Christmas in the making

I’m currently working with women of all ages in a department store. I’m learning more each day about the varying stages of, dare I say it, “womanhood,” and things get a little kooky now and then. This isn’t the first time I’ve worked with a lot of
women. And all of them, even if only on the consumption side, have a love for food to some capacity.

The other day, Beth, a personal shopper in her early 50s was telling me about her Christmas gift making plans. “Christmas is for the birds” is her theme. She is making all of her pals birdhouses. I love it. I started thinking about what I could do with a theme, or gift making idea in general. A day or so later Beth brought in some of her famous garlic bread. The following day Sam had a tub full of decorative cupcakes. I don’t know why it took me probably a week later for my gift making epiphany to hit, but it did. I’m making the women in my immediate family cookbooks filled with our family recipes. I’m actually really excited about this, and I will probably end up making one for myself-- I MUST HAVE the recipes for my grandma’s pie crust, my aunt’s home made chicken soup and my mother’s hot rolls. I don’t know why I haven’t collected these by now, but I’m glad to be getting on it, and I think those receiving the books will be, too.
























I thought about several mediums, but I knew I wanted to avoid working digitally on this project. What you see here will be the only digital form these books take. My handwriting is shaky, but that is part of jotting down recipes, right? The paper you see here has been cut and sized to fit the DIY covers and binding kits I found. I found a lot of antique prints, and I am rarely drawn to rustic tones, but for this I feel it works. The recipes that this book will house aren’t being served in any luxe cafes-- they are straight from rural Southwest Missouri kitchens-- bright geometrics just weren’t jumping out at me for once.



















I haven’t hand made a gift for a couple of years. Somehow in the rush of finals and mayhem at school, it never even crossed my mind to handcraft much of anything. My nights are much slower lately, and I can admit that picking out paper for over an hour this week followed by curling up alone with a book in my favorite local coffee shop was pretty blissful. If you decide to take on a similar project, let me also suggest baking these while doing so. YUM.