In My World: Close To My Heart ~ Baking Memories

Baking Memories with a Recipe Swap and Giveaway!

(Please note that the recipe swap contest has ended.)

Some of life’s sweetest moments take place in our very own kitchens. It is where we gather with friends and family to share stories and make memories, often while enjoying something appetizing that has been carefully plated by the host. Today, we invite you to be our guest as we combine two of our favorites—food + crafting!

Even though in scrapbooking we often find a lot of squares and straight edges, have you noticed how prevalent circles are in a kitchen? From an array of dishes to cakes and cookies, circles are everywhere!

We took that familiar basic shape and used it to make a scrapbook page with our Freshly Baked paper collection, easily creating a space for preserving a moment where friends gathered to spend quality time together and make a delicious treat.

The smaller, patterned paper circles making up the larger circle shape on the page were cut from the Freshly Baked paper packet using the Circles Thin Cuts. The additional page elements, including the title and the smaller accents scattered across the page, are either stickers from this collection or stamped images from the Freshly Baked—Scrapbooking stamp set.

This second scrapbook page also carries the circle theme, this time through the designs on the patterned papers rather than the way the papers were cut. With just a few strips of paper, and some additional straight cuts, this delectable page also comes together quickly!

One of our favorite things on this page (besides the super cute couple pictured! ) is the cookie cooling rack with the cookies on top of it! The cookie shapes were easily cut with the Freshly Baked—Scrapbooking Stamp + Thin Cuts and then colored in to create accents to accompany the photo. For easier attachment, and to avoid having the space behind it appear too busy through its spaces, we mounted the die-cut cooling rack on White Daisy cardstock. The white space surrounding the cookies provides our eyes with a place to rest as we visually take this delicious page in.

As you can see from these two examples, the Freshly Baked collection has all the ingredients you need to preserve memories of food, recipes, traditions, and other kitchen fun in amazing scrapbooking layouts. Next time you’re preparing a meal–whether it’s an old family favorite, something new, or a meal for a special occasion–take pictures of the process and the result (so millennial of us, but why not?!), and then add these, along with pictures of the chefs and a copy of the recipes, to your scrapbooks!

Not sure where to start? Give one of our workshop kits a taste! The Freshly Baked scrapbooking workshop is designed to create three coordinating 12″ x 12″ two-page layouts that would make a great home for any of your kitchen exploits.

Include the recipes as part of the journaling and turn your scrapbooks into an even more valuable keepsake!For even more crafting assistance with the recipe side of your cooking adventures, the Freshly Baked—Cardmaking Stamp + Thin Cuts are designed to make actual recipe cards.

This stamp and die set can be used to make cards to add to your scrapbook pages, or to make cards that you keep in your kitchen, or even to create a combination of both ideas—just imagine the beautiful functionality of a scrapbook dedicated to recipes with pictures and stories that you keep in your kitchen! (To see how and why Karen Pedersen, our Creative Arts Manager, preserves her recipes using this yummy collection of products, check out the video at the end of this post!)

Because we love food and memory keeping, we thought it would be fun to host another recipe swap, right here on the blog! We’ve done this a few times before and with huge success. It’s so exciting to see what everyone is cooking up in their kitchens, to get to know each other through our stories, and to pick up new recipes and ideas along the way! We’ve started you off with two actual recipes in the photos above–now it’s your turn!

If you’d like to participate (and we hope you will), share a special recipe and a memory that goes along with it in the comments below. If you’re not quite sure whether or not you want to share those delicious recipes running through your mind right now, we’re sweetening the deal by adding a giveaway. Share more than one recipe, even, and increase your chances to win one of THREE Freshly Baked—Cardmaking Stamp + Thin Cuts!

For your recipe to be counted as an entry in the drawing, you must also be subscribed to this blog. (If you are not yet a subscriber, all you have to do is push the big blue button on the sidebar that says, “Subscribe to list.”) You will have until 3 p.m. Friday, October 21 (MST) to enter. Even if you miss the deadline, share a recipe anyway! We want to hear from you! (While you’re at it, be sure to check out this video to see how Karen uses the Freshly Baked product collection to document and organize her own recipes!)