The Homely Year is a book about the seasons; and living in tune with them. We give recipes and instructions for growing and making things.
Noreen and Margaret were inspired to write this book by a number of factors. Margaret, in particular, is good at making and growing things. Both believe that it is not necessary to throw money at your life to make it better. Instead it can be satisfying to take a step back and live in a simpler way; shopping in the local market and charity shops instead of huge stores. A big part of our ethos is that anybody can enhance their lives and home and have fun along the way. Both have learned a lot while doing (and living!) the book. We photographed all activities; eg: jam-making; home-made Christmas decorations; growing pots of herbs. The related blog has also gained its own momentum, with a healthy number of visitors.
Forgot to say - we got an agent for this quickly and easily. She had a few publishers really close to accepting it; but very disappointingly we always failed at the last hurdle. We have quite a lot of photographs making it expensive - and of course we are unknown - marketing departments seemed nervous at the last minute - there you are...honesty being, as they say, the best policy !