Hi! I was thinking of doing the same. So far I thought I would do a gussied up recipe card, a photo of the person I got the recipe from and/or a small journaling bit about her/him, and then a photo of me and/or the kids in the process of preparing it (could be very messy), and one of the end product. Maybe some candid comments on the taste and a One to Five Star rating.

I figure this would kind of force me to try my hand at family recipes and it could turn out to be fun. Maybe.

What were you thinking of doing?

Hi! I am the only one left and have 2 daughters grown so I was thinking of doing a small book with the most used recipes, pictures and somehow putting something over them to preserve them. I purchased a recipe program and plan on typing them all in and saving those on a disc. The orginals I would give to my daughter a long with the scrapbook. Trying to get together some neat idea's though. Like my grandmother made an awesome raspberry pie so taken a picture of her with one and showing the recipe. Let's keep the idea's going. Thanks

I made a recipe scrapbook for my daughter-in-law's bridal shower. I contacted everyone who would be attending and asked them to send me their favorite recipe, a photo of themself and write their Advise to the Bride.

Some people got very creative, both with their recipes and phots, some sent recipes cut out from magazines, some sent the advise: make reservations. I had a lot of pictures of him with the people who wrote recipes and added them.

I also collected all the family recipes from both sides. On these pages I put lots of old family photos. My son became an only child when his younger brother died 5 years ago, so I was generous with my collection of photos. They would all become his eventually and this way he would be able to identify everyone by the recipes.

I added funny cooking and marriage/relationship stories from Dave Barry and a book called Raging Hormones, funny and romantic quotes from all different sources, clipart, embellishments, dried flowers, tokens, baseball cards. Anything I could think of, really.

It came out great. Everyone at the shower enjoyed seeing their recipe and how thier page turned out. The older women in the family who had helped me with the traditional recipes enjoyed seeing their older relative's photos.

I love that when I'm gone, my son and his family will have all the recipes for the food he grew up loving.

I think the most complicated part was the Table of Contents and numbering the pages at the end.

I came across this website awhile back and bookmarked it. She does some really cute layouts. She has a whole recipe section. Cute stuff!!

Might give you some ideas.

Here is a link that might be useful: Recipes

My DIL made a lovely scrapbook (very small) of recipes she remembered of her Mom's She did it with a few photos on the computer and printed out on heavy paper and had them bound with spiral things. Very lovely

I collected all of my family recipes earlier this year to create recipe scrapbooks for my grandmother, mother, and sister for their birthdays and Mother's Day. I was planning to dedicate several pages to each cook and include their favorite recipes along with family pictures.

The whole family was very excited about the project, and the number of recipes just grew and grew! Before I knew it, I had about two hundred recipes, so I decided to look into other resources for completing the book.

I found Secret Ingredients on the web. They offer a beautiful family cookbook that you create through an easy-to-use website. The process was really fun. I choose the layout and look for each book, uploaded my photos, and wrote a dedication for each book.

If you are looking for a smaller project to organize your recipe cards, I would recommend using a photo album! Recipe cards fit perfectly!

Here is a link that might be useful: Secret Ingredients

I did this last year for my husbands family. It turned just beautiful and everyone loved it. I made 17 books! Like I said they turned out really cute...would never do it again but they are really cute. It was a lot of work. I sent a letter out to all the family members asking that they submit their recipes to me by a certain date. I had a couple of family members that turned theirs in really, really late which made it really fun!
I took all their recipes and typed them on the computer, saved it to a disk, and took it to a printing shop that printed them out on card stock in what ever color paper or ink I wanted. I went to the scrapbook store and bought the kits to put them together in a spiral book. Then I scrapbooked each recipe, added little touches to each one to make them special.
I had family member write little comments about certain recipes so we would know where they come from and what one's were family favorites.
Like I said they turned out just precious but boy what a job. Each book contained over 125 recipes.

I'm so glad that I stumbled upon this thread!!! (usually hang out in the Kitchens & Building side :-). Anyhow....I am in the process of putting together a recipe scrapbook for my mother as a housewarming/happy retirement present. I am starting with my own recipes and contributions from family, but want to leave room for her to be able to add to it as she has recipes falling out of every cookbook she owns!! ...as well as a couple of recipe file boxes, shoeboxes, etc. etc. etc.

So here's my idea....I would LOVE some input/opinion on it! I am going to do 8 1/2 x 11" pages, as a larger 12 x 12 would not fit on the shelf with the rest of her cookbooks (too deep/tall). No lack of layout ideas here (ha!)! Going to insert all of the pages into clear page protectors to shield them from cooking splatter. Think that I would like to use a D ring binder to put them in so that the recipes could be removed or added to, and also so that they would lay flat (thus the "D" ring) for counter use. I'm having problems finding such a binder that doesn't look like something that belongs in a bank, though! Any ideas on a scrapbook/binder solution?? Anything that I've missed??

Thanks for all of your great ideas!

Glad to have found this again. I am probably doing a small one for my daughter and am still working on getting the receipes together. Any additional tips appreciated.

I'm thinking about doing the same thing. I have some of each of my grandmother's recipes and would like to make a 6x6 album of these recipes and why I love the recipe so much! A photo of each of my grandmothers would complete it.
Sue

I am just writing them on index cards by need some acid free albums to put them in. Any idea's where to find them?
Glad you wrote Sue!

honeysmomcooks, I'm in the same bind, months later. Have you found a good source for an 8.5x11 binder?

Years ago I organized my mom's recipes in a scrapbook intended for photos. It was a perfect fit for her recipes and made old favorites accessible again. Unfortunately this size doesn't work for my recipes. I have a lot of recipes with a long list of ingredients, and I'd like to fit everything about the dish in big print on one side of a sheet. (inc notes on substitutions or related family lore)

I think I'm going to just take the plunge with an ugly old binder, but a beautiful easy-to-clean binder would be more inspirational.

Any online sources? I live in scrapbook country but the local shelves are pretty empty -- I've been looking.

I suggest you buy a presentation binder for your recipes. They're a reguar 3 ring binder in any size spine and they have a plastic sleeve directly on the cover. You can print or make a nice cover for your book and slip it into the sleeve. The spine also has plastic covering it and you can slip the book title into that one. A little industrial looking but practical. The recipient of your thoughtful gift will be able to add recipes easily.

Just browsing and found this post. I have just started working on cooking scrapbook. In addition to all the other ideas I did a search for cooking quotes and used some of them on pages with recipes,pics.etc. Looks nice.