Recipe Binder Challenge

    

What's better than one recipe binder?   Two recipe binders?  8 )


Over the past year or so, I've sorted my recipes into two binders.  The binders were pretty much put together, I was just missing pretty covers for them.  I couldn't decide what to do for the covers  - they were too many cute papers in my scrapbook stash.  I ended up picking two semi coordinating papers from my scrap stash.  I wish that I had realized that I needed *two* sheets of each paper to do the cover and the spine.  Since I was using paper from my scrap stash, I only had one 12 x 12 sheet of each color.  There wasn't enough paper to completely fill the spine part of the binder.  Doh!  Still, it's better than it was before!

Anyway, one binder contains our favorites - those recipes that we enjoy having over and over (and over and over....).  This binder has what you would think of as the "traditional" tabs - chicken, beef, pasta, salads, bread machine recipes, crockpot recipes, cakes and cookies, etc.  Here is our family favorite binder -

 

I have a second binder that I call my "Monthly Recipe Ideas".  The idea is similar to having a weekly meal plan - only instead of planning for one week, you plan for the whole month instead. 

A few years ago, I noticed that there was a sort of seasonal theme to the recipes that I was collecting from magazines and from some of my favorite recipe blogs and websites.  For example - during the summer I was collecting recipes with a lot of fresh veggies and grilling recipes; and in the winter a lot of soups and stews and comfort food type dishes.  I started to put them in files such as "recipes that would be good to have in the summer" and "recipes that would be good to have in the fall".  That eventually evolved into creating monthly meal plans.  Each month has a tab and when I make my weekly meal plan, I pick most of my meals from the Monthly Recipe Ideas binder and then pick one or two meals from our family favorites.  That way, we don't eat the same things over and over and over and over.  Here are just a few of the recipes that I've filed under February -
1.  Kung pao chicken
2.  Chicken tikka masala
3.  BBQ cola meatballs and spaghetti squash mac n cheese
4.  Spicy tuna melt pie
5.  Spinach and tomato stuffed chicken
6.  Homemade beefaroni
7.  World's best shepard's pie
8.  Hot roast beef sandwichees
9.  Rosemary Turkey meatloaf

I add recipes to the monthly ideas binder as I collect them.  I put an index (or would that be a table of contents?) in the beginning that lists the name of each recipe and the month that it is filed under.  That way I don't end up with the same recipe in multple months. 

Here is what my monthly recipe ideas binder looks like -

There isn't room in our kitchen for these to sit out, so they are stored in a cabinet next to the stove -

Don't mind the messy shelf underneath - that is my baking supplies.  Those could use a good cleaning out - maybe that will be one of the challenges!





While I was taking pictures, I couldn't resist catching one of my Valentine roses -

Aren't they beautiful?

Valentine's Day

Oh, and . . . . .

Happy Valentine's Day!

Launch Pad - After

I'm lame - I didn't really do much for the launch pad challenge.  8 )

I think that we have a pretty good system for our family right now.  I did clean out our key baskets and throw away the trash.  I also straightened up the shoe rack and cleaned it and put the extra shoes away.  Lastly, I straighted up the coat closet and reset everything back to where it belongs.

I guess that I did more than I thought!


This weeks challenage (week # 3) is a recipe binder.  I have two binders and this is the push that I need to straighten them up and give them some pretty covers!

Launch pad - before

Coat Launch Pad



Shoes Launch Pad

A bowl full of lemons is hosting some weekly challenges to help get your home organzied.  This week is the Launch Pad - a place to launch you out the door and to land when you arrive back home.  We don't really have an entry way in our house - you open the front door and BHAM! you are in the middle of the living room.

To the left of the front door we have a shoe rack that we store our shoes in.  I love that you can sit on the shoe rack to put your shoes on.  Right now, since only four of us walk, each person has two shelves.  The rule so far has been that you can have as many shoes as you want in the shoe rack - they just have to fit on your two shelves.  8 )  Once the baby starts walking and has her own shoes, one of us is going to loose a shelf.  I haven't figured out who that will be yet. 

