How to Create a Cookbook |

Your photos + family recipes = a treasured holiday (or anytime) gift

The Idea: Create a Cookbook as a Holiday Gift The Project: Heirloom Photo Cookbook (from HP's Activity Center) Time commitment: After gathering photos and recipes, building each recipe page took less than 15 minutes. Craftiness Required: Little to none. Trust me: If I can make the page you see here, anyone with the ability to drag and drop can do so, too! The tools: HP Inkjet Photo Paper, hole puncher, three short pieces of ribbon (or purchase an album or album rings to bind the pages together), your photos, and your recipes. (There's a free HP Quick Lesson on how to create a custom cookbook, too.)

Why I Did It I may not be crafty, but I love to cook. And I really enjoy sharing and trading recipes, tips and techniques -- especially those that have been given to me by family and close friends. "Make a cookbook and give it as a present this year," a friend said to me the other day. Visions of Betty Crocker, Julia Childs and Emeril flashed before my eyes. But before I tossed the idea aside, I realized that I'd only have to compile the photos and recipes once and print as many or as few copies as I wanted, when I wanted. Luckily, the HP Activity Center makes it very easy to do just that.

How I Did It For this cookbook, I gathered three recipes from my extended family in Parma, Italy; I grabbed a notebook of recipes from my Hungarian grandma, and I grabbed my maternal grandmother's recipes for apple pie, pumpkin pie and pecan pie. The Heirloom Photo Cookbook template allows you to select different design themes, plus text fonts, colors and sizes. And you don't need special software to build your cookbook (the project runs from the Activity Center website). Simply save the pages to your computer as you build them. Then you can print them immediately or at another time, depending on when it's convenient for you.

My Tip for Saving Time Don't worry if you don't have photos of the actual food in the recipe. I think the cookbook is more personal and touching to include photos of the people you love and of those who contributed the recipes (not to mention what a timesaver it is because I have lots of photos of family and friends and very few pics of the food I cook). This is a simple project that doesn't require creative genius.And I feel excited that it will generate lots of love and for years to come. Try it, and create a gallery page to share your cookbook with the community. I promise to take a look -- maybe we'll swap recipes!