Our Family Recipe Book
Dear friends... Alix here... happy to be guest-blogging again. :) With Mother's Day coming up, my siblings and I have been brainstorming some fun ideas for Mom. After 30 years, it's getting hard to continue being creative... coming up with new ideas & creations to impress Mom & let her know just how AWESOME she is! But, it's totally worth it... and we always think of something. After having my first baby last year, I am constantly asking my mom how on earth she managed all 5 of us hoodlums. What a brave soul. Nothing makes you appreciate your parents like becoming one yourself. 
So last year, before I gave birth to my now-very-busy son (that time long ago when I still had time on my hands to really get creative)... I did something pretty cool for my mom. (It was for our entire family, actually.) I made the 'Hook Family Recipe Book.' Hopefully reading a little bit about this will give you some ideas of your own! Maybe you can use this concept for YOUR recipes! Make one as a wonderful Mother's Day gift idea this year... or as a Christmas gift for the entire family. What gave me the inspiration was actually my Grandma (my mom's mom). She gave a book of her recipes to my mom many years ago. To this day, it is one of the few items my sisters and I all want to call DIBS on to inherit someday. It is such a treasure. It's handwritten, and full of not only incredible recipes... but also pages and pages of stories! She wrote about her kitchen experiences growing-up... learning to cook for a house-full of boys (10 brothers!!!). There were so many difficult things that she had to figure out (like how to kill & pluck a chicken) in order to cook. Things that we take for granted as we run to the store for a package of chicken that's clean and ready to go. Phew. Well, I talked my mom into letting me borrow the book for a bit so that I could scan in all those priceless stories and select a few recipes to add to this recipe book I was making. From there it was quite the collaborative effort. I dedicated the whole first section to my grandma, and then gave every member of my immediate family a section too. I asked everyone to hand-write (if legible) a few of their favorite recipes and add a story about why the recipe was a favorite. So, everyone knew what I was making (sort of), they just didn't know the details of what anyone else was doing.
So last year, before I gave birth to my now-very-busy son (that time long ago when I still had time on my hands to really get creative)... I did something pretty cool for my mom. (It was for our entire family, actually.) I made the 'Hook Family Recipe Book.' Hopefully reading a little bit about this will give you some ideas of your own! Maybe you can use this concept for YOUR recipes! Make one as a wonderful Mother's Day gift idea this year... or as a Christmas gift for the entire family. What gave me the inspiration was actually my Grandma (my mom's mom). She gave a book of her recipes to my mom many years ago. To this day, it is one of the few items my sisters and I all want to call DIBS on to inherit someday. It is such a treasure. It's handwritten, and full of not only incredible recipes... but also pages and pages of stories! She wrote about her kitchen experiences growing-up... learning to cook for a house-full of boys (10 brothers!!!). There were so many difficult things that she had to figure out (like how to kill & pluck a chicken) in order to cook. Things that we take for granted as we run to the store for a package of chicken that's clean and ready to go. Phew. Well, I talked my mom into letting me borrow the book for a bit so that I could scan in all those priceless stories and select a few recipes to add to this recipe book I was making. From there it was quite the collaborative effort. I dedicated the whole first section to my grandma, and then gave every member of my immediate family a section too. I asked everyone to hand-write (if legible) a few of their favorite recipes and add a story about why the recipe was a favorite. So, everyone knew what I was making (sort of), they just didn't know the details of what anyone else was doing. 
