Oct 4, 2010

277- The Recipe Box

Growing up my Mom had the most wonderful wooden recipe box. It was unlike any available today. That sweet recipe box, with my Mom's initials on it, now resides at Rosehaven Cottage with my niece, Grammy's oldest grandchild. (Thank you Cindy for sending me this photo to post here.)


So for years I've suffered a great amount of angst over the problem of needing a box like my Mom's! I had a smallish orange one (actually, regular recipe box size)  when I first got married that had a slanted lid with a rolled lip that you could put the recipe on to keep it out of the cooking mess. Then a few others of which I only have a vague recollection.

Most recently I had a large square plastic mauve job you were supposed to be able to pick it up by a handle on the top but even from the beginning all that ever did was dump all my recipes on the floor. Then the plastic hinges broke and it was really dgrain-ger-ous... (Wait... wait, I just yoinked it out of the recycle wheelie-bin to get a photo for posterity!)


A few years ago (I don't remember how many, but since I moved to Utah) Rebekah sent me a DARLING recipe box that she'd made and embellished. I love it! But it just sat in the pantry unused because it wasn't large enough to take all my recipes and I have an OCD problem about throwing recipes away. (Of course, this deep-seeded fear may come from the time in 1975 when I was cleaning out and sorting my recipes and threw the WRONG PILE INTO THE FIREPLACE!!!!! I have a bunch of singed recipes now residing in my recipe box to remind me not to repeat that mistake!!)

277- recipe boxes
Rebekah's repurposed recipe box is on the right.

But this week it hit me! HA! Those cool boxes I bought at Women's Conference 3 years ago and gave some to Bek... JUST THE RIGHT SIZE! So I pulled out my Un-do and removed the embellishments, ribbons, and tags from the small box and put them, along with some new ribbon and the tag from the accompanying Mother's Day card, on the new pink polkie-dottie box! I also needed to make more dividers since I had twice as many divisions as Bek sent me.

How stinkin' cute is this? I just copied her lead on the dividers (she takes scrapping to a new art form!).

277- recipes

OK, but now here is the crying part... I didn't even wonder why I had all these extra division/categories in my recipe box until I looked at the photo Cindy sent me today of Mom's box... there, category for category are my Mommie's dividers!

3 comments:

Cindy Garber Iverson said...

Such a cute job on the divider cards... I like the lettering! The old dividers in Grammy's recipe box are the same as the ones that were in my mom's recipe box as I grew up. So I have memories from both women connected to the simple dividers. I look at them and immediately I'm transported back to helping back cookies and licking the beaters.

NanaSue said...

Here's an AH-HA for you...Where do you think the perfect wooden box came from? Most likely it was made by Mom's grandpa, Julius Pump... who made so many other family heirlooms.

Dean and Sheri said...

"Yoinks"! Oh Joanie, how I love your "Jonie-isms". In fact..."wonky" has become part of my regular vocab. And how I love your mother's recipe box. What a great post. My uncle created a small wooden box out of the lumber from my great-grandparents house in Waldo Ark for me. I LOVE that little ol'shack they lived in. I visited every Summer as a young child. Such good memories. I've got to get on the ball and get my recipes in it. Luckily...it's 4x6 size. That's good for my 47 year old eyeballs! Your new recipe box is adorable too, BTW.