A satisfying project completed

So a couple of weeks ago I tackled a project I've been thinking about for awhile.  It involves recipes printed from online sources (and a few printed out pages from my personal cookbook).  Storing these recipes has been a source of frustration to me for years, and recently it came to me that I could just get a really large binder and place the recipes in page protectors.  I didn't take a photo of the "before" storage, but trust me, it was not pretty.  Photos of the "after" are sprinkled throughout this post.

For some history:  A long time ago (I just looked back -- aren't blog archives wonderful? -- and it was in 2006) I was trying to find a solution for recipes I'd clipped from magazines, and I went shopping to see what I could find that might work.  I think that what I found was intended to be a planter. It’s galvanized metal, long and narrow, with an embossed ivy design. It held my recipes just fine, and looked neater and decorative at the same time. I put index cards in it for dividing the recipes into categories, and it worked well for quite awhile.

Until, that is, I started finding recipes on the internet and began printing them out.  What I found myself doing was to fold these recipes in half and tuck them into the metal box with my clipped out recipes, which these folded pages soon displaced.  I tried to solve it by putting all crockpot recipes in a file folder, and all gluten free recipes in another folder. and placing those with my cookbooks.  That did help quite a bit, but still my metal box was bristling with those folded papers.  It was annoying to look at and even more annoying to have to unfold various papers whenever I was looking for a recipe, to see what it was.  So when this binder idea came to me, I jumped on it.

I got the thickest binder I could find and a couple packs of page protectors.  Then I began the process of moving all of those recipes out of the box and into their new home.  I hadn't been sure what I would use to decorate the covers -- this is the type of binder with a clear pocket on front, back and spine -- but one day I was making an envelope out of a Gooseberry Patch calendar and realized the artwork was the perfect size for these large binders, with only a little trimming necessary.  I cut another piece of a calendar to decorate the spine.  Voila -- an absolutely beautiful binder with some of my favorite scenes on it!

 This past weekend I had some cooking and baking to do and used several of my printed-off-the-internet recipes.  What a blessing to just turn to the appropriate pages in my binder and use the recipes!  I'm very pleased with how this project turned out and how useful it is.