Gotta start somewhere

Yes this is another craft. GOSH. Lay off! :) Here is how this one began...my best friend Erin (married with a 10 month old, went to high school with her) and I hang out with her husband, my husband, and our other best friend, Michael, EVERY Sunday night. It's kinda Jersey Shore style in that we all bring something and eat dinner and hang out from about 7 to 11 and catch up on each other's lives. Total family dinner tradition. We usually order out from somewhere or all bring something to add to a meal. I always look forward to Sunday nights!

Well since I am all married now and trying recipes, Erin and I started talking about how we need to start trying recipes together and build a little recipe book for ourselves. Not like some legit book, but just start conglomerating some recipes (old and new) and saving them! Sunday nights prove to be perfect timing for this adventure. So I decided CRAFT TIME! It's weird though, I looked all over for cute recipe storage things and cards and separators and apparently people do not store recipes in this fashion anymore! Or maybe I am looking in the wrong places! I happened to find some cute boxes on clearance at Michael's craft store and some fun recipe cards on sale to go with them (for $1!)....

Kinda fun, right? The sayings on the recipe cards are pretty cute. There were a couple other different ones too. So then I went searching for some separator tab things (like appetizer, desserts, etc) and nothing! AH! I was so frustrated! I still got the boxes and cards, one for me and one for Erin. So I looked EVERYWHERE. No luck. While I was at Joann's fabric feeling pretty down about this whole deal I stumbled upon this really cute paper:

The stripes are the backside of it but I really liked the pots and pans on the other side! So again...wheels got turning and I decided I was going to make my OWN tabs for the recipe box. Then I wanted something to kinda differentiate the tabs from just a card stock piece of paper. So then I found these:

They are photo corner things that you are supposed to use in scrapbooks for corners of pictures and stuff. I thought, hey, this could work. I don't know why I got fixated on this project but I wanted to surprise Erin with a fun gift to start our recipe trading. So I tried a few different ways until I finally found the right size that would fit in the box but also stick up a bit from the recipe cards. Everything sounds so simple but I always think I am going to do something in 15 minutes and it turns out to be an afternoon. So I cut part of the stripes from the back, glued to the top of the pot and pan side, wrote the description on the tab, cut the tab to stick out, added the photo corners, and then laminated to help stand out more. Result:

I did five tabs. Starters, Entrees, Side dishes, Sweet Treats, and Family Recipes (cuz my mom is AMAZING and she needs a whole section!). I separated the new recipe cards with the tabs I made and here is what it looks like in the box:

So I hope Erin likes it! I made two identical ones for us:) Because that's what best friends do people...they match. ;)