Everything must be pretty. Make it so.

When I was growing up, my home was cluttered.  I mean, CLUTTERED.  My mother wasn't a hoarder or anything, but there were boxes of things in every corner of our house.  I didn't even realize what houses should look like until I got older and visited my friends' houses.  If you walk into my mom's house today, there's the same clutter... and I do mean the SAME.  The exact same box of pencils that she collected on every vacation is still in the same corner.  Why does anyone need a shoebox of unsharpened pencils from Branson, Missouri?  I couldn't tell you.

When I moved out on my own, I made it my mission to have a tidy house.  I moved out when I was 18 and going to college, so the first few years were not actually TIDY, but at least I could call my corners clutter-free.  After college, I had a tiny little apartment that was tidy... but that was because I didn't have anything to put in it.

Fast-forward a few years and I'm married with children.  My house is cluttered, but it's with toys... and children.  I have two, why does it seem like there are 50 of them here?  One of life's mysteries, I suppose.  Anyhoo, I'm working to make everything organized and pretty.  Very pretty.  Like, the Princess Kate of pretties.

On my family's budget, I have to work with what I've got.  So while I'm saving up to do a bookcase organization project, that I promise to post about when it's done because it will be awesome, I'm busy doing the easy stuff.

Recently on IHeart Organizing, she talked about binders.  This girl and I are twins, separated at birth, I swear it.  This post about a recipe binder got me thinking about doing one of my own.  I hate my little recipe box, truly I do.  I have thought about painting it, making it pretty, dressing it up in a little tuxedo, ANYTHING to make me not hate it.  But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it wasn't the box itself, it was the space it takes up.  How can something so tiny be so IN THE WAY all the time?  I don't know.  I don't know a lot of stuff apparently. (Don't tell my husband.)

That post gave me motivation to make my own recipe binder, which will go nicely with the 12 other binders I have on my shelf.  OK, it's not 12... but it's getting close.  The setup of the binder was not an issue for me, as I am an old pro at making awesome binders that are awesome with their awesomeness.  What I wanted to do was transfer all my old recipes from their little cards onto a 8 1/2 x 11 sheet, with the same template for each one.  Uniformity.  That's what does it for me.

So, I created a template for my recipes:

That's my real recipe for Fruit Pizza.  I made it last weekend.  It was delicioso.  That means tasty-awesome-delicious.  I took the picture when it was made so I didn't have to use a picture online that was not my own creation.  I'm authentic like that.

I went to Target and found a cute binder. They have the cutest binders at Target!

It's so happy and pretty!  I found other cute binders too... they will have their own place in a future post.  I got some tabbed dividers on clearance (jackpot) at Walmart, so I went to work.

I labeled the tabs with courses since that's the easiest way for me to find them.  The tabbed dividers have pockets on each side so I'm keeping 'recipes to try' in the pockets until we can make them and decided whether they are good enough to keep in the binder.  We have no room for so-so recipes!

That manicotti recipe is amazing. Really.

Now I'm spending time filling in my template with my recipes and making them for dinners and desserts and whatnot to get a picture of them.  I'll laminate them for longevity and put them in my pretty 3-ring binder as I go. This project will take a lot of time to do, but it's easy and it will look awesome when I'm done.  Patience is one of my best characteristics.  That, and my gorgeous supermodel-like physique.  This is the internet, you'll believe what I tell you. ;)

I made a little tag for the binder too, so I'll know which one is which. I have a 'home' binder that has all my important info in it (that's for another post) and other binders as well.  What can I say? I enjoy the binders.

And the clutter?  I'll work on it.