recipe box redu...

I have a crush on vintage advertising and labels. The wonderful artwork, the neat fonts, the retro colors - the sense of nostalgia. When we cleared out my grandparent's home for auction a few years ago there was no shortage of ephemera. My great-grandparents built the house, and like many during the depression years, they saved everything!

One of the carry overs of food packaging that has lasted to this day, is the inclusion of recipes. [usually the recipe calls for another product that the manufacturer makes] Some of the recipes I found were much more appetizing than others, but the artwork was lovely. I am a big fan of the old school Betty Crocker cookbooks with the 'sketchy' looking art, so I was super excited when I found these 'free with purchase' recipes.

I already had the wooden box, it just needed a handle for the top. With trusty modge podge at my side, I went to work. Some scrapbook paper, vintage images, and even a few of my grandma's handwritten recipes later, I had a great place to store my little tin recipe boxes and all of the misc. recipes I have printed off from websites that were previously hanging out in my cupboard.

The result is a little kitsch - just the way I like it. I hoping that it will encourage me to try out more new recipes and to cook at home more often [too bad I can't reach into the box and pull time out :]

i'll file away...

I am an unabashed saver - I live with the motto: "maybe i'll need this later" This carries through to bills, receipts, documents, and papers of all types. Behold, the perfect Hawaiian themed file cabinet!

I am really horrible with remembering to take 'before' photos (I am usually SO excited just to get the project underway) so this is as close as it gets. I bought this 2-drawer file cabinet at Goodwill for $5 - it was beige with marble-look drawer fronts - at first glance I thought they were covered with some horrible contact paper. So step one was to spray paint it black.

Then I searched the web for some vintage beachy postcards - and found the motherload! Arkiva Tropika is packed with great tropical ephemera - old menus, postcards, brochures, and the like. I printed those out on some medium weight paper and cut them out.

I laid out all of the images so that they fit on the top and two sides. Then came the modge podge! I painted the mp on the back of the image and on the file cabinet and smoothed them down with my fingers and the occasional aid of a popsicle stick. Then I plastered the top of the image with a nice even layer of mp. Once an entire side was complete, I would paint mp all over it again - after some drying time, this step was repeated five times for each side.

I think it turned out pretty fun and unique - much nicer than a boring old file cabinet :)