BIG, HUGE (Cookbook) News!
Happy October, friends! Today I'm bringing you the biggest blog-related announcement I've made in...ever!
If you follow me on Instagram and caught my post earlier this week, then you're already privy to this announcement.
As for the rest of you, are you ready?
Okay, here goes:
I'm writing a cookbook!!!
Specifically a Real Food Slow Cooker Suppers cookbook, since that's what I enjoy cooking for my family and those are the recipes that visitors to Five Heart Home seem to love. So are you as shocked by this news as I am?! Because I still can't believe it. 
When I started this blog two years ago, I couldn't have imagined that it would lead to this opportunity. But it has, and it's all thanks to you, my loyal readers! So I'm really excited to let y'all in on how the little (BIG!) secret I've been keeping all summer came about...
Back in June, I was contacted by a publishing company about exploring the possibility of a Five Heart Home cookbook. Let's say that my eyes just about popped out of my head when I realized that it was a legit e-mail from a legit company that published legit cookbooks (which hopefully doesn't make me sound too jaded, but bloggers receive a lot of fake offers/spam). So we set up a conference call, during which we came up with a premise for a cookbook that I was passionate about and that we thought my readers would love. Then came the phase where I had to submit samples of my recipes and writing style and photography to make sure I was worthy of a book deal. 😉 Lucky for me, I passed all of their tests, and I'm thrilled to announce that I'll be working with Page Street Publishing Company over the next year to bring you a Real Food Slow Cooker Suppers cookbook with 80 brand-spanking-new recipes, available at Barnes & Noble and Amazon in October-ish 2016!
Now I realize that there are tons of slow cooker cookbooks already out there, but this one is going to be different in that the recipes will require no processed ingredients! No canned cream of 'X' soup...no gravy packets or dried seasoning blends with questionable additives...just real food ingredients resulting in dinners that taste great while still being easy to throw into the crock pot.
And now for a bit of explanation about the work I have ahead of me... If you're an e-mail subscriber or regular follower, you may have already noticed that my posting schedule has been slightly reduced over the past couple of weeks. The downside of writing a cookbook is that I have to meet a pretty huge, looming deadline in a few short months. So, seeing as how I am 100% human and 0% superhero -- and seeing as how I'm still responsible for the care of three young kiddos, to whom I'm rather partial -- I can't possibly maintain my usual weekly blogging schedule and care for my family and create/test/perfect 80 new crock pot recipes, all at the same time. Somethin's gotta give. And in this case, that something is going to have to be my current three-new-blog-recipes-per-week schedule.
I promise to do my very best to still bring y'all two new blog recipes a week while I write the manuscript for this cookbook. But I'm honestly not sure how time-crunched things are going to get at certain points, and it's possible that some weeks I'll only be able to eek out one. I hope y'all will hang in there with me, as I still have tons of fabulous previously posted recipes with which you can get acquainted while my usual blog recipe production slows down for a bit. 😉
I just want y'all to know that this is a temporary state of affairs...I fully plan on reverting back to my usual posting schedule once my biggest cookbook deadlines have passed. I so appreciate your support, patience, and understanding as I add another job to my already-overflowing plate. I've decided to accept this challenge because I think that I can write a really useful cookbook that will help busy families get a delicious dinner on the table with minimal time and effort. Hearing that my recipes help make people's lives easier (or tastier) has always been the most rewarding part of working on this food blog. So to create a real, live, printed cookbook that has the potential to bring families together over the dinner table? I get a little choked up just thinking about it.
Okay. Enough of the jibber-jabber. THANK YOU again for supporting Five Heart Home for over two years now, and thank you for helping me reach a point at which this cookbook is possible.
I hope you're as excited about real food slow cooker recipes as I am, because I have 80 new ones headed your way next fall!
