is after I began sorting the big pile into workable categories. I find this works best for me when I have a paper project that must be sorted before being placed in a folder or notebook.

After the initial sort I label my notebook dividers that I’m going to use in the project.

Then I, systematically, work through each pile punching holes in notebook size copies of recipes OR taking magazine recipe clippings and mounting them on notebook size paper.

During this step I’ll put the recipes in order for that particular section.

As I work through all the sections I place them in the notebook when completed.

Now, we already had the notebooks, dividers and paper that we wanted to use but …I did want the notebooks to have a bit more flair when they were placed in her bookcase so… I used a $4 shower curtain to cut and cover the outside of the mismatched notebooks so they'd have a uniform look.

I simply taped the decorative covers to the inside of the notebooks. If you want to get fancy you could match up the patterns to the adjoining notebook!

The basket next to the finished notebooks holds her ‘vintage’ papers that will end up being another project one day!

I’m also including a link to HGTV magazine online that gives directions for jazzing up plain notebooks. http://www.hgtv.com/design/make-and-celebrate/handmade/how-to-dress-up-binders-with-a-decal