Nathalie's Bat Mitzvah

It's been a little while since my last post as I have been busy preparing for, and then celebrating, the holiday of Passover with my family. My Dad was back for another visit and during the seven-day festival we have been to some wonderful places around Israel which I will post about soon.

Passover, or Pesach as we call it, is all about the food! We clean our homes thoroughly to remove all crumbs of chametz (leaven) to remember the Jews leaving Egypt who did not have time to let their bread rise, and we eat only "Kosher for Passover". You can read more about it in two of my previous posts here and here, but whilst we're on the subject of food, I am excited to show you a project I worked on some time ago - a recipe book for a young lady celebrating her Bat Mitzvah.

A customer approached me with the idea of a family recipe book in mind. She was already in the process of collecting recipes from various members of her family and wanted them made in to a book with extra pages that the Bat Mitzvah girl, and any children she may have in the future, could add to.

Nathalie, the Bat Mitzvah girl, loves horses and the outdoors. I have shown her on the cover of the recipe binder with one of her much loved horses, and with a tent in the background since she enjoys camping too. All the recipes collected were for desserts - obviously they are a sweet-toothed family - so the name of the book aptly became 'Family Desserts' and I added a chocolate mousse, a jelly, a slice of cake and chocolate chip cookies to the cover to give a taste of what is inside.

I designed each recipe page on a grid using teal and kraft paper, to match the binder cover, as the general colour scheme. I then added 'ingredients' from each recipe to decorate the pages and had fun crafting chocolate, mangoes, bananas and jelly to name but a few!

My customer loved the kiwi the most, below, whilst I think that the chocolate chip cookies, above, look good enough to eat. I just hope that Nathalie doesn't spill any of these ingredients on the book whilst using it!

The same day that my customer collected the finished book, she wrote to me to tell me that she thought it looked amazing. "I loved leafing through it" she said. "The detail is fantastic. I love the kiwi and the chocolate mousse pages especially. Many thanks again. I am sure it will give Nathalie and all the family a lot of pleasure."

I am so pleased that I was able to make it happen.