DIY Valentine's Day Surprise for my Valentine

I can always think of a million things to get my boyfriend, but for our first Valentine's Day together I wanted to make his gift a memorable one.  I tried hard to think of something special that tied back to the very first night we met.  He impressed everyone that came to eat by making General Tso's chicken and Fried Rice, and of couse I kept stealing glances while he expertly tossed the rice in the pan.  We were set up by two close friends that night on April 17th (2009) and have been together ever since.
As I said, I thought of a million things to get him... 

The nice sturdy set of measuring cups at Williams-Sonoma that we saw when were at the Mall of America last week...

A new set of spatulas...


A candy thermometer?  (So he can make me chocolate?  Tempting...but no.  That wouldn't help my waist-line.) 

The list could go on and on...and as I thought of all these kitchen items, suddenly I thought of a brilliant idea!  He hates recipe cards, doesn't have a box for them, and would rather print out his recipes on a 9 x 11 sheet of paper.  In fact, he stashes all of his Food Network print-outs in a kitchen drawer and sometimes they float around a bit before they reach the drawer.  Ta-da!  My present was to be a personalized binder to keep his recipes in.

First it was off to the K & Krafts (a very cool local scrapbooking store in the Fargo/Moorhead area) to search for some manly paper to personalize his binder.  I spent less than $7 on the scrapbooking paper and a few sheets of regular green cardstock.  Here's a picture of the front cover.  His favorite Food Network personality is Alton Brown. Can you tell?  I used rub-on transfer stickers that I already had for the lettering.

 
Below is a picture of the back cover.  The Menu used on the back cover and the fork, knife, and spoon on the front cover came from a sheet of scrapbooking paper.  The entire sheet had different menu/eating/cooking related  cut-outs.  The best part is that these didn't have flowers or sparkles all over them.  These passed the dude test.

I even got out my paints and painted some of the letters for the spine of the binder.  

Here are a few pictures of the inside of the binder, starting with the cover page.  On the back of the cover page is a lined page where I left my Valentine a special note in place of a sappy card from that greeting card store that starts with an H.  :) 

Yes, I also found some (manly) scrapbooking sheets that you could cut into recipe cards.  Even though he prefers making print-outs, everyone has recipe cards for exchanging.  One never knows when a blank recipe card could come in handy, or if he receives a recipe card now there's a spot to keep them.  I put a sheet of recipe cards at the start of each section/divider.  (There are 8 dividers in this binder.)

And let's face it; cooking can be a messy job.  Who wants stuff all over their cards or print-outs?  I bought a pack of 50 heavyweight sheet protectors (non glare) at Office Max, and the recipe cards fit perfectly into a the [In] Place brand of Heavyweight Assorted photo pages.  These photo pages came in a pack of 10 sheets.

With a binder that will hold 300-some pages, I think he should be set for awhile!  In the process of making his present, I let it slip out that I was making his present when we were talking over the phone, and that made him instantly curious.  He may be humoring me, but I don't think he guessed what I was up to.  :)  And no more loose pages of recipes will be floating around.  Most of all, I had a blast making his present!