Recipe Binder

So I've had a recipe binder for a while. It has looked like this for a long time. Yep, I once turned on the wrong burner on my new to me then stove and melted plastic onto my ceramic stovetop. Andy thankfully was able to clean it off. Notice all the white papers sticking out the side? TONS of printed recipes that were just loose hanging out. When I looked for a recipe I had to flip through all of those plus the ones in plastic sheet dividers to find what I was looking for.

The dividers weren't wide enough to show past the page protectors. They were invisible. Couldn't ever find the section I needed. Plus I had never labeled them.

 The new goods. I love my new binder I found out Target. IT is a 2inch binder with a brown background and cream flowers. The centers of the flowers are different colors of the rainbow. I bought coordinating folders to use as dividers. The green cardstock is for gluing smaller recipes cut out of magazines so all recipes are 8 1/2 by 11. (Both of those ideas were found on one of my new favorite blogs, here.) I put two on a green sheet when possible to make the most use of each page. Also used the front & back to glue recipes on since the page protectors are clear and show both sides! I spent $18 plus tax. We already had some plastic page protectors.

I opted to hole punch the folders without cutting them in half. Andy did that part. Then I glued them closed so they wouldn't be flapping open as I was flipping through to find recipes.

The three colors of file folders...blue, brown, & green with the coordinating flowers. *love*

I used my handy label maker to make label the dividers. I had clear label tape at first and then had to go buy more and Wal-mart was sold out of clear...had to switch to white. That bugs me a little bit. BUT oh well! These are recipes I have found on the food blogs I read or from Pinterest etc that I print out. I still have some cookbooks and I still have some recipe cards. The cards are organized in a spiral photo album and just tucked into the photo sleeves. I decided to not add them to this binder.

The categories in my binder:

DIY- (homemade taco seasoning, dressings, croutons, etc)

Drinks

Appetizers

Breakfast

Bread

Salad

Sides

Main Dish

Dessert

Top View

Is it bad that the last section (desserts) is the biggest?! The one right before that is main dish, so at least it is somewhat balanced!

Check out my updated 20 in 2012 post!