Recipe Scrapbook

Creating a Family Recipe Scrapbook

Creating a scrapbook of favorite family recipes can be a labor of love. It's not just the food that's important, it's all the memories associated with the dishes. For example, the family recipe for candied yams can spark memories of many happy Thanksgiving dinners. With a scrapbook, you can capture the spirit of this event right on the page.

Preserving Recipes

It's important to preserve those family recipes for future generations, but it's also nice to preserve the "character" that goes with them.

It's not just the ingredients you want to preserve, it's the look of the recipe itself. Why type out a fresh copy of Grandma's best birthday cake recipe if you can still read the one she wrote by hand? Even if the page is yellowed by time, it's still a priceless family treasure.

To preserve recipes like these, you can take a photo or scan the original and print the image out on archival paper. It will still have the vintage look of the original, but you won't need to worry about further deterioration.

Adding Photos

No recipe scrapbook can be complete without photos. Include images of:

• The family member the recipe was handed down from
• Someone actually preparing the recipe
• The finished dish
• Family gatherings where the dish was being served

Just as with aged recipe cards and newspaper cut outs, you can photograph or scan non-archival images onto archive quality paper. This gives you the opportunity to do some creative cropping without damaging your originals.

Journaling

Journaling ideas might include:

• An anecdote about the person the recipe comes from
• A special occasion the dish is usually served
• Whose favorite recipe it is
• Ingredient variations and special preparation hints

Scrapbook Cookbook Kits

One of the biggest challenges to creating recipe albums is organizing all those clippings, cut outs and recipe cards that have been collected through the years. It's here that scrapbook cookbook kits can come in handy.

Cookbookin' is the leader in scrapbook kits geared toward culinary layouts. Their selection is large with themes to fit every genre.

Deluxe

The deluxe scrapbooking kit from Cookbookin' provides all the basics to help you create your page layouts. This kit covers the general cooking theme but you can customize your pages. Supplies include:

• A binder in an easy to handle 8.5x11 inch format
• 12 designer scrapbooking papers
• 12 page protectors
• 12 designer recipe cards
• Solid color cardstock
• Cardstock shapes, including banners, corners and journals
• Coordinating dividers
• Stickers and cover art
• A guide to creating cookbook scrapbooks

Christmas

Cookbookin' also offers a Christmas scrapbook cookbook kit that is very nice for preserving your favorite holiday recipes. This kit contains many of the same items as the deluxe kit mentioned above, but all supplies follow the holiday theme.

Backyard Grillin'

Does your family love to have traditional cookouts? Then Cookbookin's Backyard Grillin' kit offers a way to organize all your best barbecue and picnic recipes. This kit offers a bevy of background papers, recipe cards, stickers and more.

Chocolate Celebration

If you love chocolate and you can't resist collecting recipes, you can organize them all with Cookbookin's Chocolate Celebration scrapbook kit. Scrapbook paper designs in shades of cocoa and icing pink are accompanied by cute stickers, journaling cut outs, and an assortment of frames, banners and corners.

Kids

Young scrapbook enthusiasts can create their own recipe scrapbook with Cookbookin's Kids Can Cook kit. Designs are fun and cartoonish, yet very easy to coordinate. Your child can use these layouts to record his/her own culinary adventures, or collect some favorite recipes from mom and dad.

Pot Luck

Not all recipe scrapbooks are strictly about family. What about all the wonderful dishes you've sampled at pot lucks with friends? Keep the recipes you've collected in Cookbookin's Pot Luck Supper kit sold at Crafter's Toy Box. This kit contains a dozen recipe cards plus coordinating papers, journaling cut outs and stickers.