An Amish wood craft can be the central theme of a bridal shower that will long be remembered as a unique affair. It is often difficult to come up with a motif that will make a bride's shower one that is different from all the others, so here's a grand suggestion! Use a beautifully made wooden recipe box as the main component of the event. The bride-to-be will be “showered” with a gift that may become a family heirloom for generations to come. In addition, she will receive many useful and lovely recipes, given to her by dear friends and relatives.



Each guest should be invited to the shower with an invitation that includes a blank recipe card that will later fit perfectly into the box. The invitees will be asked to bring a dish they have made to the event with its corresponding recipe, handwritten on the card. At the bridal shower, the card is inserted into the recipe box. Everyone will get a chance to sample and savor that particular homemade food, as part of the shower's activities. This theme carries through the entire event, and it also saves the hostess from hours of cooking and baking!

Since the box is one made by an Amish craftsman, the invitation can gently stress that an Amish recipe would a perfect choice to make and record on the card. If an attendee doesn't have one in her repertoire, she can go online to find innumerable opportunities to make an Amish recipe a family favorite of her own. Then it will become the perfect choice for the shower recipe card. Everything from Amish Friendship Salad, which uses ham, macaroni, carrots, onions, barbeque sauce, and condiments, to Amish Chicken and Corn Soup, which has the delicious ingredients of chicken, onions, carrots, celery, parsley and noodles, can be found. There's even an old favorite, Amish Chocolate Chip Cookies! Other tempting dishes such as Amish Friendship Bread, Amish Apple Strudel, and Amish Baked Apples, are ideal choices for the recipe box.

Not only is this Amish wood craft giving the bride a cherished gift that she will use her entire adult life, but it can also be a family heirloom that is lovingly given to each generation that follows. As the woman becomes a mother, and shows her daughter, or daughter-in-law, how to prepare certain family favorite foods, that beautiful wooden recipe box, which has taken on the patina of loving handling over the decades, will be the center of a kitchen work table. Children will know it as a magical fountain of yummy foods. Imagine the joy that will be shining on the face of the next bride-to-be, as she is the recipient of this wonderful, everlasting, intergenerational gift!

If a wedding shower is not planned for the near future, the recipe box would make an excellent birthday gift, for bakers and cooks of any household. Instead of using it as the central theme of a wedding shower, it can be the focus of another event, this time a baby shower! It could be given to a mother-to-be, filled with wholesome recipes for baby foods. The possibilities for the gift of an Amish traditional recipe box never end. How about for a young teenager who is turning sweet sixteen? The box could also be a special birthday gift for a young adult who is coming of age at eighteen or even twenty-one. Why not gift a young woman who is starting her own apartment, or graduating from high school or college? This item would also make an ideal farewell party gift to a special friend who is moving away.

The recipe box theme can be expanded at any one of these events to include other Amish wooden crafts. Items such as wooden bowls, rolling pins, and spoons are often handed down from mother to daughter to granddaughter. Not only do they compliment the recipe box in quality, and durability, but also in sentiment. These kitchen tools can invoke beautiful, nostalgic memories of a mother or grandmother, who used the same items to provide sustenance for their families. There is a true nurturing quality that is inherent in the soul of these products. They are family treasures, which are cherished. They have a similarity to prized possessions such as family Bibles.

One might wonder, “Why Amish?” Each wooden piece represents the craftsmanship of an experienced American Amish worker. When one desires finely crafted items made by skilled artisans, who have spent their entire lives working with wood, then the choice needs to be Amish. These American workers know the intrinsic qualities of American woods, including which kinds of wood should be used for kitchen utensils, for recipe boxes, for furniture, etc. In our fast paced society, time usually means money. In contrast, one finds the Amish craftsman, creating at a pace suited to making a perfect product, rather than to a time clock. Quality of workmanship is an ideal as well as a reality to the Amish worker. These items are not made in a foreign factory, but instead, are fashioned by skilled woodworkers here in the United States. High quality American native woods are used to make these products. They are not of the plastic or pressed wood varieties found in discount stores.

So how can an heirloom-quality Amish wood craft be purchased, if one does not live anywhere near Amish country? In years past, someone might have had to travel across a number of U.S. states in order to arrive at an Amish community. Happily, we now have the Internet, and technology has solved that logistical problem. Traditional, well-made Amish crafts can be obtained online. So that wonderful set of wooden bowls with mixing spoons, or that beautifully crafted recipe box, with the lid that closes so perfectly, can all be acquired while sitting in the comfort of one's own home. The wedding shower, or birthday party, with the recipe box as the central theme can be a definite reality. In order to find a product made by people who do things “the old-fashioned” way, a person actually needs to go to cyber space! One can find there, the world of the Amish people, who craft with true American values, and beliefs, as they make products of lasting, wholesome beauty, suitable to be called family heirlooms.