Inside: A Free Template for a blank recipe book; plus a full tutorial for how to design your own family cookbook; perfect for gift giving and preserving family traditions.

Need a last minute gift idea? Or maybe you just feel it’s time to start collecting all those old recipes in one place? Or perhaps, you are like I am and like to switch up your recipes and you often forget what adjustments you made? Either way, having a set of blank recipe pages to take notes in is a great idea! Not only that but today, I’m going to show you how to make your own DIY Family Recipe Book – plus there’s a form on this post that will let you download my template for the blank pages!

This is a super simple tutorial. All you need is a free (or paid) version of Canva. I use it allllll the time for blog things and to make print outs and documents. I absolutely love it as a tool. In fact, I used it to make this cool modern family tree art last week.
Open Canva and navigate straight to the templates for recipe cards. Yes. They make it that easy, you guys. No designing required! Some of them are more modern and require big images, others are just words and lines – all of them are cute and you really can’t go wrong.

I used some images I had saved from past baking projects to create the front of my recipe book. Imagine how pretty this would be as a Mother’s Day or Christmas Gift for someone who loves to cook and bake?

Once I had my recipes all saved in Canva, I downloaded them as a high-resolution PDF suitable for printing. Then I took my files to Staples and had them print the pages out on medium density paper. Basically, my instructions to them were that I didn’t want cheap paper that would be see through. I wanted paper that had a bit of weight to it.
I also chose to have my recipe book spiral bound – which comes with this fabulous laminated cover …perfect for messy kitchens!

I’m so thrilled with how this turned out and bonus points because it fits perfectly on my DIY Tablet stand in the kitchen!
Oh and even better was this entire thing cost me less than $14! Gotta love that 🙂Â