I like how they are completely covered with the same patterned paper both inside and out. As cute as they were to start with, I couldn’t help but embellish them just a bit. No. I really didn’t have a ton of extra time on my hands with nothing more pressing to do. I’m just quirky about things like this. So I made my own divider cards with coordinating paper from my stock of scrapbooking supplies.

My orange box contains categories for appetizers, beverages, canning, desserts. In this box, the only category with subcategories is desserts and they are: bars, cakes, candy, cookies, frozen, and pies. Emily talked me out of covering each of the subcategory index cards with cream colored paper stating I didn’t have time for such creativity with company coming for dinner in a few hours. So, I added some white ribbon to the main category cards hoping that would tie the index cards together with the other colors enough to not drive me nuts. I’m doubtful, but it’ll probably work for awhile since I really didn’t have any more time to spend on this project. Oh, and the third box on the shelf contains all of our untried recipes in no order whatsoever and that poor little box doesn’t have any matching index category cards. Maybe another day.

If you look back up to the picture at the top of this entry, you’ll also see all of the cookbooks in no particular order. They have all been rearranged and nicely organized on a shelf all to themselves. The Betty Crocker Jr cookbook is from my childhood and the regular size Betty Crocker cookbook sitting next to it is my mom’s. Recently, I rescued both from life on a bookshelf in my grandma’s bedroom to a life of stardom here in our kitchen! My mom says she needs one recipe out of that cookbook so I guess I’ll have to make it and post it here on the blog in the near future.
And, the syrup bottles shown above which are laying on their sides above the cookbooks have caused more than enough extra work for me with their leaking and dripping onto the carpet and papers. Now they have their very own shelf tall enough to allow them to stand upright eliminating a LOT of extra cleaning for me down the road. Now that I have shown you the above shelves and have sufficiently justified my NEED for a new cabinet in my recipe corner, I’ll show you what the whole finished corner looks like.
It’s much more functional than my previous corner cupboard and it’s more fitting to the decor as well. Here’s a picture so you can see where it’s at in relation to the rest of the house. It’s on the wall going into the dining room.

And, it can be seen as you enter the house from the back door. This is a view from the back porch looking through our kitchen.

And, last but not least here’s a close up of the Willow Tree figurines prominently sitting on the top shelf. At first glance one might think it’s just a collection of various pieces. However, these particular pieces have very special meaning to me because they were my Christmas gifts the year Nathan was born. Each piece closely resembles the ages of our children at that time with the two boys staying close to Tim and I. The girls are a little more grown up sitting together visiting just a little ways from us and there is an angel watching over all.
These figurines were previously inside the hutch in our dining room where they were kind of hard to see. I LOVE having them right here in the kitchen on an open shelf. At the risk of sounding sappy, I just want to say that with each passing year I look back more fondly on the time when all of our children were here at home for almost every meal and I’m glad I have these figurines in our kitchen to immortalize that particular time period in our family’s life.