The holidays are around the corner. That means it’s time to cook, bake, and entertain with your favorite holiday recipes. Your kitchen will be a busy place from now through the New Year. Gallery Leather wants to help you by offering a full line of products and some tips on how to use them best to keep your kitchen organized this holiday season.
1. Write Them Down
Say your friend brought over a decadent dessert that you would love to try to make yourself. You ask them for the recipe. They tell you that it’s simple and rattle off a list of ingredients.
When you go to make it later, you don’t remember how. You wish that you had written it down. You know that you remember things better if you write them down.
Studies have shown that you process information better while writing it down by hand, making you more likely to remember it later. Recipes are no different. You will remember what you wrote better if you put in on paper instead of typing it out on your cell phone.
If you would like to take advantage of this life hack, Gallery Leather offers various journals and notebooks. We offer travel journals and pocket notes portable enough to bring with you to any holiday party to write down recipes that the host may share with you or to the grocery store with a list of ingredients you need inside.
We craft our Leather Journals using bookmaking techniques that have stood the test of time. The pages of our leather journals are Smythe sewn and glued. Then, they are reinforced with a cloth binding strip.
Acid-free vellum endpapers and a ribbon bookmark complete our journals, which are bound by hand in bonded leather. The paper we use is acid-free and selected for just the right “tooth,” weight, and texture for writing. Holiday shopping will become easier and more enjoyable with your new journal.
2. Make Your Own Cookbook
If you’ve ever wanted your own cookbook, Gallery Leather can help your dream to come true. Our Leather Recipe Organizer holds 4 x 6 recipe cards, clippings, photos, and printouts in acid-free polypropylene pockets designed for easy viewing while protecting your favorite recipes from stains. At 25 pocket pages, our recipe organizer can hold up to 100 recipes.
Perforated 4 x 6 recipe cards are attached to the recipe organizer’s ring binder until needed, and Mylar tabbed dividers organize recipes for quick reference. Tab dividers included with our recipe organizers are for appetizers, soups and bread, salads and vegetables, meats, seafood, poultry, pasta and grains, and desserts. Journal pages are available for recording life viewed from the kitchen.
One customer enjoyed her recipe organizer so much she decided to order several more:
“Have had these for years, and I love the look, feel, and how it adds to my cooking experience. These are great! Love the different colors and how they are divided.
Have several colors and thinking of purchasing another color. I’ve divided the colors into main dishes, desserts, appetizers, and beverages. Great quality.
I have used them for over 15 years. Hold up great. Great gift idea also.”
These recipe organizers truly are a great gift idea. Another customer has two organizers and plans to order two more to give to her children. Everyone loves food, so we highly recommend our recipe organizers for your holiday gift exchange.
3. Plan Ahead
You have many important dates to remember during the holiday season with parties at home, work, or school. Planning meals ahead of time can help alleviate holiday stress, especially when meals need to be prepared in advance. For example, did you know that a turkey needs to be thawed for 24 hours per 5 pounds of its weight? That means it can take almost a week to thaw a 20-pound turkey!
Today, most people use online calendar programs like those attached to their email accounts to meet their planning needs. These calendars can be used on both your computer or cell phone.
They are useful tools, but what happens when you are away from your phone or computer? Like when you’re attending a holiday party. As easy as these tools make it to remember important dates, they make it equally as easy to forget them.
In turn, this could result in you forgetting to bake for the cookie exchange at work or having a turkey that is still frozen on Thanksgiving Day. Here is where Gallery Leather can help. We offer planners in a wide variety of formats and designs to accommodate your holiday celebration schedule.
From our Weekly Desk Planners to our Leather Family Planners, with all the details you could hope for, we craft our planners using time-tested bookmaking techniques and quality materials. You can choose between weekly, daily, or monthly planners to best meet your scheduling needs. We even offer undated planners so you can plan your meals on your own terms.
4. Take a Picture
Did you know that most of the appeal of food comes from its appearance? Written recipes don’t always do your favorite dish justice. Taking photos of the finished product and the steps it took to get it can help you to remember the recipe better. You could even create a photo album or scrapbook devoted to your family’s recipes. Gallery Leather can help you with that project.
Made of bonded leather, the Gallery Leather Photo Albums and Scrapbooks come in a rainbow of colors. You can even have your album personalized with your name, initials, or another title. Every photo album or scrapbook is crafted to exacting standards, with acid-free, archival photo pages, to last for generations.
5. Put a Label on Them
Part of getting organized is labeling. Recipe organizers and albums can be labeled to reflect any title that will help you remember what is inside. Arrange these items in alphabetical or numerical order. This makes it easier for you to refer back to recipes for specific items, like desserts or side dishes, for example. You can make these labels by hand or purchase professionally made labels.
Gallery Leather can help you to get organized in this way as well. You can also have a name or other identifying information added to your recipe organizer when you personalize your purchase. However, if you already have one of our products that you would like to label, we offer custom title labels in bonded leather to match your item’s material. Your kitchen looks and feels more organized once you label your recipe organizers.
6. Color Them Organized
Gallery Leather offers products in many different colors and textures. Our recipe organizers currently come in five different colors: Camden Violet, Camden Kiwi, Camden Orchid, Camden Red, and Camden Blue. If you’re not sure which color you’d like, we offer swatches to help you decide. To better organize your recipes, you can buy them in different colors.
7. Put Them on Your Tabs
Although our recipe organizers come with tab dividers for different food categories, we also sell them separately. That way, you can use them in a recipe organizer you already have, even if you didn’t purchase it from us. These Mylar tabbed dividers organize recipes for quick reference. The tab dividers come in a set that includes categories for appetizers, soups, and bread, salads and vegetables, meats, seafood, poultry, pasta and grains, and desserts.
8. Card Them
If you would prefer to have your recipes written down on recipe cards, we sell sets of 10 pages with two cards each. They come as perforated sheets to use either with our recipe organizer or on their own. At 4 x 6, they are portable enough to share or bring to collect recipes at your holiday party.
9. Protect Them
If you consider yourself somewhat of a messy cook, having a way to protect your recipe cards can help them last longer and keep them organized. If this is you, Gallery Leather has a solution for you. Our easy slip-in recipe pocket pages are made with acid-free, archival materials.
The pockets are sonic-sealed, without harmful adhesives, and constructed of 3 mm polypropylene film to reduce distortion for crystal clear recipe card viewing. Pockets accommodate 4 x 6 index cards, recipe clippings, and photos. Use them with our recipe organizer or any binder you own.
10. Collect Them
A fun way to collect new recipes is by sharing them with friends and family. The holiday season is the perfect time to do this. A fun way to organize and collect recipes is by using one of Gallery Leather’s Guest Books at your holiday party. Along with signing their names, you could ask your party guests to share their favorite holiday recipes in the guestbook on our “open” format pages. At the end of the night, you’ll have a collection of recipes to use for next year.
No matter the season, Gallery Leather has a solution to keep your recipes and life more organized. We know that the holiday season can be stressful, but it truly can be the most wonderful time of the year with the right tools. We hope that you consider adding Gallery Leather’s full line of products to your wish list this year.