My Recipe Collection Books

Several years back, my eyes changed. I'm already nearsighted. When I was young I figured that as I aged and began to become farsighted my nearsightedness would gradually correct itself. By the time I was a bonafide senior citizen, I'd have perfect vision. It seemed fair and reasonable after years of being blind as a bat.

Unfortunately, things turned out UNfair and UNreasonable and I now have issues seeing close up AND far away. I wear trifocals and when at the computer, often put a second pair of glasses over my first. Attractive.

The most irritating sign of my vision loss was when reading my recipes. I had a grand collection, all on 3x5 index cards with tiny writing. Something had to be done. Problems often lead to great discoveries. My problem led to a fun creation which brings me joy every time I cook.

I spent a summer (I was a teacher, so summers were all about big projects) converting all my recipes to full size, large print recipe pages, organized into notebooks.
The large print was a big improvement, but I also wanted the notebooks to look happy. I took a trip to my favorite scrapbook store (sadly it's now closed) and bought happy paper. I used that to decorate the cover of each notebook.
I've always been drawn to cookbooks with photos. I decided my recipe pages should have photos or pictures. I didn't plan to cook and photograph everything that summer, so to start with I mostly used pictures or clip art of food.

Some of the recipes in my collection come from favorite blogs. They have photos and I love to put those on the pages. They are so pretty and it reminds me of my blog friends. The recipe on the right came from Alicia Paulson of Posie Gets Cozy. Her food photos always make me hungry.

Some of my pages don't have photos or clip art. I used fun border paper to print them on.

Now, why did this picture come up sideways? I redid it over and over.  

Please turn sideways to look at it! :-D

I usually have one of my books out on display. I have two display possibilities. One is a decorative iron stand. The other is an old wooden book stand which came from my grandmother. I usually keep the book open to a page with something I plan on making soon.

Another idea is to keep the page open to something seasonal. Hot chocolate pictures are fun to see in January. It makes me feel cozy when it's cold outside.

Over the years, I've fine tuned my recipes - especially the directions. I've made notes about substitutions, which pans are best, reworked the order of things to do for efficiency and more.

This is one project that has made a wonderful difference in my life.