We love cooking in The Mad House. I really enjoy teaching the boys new recipes and sharing with them recipes that have been passed down through the family. I want to make sure that I leave them with a legacy of lots of delicious family recipes. I was delighted when Newcastle Building Society set us a ‘Customise Your Life’ challenge of customising your cookbooks with your top 10 family recipes as it spurred me on.
I have been including printable recipes on the blog for a long time, so it was simple enough to print them all off to start our project. I also gathered together some materials to make the customising of our book (which I purchased from We love Bread and Jam).
Materials
- Blank book
- Glue stick
- Stickers (we were sent ours by a lovely lady in a facebook group)
- Pens
- Pencils
- Stamps
- Tape
- scissors
How to create a family cookbook with the kids
Yes I have lots of our family recipes on the blog, but there is nothing like a cookbook stained with fingermarks where the pages have been turned and marked with flavours and smells of all the meals within.
I picked a good quality blank book with thick pages, so that we could colour in and the colour not transfer through.
I started by printing out all the recipes and we cut them to size.
We then glued them in place before embellishing each page.
We wanted to make notes on who’s favorite it was and also any hints and tips that we had for making the recipe too.
Why “Customise Your Life”?
Newcastle Building Society appreciates that everyone is an individual and no two person’s needs are ever the same – especially when it comes to savings. That’s why they’ve developed its CustomISA, which allows savers to spread their tax-free savings across as many Newcastle ISAs as they like each year and is designed for savers who would usually have to decide between sacrificing rates on their ISA for access or access to their own money for a better rate.
To celebrate CustomISA’s flexibility, we are inviting a select number of bloggers to be part of a #CustomiseYourLife Blogger Challenge and our challenge was to create a customised family cookbook. I can not wait to see what the other bloggers have done.
Pocket Money
I love using crafting time to discuss things with the boys and we discussed this pocket money infographic that Newcastle Building society sent us. The boys are 8 and 10 and both get £2 pocket money a week and the opportunity to earn £2 more by doing chores. Mini said he certainly spends his money on sweets, not food! Both the boys were surprised that a quarter of 7 – 12 year old kids use a mobile phone to go online as neither of the boys have a phone and neither do most of their friends.
I would love to know how much your kids get for pocket money and how old they are.
Great idea! I want to make one with our kids, too!
what a wonderful idea. I think I will do this with my 2 little bears x
Now this I’ve been meaning to do for years, thanks for the motivation!
Such a great idea – I just have lots of random pieces of paper floating about. This is far more sensible and a nice thing to pass on too.
So pleased it’s not just my children who don’t have mobile phones before their teenage years! Whatever happened to having fun? 🙁 so sad. Love the family recipe book, we have one too!
A lovely idea – my recipes are stuck into the cookbook I made when I was at school.
Love this family recipe book idea! I’m forever finding recipes online and then losing them, printing them out and putting them in a book like this is a great idea.
I love this idea and it’s one I’ve been meaning to do for my older kids in Italy as they are always phoning me and asking me for recipes I used in their childhood.
I just hadn’t thought of how to put it together.
This idea is fabulous, thank you!
One of the reasons I started my blog was to make a record of our favourite recipes.
I started my blog like ness to record my receipt an memories et x
This is such a lovely idea! There is nothing quite like a cookbook – and one that you make yourself is even more special
This is a great idea, I have an empty my favourite recipe book and it is something I really need to use x
what a great idea, i have found that when children are fussy it is because they prefer to either choose their own meals or make them
This is the best title for a recipe book ever, genius!
Do I need my eyes tested on that infographic? Do children of both sexes really spend £3.9million on Germs?
Love the idea of creating our own recipe book – I have my aunts here and it falling to bits
This is such a great idea! I would love to do this with my son.
I love this, what a brilliant idea and definitely one I will be doing with my three over the summer. Thank you!
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This is great Jen, what a brilliant idea. Looks superb too. You are a wizard of la craft! Poppy doesn’t have pocket money yet, we should probably think about when we start that though. She starts school in September x
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I love this! You’re so creative! A good way to get everyone talking about their favourite meals 🙂
Oh wow this looks amazing. I love it! I will definitely make one with Pickle when he is a bit older 🙂 Kaz x