It is this site's 20th Anniversary!
If you are new here or never knew the history of the site An American Housewife... here is a quick blurb;
The name "American Housewife" stems from an idea for a cookbook I'd always wanted to put out in the 90's and early 2000's. I never had the funds to make it happen... but then the internet came along and the chance to have a recipe website presented itself to me.
The name American Housewife was a natural. As for the url of the site; housewifebarbie - well, that stems from a joke that I kind of regret now.
I was a full time Mommy with three children under the age of 5. I loved cooking, baking, sewing, crafts and everything to do with babies and children. My friends dubbed me the Original Housewife Barbie... after the Barbie doll that had done everything from being an astronaut to a doctor to a teacher, but never 'just a housewife'.During some joking conversation one day, I was deemed the original Housewife Barbie and when I had to think of an original url for a blog in 2006, it seemed only natural to use it since it was just a personal little blog for myself and who cares? Right?
This site is a collection of recipes I've gained over the years since I was in Junior High. Some from the 1,000 recipe books and magazines I have, some from the internet, some from friends, family members, my grandmothers old handwritten school notebook from cooking class and various other places. It's a collection of recipes that also includes those that I've made up myself for my own family.
This site was started in 2006 and for quite awhile was my 'part time job' and was much, much busier, bigger and had links and affiliates and ads. Was continuously updated, had a very high ranking and had about 2 million visits when I put it in 'standby' mode to focus on a lot of things going on in our life at the time.
So many life changes in the past few years... so many big, big things. I had to pull back all recipe posts, reviews, affiliate links, ads, regular updates, etc. as I was expending all my time and energy elsewhere by
As we enter 2026 I was really just going to update my site with the cookie list for Christmas 2025... (I made 24 recipes this holiday season and multiple batches of many of them). I also thought about starting the website back up again... at least a bit... when I realized upon logging in that it is now 2026 and my site was started in 2006 and OMGOSH it's my 20th Anniversary of this site!
It might be a grand time to make it active again.
