Back to Basics Giveaway

In celebration of my 100th blog post, I thought I would have my first giveaway.

I love books, so naturally, I decided that my first giveaway should be a book that I really enjoy.

The book I have chosen is called Back to Basics - How to Learn and Enjoy Traditional American Skills- and is put out from Reader's Digest. I got this book years ago, shortly after I was married, and had become a homemaker. I had grown up on Little House on the Prairie, both the show and the books, and have always loved the idea of the "country life".

To show you how excited I was about country living, here is a scan of my Christmas list from back when I was a child- probably 9 years old. Looks pretty normal at first- a cooking set, a printing set, 10 dollars, a science lab, then starts to veer into homesteading- a big backpack, tent and blow up sleeping bag, a lot of money to buy land, 16 cows, 5 horses, and a whole bunch of wood (presumably to build a log cabin). I am glad my Mom saved this list- I did, by the way, get the cooking set- rather than a toy set my Mom put together a whole box of real baking things, as well as an assortment of Jiffy Mixes, so I could make them all by my self and really learn to use the oven. I had so much fun with that. I also got the printing set, I fancied myself a journalist, and wanted to be called "scoop".



When I was first married, my husband and I lived in the Portland suburbs, but I dreamed about country living. I poured over this Back to Basics book all of the time. Gary started to be interested in some of the ideas in this book as well, we would read this book at night before bed, and talk about our dream property. When we finally moved to our first country property it was this book that inspired me to have chickens, and raise a huge garden. Even now, as I live on a smaller property in a small town, I am still inspired by this book, to do the gardening, crafting, and cooking that I do here, as well as continues to keep me excited about saving up for our next country property.

Here is a picture of my old copy.

This book covers a lot of interesting topics- from buying land, to raising livestock, from gardening to braiding rugs. Very fun book to read. Also wonderful for anyone reading The Little House books with their children, lots of good project ideas! Wonderful for anyone who wants to start learning traditional skills or is thinking about moving to country property.

Here is a link to this book at Amazon.

So now for the giveaway-

I am giving away one new copy of Back to Basics to one lucky reader. Here's how to enter:

Just leave a comment below- if you do not have a blog please be sure your name links to an e-mail.

For bonus entries:

For 2 bonus entries-Follow April's Homemaking and leave two comments letting me know you have done this.

For 1 bonus entry Follow April's Homemaking on Facebook and leave a comment letting me know you are following on Facebook.

For 1 bonus entry Share a link about this contest on Facebook and leave an additional comment to let me know.

For 3 additional bonus entries write a blog post about this contest with a link back and leave three comments letting me know you have done this with a link to the post.

Your entries are your comments so be sure and leave a comment for each entry. I will be choosing a winner from the comment list using Random.org. This giveaway starts September 9, 2011 and ends September 17, 2011. Winner will be announced Monday September 19th, 2011.

Good Luck Everyone!