Tuesday, November 15, 2011

A Home-made Gift Idea

"Sleigh bells ring are you listening. In the lane snow is glistening." Can't you hear me singing. Well, maybe your lucky but I have been because it's that time of the year. The time you have to put your rear in high gear and get to making Christmas presents.

The last few years I've bought them but this years funds are a bit short. And... our children have voiced numerous times in those years just how much they enjoy the home-made gifts. Would I please start making them again. 

So... though our daughters do sometimes read this blog. It won't be giving away their gift because they already know part of it anyway. It's the gift they've been hounding me to make.

No, not aprons, though I am making a variety of styles for gifts for Christmas. This one needs some ruffles around the pockets and a little this and that to jazz it up.

What all our children, including our son, has been after me to do is copy my recipes that I've worked to collect and change over the last ten years or so.
This year I'm working on breakfast. I've enough recipes to fill a inch and a half three ring notebook. A daunting task alone just to type them all up but... being me, I'm also photographing for it. Yup, those apples are apples off our tree and those waffles were served to our grandchildren one morn. I've seen cool programs on the Internet where you can type your recipes and a company will make a book for you but it doesn't allow photography freedom that I want. Plus you can't add to it like you can a three ring notebook with recipes in slip covers. The ability to slip out the recipes also allows you to add notes.

Since a cookbook is so... much more inviting with photographs to entice you to cook and I love to photograph...I've got to add that personal touch.  

Our one daughter will tell you that it will take more than some scrumptious looking food in photographs to get her iinterested in cooking breakfast yet, she is just as interested as the rest to have a cookbook also. Though she might not be interested, she still has a family to cook for. 

I'm not photographing for every recipe. That would take me for ever and ever since I can't stick with one task long enough with so much else that needs done. Plus, the cost of colored ink alone would break my tight budget. Instead, I'm taking a few shots here and there as I cook not only breakfast but desserts and main meals too. Yes, they are expecting those recipes to come along next in a cookbook.

And since so much of our lives revolves around food, with raising livestock for milk, eggs, and meat, along with hunting and fishing, I can't leave that out either. Yes, this cookbook will be a bit of a pictorial food history that will include photos of our family too. 

I've got pictures of the grand kids cracking eggs for breakfast.

Some of them making noodles, cookies, etc. and even a few of them eating that which I cooked.
Then there is this one for chicken noodle soup. Nap time couldn't come soon enough for our cute little bug and she fell asleep eating.

 And if our family thought I took a lot of pictures before, they haven't seen nothing yet. My camera is going to have a permanent home on the kitchen counter until I'm done, especially during the holiday season when everyone is home. 

Though this will be lots of work, it will finally end my steady search for recipes I know I have somewhere but can't lay my hands on when I want them.

Yup, I think I want these cookbooks as much as they do.

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