it's only taken, oh, about 4 years

Yeah, you read that right. Four years.
It was at least that long ago that I started to collect recipes from magazines that I had tried and liked, or that looked tasty and I wanted to try.

I had whole file box full of clippings (it was pretty heavy). I kept adding to it whenever I cleaned out the stack of magazines, and we've moved that box with us three times. I planned to "sometime" go through it and put them all in a binder or something so that they would be more organized and accessible, but that "sometime" kept get farther and farther away.
Then I found these pretty downloads on Prudent Baby and decided that it was time to finish the project that I'd started.

the dessert binder

I really liked the aqua version of the binder cover, but our printer ran out of color ink in between the time that I printed the first one and the time that I realized that I'd need more (a span of about 2 months, since I started in the week before Ian was born). I had some pieces of vellum on hand, so I printed out a few sheets of the gray version and layered them over some full-page pictures that I pulled out of MSLiving (they have some really gorgeous images in there).

the baking binder

I tossed a ton of the clippings (I really only need one or two versions of buttercream frosting, right?), but there were still a lot of keepers - three whole binders worth (so far)! So now I have the recipes divided into Side Dishes and Main Dishes, Baking, and Desserts. Can you tell where my priorities are? ;)

It's so nice to be able to have them all at my fingertips!


Linking to these parties - check them out! There are some really amazing things being posted!