It's been awhile...

Yeah, like 4 years.  But a lot has happened in four years.

Like, we got a kitten, and it was bad... like really bad

SHERMAN! 

And then we got one of these...

Not an actual picture of our house...

Except it was NO WHERE near that nice, and we had to deal with things like this...

An actual picture from our house (yes, that is mold)

And like this...

An actual picture from our house (yes, those are Christmas lights hung in poison ivy)

And then, as things were settling down, life intruded.  Unfortunately, our beloved Sammy became ill and we were devastated when he passed. Sherman was left as the only kitty, and he didn't like his only-child status, so, then we got one of these...

O'BRIEN! 

Now that we've settled into our home, got rid of all the mold and most of the poison ivy covered Christmas lights, settled the kitties into our lives, painted every wall in the house (ok, ok, i haven't done the ceilings or trim yet),

tracked down the "interior water feature",

and made sure that stopped (but first caused some extra chaos), 

Why, yes, Jim is using a chain saw in our house... 

we finally decided we were ready for a new project.  And thus, thanks to my Mom's compulsive organizing and photo copier, we came home with a copy of her binder full of recipes.   

Perhaps I should explain, my mom and I are recipe collectors.  Yes, we both have a lot of recipe books, but the real stars get adapted over time, get scribbled onto little scraps of paper from phone conversations with a friend or loved one, get printed out from sources online and then scribbled on, as we make our changes.  So, the favorite gathering place for our recipes has been a three ring binder.  But of course, one three ring binder cannot possibly contain all the goodness.  So the challenge, make and photograph all the family recipes, making notes about what works, what doesn't, and where needed, measure the ingredients. Another aspect of the challenge is still in the works.  Start going through my grandma's collection of recipe scraps and to work together with Mom to recreate some of her best dishes. 

This is not an easy challenge.  My collection and my mom's collection alone is a bit daunting...