I showed our hat and mitten holder yesterday and our coat hooks.  The girls use the hooks and hubs and I use coat hangers in the closet.

The only thing that we don't have in our lauch pad is a place for pocket junk - keys, sunglasses, change, etc.  To combat that, I put two baskets by our tv.  Hubs and I each have our own "key basket" for our own junk.  Here is mine -

and her is the hubs -

You can see that his is full of all kinds of ...... treasures!  8 )

These are "action" shots of our launch pad -



Shoe rack


You can see that this is where I store my purse.  Occasionally the shoe rack also holds things that need to go upstairs - the hairbrush and a book.  The shoes have become a bit jumbled thanks to daughter # 2 - she likes to rearrange them.

An action shot of the coats - not too bad from an organizational standpoint.

In the coat closet we have two bins that hold back up hats and mittens for the girls.  Daughter # 1 is on her seventh or eighth pair of "back up" mittens.  We are going to have to start mismatching the mittens so that both hands stay warm!

Back up hats and mittens

I'm sure that our system can be improved - or at least straightened some.  I'll have to think about how it can be improved and work on that this week.

Mitten & Hat Holder



Mitten & Hat Holder



It is not easy keeping three pink coats organized so that the right person can grab the correct coat!  8 )  In order to combat the 'we-have-too-many-pink-coats' dilemma AND to help my two big girls (age 5 and 2.5) gain a bit more independence, I created a mitten & hat holder on the inside of our coat closet door.  The coat hooks are hung low enough so that my 2.5 year old can reach her coat.  She can't hang her own hat and mittens yet, but she can stick them in the sleeve of her coat if I don't have a free hand to help her.



Hooks labeled with each girls name

 I used some stickers from my scrapbook stash to label the door right above the hooks.  I spelled out each name on the door and then added their initial to the hook.  The "S" on the middle hook is kind of hard to see.  I'm trying to work on name recognition with my 2.5 year old and I was hoping that seeing her name around the house would help.



Hooks for hats and mittens

 I spray painted some clothespins blue and then hot glued some matching ribbon to them.  I knotted the ribbon around the white hooks and then hung them above the coat hooks.  I was thinking that one clothespin would be for the hat and one clothes pin would be for the mittens.  Sometimes that happens, and sometimes they stick their knit mittens in the hat and use the other clothespin for their waterproof gloves.  Neither one of my girls likes to wear their waterproof gloves unless they are actually playing in the snow.  8 )

We have one free hook that is being used to hold their bags right now.  I guess that means we need to have one more kiddo so that we can fill up the coat hook with coats!  8 )

Friendship blossoms

I saw this idea in FamilyFun magazine a last year or the year before -  Friendship blossom link.  I've been hoarding ideas to use once my kids hit school and I am very excited that we got to use one!  These paper flowers were right up daughter # 1's alley!

We used pink cardstock from my scrapbooking stash.  Who would have guessed that I have eight different shades of pink in my stash?  I helped her cut out the hearts - which are used as the petals for the flowers - and she hole-punched them herself.  I also helped her cut out the middle - it was tricky even for me.  What can I say - I'm not great with scissors (- that's why I LOVE my cricuit!). 

The finished product

We weren't sure of the best way to transport these to school without the flowers getting squished - so hubs made this flower holder out of a pice of scrap wood -

Flower holder

Isn't that cool??

All of the flowers ready to go!

Once I saw it, I thought that it would still be pretty unweildy, so hubs made the holder vertical instead of horizontal - think like this lollipop stand  -

Lollipop stand

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of the revised stand.  Now we are all set for Valentine's Day!

Long time - no post!

Wow - it has been a long time since I posted!  Life has been crazy!  My husband is still in his medical training and has worked A LOT since Thanksgiving.  I soooo can't wait for him to be done.  I added a tracker to the top to keep us (me) motivated. 


I just hope that the light at the end of this tunnel isn't a train coming to run us over!  8 )



I've worked on a few projects over the past 2 months.  Here's hoping that the kids let me post them!