I recently came across a neat idea for a scrapbook. The person, who created it, took her familys favorite (and famous) recipes and created a scrapbook out of them. Recipe scrapbooking is such a great way to make sure all these great recipes of members of the extended family are preserved.

Start by getting all the recipes together. Look through your own notes. Youll be surprised how many of the recipes you already have. Mine are usually scribbled on pieces of notepaper and then stuck into one of the cookbooks I have.

You can handwrite the recipes directly in the scrapbook, on a piece of paper or even a recipe card. Of course you could also type them up in your computer and print them out.

Take a quick inventory of the recipes from other family members that you already have. Are you missing Aunt Bettys famous peach cobbler recipe? Call her up and get it.

Talk to other members of your extended family about your recipe scrapbooking idea. You will get plenty of suggestions about what else to include.

You can organize the recipes within the scrapbook by course, or by the family members. Group a few of the recipes on one page, or dedicate an entire page to each recipe. Include pictures of the person you received them from and pictures of the dish itself if you have them. I also like to add a little note about each recipe. You could write about how your great-grandmother brought this recipe with her from Italy, or how you invented your famous pie because you were missing one of the ingredients of the traditional recipe.

Add some cooking or baking related borders and pick up a set of recipe themed stickers to complete your family recipe scrapbooking album. Take it to your next family function to share it with everyone that contributed a recipe. You could even ask them to add a personal note about each recipe. Be prepared to add more pages, or create a second book as more family recipes start to surface.

You may be tempted to dig out the scrapbook next time you are fixing grandmas famous roast. Dont leave the scrapbook lying on your kitchen counter while you cook. Its to easy to spill or splatter something and ruin all your hard work. Instead, jot the recipe down on a piece of paper, or even better, get a small binder and put all the recipe form your family recipe scrapbook in plastic page protectors that you can easily wipe off.

Creating a family recipe scrapbook is a great way to preserve your familys recipes and pass them on to the next generation of family cooks.