June 2008 Rudolph Club Meeting

Welcome to the Rudolph Club: your once-a-month meeting to simplify your holidays and get organized for Christmas, 2008!

At OrganizedChristmas.Com, we know that the holiday season can be fast and furious. Solution? Take a day once each month throughout the year to plan and prepare for a more-organized holiday season.

On the 25th of each month, we'll bring simple assignments and easy tips to try now for a simpler, more joyous season for 2008. Over the year, you'll tackle planning and preparations to make the season lighter, brighter and less stressful come December.

Click the read more link below to get organized for the holiday season:

June Rudolph Club Assignment: Recipe Round Up!

Holiday foods are so much a part of the holiday season that it's hard to imagine a Christmas without them. No turkey, cookies, even fruitcake? Impossible!

As if the cooking weren't enough, finding and organizing favorite holiday recipes can be a chore. We're going to begin now to gather and organize holiday recipes! Goal: holiday cooking sessions will be just that, cooking--not a game of Hunt-the-Clipping.

Organizing recipes promotes creativity and enhances the spirit of the season. Bringing together all the family's tried-and-true recipes is a springboard to more exciting cooking. After all, if you're already making three kinds of chocolate cookies (brownies, chocolate chip cookies and Gramps' Goodies, in my case), new recipes based on fruit fillings will be a welcome addition to your cookie trays.

Finally, there's another reason for compiling favorite holiday recipes in one place: gift-giving. Home-published recipe books are a delight to receive, and easy and inexpensive to give.

This month, gather together the special recipes that your family enjoys during the holiday season. Don't restrict yourself to sweets! Do you make a special appetizer? Where is Grandmother's stuffing recipe? Collect all the stained cookbooks, slips of paper and scraps of index cards.

Holiday Recipe PlannerNext step: list and organize. We've got a free printable recipe planner to get you started. Use our form, or create your own computer file or planner page. List special recipes, and note their source by title and page. File your list away for the holidays inside your Christmas Countdown notebook. You'll be ready for cookie season!

But what if you're like most of us, with holiday recipes scattered among drawers and used as bookmarks in unrelated recipe books? Consider going one step farther, and organizing your recipes.

Computer-savvy users may enter holiday recipes into a recipe database software program. Or, if you have an eye to creating a recipe booklet for gift giving, you may choose to scan or type recipes into a word processor file. Then there's the old-fashioned way to organize: recipe cards written by hand.

Whatever method you use, the goal is the same: to record holiday recipes in a single location where they're easy to find, easy to read and easy to follow. Hint: many computer recipe software programs print recipes onto various size pages or index cards. Most versatile, 4"-by-6" index cards can be printed on many printers and slipped inside photo album pockets for an instant, easy recipe notebook. Pull them out of the sleeve to make notes or share with a friend!

Ready? June is a great month for a Recipe Round-Up! See you next month in the Rudolph Club!

June Rudolph Club Reminders: