Recipe-a-Month Homemade Gift Idea

Everyone gets tired of always making the same recipes. It seems no one ever shares recipes with you except when you are getting married. I received great recipes at one of my bridal showers, but I haven’t received any since then. I am sure I am not alone, and I know we all like recipes that have actually been tried, tested, and approved by friends or family. You just never know if that is the case with recipes online or not. Therefore, I set out to find a way to create a personal and special gift for my girlfriends that I know would be practical and useful, too.

Through this process, the Recipe-a-Month gift was born. It gives my friends my favorite recipes in both digital and paper form along with ideas of when to serve them. Each month’s recipe ties into a holiday or event that occurs during that month. Let’s be honest, I hope that it is not only something they enjoy but also something that they consider doing as well so we can all share recipes with one another.

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Recipe-a-Month Gift

Supplies:

Writable CDs

Colorful cardstock

Ribbon

Recipes

Instructions:

I started by going through each category of my recipe box and pulling out our family favorites that we make time and time again. Once I had my “favorites” pile, I got to work typing them out so they could be saved electronically and shared easily. Once I had a database of favorite recipes saved in files by category, I copied these files onto CDs (DVDs would work, too, depending on the size and number of files you are sharing). I figure having a digital copy would be a nice touch so that the recipes can be shared from my friends to others in an easy format that can be emailed or posted to social media.

I took it one step further than just the recipe CD. Of all of those recipes, I narrowed it down to 12 recipes that are at the top of the list of favorites and figured out a way to tie each one into a holiday or event that occurs each month. For example, a favorite Mexican dish became the May “Cinco de Mayo” recipe.

A favorite coffee cake became the April recipe for Easter brunch. Once the 12 recipes were chosen, I copied them from my newly created recipe database into a document and made them all the size of a recipe card. I printed them out on colorful cardstock including an intro card with a summary of the 12 recipes and “wrapped” them in ribbon.

The recipe CD and recipe cards combined make up the “Recipe-a-Month” gift.

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