Things that are inspiring/need inspiration:

Look what my lovely mother bought me instead of petrol money: The Self-Sufficiency Bible!

I love this book. If I could marry a book and live on a small-holding raising chickens and growing carrots, it would be with this one. That's a bit weird, but you get the point!

It's not only that it's about self-sufficiency, it's just written so well! Unlike rather a lot of books on the subject, it's not over-complicated, doesn't assume you know the difference between a cucurbits and a Solanaceae and lets you get involved on any level - 'From window boxes to small holdings'. You can read it from cover to cover, or flick to the bit you need. Bloody fantastic.

Also, it has great recipes for all your produce (I've already made a batch of cupcakes, banana bread and a carrot cake).

There is a slight problem - because we're moving house, I can't justify going into the allotment and planting lots of  fruit and vegetables, so I'm just using everything up! I am using eggs from our chickens though, so that's something! 

All this baking, together with Meryl Streep's portrayal of Julia Child in Julie & Julia, has given me inspiration in the kitchen. Grilled mushroom served with spicy Moroccan cous cous, spinach and peppers made a delicious lunch, even if I say so myself (I'd never cooked a mushroom before and was bloody proud!)

I buy/eat a stupidly vast amount of salad, but most of it goes all soggy and gross within a day, so mum bought a living salad. Basically, it's fully grown lettuce, rocket etc. that you can keep on your windowsill and trim when you need salad - fresh! Because it's already grown, it'll only last 10 days though, so I'm going to plant my own salad and chillies from scratch. As Julia would say; 'BON APPETIT!' 

 (Apparently appetit has two P's... otherwise it says Ape Tit.)

So I'm guessing I've bored you enough with all my country bumpkin talk... Photography it is then!

I need ideas for photo shoots I can do own my own - lots of people do 365 (a photo a day, duh) but I don't have the ability to keep stuff like that going! Some people do F-friday, (take a pic of something beginning with F every friday), I was going to try and do some including sign language, or  use one object in a series of shoots... I don't know. Let me know if you have any ideas!

TTFN 

F xx

ps. Sister just put Bridget Jones on, I could not be happier!! Even if my legs do only go up to here...