Shanna's Friendship Recipe Box

My best-friend, Shanna, just celebrated her birthday last Friday and of course we did it in style with an evening of scrapbooking with friends.

My cousin, Brandi, and I made this recipe box for Shanna for her birthday and of course there is a story behind it.

Brandi, Shanna and I hang out together quite a bit. Since, Shanna is like family, we not only get together as friends, but for family events as well.

Shanna likes to bake and gets excited when she finds a new recipe that works well for the family. We will be out at a function or in a restaurant and eating something that is really good and Shanna will say: "I bet I can figure out how to make this at home!" Meanwhile, I am saying: "Let's make reservations soon so that we can eat this again!"

So, Shanna had made this comment enough times in front of Brandi & I that we started saying: "Let's get this recipe so Shanna can make it for us!"

Then one day, Brandi called me up and said that we should make Shanna a recipe box for her birthday and fill it with recipes for her to make us. Also, some joke recipes because we like to tease Shanna.

Funny enough, 2 days earlier I had just received the new Kaiser Craft Recipe Box in the store that I had pre-ordered 2 months earlier.

So, we started working on it immediately. Soon after we started this project, our friend, Ellena, passed away. After her funeral, a bunch of her scrapbooking friends came back to my house for a day of scrapbooking. After everyone had left, Shanna & I were talking and one of our conversations was how nice it was that we were able to pull off our "Cards for Ellena" project.

We made sure that she received at least 2 cards a week from her friends reminding her that we were thinking of her and there for her. We talked about how nice that was. We all know that we have many friends that love us, but to have that constant reminder is even better.

That was it! The next morning, I called Brandi & told her that we had to get all our girlfriends in on the recipe cards so that every time Shanna opened her Recipe Box she would be reminded of the friends who love her.

So, we contacted our friends. I took all their head shots & on their recipe cards is their photo and their hand written recipe.

The Kaiser Craft Recipe Box is very sturdy and very easy to put together. We used one of the papers from Kaiser Crafts Christmas line to cover the box.

The longest part of the project was finding the perfect, not so common, friendship quotes to fill in the 5 windows on the recipe box. I designed them all on my computer to make them fit perfectly. We used the Labels 17 Nestability die-cut to frame out the windows on the box.

On the inside of the lid, we used one of EK Success' photo corner punches, the Labels 17 Nestability die-cut & the Lyrical Cricut Cartridge for the lettering.

For the dividers, I typed the titles out on my computer and we punched them out with Stampin' Up's Large Word Window punch.

For the front of the recipe cards, we used Stampin' Up's "From the Kitchen of" Stamp Set. For the back of the cards, the lines were designed on my computer and then we used one of CTMH's "E" Size Promotional Stamp Set that has no name on it for the swirl. For the tabs on the recipe cards, we used Stampin' Up's Extra-Large Round Tab punch.

Brandi & I had a lot of fun putting this recipe box together. I am thinking of making myself one, but since I hate cooking.....mine is going to be a photo box or an address box.

I just received 8 of these recipe boxes in the store today & 4 of them are already spoken for. I will not be able to get in any more before Christmas, so if you need to get your hands on one of these recipe boxes....you may want to get into the store sooner than later.

Bon Apetit!