And still more projects

Lest you think I was lying (laying?) around on my couch and eating bon bons while on my blogging hiatus, I've been using the last few posts to catch you up on all the stuff I've done the past few weeks. Somehow I feel like I've been bragging by showing you all of the finished projects, but really it's just my feeble attempt to prove to you, the world wide web, that I'm not a slacker that just didn't feel like blogging. I really was busy! Honest.

May is pretty big in our family. Of course there are all the end of school activities and projects, but aside from that, in our family, there are birthdays. In fact, all of the married women in Honey's immediate family have birthdays in May. Mine is at the beginning, my SIL's in in the middle, and my MIL's is at the end. Throw in some Mother's Day and teacher gifts, and we have ourselves a gift giving extravaganza!

Several months ago, my SIL shared a wonderful idea. Her brother was getting married and she wanted to welcome her new SIL into the family. She compiled all of her family recipes and scraped them into a recipe book. It was a wonderful, thoughtful wedding gift, plus all of the family recipes were preserved and passed down.

When I saw her precious book, I coveted it. Then I realized that I could make one, too! So waaay back in January, knowing how hectic May was, I started making a family recipe book for my mom for her Mother's Day gift. I had every good intention to have it finished by the end of Spring Break. You know, so that May wasn't so crazy. But, alas, it didn't happen. And the week before Mother's Day, I finished the bulk of my mom's book. But I'm so glad I did it.

I organized Mom's book by months. My mom loves holidays. She's always up for a new reason to change the seasonal decoration in the house. So I thought it would be fun to include her love of the holidays as the theme for the book. It's a bit ironic that I started this project just a couple of weeks in to my little Weight Watchers project. As I was thinking about all of my favorite comfort foods, I realized just how much our lives revolve around food. It was fun though.

Here are a few of my favorite pages:

January was soup month. I love curling up with a warm bowl of soup and a good book.

Of course, February was dessert month. It took several pages to fit all of these recipes in.

May was Girls Night Out month. This is the month for all of the salads and girly food.

June was main dishes. No particular reason there, but I just needed to fit it in somewhere.

July was cook out month. For obvious reasons like . . .it's summer. . . the 4th of July is a great time to cook out. . .

I also included favorite birthday cakes in August because Mom's b-day is in August. April was Easter month, so I put some of our favorite home cooking recipes in there. December is one of my favorites because all of my favorite Christmas breads, finger foods, and ciders are there.

Since all of the recipes are already typed up, one of my goals this summer is to make myself a keepsake book. It really will go much faster since typing and compiling is the most time consuming part. The project will be much more enjoyable at my own pace, without a deadline, one page at a time.

What's on your summer to do list?