Magical Holiday Home

How do you like to organize your holiday recipes? A binder? Card file?  Digital format?

For years I used both cards and binders. Recently I have tried to eliminate cards and keep most of my recipes in binders.  I have a special binder for Christmas but I also have Family Favorites binder, Fall/Winter binder and Spring /Summer binder.  I find that these four can pretty much handle the recipes I have. I have another single binder that is a reference binder for my cookbooks…it has pages that list favorites fron my books and which book and page they are located on.

The main problem I have is there are not enough days to make all of the recipes that catch my eye. I have had to become ruthless…if I make a recipe and it is just so-so….OUT goes that recipe….it is discarded because there are so many more that can take it’s place.

Here’s a roundup for those that like to use recipe cards…

HERE

Tie that Binds

Sweet Art Boutique

May is recipe month here at Magical Holiday Home and there’s plenty to do with recipes!  You can set up or organize your Christmas recipe notebook or you can select recipes for your dinner parties and December meals!  Gather up all those loose recipes and let’s get them organized. You can also browse through cookbooks and create a favorite recipes notebook as a reference for your cookbooks so you can easily find the ones you want without searching through all those books!

I hope you had time this month to at least “think” about your holiday dishes and holiday kitchen! Today relax and enjoy a little Rudolph Day fun…

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I thought today might be a good day for a tour of some Christmas kitchens….

First up over at Simply Sweet Home I found a super sweet tour from 201o. I love the decor and the color scheme.

Next….this darling 2011 kitchen over at Imparting Grace.

This FABULOUS yellow holiday kitchen can be viewed at It’s Overflowing. There’s alos a great free printable of the Let It Snow art.

 Another holiday kitchen to see is over at Designs by Pinky.

There are lots of good tips about organizing the kitchen for the holidays. Check out the kitchen prep week over at Organized Christmas for some great ideas.  Holiday Grand Plan Kitchen Week is HERE.  Houseworks Cooking Space Week is HERE.

I’m confident if you follow either one of them you will be on the road to success. Sometimes I tweak things a bit or add my own little spin to them such as:

•  I set up cabinet “stations”. A baking station for storing the ingredients as I buy them for holiday baking because I usually wait until the week before Christmas to actually bake. A party station to store any goodies and supplies I am putting together for either our brunch that kicks off the season or our Christmas Eve dinner. A bar station with alcohol or other drink mixes. To make room for these stations I purge and get rid of anything that I can and put the rest of the items in a plastic tote in the garage till after the holidays.
• Prior to Thanksgiving I give the pots and pans base cabinet a good cleaning and replace any items that may need to be replaced. OUT with the old IN with the new.
• I bring some of my holiday dishes into my main cabinet. These are usually in the bottom of the china cabinet but I bring out enough for at least our daily use.  That way we can use these fun plates through out the season not just for brunch and Christmas Eve.  I also get out some holiday glasses and mugs. The season is too short to not enjoy all of the neat stuff I have.
• I do a quick update of spices and discard any old and replace them with fresh. If your spices are outdated they don’t really serve the purpose!
• I make a list of holiday food ingredients that we enjoy. For example the ingredients for Almond Tea and then I stock up on them so we can enjoy little holiday treats throughout the season.

The holidays are smoother and so much more enjoyable with a little organization! I sometimes start as early as the end of September preparing the kitchen for The Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

 For a GREAT tour of a Christmas Kitchen check out Sunny Simple Life. I love how she brightens her kitchen for Christmas…so cute!