Organizing Recipes

With all of the moves we have to do, we've done some serious downsizing.  The first thing to go were my cookbooks.  I never used them.  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE trying new recipes...but why would I hang on to a whole shelf full of cookbooks when I can go online and find zillions of recipes that not only have pictures, but ratings and helpful comments with tips on how to improve the recipe? 

My favorite two recipe sites are All Recipes and Food.com (formally Recipezaar).  I usually search for something...like "baked chicken" and then when the search results come back, I sort it by "Most Popular" or "Highest Rating."  I rarely try a recipe unless it has 200+ reviews and it's 4 1/2 stars or better.  And before I make anything, I usually read through the "most helpful" comments to see if there is anything that needs adjusting.

The problem with this method, is that I often forget to bookmark a good recipe and then I have to try to find it again later, remember what I searched for and on what site.  So for awhile, I was printing off the recipes and shoving them in a photo album.

I'm less than thrilled with this method.  It just isn't pretty.  And I like pretty.  Then I ran across this blog, and she makes these ADORABLE digitally scrapbooked recipe cards that she gets printed like photos.  They're GORGEOUS and I'm in love.  But since I'm so picky about my recipes, I need to make my own. 

So that's my current project...taking photos of all of the meals I make, and creating a pretty recipe card for each of them.  It's going to take awhile, and I'm certainly not as good at it as she is...but here's one of them that I've done:

The scrapbook stuff is all courtesy of Shabby Princess....that site ROCKS!  I don't have any actual digital scrapbooking software...so I just use the graphics from Shabby Princess and put it together in a word document (as a 6x9 image so when it prints as a 4x6, it isn't pixely) and then save it as a photo.  So far, it seems to work really well!

Someday, far, far from now, when I get them all done and put them in a cute little recipe box, I'll post a picture of the finished product.  I wouldn't hold my breath.  :-P