Erin Napier has found the sweetest way to memorialize her late grandmother.
The Home Town star, 35, lost her grandmother Ouida Walters Rasberry last May, and to honor her nearly a year later, Napier created a custom cookbook filled with scans of her grandmother's handwritten recipes. "Last Easter she was still with us. This Easter, I'm picking up the coconut cake torch," she wrote on Instagram on Saturday ahead of the holiday.
The "Book of Ouida" as she calls it, is separated into main courses, side dishes, desserts and some helpful tips. Her grandmother's smiling face covers the front. "So glad we found all her recipes so I could make the Book of Ouida. But man, I miss her," Napier continued.
She announced Grandma Ouida's passing in May 2020, sharing some black-and-white photos to Instagram of her grandparents in their younger years. "My sweet grandmother went to heaven today," she wrote in the caption.
"My grandfather passed in 2001, and for 19 years she lived without him," Napier added. "I'm so happy that he's shouting 'here she comes!' today, even if my heart is broken for us without her. My Mother Goose."
Ouida previously had a stroke in 2008, losing much of her ability to speak. Napier opened up about her grandmother's condition to PEOPLE in June 2020. "In the last year or so we aren't even sure if she knew us when we came to visit," she said at the time. "So I would tell her things and she didn't really respond."
That same month, HGTV aired a special episode of Home Town, where Napier found out that the house she was renovating was where Ouida lived when she met Napier's grandfather. The episode was filmed while her grandmother was still alive, but aired the month after her death.
"My story began here," she said in a tearful scene. "I've had so much fun renovating this house, but I had no idea I had a personal connection to it."
Napier and her husband Ben Napier, 37, recently kicked off season five of their HGTV show Home Town, set in Laurel, Miss. In addition to Home Town: Ben's Workshop, which premiered in December, they're preparing for their second spinoff Home Town Takeover, which premieres May 2 on HGTV.
The couple tied the knot in 2008 after they attended the University of Mississippi together, and they share 3-year-old daughter Helen.
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