the day I made a recipe book

For quite a few years I had been collecting recipes. Whenever I found a good recipe in a magazine I would rip it out and save it in a folder. Maybe my view of recipes is odd, but I tend to hoard them thinking I'll have time and money and need to make all the yummy things...
Back in Alberta I had this box with many file folders, one was exploding, so overfull of recipes. I was frustrated, could never find that one recipe and it was just annoying to have it in the basement in a box in a folder...

ugly black binder :(

Last August on one of Lianne (my sister) and my many ventures we ended up at Dollarama. Love the place! :D Everything is so cheap, and they have so much fun stuff. I was just looking for a cool binder, you know with a fun cover. Well they had none! It was August (*school starts soon!) and there were no fun binders. We were both frustrated. We just wanted a recipe binder. Was that too much to ask.

Lianne's pretty placemat

Okay, we'll just leave then, and go to Staples or something, buy a binder, you know, then we're set. Until will walked past the place- ''mats. *thanks mom, for teaching me to think of 'plan Bs', so that I don't give up when plan I doesn't work*. Light bulb moment... :D

ruler, Stanley knife to the rescue

 I now must thank my Mom. She is BRILLIANT. Super creative. And Lianne. Goodness she thinks logical. The two together, well let's just say they are excellent at problem solving. So I saw the place-mats and bought one, bought an ugly 1" binder, and went home. Kind of happy. Kind of not happy. Kind of excited, but already flustered by the up coming process of trying to make this recipe binder. Which probably would not turn out the way I had envisioned.

make the cuts (use binder cover page as 'stencil'

make sure you don't make it too wide, other wise the
'window' on the binder rips (or byebye binder)

cutting the spine was a little tricky, since it's so narrow (the
spine window did rip a bit on mine when I was putting
it in.. O well)

put all the pieces in the cover..

 When I went through all those steps, Lianne went through the same steps as I did, we both had our very own very unique recipe binder.
For a couple of nights Lianne was busy typing out the recipes while I made 'subject dividers'. I was trying to find some colour that worked with the black/white damask that I had for my cover. At our house we have lots of craft supply, and I found some orange cardstock!! :D Love CARDSTOCK! So I ended up using the orange, not sure what Lianne used.
We had bought some page covers at Dollarama also (I think I bought 10 packs of 10 (?) but had to go back to get more.

front pocket

cover page... :D (we always said awesome
pawsome...)

I'm bad, ran out of page protectors, and out of time
in the last while, that this is in the front pocket
and whole punched

one of many recipes in my binder..
I just realized I haven't made this yet. 

mainly chocolate and baking recipes
in this section

ongoing debate that COOKIES should
be called bakies because technically
they're not cooked but baked

breakfast recibpes like muffins etc

Some of the other divider pages are, in this order...
- BREAKY (breakfast is so cliché)                                  
- MIDEATS (lunch items etc.)
- ZUPPS (O common you can guess)
- INDULGENCCES
- MISC (Jam, syrup, applesauce etc.)
- BAKIES
- SWEET 'N' SALTY (baking/homemade breads, and the like)
- NIBBLE 'N' MUNCH (trailmix etc.)

It was lots of fun making these, and now my binder is almost too full. So what's we gonna do..?

Well I was at Dollarama again yesterday (There's 3 within 5minutes!! :) Don't worry I've only been a couple of times), and was looking for a cool black 2 inch binder, or perhaps 3 inch. Even if it were ugly, I'd be okay  with that. But they had none. I'll keep my eye out.

For more recipes. And a 'fatter' binder.