Everyday Celebrations From Scratch is a DIY guide with cooking and crafts written and curated by Maria Provenzano. Released 28th June 2022 by Harper Collins on their HarperHorizon imprint, it's 368 pages and is available in hardcover and ebook formats.
The book is written around the idea that celebrations don't have to only occur on big occasions. It's enough to celebrate the everyday things as well. To that end, the chapters' recipes and crafts are grouped thematically: weeknight meals, family, friendship, sports, and seasonal celebrations with entries for each season.
Recipes are appealing and the book is styled to within an inch of its life. In fact, it reminds me more than a little bit of the Martha Stewart style/aesthetic with a bit more American Italian casual and a little less New England WASP. Recipes are written with an introduction, ingredients in a bullet list in a sidebar, and followed by step-by-step instructions. Measurements are provided with imperial (American) units only. There is no nutritional information included. Most of the ingredients for food and crafts will be relatively easy to source at any moderately large grocery store or big box crafts supplier.
The production values are top notch, but fair warning: the book seems to be a photo album of a hyper-imagined "instagram perfect" family (as I look around at my messy kitchen countertops and wash my 3rd load of laundry for the day). They're almost all blonde, beautiful, thin, with straight teeth and full heads of beautifully styled hair (even the older generation). There are abundant photos of the author's beautiful family, but not so many of the food or crafts.
The crafts are mostly kid-friendly, and I never really thought I would review a book which intentionally included pasta picture art, but here we are.
Three and a half stars. A careful read-through showed no glaring errors in the recipes or crafts tutorials.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
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