Apron Strings - A New Chapter in our Lives

A home with four children running around the place, an always unpredictable number for dinner and an ever growing outdoor family can be a pretty busy place to spend ones day. However it's important to have hobbies. For some that may be swimming, walking or having coffee with friends. For me I love to write my blog posts and spend time snapping food pics. It's a fantastic hobby that gives me a fabulous outlet from my busy hub. I must tell you, if you haven't realised from previous posts, that I am a dreamer but I genuinely believe that most dreams can be achievable. About four years ago, while I was escorting Jack to his Saturday classes at CTYI, I always had a few hours to spare. I wasn't anyway Internet savy so there was no distraction from Twitter or Facebook and it was also prior to my blogging days. With time on my hands I decided to try and pen a children's novel. I must say that this was one of my least outrageous ideas, of the past ten years and it wasn't going to cost me anything more than my time. After I had each chapter written I would read it to the children. They found this all very exciting and I in turn found myself imagining that someday this would be on the shelves of a book store and my children would read it to their children. I liked to dream! I became quite unwell while pregnant with Millie and could barely perform everyday tasks, never mind write a book, so this was left to one side.

When I started the blog I was giving cookery classes, from my kitchen, so this was a wonderful way to bring together my love of writing with my passion for food. I started to write for the Westmeath Independent and Easy Parenting also blogging events were now becoming a regular occurrence.  I was busy, but the dream of finishing my book or starting a new one was always lurking at the back of my mind. Then out of the blue, earlier this year, I received an e-mail from Eoin Purcell, the commissioning editor at New Island, querying if I had possibly thought about writing a cookbook. To say that I was over excited was an understatement. We met the following week and I've been stuck into writing the book ever since. It's a book that is mostly recipe based but is supported by everything that is part of my everyday life.
The name of my book will be Apron Strings. A name that Diarmuid, my husband, came up with and I instantly fell in love with it. Even though the past few months have been extremely busy for me, and the rest of the family, I've thoroughly enjoying all the writing and the photography{above being one of those photos}, so I sincerely hope that you will all enjoy reading it too. I'm at a very exciting stage as I almost have the manuscript complete, but I still have a bunch of photos left to take. Thank you to all of you who read the blog and to my blogging friends, you give me such great support. This is truly a dream come true for me.
Apron Strings will be on the shelves of book stores {and the boot of my car}, from April 2013.